Forcing smart meters hurts ComEd customers

By overriding the governor’s veto, the legislature has hurt ComEd’s customers.

A recent study by IEE, “Costs and Benefits of Smart Meters for Residential Customers,” showed that utilities are the major beneficiaries of smart meters.

The study divided utilities into four groups and estimated savings and costs by customer type over a period of 20 years. Customer savings included not having to pay for CO2 emissions, with CO2 costs from $15 to $60 per ton.

In every case except the Pioneer Group, where utilities had already installed smart meters across their territory, utilities were the primary beneficiaries of savings from installing smart meters.

Most of the utility’s savings came from the reduced cost of meter reading. Savings also came from reducing the cost of outages.

The utility’s savings vary from a low of $77 million for the Pioneer utility group, to a high of $208 million for the Cautious Group of utilities.

I suspect that the Exploratory Group of utilities reflected ComEd’s situation, where the costs were $223 million and the savings were $156 million. ComEd hadn’t previously installed smart meters across its territory. If ComEd was in either of the other two groups, excluding the Pioneer Group, the savings would have been greater.

It should be noted that customer savings included the savings from avoiding CO2 emissions.

Certainly for ComEd, most of the savings from installing smart meters will accrue to ComEd and not their customers.

ComEd’s customers can thank their members in the legislature for higher utility bills, while owners of Exelon’s stock may receive higher dividends. ComEd is an Exelon subsidiary.

Forcing people to pay for smart meters is a bad policy decision that hurts all of us. I cover energy issues on Power For USA.

Donn Dears

Geneva