Power to the People
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My promised restructuring of Microsoft will conclude tomorrow but today I want to cover a news announcement from Google that I think is very important, yet that importance seems to have been missed by the mainstream and technical press alike. My subject is the Google PowerMeter, which is far more strategic than Google is letting-on.
Not that the official PowerMeter story isn’t a good one. Google has invented these devices that will be distributed to users to measure the electricity consumption of their homes or apartments in real time, encouraging residents to conserve power, which is good for everyone. I’d love to have one of these gizmos, which in most cases won’t only report to the residents but also to the electric utility. And eventually that utility may be able to directly control electric heating and cooling systems through the PowerMeters, turning them up or down as needed to reduce total demand during high-use periods, perhaps in exchange for lower electric rates for the consumer.
This power consumption shaping would be very similar to programs already in place with many industrial users, the idea being that if maximum consumption can be kept down below a certain level then the utility won’t have to fire-up expensive gas turbine generators that are often used for peak additional power. And in extreme cases utilities might be able to forego entire power plants, saving in the case of nuclear plans, up to $3 billion in construction costs. It’s a heck of a deal.
So this is Google doing its bit for the environment in exchange for which they learn even more about our behavior, right?
Wrong. It’s much more than that.
Google’s PowerMeter is a Trojan horse – a way to become a de facto Internet Service Provider for potentially millions of homes.
Several years ago Google made a $100 million investment in a suburban Washington, DC company called Current Technologies, which is America’s leading provider of both smart electric metering services (that’s what the Google PowerMeter is supposed to be) AND power line Internet service based in part on the HomePlug networking standard.
Current’s business model was simple. They’d give participating utilities a way to both measure and control local power consumption pretty much as described above. Oh and, by the way, the meter connection could also be used to provide Internet service, potentially to 100 percent of a neighborhood since pretty much everyone buys electric power. Throw Internet on the power bill, then maybe digital cable service, too. Eventually the power companies would take on the cable and telephone companies to fight for broadband hegemony.
Only it isn’t really happening that way. Current is doing deals with utilities, but most of those utilities AREN’T going so far as to offer broadband Internet. They are just reading meters, thank you, which isn’t bad unless your profit is supposed to come from the Internet and cable competitor side. So Current Technologies is struggling somewhat and Google’s investment in that company hasn’t grown as much as either company would like.
Enter the Google PowerMeter, which is both an intelligent power meter AND an Internet gateway, just like the original vision at Current Technologies.
Electric utilities are enthusiastically installing backbone capability to serve these smart meters. And contrary to popular belief, the network on the power company’s side of that medium-voltage transformer on your telephone pole is usually optical fiber, NOT Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) which amateur radio operators hate so much. The fact is that BPL has real distance limitations and it is just easier to string fiber alongside the medium and high-voltage lines.
So the utilities partner with Google to install these boxes, ideally in every home. They install enough fiber for gigabit service to the medium voltage transformer with HomePlug or WiFi into the home. And the whole thing interfaces to Google at the power company’s data center where Google will install proxy servers and routers and connect to the Internet backbone.
Eventually Google — not the electric utility — throws the switch on consumer Internet access, IP TV, and VoIP phones, which the electric companies could have done – should have done – on their own but generally couldn’t be bothered to.
Ideally Google lights the whole town with Internet with the utility happily picking-up most of the infrastructure costs yet with Google becoming the ISP.
Now THAT’s a heck of a deal.
Prove to me I’m wrong.
See, if Metricom hadn’t been so married to wireless data links, this could have been them. Now they’re just a dead disruptive technology.
It was kind of shocking news to them.
That would be *so* cool. I would love to see more competition in the market place. If Google pulls this off, I say more power to them. (Okay, pun only slightly intended.)
At this point, I welcome some competition to the cable/telcos who are the only internet-dealers around.
Could these power companies undercut the cable/telcos and still make decent money?
It’s actually not invented by Google. There is a power company in Germany (Yellow Strom) (Strom = Power/Current) that has been working on it for some time. It was actually developed together with Ideo as far as I know.
