Big Brother and Electricity

After HR2454 passed the House floor, I was watching various interviews about the intent of the bill as well as the ramifications of passing this legislation.

I was very surprised to hear a couple of reporters talk about the implementation of smart grid services as a way to monitor and control individual customer usage. The comments indicated electric utilities would become “big brother” and if you used too much electricity, we would contact you and caution you about your energy usage (turning us into the electricity police).

I’ve been in the utility industry for over 30 years. There will never be a time that I can foresee in which we will tell a customer that we’re intently watching them. Granted, we spend a lot of effort asking customers to improve energy efficiency, but those instructions are designed to help them save money on their bill.

I don’t know of any other industry in which the product provider actually wants the customer to BUY LESS. There’s a method to our madness. We only have to pay for the power we buy from the wholesaler based on how much electricity our collective customer base needs. Think of it as demand on inventory and our shelves are purposely kept empty. The infrastructure we have in place (poles, lines and meters), allows instant transport. Our linemen fix the shelves or build new shelves and that accounts for a significant part of our operational expense. Again, the only time you pay operational expenses is when you use electricity.

Let’s go back to that ‘big brother’ theory. Honestly, I can hardly track my own electric usage much less use my 8 hour work day to track yours. There isn’t anyone in our office who is remotely interested in how much electricity you (individual residential) use or don’t use. The only exception is irrigation customers and those customers choose whether or not they want to be controlled based on financial incentives.

The whole idea of monitoring usage is for YOU to control what you use. All we want to do is provide affordable electricity in the safest manner possible.

Gwen Kautz, Customer Service Manager
Dawson Public Power District