The benefits of the smart electricity grid – including detailed information about electricity use and lower rates when demand drops – are now available to Texas electricity customers with advanced “smart” meters. Reliant Energy is offering two new smart energy services that give customers the tools and information they need to manage their energy usage better – the Reliant Energy Weekly Summary email and Time-Of-Use plan.
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A fight over control of the home (and office) seems to be taking shape.
As time goes on, the world will likely see competition between companies like Tendril and Adura Technologies that make hardware and software for controlling power in buildings, and demand response service providers like Comverge (COMV) and EnerNoc (ENOC), which have independent networks that deliver “negawatts” of power to utilities in terms of reduced consumption.
The nub of the competition is that these companies provide technologies that can accomplish the same task. The hardware/software vendors effectively install equipment that lets utilities, with the cooperation of the residents, curb power to lights and appliances. Businesses and consumers can deploy these technologies themselves without a utility, but because of the subsidies and benefits utilities can offer, they will be invariably involved.
Without a middleman, the costs for adding this sort of functionality will be lower.
“We don’t think the utilities should be throwing the problem over the fence and outsourcing it,” asserts Adrian Tuck, CEO of Tendril. “We don’t see negawatts succeeding in the long-term.
“We will provide the utilities with the tools to do it themselves,” he said.
via The Looming Smart Grid Battle: Software vs. Services — Seeking Alpha.
