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What do consumers think of the smart grid? Um, not much

By | February 25, 2010, 11:01am PST

There’s a new poll out from Harris Interactive gauging consumers’ perception of the smart grid and smart meters. Turns out they don’t have much of one. In fact, close to 70 percent of them have never heard of the smart grid and about 63 percent haven’t a clue about smart meters. Those who ARE aware of the smart grid are concerned about the security around it, which is another thing that technology players should be worrying about. ZDNet Editorial Director Larry Dignan dissects the results further over in this post at our SmartPlanet sister blog site.

This reinforces my believe that in order for all this to work, it has to be transparent. I mean, come on: Just because you CAN monitor your energy usage and adjust it from a remote location doesn’t mean that you WILL do it. And how many people you know are excited about paying to update their thermostats or other gadgets necessary to start collecting energy data. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

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Grid, Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues.

Disclosure

Heather Clancy

Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I am also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I am covering in my blog.

Biography

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll.

Talkback Most Recent of 7 Talkback(s)

  • I would actually..
    if it was easy to implement, however I havent seen anything that wouldnt require an army of electricians to install. I am going to invest in IP-enabled thermostats so I can remotely manage my schedule (like days I'd be seriously late home or forget to set my "holiday" schedule) but unfortunately those are to the tune of about $300 each and I have a dual zone..
    ZDNet Gravatar
    JT82
    25th Feb 2010
  • No practical justification for the smart grid
    The only justification for the smart grid is to permit rationing of electricity. For example, the next time California has brownouts because they've been too stupid to build new power plants, the utility company can start shutting off people's AC. Other than that, there's no justification for it. The so-called smart-grid produces NO increase in transmission efficiency, as is often, and erroneously, floated.

    What will be interesting, is if the Vermont legislature denies the extension for the Yankee Nuclear Power plant which supplies 70% of Vermont's electricity. Then it will be fun to watch how effective all the greenies conservation mantras will work out.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Takalok
    25th Feb 2010
  • You have just summed up the entire
    environmentalist movement.

    Controlling people.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    frgough
    25th Feb 2010
  • It doesn't realy matter anyway.
    Your bill is based on how much your energy company needs to make in profits. This will not change no matter what kind of technology you use.

    Last year we spent 15,000 USD making improvements to our house. Making it more energy efficient. We hired professional high quality companies to come in and do the work and do the physical testing. I was able to independently verify that we knocked 25% off our usage. In other words after our improvements we were using 25% less power in our daily lives than before. Our local power company decided that because the local government wouldn't let them raise their rates and tried to force them to give discounts to people who did what we did and made our energy usage more efficient, the energy company added "delivery fee" to the bill. It was 15% more than our old bills. Instead of getting a 25% discount from our old bills, we got an increase of 15%. This was on top of the money we spent on our house. Plus apparently after our modifications our property is now worth more and are property taxes are even higher than before.
    With this new "delivery fee" the energy company can slide your bill around to where ever they want the final dollar amount to be.

    I was all for "greening" up my home but I have paid a steep premium for it.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    mr1972
    25th Feb 2010
  • News flash for you
    your government was directly involved in this "delivery fee," because
    guess what? When you pay less for energy, they get less tax revenue.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    frgough
    25th Feb 2010
  • Doesn't Surprise Me
    I honestly don't know how the energy company and the local government are connected.
    I do know my property taxes went up and the only improvements we made to the property and the home where related to making our house more energy efficient.

    I do know that we actually got the 25% discount but the "delivery fee" covered that discount and added 15% on top of it. So basically we got a 25% decrease for usage and a 35% increase for "Delivery fees".

    The bottom line is we are paying 15% more this year after our home improvements than in past years before the improvements.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    mr1972
    25th Feb 2010
  • RE: What do consumers think of the smart grid? Um, not much
    I sometimes wonder if all these "smart" devices are really all that smart. Think about it for a moment...
    I've got old thermostats, really old, no digital read for temp, setting...new "smart" IP enabled thermostats might be handy, but they are going to use energy just displaying, processing, otherwise handling all that data, right? Same with "smart meters".
    And what about people living in "rural" areas, you know, with dialup only...is the theremostat or meter going to initiate a dialup connection every 15 minutes???
    Then you have some people saying to unplug all devices when not in use, everything, televisions, radios, toasters, wall-wart chargers, clocks...is this really a workable solution? How much time would I spend resetting all the timers on various devices?
    I'm not convinced these ideas are "consumer friendly".
    ZDNet Gravatar
    wizard57m@...
    25th Feb 2010

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