DOE Secretary Chu on fighting consumer smart grid resistance

Expediting deployments of smart grids, through stimulus money and the creation of standards, is one of the Obama administration's top priorities. To move the process along, the National Institute of Standards plans to release its smart grid standards roadmap at this week's Grid Week conference, but it will take more than interoperability assurance to convince consumers it's the smartest move, according to Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a keynote address Monday. Advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) is being rolled out today with demand response as the ultimate goal. The idea is that consumers can adjust their energy usage in real time to save money and lessen their carbon footprint. The utility can also exercise this control for the customer, turning down electricity at peak periods and encouraging consumers to run their dishwashers, for example, at off-peak times. If utilities use the demand response and load shifting tools available to them, they can eventually shift 20% of the load off-peak, Sec Chu said, noting that a substantial part of generated capacity and distributed capacity is used less than 5% of the time. If the utility can shift 1%, 5% or maybe 10% off the peak load into other times, it can get a better return on investment, he said, potentially saving them hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Sec Chu noted that while demand response and dynamic pricing will hopefully alter consumer habits in the long term, initially it won't. It will do the opposite and create angry consumers, he admitted.