It will measure your power usage every second, send it to the utility and give you an interface showing the movement of your power. They are already giving you cheaper power at night through the system.
http://www.yellostrom.de/privatkunden/sparzaehler/index.html
Oliver
He didn’t say they invented it, but they will make the most out of it.
forgot the quotes ‘invented’ it… but for all intents and purposes they will have
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1) Many electric utilities already offer remote load control devices in exchange for a discounted rate. They attach to your water heater or air conditioner and are remotely switched via RF.
2) I’m all for competition (especially if they offer something an order of magnitude better than the competitors). But since stringing (or burying) fiber involves truck rolls, will this extend broadband to those who don’t currently have access available through a telco or cable provider?
Put a WI-FI access point on each power pole for connection to the home and now you have the entire city lit up with wireless internet access under Google control, a la Mountain View
I heard about this earlier in the week and have had another look now and can’t see any actual information on how it actually works – but my first thought was to assume that this would be some Google branded device (similar to http://www.amazon.co.uk/Owl-CM119-Electrisave-Mk2-Electricity/dp/B000LQ79Q6) that rather than connecting to some wireless monitor would instead connect via your wireless (or perhaps even wired) network and on to a Google branded ‘portal’ that would display your usage (and ad’s).
It would work for Google because they could target ‘energy saving’, ‘green’ and other thrifty services at the users in a more directed way increasing revenues etc on the way.
Nice theory, but it’s got some serious flaws.
A: The power company only needs a few bytes of data to transmit power usage. A User ID, a date stamp, and the total number of Kilowatt/hours on the meter. It really only needs to transmit this data once a month. And for this tiny amount of data, you think the power company is going to invest the billions of dollars required to deliver fiber to every neighborhood in America? No. They’ll do what they’ve done already in gated communities where the meter readers can’t access the properties. They’ll use text messaging. It’s a little box outside of the power meter which sends usage information via SMS on a cell phone provider. The box on my unit sends usage data for power and gas. It’s cheap, it’s ubiquitous, and the infrastructure has already been built.
B: Google won’t run an ISP on fiber they don’t own, maintain or control. What happens when a construction crew digs up one of these fiber cables by mistake? Do you expect the power company to rush out with a crew to patch that cable right away? They only need data from their meters once a month, and if they can’t read it they just estimate your usage based on previous months & years, and then correct the readings once they have connectivity again.
C: Google is notorious for their poor customer service. They are already incapable of dealing with basic customer requests on AdSense. Do you really think they’ll be capable of handling customer calls about their service being down? Google has no interest in being in a business which requires dealing with the customer. Why do you think every product of theirs is eternally in beta? So they can defer all customer complaints with a simple, “It’s Beta!” message.
A. They do real-time monitoring, NOT once a month, and if you’ll talk to the participating utilities (I have) they are installing fiber because of its inherent resistance to electrical interference. This IS a pretty hostile environment and they need it to be a no-brainer installation. The cheapest optical adapters now are gigabit. In this case faster is cheaper.
B. The ONLY ISPs who own their own fiber plants are telcos. EVERY OTHER ISP uses someone else’s wiring. And in this case, as in all those others, this is very good for the ISP because they have service level agreements with the fiber owner who is, in this case, the power company that is ENTIRELY DEPENDENT on that fiber for their own command and control.
C. You could be right about this one, but since when did having bad customer service keep Google from doing anything?
“C. Customer Service”
Also bear in mind that the telcos and cable operators have pretty dismal customer service, so the bar is set very low.
We can only assume that Cranky Dad must not use comcast broadband…
I recently had an interesting experience with Charter Communications and the loss of my cable internet service. Read about it here:
http://article-trend.com/social-articles/chartered-epilogue-making-the-effort/
I think Google knows they can’t go retail directly. It’s just not what they’re good at. Think of the phone that they’re designing and programming for but not selling and maybe you see a different path. This might be a case where Google partners with or buys a stake in an Earthlink or someone just to get a call center and billing apparatus. Instead of taking on all that crap, they just make an arrangement that leads to business for them but farms out the tedious low margin parts.
