Public Service Co. of Oklahoma is teaming up with a local private university, the University of Tulsa, to install about 1,000 smart meters in and around the school's campus in the hopes of helping students learn how to make smarter energy choices.
Installation kick-off happened in mid-March, and university officials say they're glad to be working with PSO. The installations were completed this week, just in time for students returning from spring break.
PSO last showed an interest in smart meters with a spring 2011 deployment of about 14,000 advanced meters in the Tulsa suburb town of Owasso.
"As we strive to identify new technologies that can help our students conserve resources and control energy costs, we welcome the installation of PSO's smart meters on TU's student apartments," said TU president Steadman Upham.
Using these advanced meters, the utility can connect or disconnect electric service remotely. This capability offers a special advantage on a college campus: With students moving in and out of campus housing for the fall and spring semesters, PSO can turn service on or off easily and without the need to send out a utility worker to the site to service the order.
The meters will connect with a specially designed Web portal, allowing participating customers to check out their electric usage and other information that will let them see how much energy they are using and how they can use less.
The utility is hoping that this pilot program will help them learn about the energy habits of college students, and how interested they are in cutting their energy use.
"The installation of smart meters on student apartment housing is a perfect opportunity to see how young, technology-savvy young people take advantage of information they will have available to help manage their energy usage and costs," said Derek Lewellen, PSO gridSMART project manager. "The number of meters we'll install, plus the fact that TU is a leader in the field of energy technology makes this partnership a natural fit."
It's not just dorms, suites and on-campus housing that will get a smart meter. PSO will also install smart meters at residences and commercial buildings along the northern edge of the campus.
The TU campus is just a few miles away from where I type this, here at PennWell Corp. headquarters in Tulsa. Locally, TU is considered to be a really prestigious (and expensive) school to go to, and I'm not saying that because I went there — I didn't.
University campuses and college towns have long been targeted as test beds for smart grid technologies, and for good reason. They often operate as self-contained grids with their own physical plants and occasionally their own on-site power sources.
So they definitely hold promise for companies and investors who want to try their hand at, say, a smart grid program, an energy storage pilot or a smart meter installation. Plus, as an investor, you get access to a group of young, educated people who might be a little more receptive to new energy ideas than the average local resident.
When I was in college, I spent most of my time living in off-campus apartments where the utilities were pre-paid by the landlord. That was generally something you looked for as a student on a fixed income. So I didn't think much about my energy use at all.
If I had had the ability to keep an eye on my electricity use though, I might have been interested in doing it. College is where a lot of people live on their own for the first time, and you pick up a lot of domestic skills during that time as you think about things you never had to think about before — like supplying groceries to a whole dwelling, how much water you use in a month, or where to get enough quarters to do your laundry.
Testing this kind of program out on student, then, seems like a good choice. If today's utilities are interested in helping foster a generation of people who think about their energy use, getting into colleges and starting programs like these is a great first step. Once you pick up that habit, it's likely you'll continue it as you enter what your elders call "the real world."
By Jeff Postelwait
Online Editor
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
A utility pole tree?
By Jeff Postelwait
Online Editor
On Spring Break weekend, my family, friends and I went on a 7-mile hike in the Winding Stair Mountain National Recreation Area in Electric Light & Power's home state of Oklahoma. The area, which is home to the Ouachita National Forest, extends into Arkansas. It's the oldest national forest in the southern states and was a setting used in the John Wayne classic "True Grit," as well as the 2010 Coen Brothers remake.
The striking thing about the land for me, being an Oklahoman, was the very tall, very vertical cedar trees. From my first step out of my car, I could hear the wind rushing through the treetops (and not much else). With as many ice storms, violent winds and tornadoes that come through the area, there aren't many tall trees in this part of the world — although we do have some battle-tested utilities and co-ops that can vouch for the intensity of this kind of severe weather.
About a third of the way into the hike, I rounded a corner on the trail that cut near a small creek and saw something worth taking a few pictures of. I'm not the world's most experienced hiker, and I don't know a lot about forests or trees, but I'd never seen a tree quite like this one before.
To me, this tree's trunk looked for all the world like a utility pole. I thought that someone's "Lost Dog" poster might not look too out of place duct-taped to this tree.
The area where the thick, papery bark had fallen away revealed a smooth, shiny surface that was immediately familiar. Yet when I looked skyward, what I saw looked more like the other cedar trees that made up this forest.
