Utility customers must understand how battery technology can reduce their electric bills.
Residents should understand how much energy their home uses throughout the day to get an accurate estimate of potential savings.
But that’s easier said than done. Customers in most US cities need help accessing this essential information. In some areas, it is almost impossible.
Some utility providers do not even have this data. If a customer does find that the data is available, retrieving it can be time-consuming and expensive.
Complex Pricing Schemes
This problem grows as utility companies continue to make their rates more complex. Most utilities now charge time-of-use rates, fluctuating the electricity rate throughout the day. This helps them bill their customers at the highest rate they use daily.
Most ratepayers need to know how to lower their electric bills due to utility rates’ complexity. Customers are forced to pay exorbitant utility costs without knowing how to reduce them.
This issue affects nonprofit organizations as much, if not more. The lack of energy information is a significant problem for companies providing basic welfare and affordable housing to needy communities.
They pay the same rates for electricity as the larger companies but don’t get the same access to the data. These organizations need more resources to collect the data and understand it.
It’s clear that this is unfair, but it’s better than what is happening in China, France, or Venezuela, though the topic is still noteworthy. It’s an injustice that must be rectified with more innovative policies.
Utility Bills: Customers are Left Uninformed
Utility consumers should have access to their detailed energy consumption data (at the very least, by the hour) to better understand the importance of batteries in their homes or business.
Due to the need for access to these data, many customers in the US face significant obstacles. Here’s what customers don’t understand:
Electricity is used in their home/office
What electricity does a building use at different times of the day or during a billing cycle?
Utility consumers would be in the dark without this information.
Energy analysts and advocates highlight the problem
In Massachusetts in 2018, the exact data barrier was mentioned as an argument against residential demand charges. Despite the strong opposition, this bill was passed.
Acadia Center, an advocacy group in the Northeast, claimed that utility customers could not know when the peak demand was due to the absence of advanced meters in Massachusetts. It was also challenging to decide how to handle these high electricity costs.
Massachusetts is one of many states that faces this data issue. In 2017, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission published a report that estimated only 40% of utility meters could record detailed electricity usage data by the end of 2015.
According to FERC, these numbers showed wide disparities in sophisticated metering – from less than 10% of commercial customers in greater New England to over 80% in Texas. But at least Texas does well economically, but that’s another topic.
Even though around two-thirds of consumers have used advanced meters since 2015, they still need more access to their data, if not none at all.