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Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

Don't worry about the utility companies - they're already looking for ways to monitize you even more.

At ReInvent, there was actually a utility mouthpiece touting how they were interfacing with Salesforce to make more money out of you by running deep learning on everything they know about you to create proactive and individualized "sales opportunities".

"Your refrigerator/TV/hot water heater seems to be inefficient. We're offering a sale on those right now..."

"You appear to have a water leak. Want us to send out a technician to do a full workup?"

"Hey, you seem to really like American Football. Want to buy these three premium channels that offers even more?"

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Lol, I'll believe it when I see them execute on this strategy. Utility companies are not known for employing talented innovative thinkers, those people tend to flock to opportunities in other industries.

It sounds to me like Salesforce was able to sell this utility on an a vision that the utility is unlikely to execute on.

> Utility companies are not known for employing talented innovative thinkers

Enron ring a bell? Granted that wasn't actual innovation but you can't deny them a certain amount of creativity in the bookkeeping department.

> Lol, I'll believe it when I see them execute on this strategy.

Some are, already, executing on some form of this strategy.

My residential electricity supplier sent around letters last year to every account offering what amounted to "water pipe insurance". Mind you, this was the "electric company", offering "water pipe insurance" but the deal was that for some "low monthly payment" amount (I forget now how much) they would cover the costs of fixing a leak between the locality water meter (installed street-side) and the pipe that entered through the wall into my basement to supply the house.

The letter was full of scary sounding things that /might/ happen, and of the huge sums of money a leak might cost to repair, should one occur (this figure I have some recollection of, their claim was that it was on the order of $3,000-$4,000 to repair).

I read it over, scoffed at most of their scare tactics, and recycle binned the letter. But I did wonder just how many folks would ultimately sign up for the "insurance".

The reason that pipe is particularly dangerous is because it is before your house pressure regulator (so it is at mains pressure) but you are still responsible for it. In addition, it is the most prone to failure as your house settles independently of the mains. But yea, like any insurance, if you can afford the $3-4k of repairs without having to skip meals, you probably don't need it.

Edit to add: my source is that this happened to me, it was enormously expensive to repair. I still wouldn't get this insurance though.

#1 and #2 are already out to consumers in my local market.

At odds with this: Our local utility subsidizes efficient bulbs and appliances.

You should ask the question: Why?

Are they a cooperative who has the interests of its own users above profit? Are they receiving money from another entity to do it? Were they forced to do so in order to maintain their monopoly?

And if it's none of the above - it's just good people - then that's f'ing awesome. I wish more were like that.

It's cheaper to subsidize energy efficiency than it is to build additional transmission and generation capacity.

It's a municipal utility chartered to serve the public not profit from them. And they don't want to make risky massive capital expenditures on another discrete block of capacity.

Mine does this as well. They do it because they've convinced their regulator to let them raise prices in exchange for doing it.

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