No doubt that success in the tech industry has little to do with quality of customer service. Don’t need to look any further than our friends in Redmond to know that putting out junk product and refusing to support it hasn’t seemed to limit their commercial success to this point…
They’ve already made the investment:
http://www.fplfibernet.com/networks/contents/florida.shtml
Just need the ‘last mile’ connectivity.
Thats an interesting angle Bob. I’d never have thought of it myself. I co-wrote a blog post the other week about Google sniffing around the power industry. My take was that they want to get push renewables and energy saving because it is good PR for them and will save them a ton of cash. This power meter fits that theory as well.
The post is here, if anyone is interested:
http://www.talkingfuture.com/2009/01/will-google-influence-future-of.html
Must admit I would prefer it if you were right!
I believe its naive to think the power company may offer lower rates based on usage. If anything – they will keep the price the same – and then raise rates during peak hours.
In other words, the new technology will not lower your bill. But might give you a (small) chance of having some control of how fast your electric bill will go up in the future.
Yea I could see this being the advent of a tiered pricing structure stealthily introduced during peak usage times… if your usage shoots up above certain thresholds then the rate goes up accordingly – for the duration of the usage being above said threshold.
I think how these companies have historically operated shows that this is far more likely to result in increased charges to the consumer for peak usage than it is savings for trough usage… Why would they invest so much to save us (and therefore cost them) more money ?
Granted these high cost gas facilities they fire up during peak usage cost them more, but is the average consumer really going to adjust their habits based on some peak statistical data ?
I have a hard enough time getting the Mrs. to turn off lights when she leaves a room, so I can forget trying to get her to keep the washing machine turned off whilst I’m playing XBox etc …
I agree with cranky dad,
I would also see a potential for real time data for area use, but no reason to pass that information onto the customer. The utility gains nothing from sharing that data except more headaces
and why would the utility pay for an entire network when they could pay for a connection to a local hub, where they then run a line to their electric and have network gear to cover each account (at first glance this would require less capitol to install and maintain).
additionally it will be some time for users to give up the control of how much power they can use at any given time. Examples include foundries that use electric current operate at night for cheaper rate. they would rather use a constant and cheaper supply then chance their ability to output their supply. Lets look at another user a machine shop, if they can’t have a guaranteed supply to handle their required production levels wouldn’t they rather pay a high rate so they could operate?
Another area we should look at is controlling this flow electricity. To monitor the usage is much easier and cheaper then having the ability to control the output at each point. Controlling the flow at all these points would require a significant increase in operating expenses that would need a significant benefit.
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Cranky dad makes some good points. However…
The power company has a vested interest in being able to control the high load devices in your home to smooth out the demand. This will require real time monitoring which requires bandwidth.
Obtaining right of way to run cable across a road is a HUGE deal and often very political. This difficulty in obtaining right of way is one of the reasons we don’t have more competition in broadband. If you want proof look at the large apartment complexes – 20 years ago they installed big dish antena’s and gave free TV to their residents (since shut down by cable companies). 10 years ago they started running cat5 to all new units and gave free internet to their residents. Now they just use wireless. The demand is there, the technology exists. The reason an apartment complex can do it, but your neighborhood can’t is because the apartment complex controls right of way inside their gates. They also have a built in billing model (rent) to recoop their costs.
Currently the power company and the phone company both have EXISTING right of way to string wires directly to every building in the USA. Adding a fiber optic cable isn’t tricky – they just need to find a business model that makes sense to them. The current utility/phone company execs have built their careers with very little innovation. What google brings to the picture is a new way of thinking about business models.
With the advent of high speed wireless things are even easier. Utilities can run fiber along the main lines and stick wireless access points on the poles. No need to do lots of little cable runs to every house.
The utility company will most likely stick to it’s current business model and let google do the ISP thing (giving a cut of the profits).
2nd reason this makes sense for Google. They are a huge power hog with millions of servers.
