Why wouldn’t power companies simply send their data over the power lines? Broadband over power line is established technology isn’t it?

That out of the way – “$7/mo for 1 MB”?

Just seems extremely high. There’s something that I’m not understanding.

I’m looking at a wireless internet connection to replace my satellite ISP. For service over the basic fee/5 gig use limit the company that I’m considering charges $2.50 per gig.

Let’s see. They could go to NewEgg and get a 1.5TB hard drive for about $110.

33MB = 0.00003142 TB.

Could store the data from 47,740 customers on one 1.TB HD.

Cost would be $0.0023 per customer per month.

(Warning: Morning coffee deficient math.)

That said, why would the utility company want or need to store all that detail?

There’s a difference between saving too much data (every single 15 minute reading/whatever from every single meter) and not saving enough.

Remember, here’s where this discussion started…

“If 140 million smart meters are installed over the next ten years they could produce a massive 100 petabytes (1 PB is 1 quadrillion bytes) of information,….”

It’s all about sampling and summary statistics.

1) Billing. On an individual household basis, I can’t see the need to store detail past the amount used per “peak/off peak price” and the amount sold back to the utility at different price points. All the detail can be discarded.

If an individual customer suspects that his/her meter is malfunctioning then there can be a process to add a second recording device and a refund can be paid if proved appropriate.

Even if all the details do need to be stored, they don’t need to be stored in perpetuity. Give customers a window to appeal (60 days, 90 days) and then toss the detail.

2) System control. The grid controllers need aggregate data, not specifics. And once the control decisions have been made (fire up a turbine, shut down a turbine, etc.) all that needs to be stored is some summary data as to what triggered the decision and how well it worked. A year or two out that data can probably be further compressed to an even smaller form.

3) System planning. Again, no need for huge detail. What is needed is profiles and behavior patterns. This just takes good sampling skills, the sort of things that pollsters and scientists do all the time.

Handling the data. “Neighborhood aggregation” – feed data streams from defined portions of the grid into separate processing systems. Feed only the summary statistics to control centers and send the billing/history data off to storage. Grid controllers don’t need that data.

The idea that utility companies would need to store and sift through years and years of petabytes of data just doesn’t make sense to me….

Whether it is power generation coming into the grid (remember one house won’t be an issue, but a community of wired homes might), or the presence/absence of PEV’s at public locations, or simply a finer granularity to better balance power, the individual readings matter.

And my concerns are not just about maintaining the data, it is receiving it, analyzing it and attributing it. As an example, if a customer wants to contest billing, claiming that they are maintaining a particular power profile (Solar on, off-hour use, PEV), their meter data will need to be saved with their authenticating information, if the utility is going to be able to manage a credible and non-repudiable view of their usage.

Also, pulling, spinning, and retrieving out of even a couple of petabytes will already be a challenge. These organizations, utilities, have not typically dealt with anything like these volumes, and I’m not a big fan of hoping for the best.

All that is needed is aggregate statistics. There is no need to store data from 2230 Second St. every fifteen minutes and data from 2231 Second St. every fifteen minutes and data from 2232 ….

Power companies know the data that matters. They can aggregate the data as it arrives and toss most of the detail.

And they can store a representative sample of individual records just in case a new question arises in the future. They won’t need to know the usage behavior of an individual user, just the profile of users in general.

And the detail data does not need to be stored on spinning storage. Historical/detailed data can be stored on parked disks (replicated and checked periodically) and only spun if someone wants to pull out the details for future analysis.

I suspect Jack just got a bit over concerned….

We get special discounts that bring us $0.50 CFLs and rebates from the utility company for replacing inefficient appliances with less power-hungry models.

Remember that ‘new’ power is more expensive than power from paid off nuclear plants, dams, etc. If we use more power and have to build expensive ways to generate that power we will all pay more per kWh. Our bills will go up.

So the end result might be that the utility company continues to make money and we use less power and our total electricity bill doesn’t rise.

I’m fine with that.

Is your utility company making more money if you use more power?

If so, that’s not helping us quit the coal habit….