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With this universe of “smart” things available to help make our lives easier, will utilities' have the ability to make good on all of the promises of benefits and empowerment that the Smart Grid will deliver to customers?

As Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) deployment picks up steam, fueled nationwide by the recently announced stimulus grants from DOE, utilities will be hard-pressed to show tangible and measureable resulting benefits. Despite the stimulus funding, costs for deployment will be passed on to customers. Time after time, however, customer surveys indicate their dissatisfaction over the increasing overall cost of electricity in relation to their household expenditures. Exacerbating this negative perception are indications from research that residential customers are generally not well-educated regarding their energy consumption, and its effects on the impact it has on their household budget. A fine example is the comparison of customers' understanding of what a gallon of gas costs and what it gets them versus what a kilowatt hour is and what it gets them. Finally, further exacerbating the issue is something that has always been recognized as a positive attribute of the utility industry, the customer perception of reliability—where the value of electricity is that it is “there when you need it,” so much so that customers' perception of the commodity itself is only noticed in its absence (during an outage or while “roughing it” while camping, etc.).

Thus the major challenge facing utilities is not just to educate and engage customers on programs and applications that eventually result from AMI deployment, but to inform and educate them at an even more basic, rudimentary level on how energy is generated and then moved (transmission and distribution) to their homes, as well as how their usage is measured and what things in their homes use relatively how much electricity. If AMI-enabled programs are to stand a reasonable chance of enabling utilities to meet state and federal peak and overall consumption reduction goals, UtiliPoint believes that they must follow this “crawl before you can walk, walk before you can run” approach to customer education.

I have been fortunate enough to have had the chance to work during the past 18 months on the PowerCentsDC Smart Meter Pilot Project in Washington, D.C.. I had primary responsibility for handling customer service inquiries that were specific to customers' bills on their respective dynamic pricing rate (the program offered three rates: Critical Peak Pricing, Critical Peak Rebate Pricing, and Hourly Pricing). A few examples of customer inquiries we handled provide some interesting anecdotal evidence supporting our conclusion.

One type of “trouble” call we received on more than one occasion had the customer stating in one way or another that “I'm having a problem with my smart meter....” They would usually go on to state they were having some sort of question with what was on the display or with the controls for the “meter.” After the first few instances of receiving this call and reacting with abject surprise, it became clear that these customers were referring to their smart thermostat as their “smart meter.” [Note: The program budgeted for the installation of a smart thermostat in approximately ¼ of participants' homes (the program was for residential customers only).] Of course, given that the smart thermostat was the one most tangible thing they associated with their participation, it stands to reason that they'd associate that with the “smart meter” pilot project. I had to issue a quick alert to the my colleagues who also took calls to beware that customers with smart thermostats may refer to them as smart meters, as well as a recommendation to refer the customers to the thermostat's user guide (which the customers had hard copy of and was also available online) as well as the online FAQ's on the program's Website (www.powercentsdc.org). Another inquiry we received on a few occasions had to do with our customers' reading and interpretation of their billing statement. Each bill was accompanied by an “Electric Usage Report” (EUR), which detailed customers kWh consumption and dollar spending for each day of their billing cycle. For Critical Peak Pricing and Critical Peak Rebate customers, consumption and spending for the Peak event hours for a Critical Peak day were also shown on the bill. The illustration below is of a Critical Peak Rebate customers' spending for the month, where there was one CP event day called for June 25:

Even though the CPR savings is labeled below the graphic, we fielded a few calls from distressed customers who perceived the representation of the CPR savings to mean that they had actually spent that amount (in the case below about a $1.50) and that they were being charged extra for their CP usage, a la the CPP pricing plan. One “lesson learned” we gleaned from these inquiries is that there are some instances where you cannot over-educate or over-explain some critical information to customers. Since the bill always has (and will continue to be) the one utility communication customers will pay close attention to, it is vitally important to explain simply but thoroughly any changes (whether AMI enabled or otherwise) to the billing format. Our “takeaway” from this feedback from customers was that a detailed example (sent out with the customers' first bill) of the EUR with a “legend” that included brief definitions of not just the new terms on the bill, but how to locate and interpret those items on the graphical images on the bill.

These are just a few examples from our experience interacting with customers that lead us to believe that utility customer service is at a crossroads. As the technologies of AMI and other Smart Grid applications enable customers to better understand when and how they consume energy, and potentially contain the cost of the energy they consume, the utility's role in providing customer service will need to evolve into an ongoing conversation with the customer, where the customer not only goes to the utility with a problem or complaint, but looks to for education, guidance, and advice on how to best manage this vitally important and ever-more costly resource in their lives. For utilities to help customers best utilize these technologies to help reach their challenging future goals for demand response and reduction there will need to be a continual dialogue.