Understanding and Connecting Smart Meters, Smart Grids, and Smart Markets.
- Lynne Kiesling
September 19th, 2011
Two interesting articles about consumers and the smart grid, and what really motivates conservation: money and a sense of ownership:
The first – via Greentech Media – provides recent data from a survey put out by the Smart Grid Consumer Collaborative (with light green in graph below indicating “somewhat” and dark green indicating “strongly” increase respondent’s support for smart meters/smart grid adoption:
The second from Treehugger provides some powerful anecdotal evidence that the likelihood of conserving WHEN one has the opportunity to realize benefits from such conservation because a feeling of ownership has been imbued upon the individual is significantly higher than if not:
“…When I posted a video on solar car charging in rainy England, johnnydarkangel (who says anonymity has to go away on the web!?) commented that solar changes the way you consume energy. You do all your washing during the day, minimize consumption at night, etc. There’s a logic to this, but I wondered just how much people are willing or able to adapt their routines.
The photo above is of the newly installed solar panels on my brothers’ house. And if his emails are anything to go by, solar can be a powerful tool—not just for generating electricity—but for transforming the way we consume it too.
I’ve already noted how my Dad has started keeping careful track of his energy consumption since they installed solar, announcing with pride that they generated about 2/3rds of the energy they consumed between mid-March and mid-June. And now my brother has chimed in with his experiences, and given a little more detail about how his actual behavior has changed as a result:
It’s been said many times before, but from personal experience I can confirm that generating my own electricity has made me very conscious about how much electricity I use. I love my dishwasher, it’s great. But when it’s consuming electricity at 2 KwH and I’m generating at peak times only 1? Suddenly hand washing my dishes doesn’t seem quite such the hassle.I charge my laptop during the day when I’m out, and when I get home in the evenings, I might work a little or use my laptop to watch a film or streaming TV on the BBC iplayer. But if my laptop runs out of charge, then it makes me think seriously before I plug it back in. Unless I’m in the middle of a good film, I often decide to stop working or watching TV and go and read a book, or go to sleep earlier.
What’s most interesting about all this is that my brother is hardly a committed environmentalist—although he’s no climate skeptic either. He installed solar panels because it made sense. And he joined a car club for very similar reasons. As he himself pointed out, if solar can transform his behavior, it would be interesting to note what it does for those who are really committed to the cause. A quick Google search does not bring up any hard evidence on solar and behavior change—but if anyone knows of any research, I would love to see it.
Of course there are other, cheaper ways to get folks to pay closer attention to their consumption. From high-tech energy monitors to community-based efforts to cut energy use, the simple act of monitoring and recording what you use can be powerful in itself.
But there is more at play here with solar—just as you are likely to value a cucumber you grew yourself a little more dearly, the act of generating electricity at home creates a sense of ownership. And ownership encourages stewardship.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Based on decades of experience and interest in conservation, Monty Simus believes that a truly “smart” grid must be a “transactive” grid, unshackled from its current status as a so-called “natural monopoly.”
In short, an unlocked grid must adopt and harness the power of markets to incentivize individual users, linked to each other on a large scale, who change consumptive behavior in creative ways that drive efficiency and bring equity to use of the planet's finite and increasingly scarce resources.