You can keep it simple with a carbon tax on your overall electricity usage but it will be more effective if the tax structure highlighted to people exactly how they could cut their electricity usage. Action steps, not just broad penalties.

Personally though I want to own and control this data. Not out of fear but because I want to be able to explicitly share my data with Electrolux and have them offer me a discount.

Tbh I didn’t go into the technicalities of this with Monika. I just took her at her word that the data from smart meters is granular enough to identify appliances.

Re the database – I have seen estimates that smart meters will generate up to 400mb of data each (depending on how often they are sampling) per annum. When you multiply this up by a few million customers and factor in data retention legislation you are looking at terabytes of data storage, possibly even petabytes.

I hadn’t thought of how each appliance can have a unique power signature, but it makes sense. What comes to mind are how voice recognition systems identify patterns in speech waveforms rather than looking at all the unique ways people can pronounce a word or phrase. As you describe, these unique signatures can trigger incredibly precise, focused communications through customer bills, web portals and a host of mobile devices.

Keeping in mind I harbor some concerns over privacy issues (including the possibility of bringing the concept of spam to a completely new level), this capability has the potential to radically transform behaviors in a positive way – both for customers and for energy suppliers.

Mike Balin
http://www.streamserve.com
twitter.com/mikebalin

Do you know any more about the technicalities behind this? Are there meters out there that already capture this information?

It will be interesting to see who becomes responsible for the database that stores all these product power profiles… i think i read that there was some initiative started a few years back.