LIVE FROM DISTRIBUTECH: It's about the customer

DistribuTECH 2011 kicked off in San Diego yesterday (with a few pre-conference sessions and meetings beforehand) and from the co-located SGCC symposium to the keynote to my personal meetings, almost everyone is talking about the customer---and not just internal industry customers, truly about the end-use consumer (an idea rather foreign to traditional utilities who always had a bit of a monopoly and could simply assume demand without catering to consumers).

During the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative's (SGCC) Smart Grid Symposium (also titled the "Partnering for Progress" Symposium) on Monday, debate about how much, how often, how nicely utilities need to communicate with consumers was the stuff of panel debates and paper releases.

SGCC released their 2011 State of the Consumer report to "shed light on what residential electric consumers want." What do they want? To know more, apparently---especially about the smart grid---if they have the values and priorities that fit into the smart grid overview. (The report noted that personal mores and hierarchies trumped age or income factors.)

When discussing this report and the motivated smart grid energy consumer at the meeting, SGCC Research Director Judith Schwartz noted, : The big picture may change, but the major players for change had to have passion, had to care."

Schwartz made the comment during a debate on customer wants and needs, acceptances and doubts.

But she found a bit of disagreement with Ahmad Faruqui, principal with the Brattle Group, who made the point that asking people what they would do in a situation and what those people actually end up doing in a situation when finally faced with it, are often very different prospects, which may be a flaw in reasoning out the psychology of consumer smart grid choices.

All the panelists, however, seemed to agree that bringing the consumer into the smart grid conversation was absolutely necessary since, really, the mainstream views of smart grid are often negative.

As panelist Craig Boice, president of the Boice Dunham Group pointed out, the most successful smart grid marketing, to date, was created by the opponents of smart grid in the San Francisco area who changed the community view of smart grid to a negative one in six to nine months time.

"The smart grid story we are telling, "Boice noted, "well, we just haven't found a way to get the customer into that story."

These customer-centric words were echoed in the opening keynote session of DistribuTECH the next morning by representatives from local California utilities and industry commentators and analysts.

David Geier, vice president of electric operations at San Diego Gas and Electric stated, "We can have all the great ideas in the world, but they need to align with and benefit our customers."

Lynda Ziegler, senior vice president of customer service at Southern California Edison agreed with Geier, noting that we, as an industry, have not yet incorporated educated consumers into the equation nor looked at areas consumers are really concerned with: cost, safety, accuracy, security and health issues like EMF.

"If consumers see no benefits to the smart grid, it will be difficult to move forward," she said. "We all have a role to play in the public conversation."

The industry conversation about smart grid continues this week at DistribuTECH. We'll be here in sunny San Diego until the end of the week---most likely talking more about the consumer. We'll keep you updated.

Additionally, our online editor, Jeff Postelwait, is onsite giving you the latest news from the conference. He's streaming that to the news section of the home page. So, take a look at the home page for a peek at the products, announcements, partnerships and collaborative projects from DistribuTECH 2011 this week.