If they can get in tight with the power company they can put lots of smaller server farms very close to the users…. if they co-locate in a power company building they might be able to use power company electricity without paying for it. Each server farm isn’t very big so it’s too much trouble to give google a seperate meter. As long as the bandwidth between all the different google farms is high it doesn’t matter if the distance between google boxes is 1 foot or 1 mile or 1000 miles. Light travels pretty fast these days.
I live in Chicago and AT&T’s U-verse (?) [fiber internet, TV]has not entered the city yet.
In areas where telcos currently have fiber broadband what do think Google’s broadband pricing would be?
What Google is providing is simply a Software tool that requires a customer to have a AMR device installed which is a major step/cost to Utilities.
What is missing is the Remote Access and Control Service that would allow the susbcriber and the Utility to gain access (via broadband Wired and Wireless link) to each devices Software and manage these Home Automation devices (Power/Thermostat/Lighting/Water and Security).
Take a look at what In2Networks is doing with their Internet Communication Devices (ICM) and Remote Access and Control Services are doing in this space. Each device has an intelligent ICM associated with it that would allow the subscriber and utility access and complete control of the devices to include alerts via email.
When one combines the above with new Metering tools (Energy and Water) we wil finally have a means of managing our consumption and saving all of us money.
Key here is that the subscriber has access and control and does not turn over everything to the Power or Water Utility but provides both parties a value add.
What the Power companies should be doing is working with the local Service providers and Builders to install or retrofit homes/buildings with these tools.
Jim A
I’m sadly not convinced Google wants to be our ISP. Ya, It would be great if Google took a stand against the Telcos, but if so why haven’t they pushed into competing with them directly in medium to large markets.
I don’t see them trying to push directly and control a more mature market like Microsoft did with the X-box. Google seems to invest in a lot of small to medium sized project with new tech and trying to incubate them. Being an ISP would require a forced large project creating customer service and significant investment. Google reminds me of my small company where we rapidly prototyped ideas, tested them and evaluated the results. We let the failures die and the cream rise. Sure, they MIGHT get a disruptive game changer that way but it’s not what your focused on. They just don’t operate in a way that invests a significant portion of the company in a single idea. I think they are coming up with a good product but aren’t going to try and leverage into a massive new business.
Cringe,
Remember those stories from years past about Google buying up dark fiber all over the place? It’s possible those acquisitions have nothing to do with this project and were to be used for connecting their data centers on a private network, but it would certainly fit in here.
Water heater and air conditioner control via RF was in use in the Raleigh, NC, over 25 years ago. A couple of students showed a real time load controller using is microprocessor and a watthourmeter at an Engineer’s Week display at the Crabtree Valley Mall in the spring of 1978. These are not new concepts.
Not all electric utilities are ignoring opportunities to utilize their infrastructure profitably. The Electric Power Board (my electric supplier) has offered business telephone service for several years. The EPB recently announced plans to run fiber to provide communications services to all residents in their service area. Comcast fought to prevent the EPB from entering the market and lost. The EPB plans to offer telephone, broadband Internet access, and television via fiber. I know several people that will sign up with the EPB and drop Comcast the first day Internet service is available.
I am very skeptical that this would make financial sense.
I find it hard to believe that the power company has (m)any lines of fiber on the poles in the towns near where I live.
How much would it cost to string fiber to every medium voltage transformer on a tel pole?
If you want to make me a believer then give us more details about the cost, the technology, and the regulation hurdles.
Until then this is just another “what if” tech idea.
A couple of years ago Current strung fiber optic all over the neighborhood and I inquired about BPL service, wait I was told. Then DirecTV got in the picture and marketed it, poorly. A couple of months later I tried again, and they had stopped offering it all. Very strange. There were a few people who got service during the small window of opportunity. I haven’t heard if they were cut off or not. ATT has U-verse here, but spotty availability. Maybe the third world will have it best down the road, everything is wireless there.
