US smart meter penetration continues to increase
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) estimates 94.8 million advanced meters across the US in 2019.
This represented an over 9% increase from 2018 – indicating that rollouts are continuing at a steady rate – and amounted to just over 60% of the 157.2 million meters in the US.
Nevertheless, the penetration varies markedly across the country, from almost three quarters in the Pacific and West South Central divisions to less than one quarter in New England.
Moreover in most regions the residential penetration is greater than that in the commercial and industrial customer classes.
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Overall, the average penetration is now above 50% in all customer classes, with the 2019 figures being 60.7% for residential, 57.8% for commercial and 53.9% for industrial customers.
These are among the findings of the FERC’s latest assessment of advanced metering, which has been prepared annually since 2006.
As it has been consistently the FERC estimate is lower than that of the Institute for Electric Innovation, which has a December 2019 figure of 99 million advanced meters for a 63% penetration rate, while its December 2020 figure is 107 million.
The report also assesses the status of demand response and finds that from 2018 to 2019, customer enrollment in retail incentive-based demand response programmes increased by 1.1 million, while customer enrollment in retail dynamic pricing programmes increased by
1.7 million.
These customer enrollment increases represent annual percentage increases of 12% and 19% respectively, with the annual potential peak demand savings standing at 31,019MW at the end of 2019, up 0.4% on the previous year.
At wholesale level the data covers the next period with demand resource totals decreasing in the wholesale markets by approximately 4% to a total of 30,787MW from 2019 to 2020. However, despite this decrease, the wholesale demand resource potential to meet peak loads increased from 6% in 2019 to 6.6% in 2020 as a result of lower peak demand in 2020.
State regulatory support
The report comments that state regulators across the country continue to support proposals to deploy advanced metering.
States such as Connecticut and New Jersey are initiating proceedings and establishing frameworks for advanced metering proposals and proposal analysis. Increasingly, state regulators are proactively seeking different approaches to calculate the benefits and costs of advanced meter deployments beyond the traditional cost-benefit analysis prevalent for traditional utility investments.
The report also notes that state regulators and policymakers continue to expand dynamic pricing offerings through both pilot and permanent rate programmes.
Orders issued by state regulators, such as those in Illinois and North Carolina, stress the importance of clear price signals to induce customer behaviour to use less power depending on the time of day. Similarly, state policymakers in states like Indiana and Montana passed legislation seeking to further study the benefits of dynamic pricing.
Nevertheless, regulatory barriers to customer participation in demand response programmes continue to exist, for example around the implementation of time-based rates and incorporation of demand flexibility.
With new streams of resources, customer information and programme data, regulators and utilities must consider the best way to use investments to improve customer participation in and satisfaction with demand response programmes, the report recommends.
