Why do we need all these smart meters – so someone asked over at GreenTechMedia. We can run the grid with far fewer, and it will cost less. Why do we need these complicated protocols when we only need a price and a use? This perspective is correct; it is good engineering unencumbered with vision. This perspective is wrong; we cannot build tomorrow by doing what we day just a little bit better. Without pervasive metering, LEEDs and Green Buildings will remain a sham. Smart utility meters are only the first step.
Peter Drucker is still the most important and most visionary of thinkers about business and organizations. Drucker’s work ranged from identifying the long term sources of GM’s problems in 1942 to coining the term knowledge worker in the 1980’s. There are very few writers in this field whose work is more than a fad or a fashion. Few are worth re-reading. Drucker’s work is still relevant – even in the post DotCom world.. (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Peter+Drucker).
Drucker fans are prone to invoking the pithy statements that sprinkled his work. My favorite Druckerism is "There is nothing quite so meaningless as doing well that which need not be done at all." There are many opportunities to invoke it at a state university where process often trumps any actual goals.
If we are creating a smart grid merely to meet the needs of the existing regulated market structures, much metering is not worthwhile. There are some limited benefits in peak management that accrue to the traditional utilities. There are few incentives for energy users to change, because benefits come to the diligent and free riders equally. It is not worthwhile to have well-implemented smart meters everywhere if their interfaces are only for the power provider.
The real opportunity of the smart grid is its ability to work with more business models then the current top down reliable far-away power for dumb buildings and homes. The smart grid will support a network of power, with a network of new business opportunities for technology to insert itself into the energy chain.
Alternative Energy changes the grid because it is unreliable. If any significant amount of power on the grid comes from unreliable sources, we will have more peak energy events, when demand exceeds supply, per day than we now have per year. Distributed energy means that the neighborhood wind farm is now a full peer on the grid. Net Zero Energy means your dishwasher might bid against the grid for the output of your solar panel.
The smart grid offers choice. Homes and business will choose what power they buy, and they will want the smart grid to leave audit trails that they actually are getting it. A decade ago, supermarkets laughed at the idea that a significant number of consumers would choose more expensive groceries. Today, Whole Foods has transformed that industry and nearly every chain offers an organic produce section.
Why, you may even buy conventional reliable power to run your business but tell the fountain out front to run only when it can buy wave power. You may agree to pay a slight premium for your neighbors wind power when he is on vacation to keep his system working. We, or our software agents, will be active market participants in the national smart grid, in regional smart grids, in neighborhood smart grids, and even in in-building grids.
More metering, and more functional metering is worthwhile. Minimally functional metering is merely a way to reduce meter reading, not a step to the smart grid. And so, a final Druckerism: “We need to Measure, not Count.”