We need more last mile competition. Perhaps friendly laws (where Ma Bell cannot sue) to homeowner associations and municipal districts where a subdivision or town could own their “to the premises” connections and require utilities to connect only at a designated point on the edge of a town/neighborhood. That would allow residents to choose from various competing vendors for various utilities (electricity/gas/phone/data/video/etc). It would also let other vendors compete in new markets cheaply by only running their utility to one access point. As an example, maybe Verizon would run FIOS to your neighborhood if they didn’t have the cost of running to each house. The neighborhood would have to manage their own infrastructure, but that could be sub contracted and payed via taxes/cheap loans/home owner dues/etc and the competition would benefit everyone. Subdivisions could compete based on their infrastructure (1GB+ to the home, underground-vs-overhead wires, etc). This would be a cost effective stimulus rather that the current pork from the “Is Obama your Sugar Mama?” administration.
“Prove to me I’m wrong.”
Okay
“Google has invented these devices”
You’re wrong. They didn’t invent them and they aren’t even planning on distributing them. From Google’s PowerMeter site:
“Over 40 million U.S. homes are scheduled to get these upgraded meters over the next three years with support from the Obama Administration’s proposed stimulus package. ”
It would be same if they offer some new service that integrated with the smart appliance (fridges, washers/dryers, etc). The devices exist, without Google ‘inventing’ them, but Google could choose to offer a service that integrates with them.
Thanks for the article Bob.
Kinda scary to think that Google is becoming more and more part of our lives…
Are the Google’s PowerMeters planed for Canada eventually?
It’s bad enough that I now have to wrestle with corporations over control of my own computer. Now I’ll have another corporation deciding when I’m allowed to turn it on???
NO THANKS!
Trojan horse? Ha, Google has been buying up fiber for years before this power thing even came out. They’ve made no secret their plans to become an ISP. That said, one can only hope that Google takes the ISP job away from Commiecast! Faster service, cheaper, no throttling (get your mind out of the gutter Jim) and more importantly: unlike Comcast and other large telecoms Google is seriously committed to net neutrality.
So I linked this as (more) evidence of Google’s taking over the world. A friend reminded me about item 100 in the evil overlord’s list: Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.
Mind you, I think everyone’s trying to take over the world. It’s how a free market works.
Oh, to miss the days of Ed Whiteacre and “his pipes.”
Should the electric companies have done this? I don’t think most of them even know how to be electric power providers anymore. From my experience, since deregulation (which led to a financial orgy much like the housing bubble) the former public utilities are now run more like the cable company, which is to say, not well at all – at least in regard to service. The former primary obligation, which was to be an efficient monopoly to guarantee reliable electric service, has given away to being an overpriced asset using short sighted margin management to guarantee a suitable return for their new investors.
Too much money has been wasted on the market exchange of assets and not on the maintenance and development of the infrastructure.
I read years ago (wish I could remember where and when) that power companies had installed fiber alongside their wires to service the then new kind of meters that were electronic rather than mechanical so that they could be read remotely instead of having to send someone out to walk through everyone’s back yard, and that there was oodles of bandwidth left over, but apparently the power companies just couldn’t get themselves excited about doing anything with it. This was back when we were waiting and waiting and waiting for the cable and phone companies to decide that they wanted to offer Internet service over their infrastructure.
Bob, I love your work and have followed you since the first Nerds. But would you please do away with the full justification format? There are so many filler spaces added just to make a pretty right edge that it really slows down the reading. Look at studies on ease, pace, and retention of reading as a function of format. I don’t remember your PBS site being this difficult to read. Otherwise, write on.
BPL on the service drop will still create a ton of RFI when multiplied by millions of users.
And a huge capitol outlay to turn off people’s water heaters? Give me a break. My local co-op has been handing out basic CFLs for free if you pay your bill at the office, and they sell lots of other lighting AT COST, because they don’t want to pay as much to their wholesaler. I could see this program carried over to things like water heater timers (which I’ve used for years now), and time of day rate metering, which is a simple change out of the power meter, instead overbuilding an entire new communications grid.
But it seems the new buzzword in Washington these days is “control.” If I want to keep the house at 80 degrees in the winter and 40 degrees in the summer, charge me for it, don’t make me live at some made up guideline. What happens if I don’t have my dishwasher ready at my assigned time? Do I have to wait until the next cycle?