After the hike, I had to do a little bit of Googling just to satisfy my curiosity. Even though I work for a company that deals with the transmission and distribution side of the utility industry, I wasn't exactly certain where all those familiar-looking power poles actually came from. A few sources online have said that cedar wood is used by utility pole manufacturers because the wood is more resilient to moisture, weather, warping and temperature changes — clearly qualities that you'd want if you were making utility poles.
So, again, I'm not an expert, but I wanted to share a little scene from my hike that I thought was interesting. Also, there might be someone out there who could comment a little more on where utilities get their poles and what kind of trees are used to make them.
Happy trails!
Online Editor
On Spring Break weekend, my family, friends and I went on a 7-mile hike in the Winding Stair Mountain National Recreation Area in Electric Light & Power's home state of Oklahoma. The area, which is home to the Ouachita National Forest, extends into Arkansas. It's the oldest national forest in the southern states and was a setting used in the John Wayne classic "True Grit," as well as the 2010 Coen Brothers remake.
The striking thing about the land for me, being an Oklahoman, was the very tall, very vertical cedar trees. From my first step out of my car, I could hear the wind rushing through the treetops (and not much else). With as many ice storms, violent winds and tornadoes that come through the area, there aren't many tall trees in this part of the world — although we do have some battle-tested utilities and co-ops that can vouch for the intensity of this kind of severe weather.
About a third of the way into the hike, I rounded a corner on the trail that cut near a small creek and saw something worth taking a few pictures of. I'm not the world's most experienced hiker, and I don't know a lot about forests or trees, but I'd never seen a tree quite like this one before.
To me, this tree's trunk looked for all the world like a utility pole. I thought that someone's "Lost Dog" poster might not look too out of place duct-taped to this tree.
The area where the thick, papery bark had fallen away revealed a smooth, shiny surface that was immediately familiar. Yet when I looked skyward, what I saw looked more like the other cedar trees that made up this forest.
After the hike, I had to do a little bit of Googling just to satisfy my curiosity. Even though I work for a company that deals with the transmission and distribution side of the utility industry, I wasn't exactly certain where all those familiar-looking power poles actually came from. A few sources online have said that cedar wood is used by utility pole manufacturers because the wood is more resilient to moisture, weather, warping and temperature changes — clearly qualities that you'd want if you were making utility poles.
So, again, I'm not an expert, but I wanted to share a little scene from my hike that I thought was interesting. Also, there might be someone out there who could comment a little more on where utilities get their poles and what kind of trees are used to make them.
Happy trails!
Thursday, March 22, 2012
What's the Green Button?
By Jeff Postelwait,
Online Editor
The Internet is buzzing this morning as utilities and energy companies gush their support of an industry-led, White House-spurred energy efficiency program called the "Green Button."
I remember posting about the Green Button first when San Diego Gas & Electric shortly before DistribuTECH 2012 came to San Diego. Here's an outside link to SDG&E's version of the Green Button on their customer website.
But now I'm seeing around a dozen different companies, each with their own announcements either of support of or participation in this program.
Itron, Baltimore Gas & Electric Co., PECO, American Electric Power, Reliant Energy, Oracle, Silver Spring Networks, OPower, Efficiency 2.0, Schneider Electric, FirstFuel were just a few I could find as of press time. These are some of the utilities who will make Green Button functionality available to customers, or else provide some kind of logistical support for the effort.
Announcements of supporting utilities and companies are still going out. A few other major participants include Centerpoint Energy, Glendale Power & Light, Pepco Holdings, Southern California Edison, Dominion Virginia Power, Austin Energy, Commonwealth Edison and PG&E. Click here for a full list of companies that are supporting the Green Button.
What these utilities all seem to have in common is they've each had some kind of large smart meter deployment in their histories, which makes me wonder if those meters might be a part of some new, thus-unmentioned functionality for the Green Button program at some point in the future. Or maybe it's just that these companies want to be seen as both "smart" and "green."
Reports are that this initiative is a response to a White House challenge to American utilities to engage and empower consumers to help them save energy and money while also driving innovation in energy efficiency.
In fact, President Barack Obama, currently on a mini-tour of the U.S. to highlight his ideas on energy policy that included a recent stop in Cushing, Oklahoma to talk oil pipelines, will be talking about the Green Button at Ohio State University later today. So clearly this is a program the administration is proud of.
