Policy Outlook

Moving Smart Meters into More Communities
While recent energy legislation, such as Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) and ARRA, provides federal support and funding for smart meter implementation, it fails to address many of the policies and regulations at the federal and state level that reduce the incentive for electricity providers to provide real-time pricing to their customers.

In Pennsylvania, for example, legislators have mandated that all customers have smart meters by 2018 — which means deploying 6,000,000 meters statewide.5 Pennsylvanians are projected to save 10 percent per month by using smart meters.6 But, the state’s legislation stopped short of its full potential by neglecting to mandate that utilities provide customers with real-time pricing, as well. Currently, the smart meters already in place in the state are only being used to collect billing information. Without price signals, consumers are left with smart meters — but dumb pricing — and no pricing incentives to change their energy usage.

What is needed are federal and state policies and regulations that make smart meters and the real-time pricing an imperative. If regulations do not give electricity providers incentives to deploy smart meters with price signals, consumers will not receive maximum benefit and value for their investments in smart grid technology.