ShareThisEvery day, 8 a.m. sharp, an e-mail arrives in Ed Cox's in-box and opens a window to the nation's energy future.
The e-mail reveals Cox's daily household electricity usage for each of the past 15 days.
By studying the day-by-day bar graphs, the retired physician realized that his Chapel Hill, N.C., home was drawing power on days when no one was in. Cox eventually figured out that his old well pump, which runs on electric power, was running round-the-clock instead of shutting off when not in use.
"My best estimate is that we paid $1,700 for wasted electricity over a two-year period," Cox said. "And it would have gone on unnoticed."
Cox's experience highlights one of the potential benefits of the "smart grid" system that will be deployed throughout this country over the next decade. The smart-grid concept describes the computerized digital energy network that will eventually replace the nation's aging and inefficient electro-mechanical power grid.
Today Cox enjoys a benefit available to only a sliver of residents in North Carolina.
He gets his electricity from the Piedmont Electric Membership Corp., a rural cooperative that is too small to operate its own power plant and instead buys electricity from the state's two dominant power companies, Duke Energy and Progress Energy. The co-op, based in Hillsborough, has provided all of its 31,000 customers with a "smart meter" -- the two-way wireless communication technology that forms the backbone of the touted smart-grid system.
Piedmont EMC, with just 100 employees, can boast having one of the most advanced grids in the nation. The co-op's officials describe the technological shift that's about to sweep through the power industry as leapfrogging from a rotary-dial phone directly to a BlackBerry.
"It's a very exciting time," said Susan Cashion, Piedmont EMC's manager of key accounts. "It's the perfect time for this because of the economy and the savings that are there."
Utility meters are a long-term investment in durable hardware that typically lasts for several decades. Progress spent $140 million replacing 2.7 million analog meters in the Carolinas and Florida in 2005 and 2006. Progress and Duke are evaluating technology that will convert their recently installed digital meters into advanced smart meters without having to replace all the meters again.
"Having just in the last couple of years changed out about all our meters, to install all new meters again and charge our customers -- we'd have to think hard about that," said Progress CEO Bill Johnson. "From all that the customers ask of us, that's not on top of the list. Where we are right now, the benefit to the customers does not outweigh the cost."
In the future, customers will be able to remotely program thermostats -- over the Internet or with a wireless phone -- that will display bill estimates for every degree setting. Smart meters will instantly notify utility companies of power outages by pinpointing the affected homes. They will spit out real-time energy-use data, instead of e-mailing yesterday's stats.
And power companies will offer special rates and timers for recharging electric cars during off-peak hours when the grid is awash in cheap, surplus electricity.
Major appliance makers are developing refrigerators, water heaters and air conditioners with embedded chips that will let homeowners or power companies remotely override temperature settings and briefly toggle off power.
"We're at stage one of something that's really big," said Ted Schultz, Duke's vice president of energy efficiency and smart-grid strategy.
(john.murawski(at)newsobserver.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
