Smart Meters

As long-term price caps were about to expire a year ago, Peco Energy customers learned that cheap and abundant natural gas was easing the pressure on power prices and sparing them some long-anticipated bad news. Customers who chose competitive suppliers were able to save about a penny per kilowatt-hour, offsetting a simultaneous increase in Peco's electricity-distribution rates. Rather than rise 10 percent or more, as widely predicted, the Philadelphia region's overall power prices basically held steady or ticked down.

PJM Interconnection said yesterday that, as electricity use soared Wednesday, the region's power grid set a record in the amount of peak need that was met by so-called demand response, in which power customers are paid market rates to curtail consumption. With high temperatures and humidity across the eastern portion of its 13-state electricity pool, PJM said demand topped 139,700 megawatts - less than the record of 144,644 megawatts set Aug. 2, 2006, but the highest so far this year.

The police chief here came under fire this week when a Borough Council audience pressured him to make his force a little more friendly. Those at the meeting - mostly business owners - said that they wanted to encourage more tourists to visit the town's restaurants and shops, and that they believed some of the Police Department's tactics were scaring people away. Tuesday night's discussion followed a meeting last week at which business owners complained about police scouting to arrest people for drunken driving and issuing too many parking tickets, and about "smart" meters that eat money when a car pulls out of a spot.

Pennsylvania lawmakers this week flipped the switch on the state's growing demand for electricity, approving several impressive conservation measures that should allow utility customers to dial down higher electricity bills over the next few years. It may not be enough to hold rates, given expected rate shocks starting in 2010 with the expiration of rate caps under deregulation. But at least electricity consumers now have more hope that they'll be able to trim their own power usage.

Discussion about a controversial proposal for a new traffic ordinance has gradually come to a stop, and no changes to the existing ordinance will be enacted for at least two months, according to Borough Council members. "We're postponing any vote on the matter," Council President Jay Snyder said. "We're not going to be ready by August. " The proposed revision met with intense opposition at a council meeting last week. Hundreds of area merchants and residents turned out to complain that the proposed restrictions on parking and deliveries to local stores would hurt New Hope's livelihood.

Even for a tourist town, an expedition like this was an unusual offer. At Tuesday night's Borough Council work session, President Jay Snyder offered to take "whoever's interested" on a tour of a different sort at 9 a.m. today - a parking safari, if you will. The informal group will walk around the one square mile of shops and sights that compose the busy town, looking at parking spots and trying to envision where space could be created for new lots, spots and loading zones.

Ten days before the start of a special session of the Pennsylvania legislature to address concerns about rising energy prices, Peco Energy offered a set of initiatives yesterday that it said would help "ease the transition to competitive energy markets. " The state's largest utility, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., said it planned to phase in a 15 percent to 20 percent rate increase that it now anticipates when price caps expire at the end of 2010. The company also said that it would expand assistance to low-income customers, offer "aggressive conservation and load-management programs," and begin a phased installation of high-tech "smart meters" and time-of-use billing.

Gov. Rendell's Energy Independence Strategy, a far-reaching plan for the promotion of renewable energy and conservation, was short-circuited by an intensive lobbying effort as the Pennsylvania General Assembly broke for summer recess in July. With a special session on energy set to begin today, it's time for citizens to power up. Unveiled in February, the Energy Independence Strategy (EIS) would establish an $850 million energy independence fund to promote energy-efficient appliances, solar panels and renewable energy projects; direct utility companies to use conservation measures to meet increased demand for electricity; require utilities to provide "smart meters" to their customers, and oblige Pennsylvania to grow and use more biofuels.

As the legislature pushed past its weekend budget deadline, the state's power industry squared off with Gov. Rendell over energy proposals he says are crucial to keeping electricity prices from skyrocketing as decade-old caps expire in the years ahead. Dozens of lobbyists representing utilities and power generators were working the Capitol's anterooms last week, pulling legislators off the floor to urge changes in the package of bills that Rendell calls his "Energy Independence Strategy.

It's a summer day a few years from now. Some things are familiar - for one, you're stuck in a Philadelphia heat wave. Other things aren't. You drive your plug-in hybrid car to work. At 3 p.m., when no one's home, your smart electric meter notices that power prices are rising. The meter switches your air-conditioner into energy-saving mode. No human intervention necessary. At 4 p.m., also automatically, the smart electrical grid notices that same spiking demand, and sends a signal to your company's meter.