Energy Biz - September/October 2008 - (Page 74) » Guidebook (MeterinG and data ManaGeMent) continues. “The smart grid reduces the need, and lets us spread it out over more time and gives us more options on the generation side. “Do we face a crisis? We’re already in a crisis,” Yeager says. “We have a system where when one utility has a local interruption that can cascade across the country. That should never be possible.” It is all of these problems and issues that increasingly are making AMI economically feasible. The business cases that weren’t feasible in the 1990s are becoming increasingly feasible today in an era of high-priced oil, rising coal costs, and adamant opposition to building new baseload generation and transmission. When electricity was ubiquitous and cheap across the United States, large-scale deployment of AMR didn’t make economic sense for utilities and business cases couldn’t be contrived. Today it’s a necessity and a survival mechanism. The problem has arisen and AMI is a part of the solution. provide a bridge,” Harkness says. “As far as renewables are concerned, relying on solar and wind won’t be enough. We still are going to have to have clean coal and nuclear power. But until we can get those up, AMI will enable smart grid and home automation to help us bridge the gap.” Other CIOs and utility executives are reaching the same conclusion. “The whole idea of the smart grid is fundamentally to enable higher reliability and use existing infrastructure to higher capacity,” says Kurt Yeager, former president and CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute and now executive director of the Galvin Electricity Initiative. “The value proposition is that it saves the consumer a good deal of money in terms of the cost of unreliability, gives them more control and enables existing infrastructure to be more effective. It’s not an insubstantial amount of savings,” he says. “We have to build new infrastructure,” Yeager Improving communications with customers By MAUREEN TRUMBLE in early 2007, consuMers energy started investigating the development of an advanced metering infrastructure program. The program is part of the company’s balanced energy initiative, a comprehensive plan to meet the energy needs of Consumers Energy’s 1.8 million electric customers in Michigan for the next 20 years. Fundamental to its design, Consumers Energy’s advanced metering infrastructure program will provide two-way communications between the company and its customers. As a result of the program, customers may take greater control of their energy usage, prompting demand reductions during critical peak times and resulting in higher energy efficiency and environmental benefits. AMI supports energy efficiency through increased customer energy awareness, while simultaneously enabling demand response and load management programs. Facilitated by automated notification from new smart meters, customers will benefit from improved outage detection and response capabilities. With September/October 2008 (Guest OpiniOn) AMI in place, the company will eliminate field trips to read, turn on and shut off meters, and improve energy theft detection. In fact, Consumers Energy’s upcoming AMI communications infrastructure will provide the foundation for developing the future smart grid, and allow off-peak charging of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Recognizing AMI’s complexity and its relative market immaturity, the company is using a phased implementation approach before beginning mass deployment, which is scheduled to start in 2010. Maureen Trumble 74 E n E rgyB i z
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