Last week the Public Utilities Commission approved the Southern California Gas Company’s  request to install smart meters, at a cost to customers of over one billion dollars.   The gas companies request was approved by a 3-2 vote, and will implement a new program beginning in 2012, to install over 20.5 million smart meters.  Users then will be able to view in  real time, information on how much natural gas they use running stoves, water heaters and home heating systems. With the cost of over $200 per meter, rate-payers will be charged about $70 cents per month for 25 years per smart meter, the projected life span of each meter. I feel that this smart metering system is a money loser considering the minimal savings.  Since natural gas is purchased by utilities well in advance of demand, the price of fuel is not as volatile as electricity.  And really, what customer is going to monitor their hour by hour usage while they are at work?  The peak usage of natural gas is well understood by most.   Rates go up in winter with increased usage during the cold months, or long hot showers and go down in the warmer California months.   A spike in the bill or unusual usage are not foreseen as with electricity.

Additionally implementing smart meters for gas will eliminate over 1,000 jobs in this economically hard hit state.  While the company plans to spend one million to retain and retrain meter readers, customers can expect to see spikes in their monthly bills as consumers have seen with the new smart metering for electricity in Northern California.  I would love to see more efficient usage of energy, but this doesn’t seem the most cost effective measure.  I would love to hear your thoughts. 

This month we will be focusing on renewable energy, particularly the role of solar applications. This comes off of March which focused on smart buildings and intelligent data systems, which in a sense is the perfect one-two punch. I've read a lot lately about the need for a beefed up smart grid in order to ramp up renewable energy generation, particularly with solar and wind.

With the advent of solar and wind, intermittent renewables, the need for smarter systems has risen. Utilities face a massive investment wall if you will, knowing that they will need to bulk up our infrastructure if we ever want to fully embrace clean sources of energy generation. There are a few problems with 'educating' our electrical grid, with some of them revolving around privacy issues and the others implementation.