Here’s something that most of us (including myself, until I read this blog post) probably ever think about in regards to their electricity bills: old technology and how it affects our bills. This post by Richard Stuebi on Cleantech Blog kind took a minority view on the deregulated Electricity markets of Texas and California, which are popular targets for criticism by many people.
His viewpoint was interesting in that it was much more forward-looking than most people’s standard “What is this costing me right now” attitude. So what is he talking about? Smart Grids. Now we’ve touched on Smart Meters on this blog before, and Smart Grids are, for the sake of simplicity, are tomorrow’s jet engine of an electricity grid compared to today’s hang glider. They will improve the way electricity is delivered and monitored and in general just do a more efficient job of what grids do today. This efficiency will show up as electricity savings and reduced consumption at the same time. Pretty cool, even if it is still a ways off, right?
So, how does this relate to us in Texas (and California)? Well, the short of it is that the deregulation of our electricity markets have forced us (the electricity market/companies) to be more clever in how we go about business instead of just dancing with the one that brought us, so to speak. Texas and California have modified policy and set in place legislation that will make it much easier to adopt smart grids going forward, as well as forcing large companies to adopt new and more intelligent business practices. Basically, we’ve taken some lumps early that will set us up to be WAAAAY ahead of the rest of the country in the long term when it comes to energy efficiency and consumption. Which will mean savings from our electricity providers which we probably can’t even put a price on right now.