Challenges in Educating the Customer Regarding New Infrastructure

PG&E made the headlines of today’s San Jose Mercury, as the California Public Utilities Commission ordered this investor-owned utility to devise ways for customers to refuse smart meters. The intent of this order is to placate critics of the meters who have expressed concerns over accuracy of these devices and the potential health effects of the radio frequency emissions.

As background, PG&E has been busy deploying 10 to 15k meters per day and are about 77% complete in their goal to have their 10 million gas and electric meters converted to smart ones by mid-2012. The benefits to the consumers and society are a more efficient grid. Additionally, intelligence at the edge is mandatory for the integration of consumers as energy sources (e.g. rooftop solar feeding the grid) as well as widespread deployment of electric transportation.

In this interview, Andrew Tang suggests that one thing PG&E overlooked, when they started this program, is that meters, unlike other outside plant equipment like poles and wires, represent a personal interaction with the customer. He cited the importance of educating the customer in the benefits of the program, particularly as it relates to the bigger picture of efficiency. Tang points out the challenge of when and how best to educate the customer on a technology that rolls out over time; similar to the challenges operators face when deploying Fiber to the Home technologies.

This is part 1 of a two-part interview and was part of ViodiTV coverage of Parks Associates' 2011 Smart Energy Summit.

5 responses to “Challenges in Educating the Customer Regarding New Infrastructure”

RobertWilliams

March 13, 2011

Last year after Senator Florez held meetings with PG$E Corporate Management and 100's of customers complaining about PG$E Wireless smart meters and skyrocketing bills, the Honorable Senator said that PG&E is lying to us.

Scientists who have heard Tang speak before representing PG$E said that lies come out of his mouth like bats out of a cave.

2. Utility customers don't need the type of "Education" that Tang is offering. Instead they need the truth and they need safe reliable inexpensive power and the Wireless smart meter provides NONE of that.

3. Tang did say that the Wireless meters "Touch people." That is true – they touch people (including infants, children, teens, adults, seniors and pets) with pulsed RF signal radiation 24 hours a day at the rate of approximately 25,000 pulsed transmissions per day, not just for 45 seconds per day as PG$E claims.

VIDEO – Radiation Measured From Smart Meter Mounted On A Home (6 minutes, 21 seconds)

4. The signal radiation travels through the bodies and brains of each infant, child, teen adult, senior and pet in the home.

TV VIDEO NEWS – Insurance Companies Won’t Insure Wireless Device Health Risks (3 minutes, 13 seconds)
http://eon3emfblog.net/?p=382

5. Wireless smart meters are the ONLY wireless device that can NOT be turned off, so it runs all night. People's bodies are intended to recover during the night when they are sleeping (children's bodies grow and develop as well as recover), but the Wireless meters are non-stop.

6. The Wireless meters do NOT give information that the customer can use to lower their energy use or reduce their utility bill.

The utility information is in a format that PG$E can create one, two, or any number of peak levels that they can charge more for each kw of electricity and the computer will automatically place the usage into the peak levels for billing as they are defined by PG$E Corporate Management to maximize the revenues they collect from customers.

The utility usage information is NOT "Real-time" so people have to go on-line to look at how much electricity they used during some time yesterday. The information from Wireless smart meters is useless for customers. Imagine if your speedometer told you how fast you were going yesterday. Or imagine if you wanted to lower your monthly gasoline usage and you can look up how much gas you used while driving yesterday from 2:00PM to 2:15PM. Even if it was 15 minutes ago, it is still worthless for customers. Customers would prefer learning and being reminded how to completely turn off appliances, TV's and computers and knowing the relative power each one uses and then customers could reduce their energy usage if they are so motivated and without spending $2.2 Billion dollars.

The bigger smart grid industry can't stand PG$E Corporate because the smart grid requires cooperation amongst customers, utility companies and regulators, but PG$E has been lying to their customers and the backlash of that may stop the smart grid from proceeding forward.

PG$E Corporate Management (including Tang) has lied to customers not telling them that "Smart" can be WIRED meters without the health problems, electrical interference problems, fire problems, accuracy problems, security and hacking problems of WIRELESS meters.

The reason that PG$E did not explain these meters in advance to the customers was not as Tang described but because PG$E knew that if the customers learned the truth about the meters, that they would not accept them, nor pay for them being added into their bills. So PG$E instead gave some general false propaganda making the meters sound "Green" and then Pg$E quietly attempted to complete the WIRELESS meter deployment before the people understood what was truly happening.

