Council to vote on smart grid bill of rights

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

The final entries for the Naperville Smart Grid Initiative logo have a lot in common. Wind turbines, light bulbs and grids feature prominently. So does the color green, which seems to make sense — the smart grid is, after all, supposed to reduce energy consumption and the resulting greenhouse gases.

Naperville resident Tom Glass’ entry was a little different.

“It was a photo I took of a full-size SUV that the Naperville Police Department was driving parked in the loading zone. Creating a scarcity out of electricity was the general gist of it,” said Glass. “It was to the effect that SUVs are all for government employees and the rest of us should all be driving Chevy Volts.”

Glass isn’t alone in his dissent, either in Naperville or the country. The infrastructure upgrade has been a source of contention for Naperville since the city announced it would be accepting a matching grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to fund the project, essentially a pilot for the DOE’s long-term goal of upgrading the nationwide electric grid, in 2009.

The price tag, $22 million, was cause for concern, particularly in the economic downturn, when both the city and its federal partner seem to be struggling with budgets and debt. Rollouts of smart grid systems in other states have caught considerable criticism — most prominently in California, where a class-action lawsuit has been brought against Pacific Gas and Electric after malfunctioning meters and rate hikes resulted in higher bills for customers. And critics have raised concerns about the potential health effects of the radio frequency signals used to send data from homes to the utility.

But at the heart of the controversy is the smart meter. In addition to tallying up how much energy a home or business is using cumulatively over the month, smart meters will send hourly data on energy usage wirelessly back to the city’s electric utility. That constant stream of information will help improve the efficiency of the utility, decreasing line load by letting its operators know exactly how much electricity is needed to power Naperville’s 57,000 homes and businesses, and eliminating the need for meter readers.

But it will also give the city a lot of data on who’s using electricity and when.

So in addition to naming the winner of the logo competition, the Naperville City Council will also vote today on the final draft of the Smart Grid Bill of Rights, a document outlining the rights electric customers will have regarding information, privacy, options and data security.

Among the rights enumerated is the right to choose between the time-of-day pricing model facilitated by the smart meter, whereby the price of electricity goes up with demand, like on hot, summer afternoons, or to keep the same fixed-rate pricing scheme that electricity customers have now, where a kilowatt-hour costs the same amount no matter when it’s used.

“The city will never ration electricity,” is also included in the document, and customers are guaranteed the right to “retain control of all in-home devices and appliances.”

Customers are also guaranteed the right to file a privacy violation complaint with the city’s Public Utilities Advisory Board, the non-binding six-member board that meets occasionally to advise the city on utility rates and services, and to appeal to the City Council.

But what opponents to the smart grid would prefer to see is the right to not have the meter on their homes in the first place.

Glass called the meters and the information they collect, “an unreasonable search of my home without due process.”

Opponents have pointed out that the smart grid can improve the efficiency of the electric utility by collecting data at the transformer instead of individual homes, avoiding privacy issues while increasing the reliability of the system.

But for Naperville and its electricity customers to really save money over the long haul, the city is counting on those customers who wouldn’t mind turning off their air conditioners when prices are highest, and they need smart meters to know when to do that.

“To realize the full benefits, customers should and would have the opportunity and choice to monitor their own usage and decide if they want to make changes in their consumption or not,” said community relations manager Nadja Lalvani. “Twenty million of $46.2 million in hard benefits over a 15-year period can be derived from customers’ improved management of their energy consumption. A meter at the home or business is needed to allow them to achieve these benefits.”

The Naperville City Council will meet at 7 p.m. tonight in the council chambers of the Naperville Municipal Center, 400 S. Eagle St.