Nest Labs, maker of the Nest learning thermostat, wants to shake up the residential demand response (DR) market.  Nest is taking a three-pronged approach to drive adoption of residential DR services and, of course, sell more of its thermostats:

• Naming:  First, Nest is not describing its services as demand response, a utility industry term lost on most consumers.  Instead, its DR program is called “Rush Hour Rewards.”  It’s an opt-in procedure whereby customers agree to have their Nest thermostats adjusted automatically during times of peak usage – for example, on a hot summer afternoon when AC usage spikes.  Customers can override the auto-settings whenever they choose.  By naming DR something else, Nest aims to highlight the consumer benefits and ease of use, and shift away from a utility focus.
• Utility partners: Nest has formed key partnerships with major U.S. utilities that will offer Rush Hour Rewards and related services, including NRG Energy subsidiaries Reliant and Green Mountain Energy, National Grid, Austin Energy, and Southern California Edison.  Combined, these utilities provide service to some 12.3 million customers.
• Pricing: Finally, Nest and its utility partners have developed aggressive pricing schemes designed to drive adoption.  Rush Hour Rewards participants can earn $20 to $60 per season, depending on their energy provider and other factors.  Also, there are substantial rebates on the Nest thermostat itself, which is pricey otherwise; for instance, National Grid is offering a $100 instant rebate on a Nest thermostat purchased through its website, lowering the cost to $149; and Green Mountain Energy customers who sign up for its Pollution Free Efficient plan receive a Nest thermostat for free.

A related Nest service, called Seasonal Savings, is a program in which the Nest thermostat and its cloud-based calculating engine (called Auto-Tune, like the audio processor) combine to make slight temperature adjustments early in the heating or cooling season.  These fine-tuning adjustments take place automatically in the background, but they can also be overridden by the user.  Nest’s own studies show Seasonal Savings participants can reduce energy use by 5% to 10%, with 80% of trial members opting to keep the suggested schedules.

Can Nest and its utility partners move the needle on residential DR with these new offerings?  Navigant Research’s consumer survey data suggests it is possible, but there will be resistance.  Nearly half of the respondents in our most recent study say they are unwilling to give up thermostat control to their utility (49%), and only about one in five (23%) are prepared to do so.  The challenge will be in convincing enough of the willing to actually go along.  For many people this is completely new customer behavior.  For Nest and its partners to find success, they will need to spend time and money on a sustained marketing campaign that explains the customer benefits.

Willingness to Allow a Utility to Control Thermostat, United States: 2012

(Source: Navigant Research)

Subsidizing the price for the high-end hardware in exchange for some DR should sway some customers.  Another plus is having utilities endorse the product and support the related user-friendly services.  Customers may grumble about their energy utility, but they still view energy providers as a valued source of energy management options such as these.  In addition, the marketing muscle the utility partners provide is a key asset.  As a startup, Nest’s marketing has been good so far in reaching early adopters.  With deeper-pocketed utility partners along, the ability to reach reluctant mainstream users should be quicker and more sustained.

Competitors are not standing still.  Rivals like Honeywell and Carrier are likely to develop competing products and services, and will be looking to set up similar partnership deals with utilities if the Nest scheme proves fruitful.  Other startups in the DR-energy management space, such as EcoFactor, Opower, Tendril, and EnergyHub, have compelling products, as well.  Still, credit Nest for driving innovative outreach to give this segment some fresh momentum.

During a recent thunderstorm, a power surge fried the motor of my pool pump.  With prime algae-growing season nearly upon us in Texas, this was suboptimal timing.  Still, being a smart grid researcher, I thought I’d write to my co-operative power supplier, CoServ, and find out what happened.  So I sent a short note via their “Contact Us” web page, asking if they could look into their distribution management system for that Sunday morning and see if there had been a power swell in my neighborhood.  This was purely out of curiosity – this is what I do for a living, right?  Here’s the reply that I received about 4 days later:

 Thank you for taking the time to contact CoServ Electric. As you are aware there were adverse weather conditions in your area at the time of the service abnormalities.

CoServ Electric works hard to ensure all our members receive reliable service. However, because of the nature of the electric utility industry, continuous service cannot be guaranteed. (For example, situations involving animals on the lines, unforeseeable equipment issues, or weather events such as happened in your case.) Because this event was an “Act of God” and not something we could have foreseen or prevented, we cannot accept liability for any reported damage. We recommend contacting a qualified electrician to make sure your electric service beyond the point of service (the electric meter) is properly protected from common outside disturbances.

Thank you again for your report and for allowing us to serve you as a member of CoServ Electric. If you would like to discuss this situation further, feel free to contact me.

Okay, I admit that lots of people walk around with an entitlement mentality.  Still, it would never occur to me that my power utility is responsible for lightning strikes.  Is CoServ up there in the sky hurling thunderbolts at my pool?  Of course not.  They bear no liability for the pump.  So why such a defensive response?

Litigation Phobia

Here’s my theory: because their lawyers made them to do it.  In its 108-page tariff for electric service, CoServ already states that it is not responsible for acts of God.  Nor should it be.  Making any utility liable for all acts of God in its service area would most likely render that utility bankrupt.

And that’s the problem.  I have seen (but will not link here) job postings for “NERC Compliance Manager” where one of the essential candidate requirements is a law degree.  An analysis of NERC CIP v4, which added additional clarification of the term “critical cyber asset” (CCA), shows 17 new clauses to define a CCA.  Each of those clauses gives a utility enough wiggle room in a courtroom to escape penalty.