Well, finally PG$E has been busted. And hopefully the people will force these meters off of their homes, out of their children's environments and PG$E Corporate will be forced to take the $2.2 Billion hit on the cost of attempting such a thing.

PS: The company hired to do the "Independent" Wireless meter "Accuracy" test, "Structure Group," is a Consultant to PG$E. PG$E is one of their biggest clients. If you read the report, you can easily see the absurdities in judgment, the false assumptions and the adjustments made to come up with the false conclusions. Does anyone think that they were going to find fault with a product of one of their largest clients?

The only criticism of PG$E in their report was PG$E's poor communications to customers – that was a complete fraud and promotion in order to cover up the substantial problems of the Wireless meters PRETENDING they were all "Communication" problems. Like Osama and Saddam and Adolph were all misunderstood angels, if only they had better "Communications."

And remember that Senator Florez requested that another investigation on the accuracy of the meters be done by a truly independent organization following the results of Structure Group's Report.

TV NEWS VIDEO – Skyrocketing Utility Bills after smart meter installation (3 minutes, 19 seconds)
http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/63581287.html?tab=video

Ken Pyle

March 14, 2011

The CPUC-commissioned independent study suggests that the Smart Meters are accurate. They cite the problems exactly as Tang suggested; poor customer service from both PG&E and the CPUC.
My reading of the Sage Consulting report, as well as the EPRI's response to this is that the risk from Smart Meter RF emissions is quite low. From what I saw in the Sage report,

The distances they measured were quite close to the source of the meter.
The duty cycles tend to be quite low (most only transmit a few minutes of data each day).
The Smart Meters are on the outside of the structure – signals get attenuated by the building (in fact, this is one of the concerns of how effective the Zigbee Home Area Networks will be).
The YouTube video that is referenced is interesting. It leaves one with many questions, such as what level is the threshold set to for the meter to buzz? What frequencies are being measured? What other sources of RF are in the area?
The Sage Report's comment about adding to the indoor "RF" pollution is interesting. Consumers are voluntarily adding wireless devices of all kinds around their homes and using them in much closer proximity to their person than Smart Meters; case in point, the wireless lap-top that is resting on my lap as I type this comment. Most people seem to be willing to trade a risk of an unknown for convenience; whether it is the utility of the cell phone or the use of microwave energy in plastic bowls to heat their food.

It is an interesting question as to why the utilities went wireless. I suspect the answer is that Broadband Power Line was still somewhat nascent and required a great deal of outside plant infrastructure work (adding bypass filters on the power line). The other alternative of working with communications providers like Comcast and AT&T was probably too complicated from a business perspective.

To this last point and regarding one of your other points, CableLabs' Roy Perry suggested that a much more efficient way to deploy Smart Meters would be to focus first on the 5% of the customers who use the most energy, as it would be much less costly, while still providing a great benefit. In this scenario, I could see how CableLabs' owners (and other broadband providers) might benefit as this scenario might mean a wired approach could make sense. Still, this message from outside the industry is one that has started to, according to Perry, capture the attention of Public Utility Commissioners, http://www.viodi.tv/2011/03/03/rem/.

Regarding the non-real-time nature of the data, the industry as a whole is trying to come up with standards as to how the data is handled to ensure communications from the back-end of the utilities to the devices in the home that are the big energy consumption devices. The consensus seems to be that Machine to Machine communication is necessary in order for real-time data to be useful. That is, to reduce peak energy requirements, the utility will need to communicate to appliances like dishwashers, washing machines, etc, to ensure they don't turn on during those periods. Again, everyone I have interviewed have suggested that this will be a consumer opt-in approach and the data is owned by the consumer. Also, there seems to be general agreement that getting customers to take an active role in managing their energy consumption is a challenge, hence the need for M2M.

Mike Riley, P.E.

March 15, 2011

I would like to see more investigation both of the accusations of wildly increasing electric bills resulting from smart meters, and emitted radiation. The idea that this is a conspiracy by the utility company seems just a little too far-fetched. The accusations that a smart meter emits damaging levels of radiation seems like a red herring by someone with an axe to grind; the only violations listed in the Sage report appear to require a number of very unlikely events to all happen at the same time, but I'm willing to believe there could be some problems.
I'm sure the nuclear plant problems in Japan will get everyone all fired up about the dangers of radiation. I think we need new language to help quantify the threats; obviously different types of radiation have different effects. People don't realize how much "radiation" bombards them all day, and especially every time they walk out into the sunlight.

