Customers Slow to Adopt Smart Pricing
Smart grid technology has seen widespread deployment. Seven states and the District of Columbia achieved adoption rates of greater than 70 percent by the end of 2013, according to data from the Energy Information Administration – including California and Texas, the two largest states.
The top 10 states for smart grid deployment, also known as advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), based on data from year-end 2013, are:
State Rank AMI
ME 1 98%
DC 2 97%
NV 3 95%
GA 4 85%
CA 5 84%
VT 6 80%
AZ 7 72%
DE 8 72%
TX 9 69%
ID 10 69%
In spite of this, a blog post on The Energy Collective earlier this week suggested that customers have been slow to leverage the types of energy management strategies enabled by smart grids.
In particular, the article focuses on the fact that customers have been slow to adopt time-of-use (TOU) pricing plans, which charge higher prices during periods of high electricity demand and lower prices during periods of lower demand. The goal of these programs is to help the grid run more efficiently by sending price signals to customers that better reflect the actual costs of the energy they are consuming. In theory, this should encourage them to shift their consumption from peak to off-peak hours – or simply to use less energy during peak hours.
