Smart Meters Didn't Work. Let's Avoid The Same Mistakes With IoT/IIoT.

Smart Meters Didn't Work. Let's Avoid The Same Mistakes With IoT/IIoT.

During the three-people-in-a-room early days of running Power2Switch, we made a decision to take every customer call we received. It was easy in those early days, the calls came directly to my phone! As we grew and launched in several US states we maintained this culture but had only one person taking the calls. As you can imagine, it became stressful for Victoria H (our all-around amazing operations person) as we hit tens of thousands of residential and small business customers. So we went back to everyone on the team taking a call and it was great. Great because it kept everyone on the team fully aware of what was going on with our customers.

Most of our customers did not understand their electricity bill and we got a lot of calls asking what things meant on the bills. One day, a customer called in and it routed to my phone. The customer called in because he’d received a ‘smart meter installation’ notification from his utility and he wanted to know how a smart meter benefited him. I gave him the typical response that the meter helped the utility get better data on his usage and it would lead to better customer service from his utility. He laughed and said (and I’m paraphrasing here)

“the utility has never done anything for me, I’m certain this smart meter thing is actually to benefit them as always”

That customer was right. And he hit at the core of the issues with deploying smart products that provide more value to the company deploying than to the customer receiving the product. It’s a trap that many IoT/IIoT (PDF) devices fall into. And it will be a huge issue as Gartner predicts that by 2020 95% of new products designed and released into the market will be IoT devices.

Who actually got the value?

An impressive 7M customers in Texas have smart meters. What have these customers, who for the most part do not care about these smart meters, found out about the benefits?

  1. Closed networks, security, infrastructure constraints, and technology obsolescence: the smart meters deployed in the last 1–3 years are already obsolete in terms of the data communications standards, hardware and cybersecurity capabilities that exist on these meters. For the customers who are tied to the utility provided smart meter they are stuck with these problems until the utility decides to upgrade the meters. This won’t be happening soon.
  2. The data captured from the smart meters served the utilities by providing more visibility into usage and demand profiles. This enabled the utility to better plan and manage their own generation assets. The customers that benefited were the ones that already cared about their energy usage before they got the smart meters. I met a customer back then who had used Excel to track his energy usage for ~10 years before his smart meter was put in. He was an engaged customer and even he only got marginal benefits from the meters.
  3. The customer experience issues that existed with interactions with the utilities were never resolved with smart meters. That poor bill and information display issue mentioned above? Still, the case because the terms and approaches to communicating esoteric information to customers didn’t really change with smart meters.

Suffice to say, the only metric on which these smart meter deployments could be considered as successful would be the number of meters deployed. And this is only because they were essentially mandated.

What Lessons Can Be Learned?

What are companies deploying IoT devices, which is what the smart meters were, able to take from what can be considered a failed attempt to engage with customers? While the deployments have gone well, due to mandated adoptions, there are lessons drawn from questions for (these same utilities and) any company deploying hardware into a customer home. The questions are not exhaustive, just some questions that require deep thought and clarity over the long-term. Questions I should have answered before I failed at my own water IoT device startup::

  1. Does the product serve the customer or the company that developed the product? It’s easy to convince yourself that your whizbang gizmo provides value to the customer. We all do that. But, if you cannot articulate what that benefit is without referencing your product, then you are not actually solving a problem that the customer has.
  2. What is your ‘product obsolescence avoidance’ plan? With the pace of technological change, it is inevitable that your product will quickly become obsolete unless you are intentional about preventing that. How can you develop your product to remain relevant, regardless of the sustaining innovations that are bound to happen in your industry? What are you doing to ensure that the disruptive innovation that is inevitable comes from your company? Have a plan. We know few plans match the reality when the rubber hits the road, but have one as a guide.
  3. How does your product serve the customer within the (new) ecosystems of product groups? The era of thinking about your product as just one thing a customer buys is over. Think about it within the holistic context of what the consumer is experiencing and engaging with within the home, the city and other contexts that are now being directed by ubiquitous technology like our smartphones. Simply put, your product no longer exists in a vacuum. Build with that in mind.

What other considerations should a product developer/IoT company or deployer bear in mind?

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Michael Holmes

Chief Information Officer at MicroHealth, LLC

6 年

Was reading the article and looked at the LOSS to the consumer in this example. Before the smart meter, a company representative had to come out and physically read the meter in order for the company to produce the bill. And yes that process got more efficient for for the utility, but it got less efficient for the consumer. You no longer had a representative from the company on-site surveying the conditions of the utility's infrastructure routinely and communicating those conditions back to the utility for pro-active action to ensure continued service (like tree-tirming to ensure power lines aren't taken down by winds or ice) or identifying unsafe or deteriorating conditions that need to be addressed. Instead you have an electronic meter that sends your usage to the utility to generate your bill more efficiently; but the cost savings isn't reflected in my ever growing electric bill; while weather related power outages increase due to lack of line maintenance and due to lack of planning the customer is at risk from cyber attach because the utility didn't address security initially nor had a plan for pre-planned product improvements to keep up with ever evolving technology requirements. You miss several intangibles at play.

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Steve Brooks

Digital Creator, Technology Innovator, and IT Director at Highlands Senior Living

6 年

Our EMC installed a "smart" meter several years ago and touted how well it would help us "manage" our energy usage. The fundamental problem is that it only measures/reports in whole Kilowatt Hours which is a ridiculously large unit for a consumer to try to manage anything really manageable, like when to do laundry or run the dishwasher. Clearly, as the author and several commenters have pointed out, the only direct benefits of "smart meters" go to the utility operators, and the as-of-now unrealized potential for sticking it to consumers with exploitative "time of day" pricing is great. Successful IoT products of the future will look more like FitBit, Nest, Wemo, Dosime, FIXD, and others that provide some direct value to end-user consumers - as measured by the consumer's willingness to pay their own money for it. IoT products like "connected" refrigerators that offer direct value only to the manufacturer and only downside costs and risks to the consumer, face a very dim future indeed.

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James F McGraw

Author| Member Services Director @ Info-Tech Research Group | Executive Coaching, IT Research

6 年

We totally agree with your POV. A next gen connected electrical panel with a built in Smart Meter is the simple answer. A panel that not only monitors power usage at the load level for residences and SMB's but also communicates automatically with the utility and client on a macro and micro level. Integrates EVs , EV chargers, storage, solar, wind and grids based on price, time and availability. Safe and fully certified the KSI Smart Distribution Panel is the smartphone of the clean tech era. Here is a quick video overview...https://youtu.be/le96F-6fG_U

GERMANY? "Germany does not plan a full roll-out of smart meters." (why)? https://energypost.eu/smart-meter-data-hubs-europe-vs-germany/

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