California's Smart Meter Battle: Google vs. Utilities

There's a battle looming in California over smart meters and energy prices. Google says the state should require its big utilities to give near real-time pricing information to every smart meter-enabled customer by the end of next year. California's big three utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric — have raised plenty of objections to that deadline, and the California Public Utilities Commission is holding a workshop in San Francisco on Friday to talk about it.

The debate, which could influence smart grid policies across the country, underscores an important difference between the two things Google wants utilities to provide — energy "usage" data versus "pricing information." Electricity usage is a real thing that can be measured in real time with magnets and wires, either by a smart meter or lots of other devices. Electricity prices, on the other hand, are contrived, during or after the fact, by a convoluted market that has to keep demand and supply perfectly balanced at all times. Delivering pricing data in real time will be challenging for smart meter networks as they're currently being deployed. So in other words, for utilities, delivering power comes first, figuring out who pays for it (and how much) comes later.