My question: does this mean that the power company can (eventually) have a better idea where a failure point on the grid is? Right now (and the phone lines are just as bad), it’s anybody’s guess where a down spot is
Bob -
Last year you were sure Google was going to buy the UHF wireless spectrum. They didn’t. You though Apple was “in on it” as well. They weren’t. Have you and your readers forgotten this?
They pretended to be interested just to get the rules changed to allow open access to competitor’s devices. This is most likely the same game. Google’s goal is to drive increased broadband penetration. Their strategy is to drive down the cost through competition. In short, they want broadband internet to become a commodity service. They don’t want to BE an ISP. They don’t want to sell phones. They want to increase the market for online advertising, which they hope to dominate.
I pretty much agree. Google’s motive is to get broadband out of the stranglehold the telcos and cable companies have on it. As Google say, it wants to organize the world’s information, and for that it needs broadband to become a lot cheaper than it is.
so let me get this straight… the power company is going to let you and google monitor the power they supply to you?
On this one, you are smoking crack. NOT A CHANCE IN HELL any power company does this.
power companies want to make money, ergo they don’t want to give you a device that makes you use LESS power. They want you to use MORE power so earnings are higher. An important part of this whole equation is the help from the electric utility, which is something they dont do.
You are very wrong on this…. very wrong.
fella, you are wrong too. Power companies want you to trim down on using electricity when the cost of production is high, because then they may even lose money. Keep in mind that electrical power can not easily be stored, so demand and supply always have to be in lock step. Otherwise you won’t get the kind of electricity you need and all your electrical equipment goes bad.
For the power producers ideally the power consumption should be flat all day. Then they would be able to make the best margin. But that is not the real world. At the power companies they can even see in the main control center when people get off the coach during a break of a major sports event … And if you think the stock market is volatile, you should take a look in the trading room of a power supplier.
I agree with ‘fella’. Unless these monitor and control products are sold via a retail space, there is no way a power company will allow its “customers” more control into using less power to make them less money. The failure point will be when anyone (not necessarily Google) tries to partner as an ISP and they find out that the Power Utilities will rebuke any attempt to give remote command and control to users for power consumption. The PU’s would rather keep the innovation for themselves and ask users to “sign up” for the service of letting them bring your bill down by selectively metering your AC/Heat/Fridge/etc.
This will cause a mediocre service due to compromise. Someone like Earthlink will sign on to a plan by Xcel or PG&E to be the ISP but be forced to offer the power management service as a subsidy making it seem to a less experienced buyer that they are getting cheaper than cable/DSL broadband. The ISP will offer bundled packages of phone/broadband/monitoring but NO naked internet. Users will either not see any real savings, or will realize that the biggest pig in their home is their TV and entertainment devices which they will NEVER let the PU regulate. The distributed savings to the PU at peak times will still be valuable but without user control, the benefit to the household will be minimal.
What I want to know is why GeekSquad is not offering to install power monitoring and home security services – regardless of broadband provider, then hosting a user portal that lets users login and view the cat and the AC usage when they are not at home. Accenture already runs the Best Buy infrastructure which would give GeekSquad a built in service desk and network with which they could offer the portal access. This would also give Google a brand for selling the actual devices that would keep in line with the Google method of not making any physical devices (android):
Buy a home wireless network ($200) + installation ($350) + service ($variable monthly) + monitoring portal ($99 yearly access) + security system add-on ($200 on install date) + power usage add-on ($200 on install date). = $1k or so for set-up. If they say I can save 10/month or roughly 10% off my electric bill then they whole installation pays for itself in about 10 years but in the meantime I’ve gotten a home network and a security system. Add in the eternal hope of users that they can “game” the system, i.e. save more than the estimate, and you have viable deployment scheme valued at $1k in the first year and $100-200 per year there after.
“Secure your loved ones while your energy savings pay for it.”
