Disrupting High Energy Prices

On ABC Radio Canberra Thursday morning there was a segment on high charges for communal hot water systems in Canberra.  In 2013 I asked for an ACT Assembly Inquiry into Energy Billing, as the charges were five to ten times what they should be. However, no action was taken by the ACT Assembly.

If the ACT Assembly will not stop incumbent energy retailers from imposing unconscionable charges, then perhaps new local businesses need to "disrupt" the business model. New providers could assist the body corporate of a block of units to purchase energy in bulk and meter it to each unit, using billing as a service in the cloud.

The ACT Government, along with Canberra's universities, have fostered a start-up community to help set up new businesses using new technology. This includes Canberra Innovation Network  and the Renewables Innovation Hub. I have been mentoring start-ups through the Innovation ACT competition and setting up an energy metering business is no more complex than some new businesses I have helped with.


ps: I teach "ICT Sustainability" at the ANU, on how to estimate and reduce carbon emissions using computers, through such measures as computerized metering.

ACT Assembly Inquiry into Energy Billing and overcharging by ActewAGL

This is to request the ACT Assembly conduct an inquiry into the adequacy of laws on oversight of energy billing. By my estimate ActewAGL is overcharging by a factor of five to ten on its hot water supply service charge. I do not actually have a gas connection, instead having hot water provided by a communal system in the apartment basement at City Edge, O'Connor.

ActewAGL reads the amount of hot water I use via a smart meter and calculates my share of the gas used to heat the water. This is an efficient and cost effective system, except for the "service charge" imposed by ActewAGL: the service charge exceeds the cost of the gas used.

As I don't actually have a gas connection to my apartment and the one connection is shared by 30 apartments, it is unclear how ActewAGL can justify charging each apartment the equivalent of a gas connection. However, this arrangement has been made legal through legislation passed by the ACT Assembly. I request the Assembly review this.

The relatively high service charge makes the use of shared systems less cost effective. Not only does this increase energy costs to ACT citizens, but also discourages the use of energy efficient and less polluting forms of hot water supply, thus increasing Canberra's greenhouse gas emissions.

Plan for Reforming Electricity Distribution System

The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, outlined a plan to change the way the Australian electricity market runs, Sunday 2 December 2012. While the PM referred to a detailed plan, no such plan has been released, only a transcript of interview, on "Meet The Press". The Australian National University, ANU Energy Change Institute, which I am a member of, will look with interest at developments.

The PM announced that the plan would be put to the Council of Australian Governments meeting at the end of this week. However, the COAG Meeting to  25 July 2012 instructed the COAG inter-jurisdictional Taskforce to report by "late 2012" on additional action to deliver a regulatory framework that promotes a competitive retail electricity market. It would appear that the new plan will therefore not be able to take into account the taskforce's recommendations.

The PM referred to giving consumers more information about their own power usage. This appears to be a reference to the installation of smart meters which give consumers details of current energy consumption and current charging rates. In theory this allows the consumer to delay electricity use to an off-peak time. However, in my view this is not an effective way to reduce energy consumption or costs. Expecting consumers to manually control large energy using appliances is not an effective approach. In my view these devices should be required to have automated energy saving features built in. In particular all new domestic air conditioners should have a mandatory peak energy saving function built in.

...

PM: This isn't about the ownership of electricity assets; it's about the way in which our power system works. I will have the Council of Australian Governments meeting at the end of this week, and I will be taking there a plan to make a difference; a plan to make sure that families pay $250 less per year for electricity than they would if we just let the current system run.

And it's about addressing the real drivers of high power prices – the overinvestment, the so-called gold-plating of the network, the fact that consumers don't get enough of a say, empowering the regulator at the centre of this with more resources, and making sure too that we reward big electricity users, big businesses, that moderate their consumption during peak time periods of pressure on the electricity network.

We can make a difference; the Productivity Commission said this all adds up to difference of around $250 a year for a family. I'm determined to make the difference ....

