Most everyone is familiar with the cliché: Build it and they will come. But for those who might have somehow missed that one, the phrase was made famous by the movie “Field of Dreams” about two decades ago in 1989. The overarching message in those few simple words was that if you want something badly enough, sometimes you have to be willing to move forward on nothing more than your own faith in its merits. This is a concept that a friend of mine used to call willing suspension of disbelief. It’s a popular concept these days, especially as regards the Smart Grid.
For those of us involved in the electric power industry, we eat, sleep and breathe this stuff. Let’s face it, you can hardly pick up a magazine or newsletter, glance at an advertisement, attend a conference, tune into a webinar or read a blog without being bombarded by that Smart Grid thing. But hey, we’re used to it, right? We just take it for granted that Smart Grid is the de facto centerpiece of the industry, and as such, we expect to hear about it – a lot! But what about the rest of the world? You know, the ratepayers – how much do you think they know about Smart Grid? (If you guessed “not very much” you’re getting warm.)
While perhaps it isn’t all that hard to believe that average people don’t know a whole lot about Smart Grid – after all, it’s still a relatively new term – wouldn’t you think that the basic rudiments of electricity would be well rooted in the minds of most folks by now? After all, it’s been around for over 100 years, and we all use it everyday. Well, that’s what I used to think too... but not anymore.
The more the Smart Grid topic has heated up over the past few years, the more occasions I’ve had to talk with average people about it. As soon as they find out what I do professionally, the conversation almost always leads to a mini-tutorial – not necessarily about Smart Grid, but usually about the basic principles of electricity.
What I’ve found in these various conversations conducted on airplanes, over dinners with friends and family, at sporting events and almost anywhere people gather for casual conversation is that most people don’t really understand much about why their lights come on when they flip the switch in their homes and businesses.
Sure, most people know that power is produced in some type generating plant, whether fossil or nuclear and whether it’s coal-fired, gas-fired or whatever. They also know that there are lots of wires around that transport electricity from those plants to various customer premises and they know that it enters their homes, schools, businesses or other facilities through some type of meter – and, that that meter somehow measures how much power they’ll pay for at the end of the month. But that’s about where the understanding drops off sharply or ends.
Don’t ask your neighbor what a substation is, or what it’s for – and definitely don’t be thinking that many (any?) of them can tell you the difference between transmission and distribution. Why do the lights sometimes flicker? What are those big metal cans hanging on the power poles? How does the power company know when my lights are out – or DO they even know until I call and tell them??
On average, most consumers are pretty clueless about these things. But it really isn’t their fault. They aren’t just a bunch of dummies incapable of understanding anything about how electricity is made and delivered. The real reason they don’t know is because they haven’t had to know – at least not until now.
In a tightly regulated environment, where no choice of power supplier existed for over a century, what would be the point of spending time and money to learn about something for which you have absolutely no say? That would have been like teaching every person with a car the principles of the internal combustion engine just because they all drive – pretty pointless unless you plan on being an automotive mechanic or engine designer rather than just a driver. So the result is that most consumers actually know very little about electricity – or energy in general, for that matter. What they do know is that they need it and, of course, that they don’t want to pay a lot for it.
The point of all this is that when it comes to Smart Grid – and especially Smart Metering – we seem to be expecting consumers to just do that willing suspension of disbelief thing and quietly accept these initiatives whatever the scheme and whatever the cost. Build it, and they will come? ‘NOT happening, folks! People won’t just accept paying a lot of money for something they don’t understand and for which they perceive no immediate benefits. There’s a big learning curve involved here that simply cannot be ignored and that isn’t going away.
There are no simple answers and no shortcuts to this. The fact is that it will take a lot of time and an enormous amount of resources to create this thing we call the Smart Grid. But it will also take a lot of time and an enormous amount of resources to educate consumers about why we need it, how they will benefit from it – and perhaps most important – why they should be willing to underwrite it even before seeing any tangible benefits.
Build it, and they will come? Well, maybe; but until and unless we accept this as a teaching challenge in addition to the obvious economic and engineering challenges, let’s not kid ourselves. If we fail to provide the education needed to thoroughly answer those questions for consumers, we shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t show up for the start of the game. – Ed.