I’m currently researching cyber security for smart grid telecommunications.  As ever, the overriding investment theme for cyber security emerges as avoidance of fines or litigation.  After 23 research interviews I have a consensus response that there are a handful of utilities in the United States that proactively address cyber security, in each case because of a single individual that really cares.  The remaining utilities are characterized by my contacts as doing the minimum necessary to avoid legal consequences.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for keeping our utilities healthy financially.  From a purely selfish perspective, researching those utilities puts bread on my table.  But – can we please focus on operations and reliability, not legal ramifications?

Utilities want to know if vendors are overselling their wares.  Are vendors making commitments that that they really should not?  Sometimes it’s hard to know what a product will actually do – or not do – until it’s installed and running.  So most buyers will try to assure themselves that the product – hardware or software – will do what it says on the label.

But there’s another side that gets less attention: do vendors underplay the difficulty of living with a product?   As Calvin once explained to Hobbes, there’s a big difference between getting something and having something.  After the discussion session at a recent smart grid conference, I understand that having meter data management (MDM) can be more complicated than buyers may grasp during the acquisition cycle.

At the conference session, I joined five utility executives discussing their experiences implementing MDM.  The group was given a preset list of questions to discuss.  The first, “What have you learned from going beyond billing?” resulted in a bunch of blank stares.  The reason: that’s all these utilities have done with MDM – generate bills.  There is little “beyond billing” yet.

Perhaps the most common theme of the discussion was the difficulty of installing MDM and then integrating it with other applications.  All of the participants felt that this aspect had been underplayed by their vendors during the MDM purchase cycle.  Integration of MDM to other applications such as energy management, outage management, or customer information systems, has proven far more difficult than expected.

Response Times Slowed

All five utility officials were also dissatisfied with their MDM’s reporting capabilities.  Several utilities had reinstalled legacy reporting systems, piping the data from the new MDM back to the reinstalled legacy systems.  The group also wanted a separate replicated MDM database for reporting because running complex analyses against the online database significantly slows the response to real-time queries – usually driven by customer portals on the Internet or help desk agents on a call.

Everyone present agreed that MDM should be done before a smart meter rollout, or at least simultaneously.  No one thought it a good idea to deploy smart meters before the MDM was in place.  Some of the group felt that the holy grail of smart metering – interval readings every 15 minutes – is useless for residential applications, although useful in commercial and industrial applications.  One panelist said his utility had activated remote disconnect for only 1% of its smart meters, although that was due to local regulations governing disconnect processes.

Navigant Research’s report, Meter Data Management, published 3Q 2012,  stressed the need for detailed planning before installing an MDM system.  These discussions reminded me how true that is!

Sandia National Laboratories is developing a microgrid architecture that holds the potential to revolutionize not only the microgrid industry, but all electricity generation.  The secure scalable microgrid (SSM) will allow for 100% stochastic, or unpredictable, generation (e.g., solar PV and wind).  Many companies and individuals have feared that renewable generation assets will compromise the stability of the electricity grid, and, under more traditional grid architectures, this makes sense intuitively.  Since neither solar nor wind are load-following or dispatchable, they can wreak havoc in the absence of sufficient traditional generation or energy storage to compensate for the large swings in renewable production.

The SSM architecture includes a communication network that connects the loads to the generation assets, along with weather and load prediction, energy storage assessments, and a device to monitor the connection to the central utility.  It uses Hamiltonian functions to balance and optimize generation and load given uncertainties in the data it collects.  With an open architecture design, the SSM also promotes transparency of operation, configurability, extensibility to different systems, and its “plug-and-play” capability.

SSM is currently being tested at the SSM Test Bed in New Mexico, which includes programmable loads that mimic both fossil and renewable based generation, buses, and integrated control computers to effectively simulate the microgrid in Lanai, Hawaii.  While there is no timeline yet for the commercialization of the technology, its eventual introduction into the market will allow for significantly greater penetration of renewables than are currently feasible.

Enabling the Green Grid

The major implication for SSM is that electricity generation can become completely renewable and independent of fossil fuels, a necessary step in the greening of the power grid.  Environmental concerns aside, completely stochastic electricity production usually requires no fuel inputs.  As the production costs associated with solar PV and wind turbines continue to decrease, and stochastic generation becomes economically competitive with traditional fossil fuel generation, the SSM should allow a transition to mostly, or completely, renewable electricity generation.

New Zealand and Austria, for example, have goals of 90% and 78% renewable generation, respectively, in the coming decades.  While it’s relatively simple, if costly, to install sufficient qualifying generation, the task of ensuring grid stability is much more daunting.  Germany has recently experienced grid issues due to its high penetration of solar, since power outputs can change very rapidly.  The SSM grid architecture, if it can be scaled up for central grid use, would help to ensure that even significant fluctuations in power output from renewable sources can maintain consistent voltage and frequency across the grid.

In the near future, the SSM architecture will bolster the ability of utilities to meet renewable energy requirements by incorporating utility distribution microgrids (UDMs) into their portfolios and service areas.  As described in the Navigant Research report Utility Distribution Microgrids, UDMs are forecast to increase 1,100 MW by 2018, and this trend will only be reinforced by the advent of the SSM.

Total UDM Capacity by Region, Average Scenario, World Markets: 2012-2018

(Source: Navigant Research)