The future of the city is smart and in some U.S. cities — like Columbus, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; San Antonio, Texas; and Spokane, Washington — the present is already one of increased connectivity and efficiency. They are powered by citizens who possess more information about their electric usage than ever before and aided by utilities that provide them streamlined data in their homes, on the road and around town.
A smart city increases operational efficiency and improves public welfare by way of data collection. The pivot for electric utilities to integrate smart city solutions into their business models is a sensible one. Truly becoming a collaborator requires moving toward the common goals of the metropolises they serve and helping those cities become the most efficient versions of themselves.
For example, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), using smart home meters to provide detailed information meant for greener energy usage, can make cities and consumers smarter. It is one of several initiatives designed to collect information, educate consumers and increase efficiency. In Columbus, American Electric Power (AEP) contributes to the city’s Smart Columbus plan. This is one of many collaborations between U.S. utilities and cities playing an essential role in an attempt to reach the full smart city potential.
Informed Consumers
AMI collects data from smart meters on homes not only to increase a utility’s operational efficiency but to educate the user on how to improve their cost savings and overall energy usage. AEP Ohio’s decade-long AMI implementation has led to more than 1 million smart meters being placed in the greater metropolitan area. The utility has another 500,000 coming and is working with the city to move toward a larger goal of reducing Columbus’ carbon footprint.
AEP Ohio Director of Grid Modernization Scott Osterholt says the actionable data produced by AMI is a huge asset for customers to make informed energy-consumption decisions. "Part of our opted-in population is super engaged and really using that information to take action," he noted. "The smart meters are helping the customers make wiser energy decisions that are, in most cases, leading to less use."
The Smart Columbus project exists as the result of winning the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge. The expectation is Columbus will use the funding, along with a simultaneous (but unrelated) US$10 million investment by Paul Allen’s Vulcan fund, to modernize its grid. The city is planning for a huge population increase over the next 30 years, and the Smart Columbus project is intended to bring about change that should spur economic well-being, job creation and an updated, greener grid.
"There’s something called 'the Columbus way' here," said Sherry Hubbard, AEP Ohio’s liaison to Smart Columbus. "It’s about public-private partnerships that work toward the betterment of the city. Smart Columbus itself is supposed to develop mobility options and improvements to the community, like access to health care, education and jobs."
When the city of Columbus approached AEP Ohio about collaborating, the utility gladly accepted. Hubbard says the utility and the city share modernization, efficiency, and sustainability goals. "[Smart Columbus] is meant to bring innovation to the city," she noted. "There's an effort toward decarbonization, where AEP Ohio's efforts have come to the forefront. That includes energy efficiency, electric vehicles and some innovation demonstration projects around the microgrid."
Incentives and Rebates
According to Osterholt, AEP Ohio has seen a noticeable change in consumer behavior that suggests they are aware of their usage, want to reduce it and are motivated to do so. Of course, that motivation can be bought with incentives, a strategy AEP Ohio has adopted.
The utility goes into communities with point-based challenges and helps locals to work toward achieving energy-efficiency goals to earn neighborhood upgrades, like new smart lighting in parks and enhancements to area schools. By creating an incentivized environment, utilities engage citizens to have control over their own energy goals and create situations in which the advancement of technology will be faster.
Dave Tabata, AEP Ohio’s energy efficiency and consumer programs manager, says the utility also applies rebates for residential consumers who use light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, ENERGY STAR appliances and heat-pump water heaters. "We started incentivizing customers about two years ago and developed an online marketplace to educate them on energy-efficiency scores and appliances," Tabata said. "We also incentivize builders to build better homes with energy-efficient practices. Most users look to their utility for information, and we try to provide as much as possible."
Like AEP Ohio, CPS Energy gives rebates. The utility estimates its energy-efficiency and conservation program is one of the biggest in the state of Texas, if not the entire nation. It gives solar rebates and rewards for efficient water systems and thermostats.
Customers also reduce their utility bills, which is usually what they want, says CPS Energy President and CEO Paula Gold-Williams. "The average citizen wants to be in control of their energy destiny," she said. "Summers in Texas are long, and what we want is a real change of behavior that lasts all year."
Evergy, the result of a merger between Westar Energy and Kansas City Power & Light in August 2019, implemented a smart meter program in Missouri to provide reliable energy while changing the way communities view technology, so consumers can make educated energy decisions. So far, Evergy and Google Nest have partnered to install 35,000 thermostats and give away solar-specific rebates totaling nearly $100 million.
"Consumers are becoming more aware of their demand and more aware of what data can mean for them," said Matt Bult, Evergy's senior manager of operations technology. "They're seeing what storing energy and using renewables really mean."
Mutually Beneficial
The partnerships between utilities and cities typically are a win-win-win situation. The utility invests in modernizing its business model, the customer gains information and saves money, and the city moves toward a smarter, greener future. For CPS Energy, its strong ties to the city council and city planner in San Antonio as well as relationships with other municipally owned utilities, like the local water utility and transit authority, make tinkering with smart city solutions promising.
CPS Energy is collaborating on innovation centers, where it experiments with different initiatives and draw conclusions about how well technology will work on a larger scale. "We have three innovation target areas," Gold-Williams noted. "A privatized military base that attracts international businesses and is talking to consumers about flooding, among other things. There's an innovation center in the smack dab middle of the medical part of town, where there are tens of thousands of jobs. We're concerned about traffic solutions there. And, the downtown area is being revitalized, so it has interests like lighting enablement."
San Antonio is one of the most advanced case studies for growth in the smart city sector. As a 2030 Districts Network city, it has committed to meeting 50% reductions in energy, water and transportation-related emissions by 2030. It has taken huge steps toward integrating technology into its grid — in large part because of its abundance of partnerships.
