"Good Company envisions and develops market opportunities for companies with products and services that are good for the environment and good business."
Smart Energy
Smart Energy refers to a wide range of emerging information-based products and services that will help usher the digital revolution into the operation of our electric grid, and our homes and businesses, while it helps to generate the savings to pay for those improvements. Good Company recognizes that Smart Energy technologies (equipment, appliances and networks with embedded intelligence and communications capabilities) are available now. They can reduce the need for infrastructure expansion or upgrades. They can enable more dynamic pricing, better energy management, the use of distributed resources, and lower customer energy bills. Digital age products and burgeoning services can increase the elasticity of demand for electricity, increase worker productivity, and stimulate the economy. Texas, with its resources and continuing leadership role in energy, information technology and telecommunications, is fertile ground for the growth of this industry.
Facilitating a market for smart energy technologies can lead to accelerated acceptance of related digital home and business innovations and communications, and, by generating real savings, even help finance that market transformation. And, while there is growing support among market participants, and political leadership, there are a number of hurdles to overcome in order to truly unleash the creativity of the market for smart energy technology in Texas and across the country. Utilities must deploy advanced meter-data networks. Independent system operators must development settlement systems that recognize the time-dependent value of energy or energy savings. The market needs to develop and adopt appropriate standards and move away from proprietary systems.
METERING UPDATE:
The metering bill initiated on behalf of our Smart Energy clients was among the very few energy-related pieces of legislation to be successfully passed out of the Texas Legislature’s 79th Regular Session. Passage of the metering provisions in HB 2129 was a major step in the effort to create a market for advanced meters, a critical Smart Energy building block. HB 2129 added Section 39.107(h) to the Utilities Code, requiring the PUCT to establish a nonbypassable surcharge to recover reasonable and necessary costs incurred in deploying advanced metering and meter information networks to residential customers and smaller commercial customers. The utilities can recover costs on the deployment of advanced meters up to one-third of the utility’s total meters per calendar year.
Good Company continues to work with clients to maintain momentum for deployment of advanced meters as the regulatory process begins at the PUCT on cost recovery and the non-by-passable surcharge for installing advanced meters in Texas. Good Company is working the state Public Utilities Commission and other interested parties to develop a common vision for the role of advanced electric meters in the Texas market, and to set minimum functionality standards for advanced meters that will permit implementation of demand management and time of use pricing. And, we are working with Retail Electric Providers (REPs) demand response providers and technology companies to develop a third-party trusted authority to secure meter data sufficiently to allow competitive energy services providers to freely access meter data directly, over a variety of communication channels.
