Connecticut Light & Power customers used less electricity during a test of “smart” meters last summer, with residents who used a website to monitor their electricity usage saving $25 on average over a three-month period.
Nearly 3,000 CL&P residential and business customers took part in the Plan-It Wise Energy Program between June and August, which tested smart meters that allow customers to adjust their electricity use as rates rise or fall hourly.
According to CL&P, it was the largest test yet in North America of smart meters at commercial and industrial sites, with some 1,300 participating.
The pilot test is a key part of CL&P”™s planning for offering smart meter technology to its customers down the road, in keeping with a 2007 Connecticut General Assembly bill requiring it to do so. CL&P must file a formal plan by the end of March, 2010 with the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) on how it will do so.
“We”™re in the guts of it in terms of doing cost-benefit analysis ”¦ and really beating up our own assumptions,” said Jessica Brahaney Cain, a CL&P manager who directed the test program.
Â
CL&P and parent Northeast Utilities are still surprised by the U.S. Dept. of Energy”™s decision not to award the company federal stimulus funding to support the rollout of smart meters in Connecticut. Only three years ago, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had labeled Southwest Connecticut one of the four most problematic energy transmission corridors in the United States due to runaway electrical demand overloading the transmission lines in place at the time. Since then, Northeast Utilities has completed or begun several new transmission line projects that have stabilized the grid, though rates remain high compared to most other states.
Â
In the Plan-It Wise program, residential customers saved $15 on average; in a twist, conversely businesses paid more than $15 extra from what they would have, though as was the case with homeowners those companies that monitored their electric use online performed better with their bill ”“ about flat from what they would have paid without participating in Plan-It Wise.
Cain said the commercial bills were higher than what might have been expected due to DPUC not allowing CL&P to break time-of-use blocks into four-hour intervals, instead forcing it to use eight-hour blocks that gave businesses less flexibility.
“The main barrier for businesses was the longer time-of-use period,” Cain said. “They said (an eight hour period) would make it very tough to respond.”
Overall, she said CL&P had received a “solid response” from participants. Some tested smart thermostats or control switches that allow CL&P to adjust their air conditioner temperature during predetermined periods of time to help the customer manage electricity usage. Others received “energy orbs” sold by Massachusetts-based Ambient Devices, which alert customers of changes in electric rates by changing color, allowing them to make adjustments to save money.
CL&P is also weighing how it might offer net metering service that would allow customers that generate their own electricity through solar panels or other means to feed power into the grid and get credit for it.