The collaborative process is like riding in a car, according to Gold-Williams. "Sometimes we’re driving the initiative," she explained. "Sometimes we're in the passenger seat providing navigation. And, other times we're riding in the back seat providing foundational assistance."
Regardless of where it sits, the utility is helping San Antonio to achieve its smart city goals. CPS Energy, which converted to digital meters a couple of years ago, is optimizing data from 40,000 meters implemented across San Antonio. It offers a customer portal with consumption and usage information to educate the public on how to maintain a more energy-efficient household.
The utility also made a competition out of it. "Customers can compare to their neighbors and compete to be the biggest conservers," Gold-Williams said. "And, it's not just millennials; I have seniors who want to win. It's definitely a basic level of gamification we can build on."
Transportation Initiatives
Another major component of smart cities is electric vehicles (EVs) and transportation initiatives. AEP Ohio has an EV charger program that enables the public to host charging stations and earn a rebate. All 300 available stations have been reserved already. It is distributing 150 charging stations to local businesses, 90 to government entities and 60 to multifamily dwellings. "This will allow us to look at electric and hybrid vehicles and see how savings will be based on driving patterns per day or week," Tabata said. "We can educate the customer on the benefits of driving an electric vehicle."
In Kansas City, Evergy has created the Clean Charge Net-work, consisting of more than 1000 EV charging stations — the largest network in the U.S. Evergy has reported a nearly 400% increase in EV users since implementing the program. "The goal for us is to reduce range anxiety to stimulate Kansas City's EV adoption," Bult said. "It's been good so far. We have charging stations throughout the network and local deployments like Tesla Powerwalls."
At Commonwealth Edison Co. (ComEd) in Illinois, the utility has focused EV efforts on senior communities in part of its service area. The utility wanted a way for seniors with mobility issues to get to and from the first and last miles of an otherwise robust city transit system. ComEd offered small two-person vehicles to transport seniors to within close range of a location and has seen almost 1000 rides take place since instituting the program two years ago.
"It's been a great program in supporting seniors and learning about mobility concerns they would have," said Russ Desalvo, ComEd Illinois' manager of grid modernization projects. "It’s a very small program, but it's the kind of thing we can learn from and then apply to other smart city initiatives."
Smart Streetlighting
In an intelligently connected grid, a user would leave a smart meter-enabled home, drive an EV to a destination and then peruse the town with the aid of more linked technology. There might be connected parking meters, smart trash cans and free public Wi-Fi someday. One existing solution is smart LED streetlighting.
ComEd has made LED lighting the standard for all its streetlights and is placing 140,000 poles across its service territory over the next five years. The utility owns the pole, fixture and node, so it can both save energy and manage the lights to identify when infrastructure or outage issues occur.
"We have the ability to dim lights or control them in different ways when needed in an emergency," Desalvo explained. "With the software, we can make them brighter. And, we're operating on an Itron Silver Spring mesh network, so smart streetlights are only strengthening that."
Allies and Collaboration
Utilities often ally with municipalities and other partners to get the most out of smart city initiatives. For example, ComEd has a smart city lab at its disposal, where it can study different components of its developing initiatives. The lab enables it to see the impact on customers in a controlled environment before unveiling the new technology.
Part of the smart city movement is in response to improving the overall decarbonization efforts in the U.S. There are ways to generate clean energy with renewables and distributed energy resources (DERs). "A lot of work the smart grid team is doing impacts the future of clean energy and how we can support it," Desalvo said. "A lot of technology we're demonstrating now is going to support the integration of renewables and DERs moving forward."
ComEd has seen a demonstrable increase in rooftop solar and 2-MW community solar installations. The utility expects to have at least 10% renewables and controllable storage in the microgrid. "It's something we’re seeing across the board, and now we’re asking how to connect and study them," Desalvo explained. "It's something that I think is definitely going to benefit the rest of the system."
Avista Utilities is partnering on a connected neighborhood in the heart of Spokane. Known as Urbanova, the neighborhood consists of about 770 acres (312 hectares) of developed and undeveloped land. Avista joined forces with Spokane, Washington State University, Itron, Verizon and others to answer the questions of how to support the community from economic, connected and welfare perspectives.
The Urbanova project seeks to hit five specific targets: enable healthier citizens, create safer neighborhoods, develop smarter infrastructure, ensure a more sustainable environment and grow a stronger economy. "We essentially built a living lab to test different technologies," said Heather Rosentrater, Avista's senior vice president of energy delivery. "We want to be part of the clean energy of the future in the most affordable way possible for our consumers. A smart community makes a healthy community."
Rapidly Changing Sector
Utilities recognize these intelligent changes are good for business. CPS Energy’s Gold-Williams compares the speed at which the energy sector is evolving to that of the transformation in telephone technology: moving at a phenomenal rate and requiring flexibility.
"We wondered, why bet only on a gas power plant if that might not be the only bet to make over the next 50 years?" Gold-Williams asked. "We decided to let the market provide power and focused on being a broker of it for our community. We're used to self-solving and being in control, and there's a huge benefit in being an operative who reduces power and covers all obligations with known assets."
Thanks to innovative programs and practices, CPS Energy and other utilities have hundreds of thousands of customers helping them to shave off peaks as a result of smart technology. Utilities need to be ready to adapt to whatever is next. If the purpose of a utility is to supply energy to consumers, extra emphasis should be placed on ensuring a city is making educated smart grid decisions to maximize the potential of smart city initiatives.
"We have to make sure we’re enabling our customers in a myriad of ways," Bult said. "We have to make sure we’re making the right investments in our grid to prepare, so our consumers know they’re paying for smart investments."
