Northwestern's Lynne Kiesling weighs in on the Maryland PSC's decision to reject smart meters. I missed this when she posted a few weeks ago. Some highlights:

If the regulatory institutions and the regulatory culture constrain the electricity value proposition to the provision of generic service to the exclusion of other product/service/pricing bundles, and if they constrain the business model to one of cost recovery instead of value creation, then the regulators will reject the types of projects that are most likely to create value for consumers and entrepreneurial producers.

And:

You [the electricity regulator], therefore, believe that your power to control is a salutary intervention, even though the dynamism of economic and technological change are proving you wrong on a daily basis. So you make decisions that reinforce your power and control, believing them to be in the best interest of consumers while you deprive those same consumers of the opportunity to make their own autonomous choices.

And:

But in the time that I have been involved in regulation, and in debates over smart grid investments and policy, it is abundantly clear that Mancur Olson was correct, and that regulation actually represents the interests of easily identifiable, politically active interests, not the interests of consumers as a whole. On the consumer side, this means that decisions get made frequently based on the organized, coordinated political actions of so-called consumer advocates (who really represent low-income consumers, not all consumers) and groups like the AARP, who perceive their interests as being best served by the perpetuation of the traditional regulatory model — generic service provided at high reliability, controlling price through strict cost recovery.