POWER August 2012 - 37

2012 SMART GRID AWARD
Customers Motivate San Diego Gas
& Electric's All-Inclusive Smart
Grid Vision
" If you build it, they will come " has proven a risky strategy for some smart grid projects.
One of California's largest investor-owned utilities faced the opposite challenge-
customers whose behaviors necessitated a smarter grid. Customer involvement in
and support for smart grid plans is a major reason SDG&E's smart grid efforts continue
to garner accolades, including the 2012 POWER Smart Grid Award.
By Dr. Gail Reitenbach
W
hen POWER introduced its new
Smart Grid Award in early 2011,
money from the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act was still flowing, and
there was a lot of industry chatter about smart
grid projects, though the vast majority of them
just involved meter change-outs. Our inaugural
year Smart Grid Award went to Vermont Electric
Cooperative (VEC), which demonstrated
how a small team of savvy professionals can
develop and implement a successful smart grid
vision with what many would consider meager
resources and industry visibility.
This year, the winner is at the opposite end
of the size spectrum and the other side of the
country. San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E),
a Sempra Energy company, serves 3.4 million
consumers through 1.4 million electric
meters and more than 850,000 natural gas
meters in San Diego and southern Orange
Counties-a service territory covering 4,100
square miles. SDG&E is making its mark as
one of the most comprehensive large-scale
smart grid ecosystem developers. The utility
has already garnered numerous smart grid
awards, but that's not why we chose it for the
POWER Smart Grid Award.
38
The People Led, the
Leaders Followed
Just as VEC proved that a small cooperative
can achieve benefits that many larger utilities
of all stripes have not, SDG&E's smart grid
experience has also turned accepted wisdom
on its head. Large investor-owned utilities
(IOUs) in particular have been accustomed
to a top-down approach that might glibly be
called " Father Knows Best. " For SDG&E's
smart grid plan, the motto is more like " When
the people lead, the leaders will follow. "
Obviously, like any other utility that answers
to shareholders, SDG&E doesn't do
anything simply because customers ask for
it, whether the ask involves more renewable
generation or lower bills. Nevertheless, unlike
some utilities that have faced heated
opposition to the introduction of advanced
metering infrastructure (AMI, digital meters
with wireless communications capabilities),
SDG&E's customers have largely welcomed
its smart grid efforts and are a major, if indirect,
driver of them.
SDG&E's " Smart Grid Deployment Plan
2011-2020 " (SGDP) notes that many utilities
are taking a wait-and-see approach to
www.powermag.com
Courtesy: SDG&E
smart grid technology deployment. " For the
San Diego region and SDG&E, however,
waiting is not an option, " it says, because:
■ Its customers and many stakeholders have
shown consistent support for new renewable
legislation, generation technologies,
and projects.
■ Its customers have installed more megawatts
of rooftop solar in San Diego than
utility customers in any other U.S. city. By
the end of 2011, more than 13,000-more
than 1%-of SDG&E customers had installed
photovoltaic systems totaling over
100 MW of capacity. (As of June this year,
the total was 135 MW, and the forecast for
2015 is 300 MW to 400 MW.)
■ Its customers are already taking delivery
of Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt electric
vehicles, and more Leafs are being sold in
San Diego than anywhere else in the country.
Ford, Mitsubishi, and BMW have also
targeted the San Diego region for their
plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) release in
late 2011 to early 2012.
■ Its customers already have access to interval
usage data, and thousands signed
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POWER August 2012

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