(Washington, DC) The Department of Energy’s (DOE) examinations of two big smart grid-related issues, consumer data access and privacy and utility communications needs, are now complete, DOE General Counsel Scott Blake Harris said today in announcing the top-line findings of these wide-ranging examinations. Both of the DOE proceedings on this topic stem from the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) National Broadband Plan, released last spring, which asked the DOE to dig deeper into the central questions of consumer energy data usage and the future of utility communications in the smart grid era.
Data Access and Privacy
Speaking at a forum hosted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Harris outlined the major conclusions of the DOE’s report on smart grid data access, third party use and privacy issues. In general, the various commenters in the data access and privacy proceeding were in very broad agreement, Harris said. Among the areas of agreement for the various utility, telecom, technology, government and public interest groups who filed comments are: