France To Charge Consumers For Saving Energy

Posted on 23. Jul, 2009 by Ross in Europe, Government Policy

The French energy regulator has defied comprehension - as well as the European environmental agenda - by demanding that a tiny electricity management company must compensate power companies for the energy which it saves consumers.

Voltalis has brought a home energy management system to market which monitors and directly controls the electricity usage in the house, enabling consumers to pay less money. By linking back to the company via the Internet, Voltalis’s Bluepod devices respond to periods of grid peak demand by turning off appliances such as air conditioners for short burst of time, smoothing electrical demand and supposedly saving consumers up to 10% on their energy bills.

Not only does this distributive load-shedding technology aid consumers, but is exactly the sort of functionality which smart meters must contain in order to enable power companies to decrease the number of back-up power stations that they must build and maintain in order to meet spikes in demand. This then saves the energy companies from having to invest huge amounts on new power stations, and reduces carbon dioxide and other pollutants from the idling of those stations.

However, in a move which has whipped up a political furore, the French energy regulatory commission sees the situation from a different perspective. It has ruled that Voltalis should compensate energy companies for the power its technology saves, because “its service would not be possible without the producer maintaining production.”

The decision has led to charges of conflicts of interest. Key French power companies such as EDF are predominantly state-owned, and as a consequence are accused of wielding too much influence over their regulators.

Photo of EDF’s nuclear power station at St Laurent Des Eaux by Julien H @ Flickr