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www.HartfordBusiness.com • November 19, 2018 • Hartford Business Journal 11 utilities' diversify their revenue base, offsetting rate hikes to some extent. "This could be of great benefit for ratepayers if we all plan for it," she said. Marone's fellow panelist Roger Kranenburg, Eversource's vice presi- dent of energy strategy and policy, said besides the technical challenges of digi- tizing the grid, the biggest hurdle may be hashing out the financial aspects. "Essentially, who pays and who benefits?" Kranenburg said. "Those are the really, really tough problems." Seeing into the grid One investment that's considered by many to be mandatory for mod- ernization is installing smart meters, which can send and receive data from the utility company, allowing for more frequent usage data than the typical once-a-month manual meter read. The meters can also: • Enable utility engineers to oper- ate the grid and forecast demand more efficiently; • Allow customers to better under- stand their electricity use; • Enable more advanced pricing structures that incentivize power consump- tion during times when demand is lower, reliev- ing stress on the grid and poten- tially saving customers money on their monthly bills. Dykes said there would be a significant price tag to rolling out smart meters across Connecti- cut's 1.6 million ratepayers. "The costs are substantial," she said. "We've seen other jurisdic- tions put togeth- er [smart meter] proposals and not be ready to make the leap." For example, Massachusetts this year delayed a planned smart meter rollout, slated to cost upwards of $500 million, due to various complications, though regulators there said they aren't dropping the effort, according to Greentech Media. Connecticut ranks poorly when it comes to smart meter adoption, ac- cording to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As of last year, just 13 percent of electric meters deployed here were smart. That ranks the state 38th in the U.S. United Illuminating Co. (UI), how- ever, is ahead of the pack. Of the company's 345,000 meters, more than 70 percent are smart, and the utility intends to reach 100 percent by early next decade. The much larger Eversource is further behind — it has no smart meters installed to date, however, about 100,000 of its deployed me- ters can be converted to "smart" in the future. Kranenburg said identifying the right time to invest in smart meters is an important financial decision. "The [existing] meters are not fully depreciated. Can you make the case that you throw away that value and replace it?" he said. "Maybe not." However, he said Eversource sees smart meters' potential. "We definitely see all the function- ality and definitely see all the advan- tages," he said. "It's not a matter of 'if,' it's a matter of 'when' … ." Despite not having smart meters, Eversource said it's still able to ad- equately gauge customer usage and demand. "As solar and other distributed energy resources on the grid increase, [smart meters] would help us de- liver more reliable service to our customers," said Jennifer Schil- ling, Eversource's director of grid modernization. UI's progress United Illu- minating began installing smart meters in 2010. Benjamin Loe- bick, manager of smart meter systems opera- tions in Con- necticut for UI parent Avangrid, said there were a lot of financial benefits to offset the costs. A big piece of the savings came from smart meters' ability to remotely shut off power when a tenant moves out, negating the need for the company to send out a truck to do it manually, he said. Smart meters also help detect outages much faster and enable ratepayers to analyze their power use by logging in to a UI portal con- nected with the system. Smart meters could also eventually enable dynamic pricing that changes from minute to minute based on electricity demand. That type of rate structure can allow utilities to incentivize customer be- havior to ensure the grid doesn't get overtaxed. NEOPERL, Inc., 171 Mattatuck Heights Rd, Waterbury, CT 06705 | 10,000 sq. ft. Quality Renovations by Borghesi Building 2155 East Main Street • Torrington, Connecticut 06790 www.borghesibuilding.com © 2011 BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. All rights reserved. Butler Manufacturing™ is a division of BlueScope Buildings North America, Inc. Contact us at 860-482-7613 or visit us on the web. SUPPLY THE PAVEMENT MAINTENANCE INDUSTRY WITH A SEALMASTER FRANCHISE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY * Offer made by prospectus only. Learn more at sealmaster.net or call (800) 341-7325 Protected Territories Available Throughout New England Distribute a Full Line of Pavement Maintenance and Sport Surfacing Products and Equipment. CT slow to adopt smart meter technology When it comes to adopting a key piece of grid modernization technology, smart meters, Connecticut is behind a majority of other states. Our largest utility, Eversource, doesn't have any installed, while the smaller United Illuminating is much further along — on pace to have all of its meters be smart by early next decade. Here's how Connecticut's smart meter adoption stacks up to other states: Smart meters as % Rank State of total meters installed 1 GA 99.7% 2 OK 99.7% 3 DC 99.2% 4 NV 96.2% 5 ME 94.4% 6 AL 87.8% 7 VT 86.5% 8 CA 85.5% 9 TX 82.8% 10 MI 81% 38 CT 12.9% Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration