Companies have new focus on managing consumers’ electricity usage

Today there are 1.9 million homes with energy management networks. We are entering a period of pervasive growth. … We estimate there will be 16.2 million by 2015.

Parks Associates hosted the Smart Energy Summit in Austin last week. It focused on ways to find customers for such services. The three-day affair showed enthusiasm is high among corporations and entrepreneurs, who sense an emerging market. Parks Associates' Director of Research, Bill Ablondi said there were about 75 companies in the market last year, but now there are as many as 250, including such big names as GE, Intel, Verizon and AT&T.

Consumers, however, remain largely in the dark about the possibilities. Smart grid technologies promise to provide big gains in efficiency for electricity generators, transmitters and consumers. That means cost savings, less pollution and fewer power plants.

Integrating information technology into the electric power grid should also make it far easier to connect renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

The technologies should also make it possible to manage a fleet of electric cars so that they can be fueled without putting crushing demands on the system and double as available storage devices for power when parked.

But with electricity prices flat or falling (they were down 11.5 percent last year in Dallas), consumers are not motivated to jump in.

Oncor and other Texas electricity transmission companies have installed more than 3 million smart meters across the state under a mandate from the state government. The meters are providing an ocean of data to the utilities about electricity consumption, but consumers have seen little advantage.

Reliant and TXU Energy can also use the smart meter data to send e-mail alerts to consumers when their electricity usage starts to balloon, along with recommendations on ways to conserve.

A thermostat equipped with wireless radio communications, however, can be configured remotely. TXU Energy offers thermostats that can be programmed from a smart phone.

Parks Associates said energy management systems independent of smart meters would outsell the utility plans for several more years. He estimated that wireless thermostats would grow into a $1.1 billion market by 2015, and that remote-control lighting systems would equal that market.

Speaker after speaker at the conference said the key to this market, however, is raising consumer awareness of the cost savings such systems can bring — without sacrificing comfort or demanding a lot of skill.

To view the full Dallas Morning News Article, click here.

U.S. consumers still unaware of smart grid benefits

Parks Associates research indicates over 40% of consumers unfamiliar with term “Smart Grid.”

Consumer knowledge of smart grid technologies is low, even as utilities have deployed 13 million smart meters to U.S. households. In the report, “Residential Energy Management: Opportunities for Digital Systems and Services,” only 11% of U.S. consumers are familiar with the term “Smart Grid.” This low awareness poses a risk to future deployment plans and opens the door for communications service providers to grab market share from utilities by offering their own energy monitoring solutions.

Utilities plan to deploy more than 50 million smart meters by 2014, but they need to improve their educational outreach if they want consumers to embrace this technology.

Consumers in Texas and California have filed lawsuits in which they blame smart meters for unexpected hikes in their electricity bills. The backlash from these stories threatens customer compliance with future smart grid deployments and could disrupt utility plans to create a more robust, interconnected grid that offers advanced services such as monitoring and time-of-use billing.

What will consumers add next to their home networks and life?

A 3D TV? A smartphone? A smart meter?

Digital Lifestyles: Outlook 2010, a new industry report focuses on the consumer, with an emphasis on expanding and enhancing user experiences in communications, entertainment, support, and connectivity.

This report provides analysis, forecasts, and industry and consumer drivers for a variety of digital lifestyle categories including: Access Services, Television Services, Mobile Services and Devices, Digital Media and Gaming, Trends in Consumer Electronics, Digital Home Tech Support, and Home Systems.

Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer

Parks Associates is accepting submissions to be considered a speaker at the Smart Energy Summit, held in January, in Austin.

The agenda for Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer focuses on the roadmap for the emerging in-home energy management technology market, offering consumer and industry research and strategic insight:

Current status of REM and Smart Grid technologies
Consumer interest in REM solutions
Engaging the consumer: Strategies and tactics to communicate benefits successfully
Leveraging applications: Think energy ….and more
Impact of government stimulus and green initiatives
Technical and business requirements for succeeding in REM
Business strategies for utilities, manufacturers, installers, and service
providers
Unit and revenue forecasts for Smart Meters and REM residential solutions

More info: www.smartenergysummit2010.com

Parks Associates Supports Advanced Meter Data Management

Parks Associates is supporting Advanced Meter Data Management from November 9-10 2009 in London, United Kingdom.