As the comments show, the issue is who has control: the user, the utility, Google, or some ISP middleman like Earthlink? Contrary to Bob’s suggestion, utility control devices over customer appliances are not new. I once bought into a “partners” option that allowed Houston Lighting & Power to “cycle” my air-conditioner, which I quickly learned meant turning it off at the hottest part of the Houston day and turning my poorly insulated bungalow into an oven that could not be subsequently cooled off. No PUC will ever allow a program like this to be controlled by the utility. However, if PUCs ever allow variable “real time” pricing with higher prices at peak times, which is a desirable goal, there should be an informational niche of the type that Google could fill.
I think Google is trying to avoid being stymied by the telco/cable monopolists, but of course electric utilities are monopolists too. Even so, increasing the pipes from 2 (telco and cable) to 3 makes collusion harder. Google has learned the lesson taught by John D. Rockefeller who made Cleveland a great refining center even though Pittsburgh seemed to have the natural advantages. Why? Because the Pennsylvania RR owned Pittsburgh, but had to compete with the New York Central in Cleveland and he could force them to compete.
I would not have too high hopes for breakthroughs for consumers from Google’s efforts. Anything with the electric utilities will get mixed up with regulators. The telcos and, to a lesser degree, the cable companies are subject to the Fed. Communications Commission. This is a powerful, sophisticated regulator that generally gives the telcos what they want, but electric utilities are subject to state PUCs and the least effective regulator ever invented, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The FCC which can take away net neutrality so Google needs to bypass it.
The question is can it create a moneymaking opportunity for the shareholders of the power companies that the state PUCs won’t offset with lower power rates elsewhere? Answer? A smart grid that conveniently operates in a multi-state environment (everywhere except Texas) allowing the ever idiotic FERC to approve tariffs that, under the supremacy clause of the constitution, state regulators can’t overrule. Eric Schmidt is tight with Obama, so maybe it happens, and is even consumer friendly, at least in relation to the very low bar of “service” we have come to expect from Comcast, ATT etc.
Bottom line is Comcast will keep winning the broadband war because it is the least regulated, and whatever emerges from regulatory politics of telcos and electric utilities will be opaque and complex, and no one will really know what the competitive market could produce for consumers, but Google will be playing the 3 against each other and get more or less what it needs.
Consumers don’t need smart metering. Just use dumb timers to turn off high-load appliances when you are not home. You keep control for when you need it. See? Simple is better.
It seems to me that the best initial fit for this type of technology are the RECs (Rural Electric Coops). It fits the Obama administration’s rural broadband initiative to a tee. I get my power from an REC, who is in a consortium (Touchstone) with quite a few other RECs and have ownership in a couple of fossil-fuel plants (one unit of a coal fired plant, and whole ownership of a natural gas peak plant).
My REC has been pushing RF controlled water heaters for years (at least 15).
They HAVE tried to provide rural broadband in the past, but it was an abject failure, as they used WildBlue. Part of their deal with WB was to provide telemetry from their substations to the dispatchers. It got so bad, they yanked their WB equipment and went to EVDO wherever it was available. I canned my WB for EVDO at about the same time.
Bob
I’m glad to hear that someone is finally implimenting RFC 3251.
Thanks for this.
Investment people seem to talk about google as a ‘tech’ company. It has seemed for some long time that it is better to think of them as an infra-structure company, and this fits perfectly.
I wonder if anyone thought about including PFC (power factor correction) capabilities to this smart power meter. That alone would be a nice help to the power companies.
Ultimately the power companies will want to do some peak shedding during high load periods. In a smart home with smart appliances, one could simply instruct the high load appliances to operate 80% of the time, or only one at a time, or something like that. Telling your A/C or clothes dryer not to run 6 minutes every 30 during high load times would be big help to the power grid.
This is going to be fun.
