Matthew Smith, Senior Director of Utility Solutions at Silver Spring Networks, responds to this industry question: "What do you think is the most challenging issue for your company as it relates to the residential energy management market?"

One challenge Silver Spring Networks is investing in is to help our utility customers leverage the strong work being done in the residential energy management sector by various manufacturers. Today, nearly all mass-market Demand Response programs rely on utility-owned devices. While the increasing availability of direct-to-consumer residential energy management devices is encouraging, it will likely not reach critical mass for a number of years. In the meantime, it will be crucial for utilities and manufactures of residential energy management devices to work out technology approaches and business models from the interconnection of consumer products, to the critical infrastructure operated by utilities. Silver Spring is building a bridge for both the technical and standards gap between domains, creating critical interconnects between both networks. Utilities that invest in the right smart grid technology will be able to augment their existing demand side programs by more easily integrating consumer devices such as communicating thermostats, regardless of whether they were provided by the utility or purchased by customers directly.

Best practice indicates that offering utility customers choice and flexibility in managing energy resources builds on customer willingness to participate in these programs. Communicating thermostats and interconnection of other devices may be one solution for getting additional customers onboard. Until then, utilities must continue to execute on standard utility-deployed methods to meet existing demand reduction goals. However, by building interconnects between the smart grid and residential energy management solutions for demand response and energy efficiency will allow utilities to manage peak and base capacity, avoid building new generating facilities and improve customer satisfaction. This will enable utilities to grow their customer relationship value and, in turn, the customers benefit from the ability to actively manage their energy use for greater savings.

The current utility approach needs to be enhanced to support the long-term consumer device- driven developments. Companies like Silver Spring help connect the technology and standards gap by working with other stakeholders in the market. The industry-and its regulators-need to help shepherd utilities through the required transformation in order to maximize new innovation and trends; as well as secure a reliant, stable and clean energy future.

Matthew Smith is speaking at the Smart Energy Summit on Wednesday, February 19. He is part of the session "Big Data & Analytics: Residential Energy Applications," with other company representatives from Bidgely, Earth Networks - Weatherbug, and PlanetEcosystems.

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