This is not about the ownership of electricity assets, it’s about the market design features that I’ve talked about, and giving consumers more of a go, more of a say, more information about their own power usage.  ...

PM: I think people can understand gold-plating really easily. What it means is there's an overinvestment in the poles and wires, and under the current market design – the rules for electricity – there's actually a perverse incentive for companies to keep investing, keep investing, keep investing – and passing all of those costs on to consumers. Indeed, there's been around about $11 billion of investment for the peak loads on four days a year.

Well we can do better than that. We can do better with a regulator that has more resources available. We can do better with consumers at the centre of the decision-making process. We can do better with consumers getting more information in their own homes about how to manage their electricity consumption. ...

PM: What we are talking about is a detailed plan to change many features of the way the electricity market runs, and it is not an appropriate comparison to saying this is about a website with more information.

This is about changing, going through from the top – at the moment, a perverse incentive to gold-plate, more investment in poles and wires – changing that so these things are set more independently.

Number two: putting consumers at the centre of the decision-making process through a consumer challenge panel, giving mums and dads in their own home more information about their electricity usage so they can make choices, knowing what it's going to cost them.

Number four: actually getting through to the regulator more resources to help them go about their job.

And finally, rewards to big businesses that use a lot of power to lighten the load on peak days. That's the plan that adds up to a $250 difference. That's the plan I'll be fighting for at the Council of Australian Governments meeting....

From: Transcript of Interview with Paul Bongiorno, Rafael Epstein and Patricia Karvelas, Meet The Press, Office of the Prime Minister of Australia, 2 December 2012.

Smart Grid Energy Revolution for Canberra

Robin Eckermann talked on "The SMART GRID - The looming energy revolution" last night at the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch Forum. He pointed out that electricity meters are the interface between the electricity grid and the customer. The meters are the most expensive component to replace to provide a smart grid, simply because there are so many meters. But by providing different power costs the meter can change customer behaviour and save significant costs for the network.

Robin argued that the future was in having the smarts built into appliances so they will adjust their power use without a need for customer input. This suggests to me that smart meters may not be a good investment for households. Instead a modern variation on off peak hot water could be used. Simple off peak hot water systems send a signal via the mains power line which turns the hot water system on. A modern system could have air conditioning switched by a digital signal. That signal need not come via the power lines or the smart meter, it could be a wireless or wired connection. The smart appliance could communicate directly, without going via the meter. This could be provided as a separate service by a company separate to the utility, provided them with a way to reduce peak loads.

As with hot water systems, the air-conditioning could be provided with a discount, in return for energy use being reduced on occasions. Unlike hot water systems, the air conditioner need not switch off completely to help the grid, it could instead reduce its power use. It is likely that most users would not notice the difference. An easy way to implement this would be allow a minimum of as much power as a standard power point can supply. This would allow for air-conditioning of one domestic room, but not a whole house. This could be easily implemented by regulation by requiring it to be installed on all new air-conditioners which use more than 10 amps

Robin pointed out that solar panels and electric cars can cause problems for the electricity grid. Some intelligence in the devices can reduce the problem. As an example, electric cars can act as an energy store for the grid.

Robin suggested that Victoria may have acted too early introducing smart meters. He then discussed how the NBN could be used for providing the smart grid. This would require some difficult issues to be resolved: houses would have to be connected even if no other NBN service was required and the NBN equipment would have to be powered even when the main house power was off.

Robin mentioned that he has helped set up "Smart Grid Australia", which amongst its activities pointed out that smart meters may not be the best initial investment.

Energy Australia won the "Australian Government's Smart Grid, Smart City project" tender.

Robin pointed out that there was scope for innovation with this technology in Canberra. He also suggested that government policy should be to encourage solar panels on an industrial scale, rather than on individual houses. He suggested that individuals could still invest in such projects, but without having to have the solar panels installed on their roof. The Nishi apartment building in Canberra has something like this with residents having the option to invest in shared photovoltaic cells on the roof.

Mesh network for Victorian smart meters

Responding to my post on WiMax smart meters, Robin Whittle responded with
"electricity meters use Zigbee and 915-928 MHz mesh", Fri Oct 30 17:56:59 EST 2009:

Two Victorian distributors - Jemena and United Energy, are going to use meters from PRI in the UK with a Silver Spring radio card (NIC): http://www.metering.com/node/15074

The Jemena information shows a particular meter: http://www.jemena.com.au/smartMetering/default.aspx

This looks the same as a particular meter shown here, a PRI meter with a Silver Spring NIC (radio card): http://silverspringnetworks.com/products/intelligent_endpoints_pri.html

The meter is from PRI in the UK:

http://www.pri.co.uk/PressRelease/PRI-Australasia-to-supply-Smart-Meters-for-the-Victoria-roll-out.aspx

The radio interface (NIC), with a 1 watt transmitter: "dynamically discovers and self-heals its Neighborhood Area Network (NAN), notifies the Smart Energy Network of outages and restorations."

The datasheet: http://silverspringnetworks.com/pdfs/SSN-DS-PRI.pdf shows that while the meter uses Zigbee to communicate with devices in the home, it uses some unspecified protocol for its connection to the outside world.

"High data rate communications between the back office and the Meter, allow for thousands of meters to be read in minutes."

Two-way 915-928 MHz FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum) communications
Dynamic network discovery and self-healing
Supports scheduled and on-demand meter reads
Supports "over-the-air" firmware upgrades, meter programming and tariff changes
Optional GSM / GPRS modem (in ETBC)
Data rate 100 kbps
Spread Spectrum Technology FHSS
Channels 43
Modulation Binary FSK
All the type approvals are for Australia.

The diagram shows a mesh between the meters, presumably using the 915-928 MHz FHSS system, and part of the mesh is "access points" which may be connected back to base via GSM-GPRS, Ethernet or CDMA. I guess they could use 3G too.

So from this, it seems they will plonk access points around the place and talk to them via GSM/3G, and each one of these will communicate directly or indirectly with a large number of meters. This sounds like a good arrangement to me.

I think that in country areas there may be such isolated meters that there would be a single access point, presumably linked back to base by GSM-GPRS. In principle it may be possible to put a GSM modem in the meter, but perhaps it would be simpler to keep all the meters much the same, and dedicate an access point on the nearby power pole for each isolated home.

I hope they won't turn on the ZigBee system by default. That would be another 2.4GHz transmitter in every house - in an already widely used frequency band.

We should have a Jemena meter installed in the next few months. Does anyone near here (north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne) have a 2.4 GHz scanner to see if it is emitting anything?

According to:

http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/aca_home/legislation/radcomm/band_plans/900mhz.pdf the 915 to 928 MHz band is "Radiolocation" and most of it, 915 to 926 MHz, is an ISM (Industrial Scientific and Medical) applications band. I understand this is used for RFID. Does anyone know more about this part of the spectrum?

Tom Worthington has a page discussing another distributor's plans to use WiMax to the "smart" meters...

This will involve "Motorola WiMAX WAP 650 base stations on 2.3GHz connected by a microwave system". This looks a lot more expensive and presumably involves licensed spectrum and expensive microwave or fibre links.

Since almost all of the locations where there are electricity meters are covered by GSM or a 3G network already, I think the GSM/3G access point, with 915 MHz ISM band mesh network approach looks technically and economically the most attractive. However, the system relies on unlicensed spectrum.

Yes, SP AusNet plans to use spectrum licensed to Unwired. WiMax can use a mesh architecture, so they could reduce the number of base stations to lower the cost a bit, but this will cost more than the Jemena and United Energy approach.

But I suspect SP AusNet plans to create a wireless network suitable for selling broadband services, not just smart meters. As an example, if they put a WiFi chip in the smart meter, then they can offer a wireless broadband service to the household and to the street. Assuming that every second house in the street has such a meter, that would provide
complete wireless coverage of a suburb. Apart from data services, this could provide telephony (there would not be enough bandwidth for TV).