With Smart meter projects being proposed and approved across the globe there has never been a more suitable time for SMi to hold their inaugural conference Advanced Meter Data Management.

For more information please click here.

Smart Energy Summit addresses emerging market for in-home energy management devices and services

Parks Associates to host Residential Energy Management event in Austin

International research firm Parks Associates announced plans to host the inaugural Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer, in cooperation with Austin Energy, on January 25-27, 2010. The event will feature expert speakers and analysts discussing the latest developments in residential energy management (REM) and the successful strategies capable of engaging consumers in new programs for energy conservation and cost savings.

The event, taking place at the Hyatt Regency in Austin, Texas, will feature market research from Parks Associates’ landmark Residential Energy Management service and real-world expertise derived from Austin Energy's Smart Grid, the largest working Smart Grid in the U.S.

Government initiatives and stimulus funds have stoked demand for REM technologies with their emphasis on energy conservation and greater efficiency in the home. Already over six percent of all U.S. meters are smart meters, and many U.S. utilities are announcing new deployments and pilot programs, which will push the number of smart meters to almost 50 million by 2012. This event identifies the business opportunities for in-home energy monitoring and management systems, accelerated by deployment of energy smart grids.

Early sponsors for Smart Energy Summit include Exceptional Innovation and OpenPeak. Andres Carvallo, CIO, Austin Energy, will present a keynote detailing his company’s experiences in developing and deploying its Smart Grid.

The event agenda will focus on the roadmap for the emerging in-home energy management technology market, offering consumer and industry research and strategic insight:

• Current status of REM and Smart Grid technologies
• Consumer interest in REM solutions
• Engaging the consumer: Strategies and tactics to communicate benefits successfully
• Leveraging applications: Think energy … and more
• Impact of government stimulus and green initiatives
• Technical and business requirements for succeeding in REM
• Business strategies for utilities, manufacturers, installers, and service providers
• Unit and revenue forecasts for Smart Meters and REM residential solutions

For more information, or to submit to speak at the event, visit www.smartenergysummit2010.com.

Electronic Systems Contractors diversify their services with green and retrofit opportunities

Majority expect sales drop to continue through 2009, expanding business in retrofit and energy management to compensate

The majority of U.S. home systems integrators, who have had average revenues fall almost 17% since 2007, are making adjustments to compensate for declines in new-home construction and consumer spending by diving into the green and retrofit markets according to Parks Associates’ Channel and Consumer Monitor and CEDIA.

Parks Associates conducts quarterly surveys of the home systems channel, including online surveys of integrators installing home controls, entertainment systems, and energy management solutions. The most recent report, based on a second-quarter 2009 survey, was conducted as a joint effort from Parks Associates and the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA).

Channel and Consumer Monitor reports that integrators, who have traditionally installed expensive control and entertainment systems in new homes, now get the majority of their revenues from retrofit jobs, which represents a major shift in this business sector.

The survey also found awareness of Smart Grid terms and technologies, such as smart meter and AMI, was low among installers, although almost one-third of integrators have installed some type of energy-monitoring system in the last year.

Results of the recent survey are only available to participants.

For the full press release, click here.

Houston's CenterPoint Energy & GE partner to produce Smart Grid System

Houston's CenterPoint Energy and GE team up to produce the Advanced Metering System (AMS) enabling consumers to track and manage electric usage and costs. Utilizing GE Digital Energy's MDS Mercury 3650 radios, AMS will translate electric utility meter info from homes/businesses to the CenterPoint's data center.


With this real time technology, consumers will be able access energy usage/prices and remotely control appliances via the Internet. For March, CenterPoint began installing 145,000+ of these smart meters. By the end of 2009, CenterPoint hopes to update all existing equipment with these new smart meters.


In addition, retail electric providers can offer new consumers products and services after the AMS installation.


For more information, please read K.C. Jones's article "GE Wireless Radios Power Houston Smart Grid Systems" posted to InformationWeek.