A Cinergy power company official said in a speech I attended a few years ago that they would actually like their customers to use less power, because when they look at the costs involved in creating additional generation capacity, it is not entirely clear that it would be a profitable idea for them to further expand capacity, especially given all the regulation that any new plant would be subject to. In addition, they propose that (similar to carbon credits) their company (and any other power retailer) should be able to get some sort of either a tax benefit or other credit in exchange for convincing their customers to save energy. So the idea would be, if, across a large customer base, enough of them could save enough energy that an amount of capacity roughly equal to an entire generating plant could be saved from ever being built, why not subsidize that outcome, just as much as we penalize (through various regulations) the construction of new capacity? I’m not entirely sure we should subsidize this, but ultimately it seems like a win-win situation, as customers would have lower bills, use less energy, the power generators must produce less energy. I think the whole subsidy thing is actually viewed as a way to keep the power company’s investors happy. It might also involve customers paying about the same, but receiving less energy for the money. (The alternative could be, as usage continues to spiral upward, that customers could see bills skyrocket. So if it can be sold as a way of keeping utility bills at least flat, or growing at only a minimal rate, perhaps consumers can buy in.)
And, someone suggested the Geek Squad get involved in this project? That’s scary to me. I wouldn’t want them messing with my electric power. I wouldn’t trust them to fix my toaster.
I also agree this program sounds tailor made for the various REMCs, and from what I understand, a majority of REMC customers are hungry for broadband & other advanced (video & voice) services. And I bet that REMCs would be in the position of offering most services either at cost or on a “cost plus” basis. Alternatively, the REMCs could simply put up the fiber/wireless/whatever infrastructure, then wholesale it at non-discriminatory rates to anyone who wants to serve REMC customers. There might be quite a few various providers willing to serve the customers if they don’t have to create the last mile infrastructure.
Alternatively, maybe the REMCs could even partner with something like Clearwire, and perhaps loan Clearwire some of the money to create their rural buildout (since the credit crunch has locked up other loan sources).
Uh… what power poles?
All the wired services are buried around here. No power poles. The local transformer is sitting on a concrete pad in my backyard. It is right next to the cable hub. (I screen them with bushes so I don’t have to look at them.) When my wire line phone stopped working the phone company had to tear down my neighbors fence, drive a back hoe across is award winning yard, move a tree, and dig a 6x6x5 foot hole to get to the wire bundle.
How long has it been since any new developments were built with above ground wiring?
To do what you are talking about the power company will need to dig a new trench, or reopen the old one, to add that new fiber. That is a lot of cost just to monitor electric usage. My guess is that around here the power company will contract with ATT/TW for bandwidth to do the monitoring.
The very high cost of adding any new cables in cities with below ground wiring is a good reason for power companies, and Google, not to offer Internet service through the Google power meter. At least not in neighborhoods that are less than, what? 40 years old?
Bob Pendleton
Cedar Falls, Iowa has a community owned utility that provides electricity, natural gas, water, high speed Internet and cable television services to a community of more than 37,000 people. They do not, as yet, provide phone service or have remotely read gas and water meters. From all I’ve heard they are an extremely well run utility and non-profit to boot. Click on the website link to visit their website.
[...] the environment, but there can certainly be more. Robert Cringley believe it’s a precursor to Google becoming your ISP via the power line. Yes, networking over power lines. I think he may very well be [...]
Dear Mr. Cringely,
I was surprised that you didn’t mention your January 19, 2007 Pulpit entitled “When Being a Verb is Not Enough: Google wants to be YOUR Internet”.
With these two stories and the Net Neutrality scare it seems Joachim’s Razor definitely applies.
With the utmost respect for your insight,
Thomas Jefferson
So, Google wants to control the world.
That’s basically what you just said… right?
[...] Bob Cringely’s take on Google’s Power Meter: it’s a strategic move toward them becoming an ISP: [...]
[...] Google PowerMeter – The story behind Google power meter which many think great app in making. A brilliant hypothesis by Cringley on how Google & power companies can mutually benefit. Installing & operating server farms with subsidised power from utlity companies and in turn helping them enter into internet business (through power infrastructure). Starting point, get the user base. For that, start with a mechanism with which user can track his energy spending. [...]
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[...] More interesting story is in lines of Google Power meter. A theory how utilities can enter broadband business with Google Power meter. I already shared this in one of my earlier posts. Read it here. [...]