Pacific Gas & Electric Co, the largest publically-traded energy utility in the US, wants to leap aboard the Information Superhighway, and has teamed with Englewood, Colorado cable television specialist Tele-Communications Inc, and Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp in a memorandum of understanding to test market energy information services via cable television. The market test, planned for later this year, will cover 2,000 homes in Walnut Creek, and other California townships not yet chosen, and is budgeted at $6.2m over two years – all costs to be borne by shareholders rather than its customers for gas and electricity. The system will add home communications and energy management user control to cable television service via specially modified set-top boxes that will run a Microsoft operating system – presumably Microsoft at Work. Pacific Gas is conducting the trial to investigate the feasibility and desirability of providing energy information services for gas and electricity customers. Services it conceives of include real-time two-way communications about energy use and services, so that a customer could effectively the gas meter spinning round on the TV screen, with a graphic alongside showing the cents mounting up into dollars. Electronic energy management programmes could give customers greater control over appliances and energy bills and provide a neat way of paying the bill and choose their own regular payment date. Real-time pricing could also be offered to help customers reduce their bills by adjusting gas and electricity use to match fluctuating costs of energy. And information flowing the other way would alert Pacific Gas earlier to local power cuts and other problems.