All told, nearly 30 million customers may now live in the footprint of the Green Button. But what does the Green Button do and how can customers use it?
"By clicking a Green Button, residential and commercial utility customers can download detailed energy usage information in a standardized format to manage consumption and costs," or so say the press releases.
For the Department of Energy's part, the federal agency decided to pony up about $8 million in grant funding to spur the development of "apps for energy" that help customers learn more about how much power they use.
This initiative may just be step one in the effort to educate consumers about their energy use, however. As the process evolves a bit and becomes more automated, it could become easier for electric customers to learn about their energy habits.
Even for a guy like me, who spends most of his waking life online, the process looks a bit involved. It looks like customers will have to start up an account with their utility's website if they don't have one already, then download the data to some kind of third-party application. Maybe a more streamlined process could be in the works.
Still, there could be a sign that the initiative could improve in the sheer number of technology types who are crowing about the Green Button. Google, Intel, GE Energy, Verizon and Johnson Controls, have each sent out letters in support of Green Button.
Lending credence to this theory is the White House's official blog, which said, "Companies are already developing Web and smartphone applications and services for businesses and homeowners that can use Green Button data."
So, assuming this gadget garners any measurable interest from people in these utilities' service territory (and actually use the information to cut demand down a bit), we might hear more about this Green Button thing later on. I'll keep an eye out.
Online Editor
The Internet is buzzing this morning as utilities and energy companies gush their support of an industry-led, White House-spurred energy efficiency program called the "Green Button."
I remember posting about the Green Button first when San Diego Gas & Electric shortly before DistribuTECH 2012 came to San Diego. Here's an outside link to SDG&E's version of the Green Button on their customer website.
But now I'm seeing around a dozen different companies, each with their own announcements either of support of or participation in this program.
Itron, Baltimore Gas & Electric Co., PECO, American Electric Power, Reliant Energy, Oracle, Silver Spring Networks, OPower, Efficiency 2.0, Schneider Electric, FirstFuel were just a few I could find as of press time. These are some of the utilities who will make Green Button functionality available to customers, or else provide some kind of logistical support for the effort.
Announcements of supporting utilities and companies are still going out. A few other major participants include Centerpoint Energy, Glendale Power & Light, Pepco Holdings, Southern California Edison, Dominion Virginia Power, Austin Energy, Commonwealth Edison and PG&E. Click here for a full list of companies that are supporting the Green Button.
What these utilities all seem to have in common is they've each had some kind of large smart meter deployment in their histories, which makes me wonder if those meters might be a part of some new, thus-unmentioned functionality for the Green Button program at some point in the future. Or maybe it's just that these companies want to be seen as both "smart" and "green."
Reports are that this initiative is a response to a White House challenge to American utilities to engage and empower consumers to help them save energy and money while also driving innovation in energy efficiency.
In fact, President Barack Obama, currently on a mini-tour of the U.S. to highlight his ideas on energy policy that included a recent stop in Cushing, Oklahoma to talk oil pipelines, will be talking about the Green Button at Ohio State University later today. So clearly this is a program the administration is proud of.
All told, nearly 30 million customers may now live in the footprint of the Green Button. But what does the Green Button do and how can customers use it?
"By clicking a Green Button, residential and commercial utility customers can download detailed energy usage information in a standardized format to manage consumption and costs," or so say the press releases.
For the Department of Energy's part, the federal agency decided to pony up about $8 million in grant funding to spur the development of "apps for energy" that help customers learn more about how much power they use.
This initiative may just be step one in the effort to educate consumers about their energy use, however. As the process evolves a bit and becomes more automated, it could become easier for electric customers to learn about their energy habits.
Even for a guy like me, who spends most of his waking life online, the process looks a bit involved. It looks like customers will have to start up an account with their utility's website if they don't have one already, then download the data to some kind of third-party application. Maybe a more streamlined process could be in the works.
Still, there could be a sign that the initiative could improve in the sheer number of technology types who are crowing about the Green Button. Google, Intel, GE Energy, Verizon and Johnson Controls, have each sent out letters in support of Green Button.
Lending credence to this theory is the White House's official blog, which said, "Companies are already developing Web and smartphone applications and services for businesses and homeowners that can use Green Button data."
So, assuming this gadget garners any measurable interest from people in these utilities' service territory (and actually use the information to cut demand down a bit), we might hear more about this Green Button thing later on. I'll keep an eye out.
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