Smart Appliances and the Energy Star Hoax
By Marilynne Martin
Overview
One of the benefits touted for deploying “smart meters” is that it will provide
consumers with information about their energy usage in order for them to better
understand their usage and subsequently reduce their overall usage or shift their
usage to non-peak periods. This is supposed to achieve savings on your energy bills.
What they don’t tell you is that smart meters, alone, can never achieve these
objectives because they do NOT provide sufficient information to the consumer. In
order to get the information needed to understand your energy usage you need to
also have a Home Energy Controller/System and smart appliances. In order to save
money, you also need Dynamic Pricing and Demand Response Programs.
Don’t want to use this because then they will implement this.
Contained in most smart meters is what is commonly known as a “Zigbee” chip or
transmitter. Its sole purpose is to interact with the Home Energy Controller and
smart appliances. It will send pricing and control signals to these devices and these
devices will react to those signals based on pre-set parameters.
These devices – the Zigbee transmitter in the Smart Meter, Home Energy
Controllers/Systems and Smart Appliances make up what they call a “HAN”, a Home
Area Network. Industry defines the HAN as “communication system(s) within the
customer facility that link consumer-owned communicating devices including
thermostats, pool pumps, appliances, distributed generation sources, gateways,
routers, entertainment devices, health monitors, fire, security and other
applications.”
The rollout of Smart Appliances poses a challenge for
manufacturers and policy makers because they are more
expensive and may consume more energy than non-smart
appliances because of the additional functionality. The more expensive
piece is usually not a challenge for policy makers as they have the ability to write
energy efficiency legislation that provides either tax credits or grants and programs
to consumers to subsidize the cost. These incentives spur sales. The problem? For
decades now, these subsidies are only given to products that achieve the “Energy
Star” designation.
In order to resolve the problem of the “Energy Star” designation,
the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (“AHAM”)
proposed that “Smart” appliances be given a “5% Connected
Allowance”. What this allowance does is allows smart appliances to
consume more energy than non-smart appliances and still get an
Energy Star designation and qualify for the financial incentives.
The problem with this “connected allowance” is that a smart appliance on its own
does not save energy or provide energy efficiencies. It needs to be coupled with
other smart paraphernalia, utility programs and be used by the consumer (many
appliances have override features). The “smart appliance” only has the potential to
save energy, and in so doing also violates the consumer in other ways mentioned in
this document. So in reality, this is a hoax. If the consumer buys the smart
appliance and uses it like a non-smart appliance (doesn’t sign up for a utility
demand response program, have the Zigbee enabled HEMS (Home Energy
Management system – a Zigbee enabled platform which acts as a conduit between
the smart appliances and smart meter) or have other energy using smart
paraphernalia such as a smart meter paraphernalia or set the delay features, etc.),
taxpayers will be subsidizing a device that actually uses MORE energy.
The Department of Energy and the EPA jointly run the Energy Star Program. They
are therefore colluding in this hoax as they just approved this 5% connected
allowance in the new Energy Star requirements for refrigerators/freezers. Policy
makers are also in on the hoax as there appear to be many energy efficiency bills in
process to allocate funds through grants to incentivize the purchase of smart
appliances.
Energy Star Program
Per its website https://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=about.ab_index
In 2005, Congress enacted the Energy Policy Act. Section 131 of the Act
amends Section 324 (42 USC 6294) of the Energy Policy and Conservation
Act, and "established at the Department of Energy and the Environmental
Protection Agency a voluntary program to identify and promote energy–
efficient products and buildings in order to reduce energy consumption,
improve energy security, and reduce pollution through voluntary labeling of
or other forms of communication about products and buildings that meet the
highest energy efficiency standards."
Energy Star “Smart Grid Functionality Allowance”
History:
The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) got together in 2010
and developed a joint resolution to petition the EPA (who jointly runs Energy Star
with the Dept. of Energy) to give smart grid ready appliances a 5% credit. Their
smart grid policy statement can be found
here http://www.aham.org/industry/ht/d/sp/i/46155/pid/46155 and essentially
states;
"AHAM believes that in order for the Smart Grid to be successful, there are three
essential requirements for the Smart Grid's interaction with consumers:
1. Pricing must provide incentives to manage energy use more
efficiently and enable consumers to save money.
