How to measure smart-grid success

How do you know whether your smart-grid initiatives are succeeding or failing? The Ontario Smart Grid Forum, established in 2008 to draft a vision for the Canadian province’s next-generation energy infrastructure, outlines four key metrics in its latest progress report.

While noting that “this is just a starting point,” the new report — “Modernising Ontario’s Electricity System: Next Steps” — states that the following metrics should be tracked to assess, over time, whether smart grid investments are delivering promised benefits”:

• “The degree to which residential and small business customers are using smart meter information to make decisions on their electricity use.” This includes knowing how many properties receive smart-meter information, how many customers are making decisions based on that information, how much electricity customers are saving by class and region and whether there’s measurable evidence of energy loads being shifted for improved efficiency.
• “The degree to which customers, including commercial and industrial customers, are taking advantage of the smart grid through associated technology and service offerings.” This means knowing how many customers are participating in demand-side management programs and how much of the power load they’re affecting, how many ancillary services customers are taking advantage of, how many customers are taking part in distributed generation efforts and how many megawatts of electricity those efforts are generating.
• “Overall performance of the smart grid and its support for new products and services, including electric vehicles.” Measurements in this category cover how frequently electricity outages occur, how long they last and how many customers they affect; what the carbon footprint of electricity is on an hourly basis; load factors affecting the transmission and distribution system; how many plug-in electric vehicles are being used, and in which utility service areas; power quality, such as voltage regulation, on the grid; and how long it takes a utility to energise a Level-2 or higher electric-vehicle charging station from the time of the initial request.
• How much the “broader electricity sector” contributes to the region’s economy. This includes how many jobs are created, the value of the region’s smart-grid product and technology exports and “percentage of rate-regulated smart grid investments, government grants/incentives relative to private investment operating territory.”