How a Smart Grid Can Lead to Smart Consumers

In such times of global warming, energy dependence, the smart grid has become increasingly popular. The smart grid delivers electricity from various suppliers to consumers by suing digital technology to reduce cost, save energy and increase transparency and reliability. The smart grid will play a big part in energy independence.

One of the biggest advantages of a universal smart grid would be its ability to create smart energy consumers. Because the smart grid would actually be able to define and identify individual energy wasters and then charge them accordingly, there would be a huge economic incentive for more careful consumption. It can be difficult to convince some people that wasting our natural resources is not really good for anyone. A smart grid would hit these wasteful consumers where it hurts the most - the wallet.

Smart meters would monitor not only the flow of energy into the home but also the actual real-time usage. This would allow consumers to see where they are succeeding and where they might need to do better. The meter could also show other information such as carbon dioxide emissions from alternative energy sources and how much money is actually being saved. This concrete information would do more toward reforming energy wasters than any lecture, brochure, or informational speech.

Smart consumers will waste less energy which, in turn, benefits the environment greatly. Right now, energy plants create and pump out the same amount of energy whether it is needed or not. A smart grid would allow energy to be generated during demand periods and the excess stored during off peak times. Smart grids would also encourage more people to consider or to change to alternate energy forms to offset their costs, especially once they know that they will be paying higher amounts during higher demand times.

Smart consumers would then know that they need to rely on their own generated energy for those expensive, peak demand periods or reduce the use of lights and other electrical equipment if they do not want to pay higher bills. Seeing their energy usage in real time would serve as a huge wake-up call. It would only take one huge jump in power costs for an investigation to be launched to determine where the energy is being wasted in many homes across the country. Some consumers will ignore the high bills and the wasted energy, but many more will become more energy conscious and smarter consumers in the process.