Smart Roads. Smart Bridges. Smart Grids.

FEBRUARY 17, 2009
Smart Roads. Smart Bridges. Smart Grids.
If we are going to spend billions of dollars to fix our ailing infrastructure, let's make sure we do it right. Here are the technologies to make that happen.

By MICHAEL TOTTY

It's time the U.S. got a lot smarter.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123447510631779255.html
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R1

Get Smart… I couldn’t help but think of the Mel Brooks and Buck Henry show starring Don Adams & Barbara Feldon back in the late 60’s. Hopefully the U.S. will get a lot smarter than the technology-enabled characters in this sitcom. Michael Totty’s February 17, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal certainly makes a case for the likelihood that the U.S. will get much smarter due to technology advances, economic necessity, consumer desires, and government incentives.

The part about “Smart Grids” caught our attention at Parks Associates. We are preparing to launch a major multi-client project to assess the market for digital systems and services used to monitor, control and manage electric energy in the home. The first step to building a more intelligent electricity distribution network (a.k.a. Smart Grid) is the deployment of smart meters which are digital meters capable of processing and reporting usage data to providers and households via two-way communication between meters and utility offices. Smart meters with the proper user interfaces can enable consumers to make informed decisions in response to real-time household power consumption data.

Data …enter Google. Google wants to build the platform for collecting, managing, and analyzing home energy information. It is one of the more visible companies developing ways to control the demand for electric power as an alternative to building more power generation plants. It recently announced that it has developed a free Web service called PowerMeter that enables consumers to track and, with the proper devices, control energy use. As I understand it, PowerMeter is still in Beta testing and the company is counting on others to build devices to feed data into their PowerMeter technology.

Back to smart meters. Smart meters are a key enabler of Google’s technology and the company has referred to expected deployments of 40 million or so smart meters as mentioned in a White House document entitled: The American Reinvestment and Recovery Plan – By the Numbers. That’s quite different from Parks Associates’ current smart meter forecast which we published on February 10, 2008, the same day Google announced PowerMeter. (See Figure)

Several reporters questioned our rationale for such a modest forecast for smart meters. Why the discrepancy? Did we miss something? We don’t think so, but we are going to be investigating the facts behind deployment plans in depth over the next couple of months. Forecasting the installation of smart meters in the residential market requires consideration of several factors beyond summing up proposed deployments:

• Ability of utilities to fund deployment of smart meters and the necessary AMI infrastructure
• The willingness of local governing bodies, e.g., public utility commissions (PUCs), to approve rate structures that make smart meters attractive to consumers and the utilities
• The utilities’ willingness to commit to long-term deployments

The economic stimulus plan will encourage a more rapid development of a smart grid, but many questions remain to be answered about just how fast this will happen. No timetable was given for the deployment of the 40 million meters mentioned. Our forecast is based on a tally of deployment announcements along with estimates of the portion going into residential versus commercial accounts. In addition, we did take judgment on some plans due to where they were in the regulatory approval process. Therefore, we believe we have a solid rationale for our forecast.

However, we expect this forecast to change. Companies such as Google, with the ability to build market awareness, can help accelerate adoption of systems and services to manage and control energy consumption. In fact, we think that there are numerous market opportunities in residential energy management that don’t require smart meters or an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). We will be exploring the entire spectrum of opportunities in our project entitled Residential Energy Management – Opportunities for Digital Systems and Services which is designed to help our clients Get Smart.

Google Enters Smart Grid Market

This week, Google demonstrated PowerMeter, a home energy consumption prototype Web application. Using smart meter technology allows consumers to decrease energy usage by appliance.

Rather than working through utility companies, like other smart grid companies, Google is striving to make home energy data available in real time. To help gain popularity, Google is developing partnerships with hardware manufacturers, utility companies, and government entities. By building a custom application using PowerMeter or the Google gadget platform, a smart meter company could easily make their information available too.

The push towards more smart grid technology continues. According to Parks Associates research, the number of U.S. households with smart meters is projected to increase to 6 million by 2012.

To read more about this, visit Martin LaMonica's article on CNET, "Google crashes the smart-grid party."