A recent survey concluded that in order for smart meters and smart grids to fulfill their potential, consumers need to be smarter about the emerging energy technologies. Chartwell’s Smart Grid Customer Engagement Research Council surveyed 1,500 utility customers in the United States and Canada and the majority of respondents claimed to have never heard of a smart meter. Of those respondents who said they had heard of it, half could not identify what is was. Ten percent believed it was a surveillance device that enabled utility companies to monitor homeowner’s movement in their homes.

Despite the lack of consumer engagement with the new technology, Toronto Hydro has forged ahead with one of the largest deployments of smart meters in North America, with the transition to time-of-use (ToU) rate expected to be finished in 2010.

Hydro Corp CEO Anthony Haines says the support of businesses has been integral during the deployment. “Everybody has the opportunity to lower their bills with the tools and products we are making available,” he says. “They can invest in conservation and use energy at different times, which will reduce their bills, especially during peak periods, and invest in various technologies to help them do this.”

To help businesses, especially smaller businesses, cover the initial costs of the smart energy technologies Toronto Hydro offers conservation and incentive programs designed specifically to assist companies improve their energy efficiency. Toronto Hydro’s Business Incentive Program, for example, helps businesses evaluate energy-saving opportunities in their buildings.

“It might be energy efficient lighting, changing motors, installing building automation controls,” explains Chris Tyrrell, Toronto Hydro’s chief conservation officer. “Then we establish just how much of that energy would be saved, and the incentive is built around that on a dollar-per-kilowatt basis. So it lowers their capital requirements, which means a faster return on investment.”

Also helping business are provisions that allows companies to generate their own renewable energy and get paid for depositing it back into the provincial grid. The Ontario Power Authority is guarantying the sell-back rate for at least 20 years.

South of Canada’s borders, the smart grid in the United States faces the challenge of promoting interoperability and coordinating standards smart appliances such as dishwashers or microwaves and other devices embedded with communications technology.

George Arnold is in charge of coordinating the standards process at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST). “It’s a serious problem,” he says. “There needs to be some sort of coordination.”

Obama’s administration is spending $4 billion on smart grid technology. If the deployed technology isn’t interoperable – and the technology is not understood by consumers – Arnold worries the rool out will not succeed as hoped.

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