Smart Meter Reality Check: Are Our Aging Parents Right to Worry?

My parents' friends aren't much interested in Smart Meters. It isn't because they are luddites. They aren't. They correspond with their grandchildren via email, upload digital images and ask about Facebook apace with sixty year olds. It isn't because they are ignorant. (A little respect, please?) And it isn't because they don't care about the planet. They do. They use CFLs because they don't burn their fingers when they change the bulbs, and it just doesn't make any damn sense to spend a whole lot of electricity heating up a lampshade. Most of them use smart strips because fool computers don't have to buzz and hum their way through the whole night. There's enough buzzing and humming in hospitals at night, and lord knows they don't need more of that at home.

They are, you may recall, the same parents who yipped at you to flick off the lights when you left the room throughout your childhood, and threw on cardigans as they turned the heat down.

Elderly Lose Money, Gain...? My parents' friends are worried about Smart Meters because they aren't sure they are going to be able to play this new electricity game. If they are forced to play, they are afraid they are going to lose. I'm not sure they're wrong.  As we've noted in the past, Smart Meters (sad, but true) did not originate with the altruistic hope of enabling consumers to monitor their electricity usage. They came about because utilities wanted to be able to monitor power usage more precisely and impose rates based on time of use.

Time of Use Rates, in absence of information sharing, are Punitive. As it stands, if I use my dishwasher during peak times, I pay more. But I do not benefit from doing dishes at two in the morning, because off-peak rates are no lower than my old pre-smart meter rates.  I gain only the knowledge that I may be saving the world from a newly constructed power plant with my wee hour rinse cycle. No small matter, kharmically speaking, but little help to my 80 year old mother, who tends to be asleep at 2am and may not find investing in a dishwasher with a delay setting a great investment on a fixed income. 

Result: If she has a Smart Meter, she runs the dishwasher when the dishes are dirty and she still has stamina, and gets nailed at a higher rate. The key short-coming: She won't know why her bill has increased. That means, her behavior won't change. (No break for the planet/big money for utilities). IF her Smart Meter told her in real time where the trouble was... I'd be singing an entirely different song.

Smart Meters could be a force for good. They could (potentially, in some instances) alert utility companies that a home is without power. They could (potentially, in some instances) let consumers know how they are spending their energy, so that consumers can learn where the spikes and peaks are and alter their behavior to save money. They could (could they really?) provide those data in real time, so that consumers, whether elderly or not, could adjust their behavior in a meaningful way to save energy and money, without having to re-trace an entire day to figure it out. But right now, they don't.

Real Promise: Real-Time Data to Consumers. We remain full of hope that Google PowerMeter may turn Smart Meters into the tools for good that they could be. For now, Smart Meters seem only to be servants of the utility. Slapping one on a house is about as generous as throwing a jump rope over my father's wheel chair and admonishing him to get in shape. Or, for that matter, asking the rest of us to go jogging with our eyes closed.

We want to love Smart Meters. We are all about monitoring usage and reducing waste. We eagerly await an indication that Smart Meter will deliver for homeowners, not just utilities.