Have the girls and boys who have been working hard to make Smart Energy happen been good this year? Will Santa bring them what they want? It’s looking less than likely. Despite promises that specifications would be complete, progress has inevitably slipped. What’s worse, the elves in some of the utilities didn’t pay attention to the lists the boys and girls stuck up their chimneys last year, and instead of sending them energy savings, it turns out that they actually sent them higher utility bills.
Of course, things were never going to happen as quickly as projected, even with the amount of stimulus money being thrown at the companies involved. If anything that’s resulted in things slowing down as everyone has concentrated on scrabbling around for a part of the pie, insisting that their toys are better than anyone else’s, and that they deserves the biggest box under the tree.
However, the story of the year is probably the level of consumer resentment that has built up towards smart metering deployments. Much of that seems to have been unnecessarily self-inflicted. In the Netherlands we’ve seen programs delayed because of privacy issues, and in the US there has been major customer resentment at higher bills. And that’s before we get into the ridiculous paranoia about the meters irradiating the population.
It’s interesting to contrast what’s happening within the UK. Not only are they taking a lead in deployment of real smart metering, with British Gas’ decision to roll out 2 million gas and electricity meters. There’s also the UK Government’s highly detailed consultation and a growing level of consumer education. It will be interesting to see whether that results in more customer satisfaction, and a bigger change in energy usage? That level of up-front education may be the most significant initiative of all the Smart Energy deployments that are happening around the world.
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