Viodi View – 03/16/2011 | The Viodi View

March 16, 2011

[…] Challenges in Educating the Customer Regarding New Infrastructure Andrew Tang of PG&E […]

Ken Pyle

March 25, 2011

PG&E's proposal on the opt-out from their Smart Meter program was unveiled today. The San Jose Mercury reports that there will be one-time fees of $135 to $270 and on-going fees of $14 to $20 per month to opt-out.
It seems like there could be an alternative, whereby the landline telecom provider would install a broadband modem on the smart meter and transmit the data to PG&E via wired infrastructure. This would serve the goals of furthering real-time energy management while helping with the economics of broadband (another service on top of the others). It seems like this is, as Roy Perry of CableLabs would say, an "economy of scope" opportunity.
http://www.viodi.tv/2011/03/03/rem/

RobertWilliams

March 13, 2011

Last year after Senator Florez held meetings with PG$E Corporate Management and 100's of customers complaining about PG$E Wireless smart meters and skyrocketing bills, the Honorable Senator said that PG&E is lying to us.

Scientists who have heard Tang speak before representing PG$E said that lies come out of his mouth like bats out of a cave.

2. Utility customers don't need the type of "Education" that Tang is offering. Instead they need the truth and they need safe reliable inexpensive power and the Wireless smart meter provides NONE of that.

3. Tang did say that the Wireless meters "Touch people." That is true – they touch people (including infants, children, teens, adults, seniors and pets) with pulsed RF signal radiation 24 hours a day at the rate of approximately 25,000 pulsed transmissions per day, not just for 45 seconds per day as PG$E claims.

VIDEO – Radiation Measured From Smart Meter Mounted On A Home (6 minutes, 21 seconds)

4. The signal radiation travels through the bodies and brains of each infant, child, teen adult, senior and pet in the home.

TV VIDEO NEWS – Insurance Companies Won’t Insure Wireless Device Health Risks (3 minutes, 13 seconds)
http://eon3emfblog.net/?p=382

5. Wireless smart meters are the ONLY wireless device that can NOT be turned off, so it runs all night. People's bodies are intended to recover during the night when they are sleeping (children's bodies grow and develop as well as recover), but the Wireless meters are non-stop.

6. The Wireless meters do NOT give information that the customer can use to lower their energy use or reduce their utility bill.

The utility information is in a format that PG$E can create one, two, or any number of peak levels that they can charge more for each kw of electricity and the computer will automatically place the usage into the peak levels for billing as they are defined by PG$E Corporate Management to maximize the revenues they collect from customers.

The utility usage information is NOT "Real-time" so people have to go on-line to look at how much electricity they used during some time yesterday. The information from Wireless smart meters is useless for customers. Imagine if your speedometer told you how fast you were going yesterday. Or imagine if you wanted to lower your monthly gasoline usage and you can look up how much gas you used while driving yesterday from 2:00PM to 2:15PM. Even if it was 15 minutes ago, it is still worthless for customers. Customers would prefer learning and being reminded how to completely turn off appliances, TV's and computers and knowing the relative power each one uses and then customers could reduce their energy usage if they are so motivated and without spending $2.2 Billion dollars.

The bigger smart grid industry can't stand PG$E Corporate because the smart grid requires cooperation amongst customers, utility companies and regulators, but PG$E has been lying to their customers and the backlash of that may stop the smart grid from proceeding forward.

PG$E Corporate Management (including Tang) has lied to customers not telling them that "Smart" can be WIRED meters without the health problems, electrical interference problems, fire problems, accuracy problems, security and hacking problems of WIRELESS meters.

The reason that PG$E did not explain these meters in advance to the customers was not as Tang described but because PG$E knew that if the customers learned the truth about the meters, that they would not accept them, nor pay for them being added into their bills. So PG$E instead gave some general false propaganda making the meters sound "Green" and then Pg$E quietly attempted to complete the WIRELESS meter deployment before the people understood what was truly happening.

Well, finally PG$E has been busted. And hopefully the people will force these meters off of their homes, out of their children's environments and PG$E Corporate will be forced to take the $2.2 Billion hit on the cost of attempting such a thing.

PS: The company hired to do the "Independent" Wireless meter "Accuracy" test, "Structure Group," is a Consultant to PG$E. PG$E is one of their biggest clients. If you read the report, you can easily see the absurdities in judgment, the false assumptions and the adjustments made to come up with the false conclusions. Does anyone think that they were going to find fault with a product of one of their largest clients?

The only criticism of PG$E in their report was PG$E's poor communications to customers – that was a complete fraud and promotion in order to cover up the substantial problems of the Wireless meters PRETENDING they were all "Communication" problems. Like Osama and Saddam and Adolph were all misunderstood angels, if only they had better "Communications."

