Is data all it’s cracked up to be? Or: Are you really communicating with your customers? June 1, 2010

Every time I hear that one organization or another will provide smart meter data to residential customers to help them “better manage their usage” or “control their bills,” I wonder to myself, “Huh?”

How does showing customers how much energy they used help them control their bills – even if that data includes increments down to 15 minutes? Customers need a lot more than usage data to make educated and effective changes in the ways they use energy.

For example, Dennis Smith on this blog discussed SmartMeterTexas.com, a website where Texas consumers with smart meters can log in to view their usage data. “SmartMeterTexas.com gives Texans more control over their electricity use,” the Texas PUC chairman said upon announcing the site. But I ask the question: How does data alone give customers control? The SMT website, as do other similar sites, claims that users can view their usage patterns and make cost-savings adjustments. Again, I ask, how?

I’ve often wondered the same thing about online bill analysis tools. Yes, a customer can find out that heating accounted for 38% of his bill and water heating accounted for 12%. So? Is heating supposed to be that high in his area of the country? Should water heating be less, and if so, how much money would he save if he replaced his water heater?

Then there are questions the customer doesn’t even know he should ask: Will a programmable thermostat cut my heating bill? Does the utility offer rebates on programmable thermostats? Yes, and the rebate is advertised on another webpage, but the customer has to click on three different links – and know what he’s looking for – to find it.

The point is, only the customers most knowledgeable of energy consumption patterns and appliance demand will be able to make use of raw data. And most customers are not armed with this knowledge.   

In SmartMeterTexas.com’s defense, the website does claim that it will be able to provide data on smart appliances and work in conjunction with home-area network (HAN) devices in the future. So perhaps the higher-than-normal usage recorded on the day when no one was home can be pinpointed to Johnny leaving his Xbox 360 running all day. But short of detail like that, what is a homeowner supposed do about that spike that shows up at 4:30 p.m. last Tuesday?

Ameren has some neat tools that tie the data and utility programs together to provide useful information – solutions, even – to customers who use online bill analysis tools. After inputting his household information and getting back the charts and graphs showing where and how he’s using energy, the Ameren customer can compare his costs with the average for his neighborhood, the size of his home, the type of appliances he uses and more. Only then will he be able to put that 38% on heating and 12% on water heating into perspective.

The Ameren customer can easily find ways to save based on how his home is weatherized, his heating and air systems, hot water heater, appliances, lighting and other factors. He can choose how to save by using calculators that help measure the return if he chooses to invest in new energy efficient systems (that new water heater, for example). Kudos to Ameren for turning “data” into “information” and truly helping customers better manage their usage and take control of their bills.

I’d love to hear your examples. So if you are doing data right, give me a shout and let me know.