People are often shocked at the size of their electricity bills and have very little understanding of the source or cause of high bills.  For example, a friend recently moved into a new house in the Northeast Valley and was surprised that the per-day energy use was about the same as the old house, even though nobody lived in the new house for part of the billing cycle (June-July).  The new house is also smaller than the old house.  She swears that the thermostat is busted.

I reminded her that we've had some intensely hot days during the move transition, which may well account for the higher energy usage on her first bill at the new house.  But, it got me to thinking about the fact that when it comes to our energy usage, we're all kind of flying blind.

The state's major electricity providers - APS, SRP, and Tucson Electric Power (TEP) - have introduced programs that encourage customers to shift energy demand to off-peak hours when the costs of electricity are lower.  Through "time of use" plans customers pay lower rates for energy used during non-peak times.  The plans rely on smart meters to monitor when energy is used (the price depends on the time of day); SRP is expanding to one million smart meters, APS plans to have smart meters installed for all its customers by 2013, and TEP is installing new meters for customers switching to its time-of-use program.

But I wonder how far time-of-use plans and smart meters can really go if we're still relying on an energy system that was built in the 1960s (or before).

In March the Federal Communications Commission released its 377-page National Broadband Plan, outlining telecommunications policies that would "advance consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety and homeland security, community development, health care delivery, energy independence and efficiency, education, worker training, private sector investment, entrepreneurial activity, job creation and economic growth, and other national purposes."

The federal government has clearly put a lot of stock in the power of broadband.  The FCC called it "the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century."  In an effort to meet that challenge, and to create jobs, the stimulus bill Congress passed last year allocated $7.2 billion to bringing high-speed Internet access to unserved (and under-served) areas.  The week before last the President announced his latest round of grants, $795 million for 66 projects expected to create 5,000 new jobs.

I was shopping at Lowe's last weekend and overheard this conversation in the washer and dryer department:

Lowe's salesperson: "Another benefit of the front-load washers is that they use dramatically less water than traditional top loaders do."

Shopper: "Yes, but water is cheap.  These washers are expensive."

But it's true, right?  For the most part, the money we pay to the water company covers treatment and conveyance costs - the cost of the actual resource is, depending on where you're getting it from, relatively small.

Herb Guenther, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, has often said that the era of cheap water in Arizona is over.  It's a wise sentiment, and I think that it's high time the era of cheap water in Arizona was over, but is it really?  Have Arizonan water companies really changed the way they price their water for retail consumption?  Have consumers really changed the way they use it?  We're beginning to make some progress by implementing more increasing block rate structures.  With these rates, as usage hits a specified threshold, the per unit price of water rises for the next block of water usage. 

I've been blogging a lot lately about the importance of innovation - and government support for it - in securing Arizona's competitive position in a new global economy.  (See WANTED: 100,000 Innovators in 100,000 Garages and Does China's Rise Spell America's Decline? and Is Energy Technology Our Last Chance? and A New Recipe for Job Creation in Arizona.) 

So I was thrilled last week to read this headline on the Arizona Republic's opinion page: "State should back real moneymaker."  The article was about Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz) and its role as a tool to get the " jobs, startup companies and bright ideas to drive new businesses" that Arizona needs.

What does the SFAz do?

According to the Science Foundation Arizona website: "Arizonans want a strong economy, a good education system, and the availability of high-quality, high-paying jobs.  Science Foundation Arizona was formed as a public/private partnership to help with exactly that." 

A report from the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice released last month, cites the direct impacts from SFAz programs as including: