The Death of Smart Grid Has Been Mildly Exaggerated

When a cousin of Mark Twain’s took ill and died in 1897, it was mistakenly thought by entire throngs of gossipers, cynics and fans that Twain himself had passed on, prompting his famous “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” quotation.

I couldn’t help but think of that quotation when Baltimore Gas and Electric had the proverbial “head” of their smart metering program handed back to them on a shiny regulatory platter last week by the state of Maryland.

Was this a problem for the smart grid? Sure. Was it the end? Should it be looked upon as a death knell? Should we be asking smart grid programs if the bell tolls for them? Nah.

What happened? Well, we had a little setback. That’s for darn sure. We thought we had all the smart grid ducks quacking and walking along together in a neat little row. We thought it was all set, everyone was on board, and we were good to jump---in one big ol’ happy group---into the smart grid pond. But, we learned, instead, that some of our ducks were wandering astray, some had stopped dead in the path and decided to sit this one out and some had simply found the pond just too darn cold.

Maryland definitely found the water too cold. The New York Times reported that the cost of deploying approximately 1.36 million electric meters and 730,000 gas meters and related technology in that Baltimore Gas and Electric program would have clocked in at nearly $835 million, about $200 million of which would have come from a DOE grant. The Public Service Commission (PSC), however, was more worried about where the remaining $635 million might come from---namely a surcharge on customers. And, so, they turned the utility down.

Baltimore Gas and Electric stated they were “shocked” at the decision, but it seems rather odd to be shocked that a PSC would balk at raising consumer bills. It’s pretty common for PSCs to be rather difficult to navigate for rate increases, even ones that are supported by evidence of necessity.

While Constellation, the parent company for Baltimore Gas and Electric, was willing to kick in about $280 million of stakeholder money, the PSC still didn’t want to put a burden on the customer. And, unfortunately, that’s how they saw this program---as a financial burden and a bit of tech folly that wasn’t necessary for the future.

And, that denial was the shot heard round the world, effectively drawing out speculation in articles, blogs and conferences that this would mean the end to all smart grid programs---that it has been discovered that the smart grid was a type of boondoggle normally reserved for the Old West days of snake oil salesmen.

It is true that Baltimore’s program could collapse under this denial. The regrouping may not happen for them, but that doesn’t mean that the smart grid overall is ready for burial. That doesn’t mean we are out of ducks, you might say. We still have lots of ducks, and many of them aren’t so afraid of a cold pond.

Today, Duke Energy announced it has signed an agreement with Cisco to pilot and further develop a smart grid-enabled home energy management solution that will provide Duke Energy customers with secure and reliable energy information and a simple-to-use tool to help them reduce the amount of energy wasted in their homes.

This week, Texas-New Mexico Power has selected SmartSynch’s Residential SmartMeter solution for a 231,000 unit point-to-point deployment to residential customers throughout the utility’s Texas market, which will mark the first mass residential deployment of smart metering solutions that use a public wireless network as the communications backbone.

Last week, Elster and Webster Electric Cooperative, a locally owned and governed not-for-profit cooperative in Marshfield, Missouri announced they will work together on a metering project featuring Elster’s EnergyAxis AMI Smart Grid solution to replace the co-op’s existing self-read electric meter base. Webster Electric Cooperative plans to deploy 18,500 EnergyAxis smart meters between July and December 2010.

So, while it’s both prudent and healthy to reexamine our systems, plans and motivations with Baltimore’s big smart grid setback---to tweak a few things here and there---it’s a bit too early to be placing that bucket out front of the industry and whispering that the smart grid needs to give a big ol’ boot to that five-gallon container.

The smart grid ain’t dead yet.