We Can Be Trusted with Consumers’ Energy-Use Data, Google Tells California PUC

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google defended its privacy practices at a session on setting policy for Californians to share detailed information about their power usage with online conservation companies and others. At a Public Utilities Commission workshop, Jeffrey Byron of the state Energy Commission told Google representative Ed Lu, advanced-projects program manager, late Friday that his company had been portrayed earlier at the event as a danger to privacy. The warning came from Zack Kaldveer, the communications director of the Consumer Federation of California, who cited privacy worries about Google Book Search and Google Buzz.

Google offers a tool called Power Meter for consumption monitoring. It believes customers should control which companies have access to their usage data, get an easy way to find out with whom it’s shared and have the right to opt out any time and get their information removed promptly, replied Lu, a former astronaut. “Those are the principles we abide by, and we take it very seriously,” he said. “We actually had to hold up deployment to make sure we had all those things in place.” Lu had previously said customer data shouldn’t be stored in more places than necessary, and access should be limited to what’s needed. Google has “quite a few” unannounced energy-management pilots around the world in addition to those it has discussed, Lu said.

Qualms raised about privacy make it unrealistic for the commission to set policies by July 1 as planned, said Administrative Law Judge Timothy Sullivan. Evidence provided by Kaldveer, another consumer advocate and other policy bodies including the PCU’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates and the Center for Democracy & Technology (WID March 22 p2/CD March 22 p6) flash a “yellow light that we should proceed a little more slowly,” he said. Rules probably will be set early in the fall after work over the summer, soon enough to keep the timing on track for the PUC’s stated policy aims, Sullivan said. The commission has said it wants to make usage data available this year to third parties, notably Web services, with customers’ permission, and start before 2012 supplying the information “on a near real-time basis” for customers with smart meters.

When Lu said making the deadline this year would require rulings “perhaps by the end of the summer,” Sullivan nodded. “Don’t try to boil the ocean,” Lu recommended. “Keep it narrow. Solve the problems you need to solve” first. Few standards are needed initially, because the information involved makes up a “simple data set” of time and usage, and it’s “trivial to write a translator to almost any format you want,” he said: “The path that the commission is heading down is a good one.” Mark Potter, vice president of operations of Internet company EnerNOC, supported “maximizing benefits while minimizing costs” from sharing usage information. In shaping rules, “we don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” he said.

Questions continued popping up about privacy enforcement and the PUC’s lack of authority over non-utilities that customers will share information with. “I would suggest the enforcer is a court of law,” Byron said. “It’s incumbent on the consumer to read that agreement” with companies getting their usage data “and understand it.”