Would an economic recession affect the Edison SmartConnect plan?
Mr. De Martini: AT&T recently announced slower sales and that the number of unpaid bills was climbing dramatically, dragging down their revenue. In contrast, SCE’s collectibles are going up. It will all come back to how much SCE will pass along in costs to the customer. As the plan is laid out, during the deployment period through 2012 the impact will be about one and a half percent for the average customer bill. This doesn’t account for the monthly savings that consumers may achieve as a result of conservation and voluntary participation in demand response programs. The program begins generating net savings in 2014 which will provide downward pressure on customer rates. UtiliPoint: Some consumer advocates have opposed the deployment of advanced metering for all customers saying its too expensive, direct load control is a better option to reduce load during peak times and can be done without investing in AMI, and that if utilities want to install advanced metering, they should make the
