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My name is Nick Sinai
and I am the director of energy and environment on the National Broadband Task Force.
recently the department of energy released
a very interesting study
%uh showing just how important
the Smart Grid is
%uh and in fact it
showed that we could
reduce the carbon emissions
%uh
from the electricity sector
by up to 12 percent directly and
seventeen percent indirectly
with the greater use of smart grid
communications technology
that is, if we automate the grid better
we deliver energy more efficiently and the reduce %uh
%uh the amount of coal and natural gas we
have to burn that creates the carbon emissions
and that the more that we get consumers involved in
understanding
their energy use and
seeing prices that reflects the the cost of providing that power
%uh the more that they will %uh shift their usage or make smarter energy
decisions
We need a smarter grid
%uh today of most
utilities know that they they aren't providing power
when customers call them up and say that their power's out
So there's really isn't that kind of visibility
into the distribution part of of electric grids
we're really starting to see some
innovation in the Smart Grid space
and in the smart home.
how consumers interact with
their lights, with their heating and cooling and all these things
that drive their energy consumption
imagine a refrigerator for example that decides
to make ice
or defrost at night, you can imagine
the clothes dryer that %uh decides to extend
the cycle a little bit longer but reduces the heat just a little bit
with the customer's permission or preferences, you can kind of think of this like the TiVo
you are essentially moving to to greater customer preferences
in devices and in the home
one study showed that up to fifteen percent of the capacity was built for one percent of
the time
so the more that we can defer non-critical usage
%uh that helps us avoid building new
fossil fuels power plants
Chairman Ed Markey has entered the e-Know bill
which is about a consumers' rights to know their energy and their electricity information
all of this this is pretty of opaque to be to the customer -they don't know
what's the most efficient
and and and how much
energy they're really using for
an appliance or a flat screen TV
they just get a bill at the end of the month
that doesn't make a whol lot of sense to them
a simple metaphor would be
imagine going into the grocery store everyday and buying a beer one day
and a tomato the next day, and only
at the end,thirty days later, do you get paper bill with four hundred dollars
of bill
and not having itemized - what we've laid out in the broadband plan is a vision for
consumers and their authorized third parties be able to get access to energy data,
and to be able to
participate
%uh compete alongside the utility for the services
in the home and to help
consumers be more efficient, and
so that's that's what's really exciting to me