And remember that Senator Florez requested that another investigation on the accuracy of the meters be done by a truly independent organization following the results of Structure Group's Report.

TV NEWS VIDEO – Skyrocketing Utility Bills after smart meter installation (3 minutes, 19 seconds)
http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/63581287.html?tab=video

Loading…

Ken Pyle

March 14, 2011

The CPUC-commissioned independent study suggests that the Smart Meters are accurate. They cite the problems exactly as Tang suggested; poor customer service from both PG&E and the CPUC.
My reading of the Sage Consulting report, as well as the EPRI's response to this is that the risk from Smart Meter RF emissions is quite low. From what I saw in the Sage report,

The distances they measured were quite close to the source of the meter.
The duty cycles tend to be quite low (most only transmit a few minutes of data each day).
The Smart Meters are on the outside of the structure – signals get attenuated by the building (in fact, this is one of the concerns of how effective the Zigbee Home Area Networks will be).
The YouTube video that is referenced is interesting. It leaves one with many questions, such as what level is the threshold set to for the meter to buzz? What frequencies are being measured? What other sources of RF are in the area?
The Sage Report's comment about adding to the indoor "RF" pollution is interesting. Consumers are voluntarily adding wireless devices of all kinds around their homes and using them in much closer proximity to their person than Smart Meters; case in point, the wireless lap-top that is resting on my lap as I type this comment. Most people seem to be willing to trade a risk of an unknown for convenience; whether it is the utility of the cell phone or the use of microwave energy in plastic bowls to heat their food.

It is an interesting question as to why the utilities went wireless. I suspect the answer is that Broadband Power Line was still somewhat nascent and required a great deal of outside plant infrastructure work (adding bypass filters on the power line). The other alternative of working with communications providers like Comcast and AT&T was probably too complicated from a business perspective.

To this last point and regarding one of your other points, CableLabs' Roy Perry suggested that a much more efficient way to deploy Smart Meters would be to focus first on the 5% of the customers who use the most energy, as it would be much less costly, while still providing a great benefit. In this scenario, I could see how CableLabs' owners (and other broadband providers) might benefit as this scenario might mean a wired approach could make sense. Still, this message from outside the industry is one that has started to, according to Perry, capture the attention of Public Utility Commissioners, http://www.viodi.tv/2011/03/03/rem/.

Regarding the non-real-time nature of the data, the industry as a whole is trying to come up with standards as to how the data is handled to ensure communications from the back-end of the utilities to the devices in the home that are the big energy consumption devices. The consensus seems to be that Machine to Machine communication is necessary in order for real-time data to be useful. That is, to reduce peak energy requirements, the utility will need to communicate to appliances like dishwashers, washing machines, etc, to ensure they don't turn on during those periods. Again, everyone I have interviewed have suggested that this will be a consumer opt-in approach and the data is owned by the consumer. Also, there seems to be general agreement that getting customers to take an active role in managing their energy consumption is a challenge, hence the need for M2M.

Loading…

Mike Riley, P.E.

March 15, 2011

I would like to see more investigation both of the accusations of wildly increasing electric bills resulting from smart meters, and emitted radiation. The idea that this is a conspiracy by the utility company seems just a little too far-fetched. The accusations that a smart meter emits damaging levels of radiation seems like a red herring by someone with an axe to grind; the only violations listed in the Sage report appear to require a number of very unlikely events to all happen at the same time, but I'm willing to believe there could be some problems.
I'm sure the nuclear plant problems in Japan will get everyone all fired up about the dangers of radiation. I think we need new language to help quantify the threats; obviously different types of radiation have different effects. People don't realize how much "radiation" bombards them all day, and especially every time they walk out into the sunlight.

Loading…

Viodi View – 03/16/2011 | The Viodi View

March 16, 2011

[…] Challenges in Educating the Customer Regarding New Infrastructure Andrew Tang of PG&E […]

Loading…

Ken Pyle

March 25, 2011

PG&E's proposal on the opt-out from their Smart Meter program was unveiled today. The San Jose Mercury reports that there will be one-time fees of $135 to $270 and on-going fees of $14 to $20 per month to opt-out.
It seems like there could be an alternative, whereby the landline telecom provider would install a broadband modem on the smart meter and transmit the data to PG&E via wired infrastructure. This would serve the goals of furthering real-time energy management while helping with the economics of broadband (another service on top of the others). It seems like this is, as Roy Perry of CableLabs would say, an "economy of scope" opportunity.
http://www.viodi.tv/2011/03/03/rem/

Loading…