Wanted: Better ideas to help consumers make sense of smart-grid data

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is offering up to $8 million in funds to promote new ways to make better energy consumption data available to residential and business utility customers.

The “Smart Grid Data Access” Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) aims to encourage utilities and third-party technology companies to work with communities to develop and implement programs that make electricity consumption data more easily available to customers. The goal is to help people and businesses better understand their energy use and find ways to reduce consumption.

“Providing consumers with easy access to data on their energy consumption can help give them the tools they need to make informed decisions about their energy use,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “Developing applications and services to help consumers understand and control their energy use is a field ripe for American innovation.”

In recent years, smart-grid technologies — often deployed with the support of federal stimulus funds — have become increasingly common in the energy infrastructure. These technologies have started generating unprecedented amounts of data about energy usage, and smart-grid advocates say making that data available in user-friendly formats can help customers save both electricity and money.

Making those massive amounts of data usable, meaningful and easy for people to understand, though, requires the addition of new software and other tools.

The “Smart Grid Data Access” FOA will involve two phases. In phase one, funding applicants will be required to provide detailed demonstration plans outlining their ideas for establishing data access policies for consumers and authorized third parties. They’ll also have to demonstrate at least one third-party software application designed to deliver a valuable service to consumers and provide a means to better manage electricity consumption. Between 10 and 12 projects in all will receive $500,000 each to proceed with their plans.

In phase two, the DOE will choose one recipient to receive around $2 million for a wide-scale adoption of the work outlined in phase one.

The FOA, which is available at FedConnect.net, provides additional information, including cost-sharing requirements for government-industry cooperation. The deadline for submitting applications is March 1, 2012.