NEGAWATT POWER BILL
Sub-metering on the Negawatt system is quite unlike the "business-as-usual" power bill people have been seeing for the past 50 years. The amount of detail capable is "down to the light bulb" metering, looking more like your cell phone bill than your water bill. However in talking to user groups and customer polling it has come to our attention that too much detail is almost as bad as not enough detail. By this it is meant if you know your refrigerator cost you $17.92 last month, is it really important to know how much it is costing you this month? Not really. What is important is if there is any change to the bill of significance. For example, if it jumped to $29.50 you might look at the door gasket, compressor, or coolant level. You might like to be alerted to the change instantly rather than at the end of the month, thus enabling preventive maintenance or disconnection from service. Other aspect of consumer concern dealt with time of day rate billing. Dishwashers and some other appliances can be set to work on base rates, have user notification on shoulder rates, and not be used at all on peak rates.
Use Case Scenarios for DR and AutoDR sub-metering include:
The ability for Multiple Dwelling Units (MDU's) to provide proportional billing for tenant usage
Homeowner knowledge of the monthly cost to run major appliances
Ability for Commercial accounts to order power by Megawatts and sub-meter to departments, tenants or
individuals
Boat marinas to bill each slip accurately
Department stores to bill displays provided by vendors
Hotels to value bill guests for power (sounds odd, but think about how they value bill on telephones,
minibars, and cable movies?)
Utilities can use pre-pay accounts
Sub metering comes into play in our Negawatt world of Remote Generation (RG), Remote Storage (RS), Home to Grid (H2G), Vehicle to Grid (V2G), and the coolest emerging technology, Peer-to-Peer Utility (P2PU). Once a homeowner achieves sustainability and independence from the grid, the next avenue is to resell the power back to the grid. Selling to the grid wastes transmission and distribution (T&D) power - about 10 to 20 percent - and the homeowner only receives low commercial rates. The ability to sell power to your neighbors becomes an emerging market, at retail prices, and is an efficient way to provide power clusters of homes balancing out RG with demand. The emerging PHEVs provide both RG and RS to a home. This is a new problem of dynamic load usage to a utility (never before did a utility have to worry about the load moving!).
Knowledge is power, and metering knowledge empowers Negawatt to squeeze out savings and value. Value that pays customers in savings and cash.