2. Communication standards must be open, flexible, secure and limited
in number.
3. Consumer choice & privacy must be respected; the consumer is the
decision maker.
AS THIS ARTICLE AND DOCUMENT ATTEST, NONE OF THE ABOVE OBJECTIVES
HAVE BEEN ACCOMPLISHED.
The joint resolution was sent to the EPA in Jan 2011 to petition them for a credit,
which can be found here http://www.aham.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/51594 and
states:
The Joint Stakeholder Proposal
1. The Joint Proposal is to provide a five percent credit to the energy
performance level required to meet ENERGY STAR eligibility criteria for
the smart-grid enabled appliances that are included in the Joint Proposal,
which includes residential refrigerator/freezers, clothes washers,
clothes dryers, room air-conditioners, and dishwashers. A five percent
credit means that smart appliances would be allowed to use five
percent more energy than non-smart products that earn the Energy
Star designation.
The EPA replied back in April 2011 stating that their request was not a proper
petition so the 5% credit was not approved but essentially would be considered in
the future.
https://www.energystar.gov/products/specs/sites/products/files/EPA_Response_Letter
_to_Petition.pdf
The EPA then opened proceedings to update its specifications on refrigerators and
freezers. The audit trail for this proceeding can be found here
https://www.energystar.gov/products/specs/node/125.
If you look at the presentation the EPA did on July 25 2011 and go to pages 30-37
where they deal with the smart grid, you will see on page 33 the "hoax". The
presentation can be found at this link here
https://www.energystar.gov/products/specs/system/files/V5.0_Specification_Framewo
rk_Presentation.pdf
It is a "hoax" because they will be allowing smart grid capable appliances, which
actually consume MORE energy, to get the Energy Star designation based on the
"POTENTIAL" to reduce energy and peak load demands. The California Association
of Investor Owned Utilities, which includes PG&E, argued against this credit –
rightfully so. Their letter is
here https://www.energystar.gov/products/specs/sites/products/files/California_IOUs_
Comments_V5_Refrigerator_Framework.pdf and they state
"While the energy and cost savings from energy efficiency are well
established, and accrue without any action by the customer, the financial
benefits and peak demand savings of smart, DR capable
Appliances will depend on a number of unknown future factors, such
as: The number of demand reduction events, the percent of customers who
can receive DR signals and act upon them using smart products or other
means, the percent of customers who are willing to shift loads or otherwise
curtail demand, and the percent of load shifted for a particular appliance."
Bottom line, we could be subsidizing someone buying a smart appliance but does
not use the smart features and therefore does not result in energy savings or
reduction of peak loads.
The EPA went on to approve the 5% credit in it's newly issued Energy Star specifications
on May 31, 2013 to take effect in
2014. https://www.energystar.gov/products/specs/sites/products/files/ENERGY%20STA
R%20Final%20Version%205.0%20Residential%20Refrigerators%20and%20Freezers%20S
pecification.pdf
As stated in this article, they will use the energy star rating to encourage these smart
connected appliances http://www.fiercesmartgrid.com/story/epaenergy-starappliances-encourage-smart-grid-functionality/2013-07-02
References
SmartGrid.Gov – The Smart Home http://www.smartgrid.gov/the_smart_grid#smart_home
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Use of Residential Smart Appliances for
Peak-Load Shifting and Spinning Reserves Cost/Benefit Analysis REPORT,
December 2010
http://www.aham.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/51596
June 28, 2010 presentation by Chuck Goldman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, at
the Mid-Atlantic Conference of regulatory Utility Commissioners “Smart Grid – Metering,
Cost recovery, Demand Response”
http://smartresponse.lbl.gov/reports/ma-meters062510.pdf
Demand Response Enabled Appliances – Key to the Smart Home, David Najewicz
General Electric Consumer and Industrial , June 8 2009, Santa Clara CA
http://eetd.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/connectivity_week_najewicz-web.pdf