California Utilities to Control Thermostats?

TeraBill writes "It seems that the California Energy Commission is looking to give utilities in the state the power to control the thermostats in private homes via a radio signal. The idea is that during times of significant energy crunch, the utilities could force thermostats to higher temperatures rather than having to implement a rolling blackout. The thermostats have been around for a while and new ones were on display at the CES show in Vegas this week. While I can see the argument for it, we just had a kid take over a tram system with a remote control, so how long before our thermostat gets hacked by the neighbors. And I'd almost rather have the power drop than have someone significantly raise the temperature in my home if I had a computer running there. (UPS and a graceful shutdown versus cooking something.)"

Comments

Reasonable idea

[kinabrew]

This seems like a reasonable idea if there's not enough power to go around.

If you want to make your computer shut down when the temperature gets too hot, you could probably rig something up.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very old technology here in Canterbury New Zealand where the power companies have controlled water heating during the morning and evening peaks. It was done by injecting audio tones into the mains supply. The technology actually originated in WW2 in London to control the air-raid sirens.

Re:Reasonable idea

[risinganger]

At least that should be harder for an external person to tamper with than a wireless version. Seriously... they can't see the problems with doing this with a radio signal???

Re:Reasonable idea

[caitriona81]

Here's an idea. Instead of the current typical 200amp service, everybody gets a 20amp service that is "always on", and a 200 amp service that's subject to rolling blackouts. That gives consumers the power to choose what loads will be shit down. It would be a little more complex for metering, but, much more effective, and easier to "convince" homeowners to retrofit. (Look... we can give you SOME power that doesn't go out...).

Re:Reasonable idea

[Seumas]

No, this is a terrible idea.

If there's not enough power to go around, build up the infrastructure. I pay for a service. You provide it. How many decades do you have to suffer poor infrastructure problems before you finally start investing in it? How the hell do you run a business (and it is) by providing only what your current systems can handle and to hell with a growing demand for those services in the future? Imagine if the phone company had decided that, instead of requiring you to dial the area code every time you make a call, they had simply said "sorry, no more phone lines!" and decided not to invest in any sort of build-out whatsoever?

This whole "oh my god, not enough power" thing is fine for a year or two, when it catches you off guard. Its' quite another more than a decade later.

Re:Reasonable idea

[knghtrider]

>If there's not enough power to go around, build up the infrastructure.

The power generation infrastructure suffers from too much 'NIMBY'. I lived in Indiana for years, and during the 90's; Duke power wanted to build several 'Peak Power' generation plants fired by Natural Gas. Every time they tried to get permits, the 'NIMBY' (Not In My Back Yard) crowd showed up and whined to the elected officials. Naturally, fearing a loss of votes elected officials caved.

California is in much the same state; They haven't been able to build a power plant (thanks to the NIMBY's) for at least 2 decades. Now, they are suffering for it. Back in 2001, the DOE estimated that the US would need around 1900 power plants built by the year 2021. Yes, they've built wind farms, but now they're finding that the Wind Farms are killing Raptors and causing infestations of rats. http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=18447

There is no easy answer--Conservation by us will help some, but ultimately we need clean, cheap power. On NUMB3RS last night, they were looking at putting up Solar Panels on Charlies house; which on a nice bright sunny day would generate more than what they used. IIRC, they were looking at some really cutting edge technology stuff. Currently, the break even point is about 12-18 years, but this company looks really promising. http://www.news.com/greentech/8301-11128_3-9835241-54.html?tag=nefd.top At their cost of $1/watt it cuts the break even by as much as 66%.

Re:Reasonable idea

[DigitAl56K]

Here's another idea: Create some competition to SDGE, and the first time they start turning off my A/C during the summer watch me switch to a new provider who builds an infrastructure that can keep up with demand and is willing to provide the energy I pay for.

Re:Reasonable idea

[arivanov]

Makes quite a lot of sense. It will require rewiring most homes though.

Re:Reasonable idea

[raju1kabir]

If you want to make your computer shut down when the temperature gets too hot, you could probably rig something up.

I doubt it's even necessary.

Where I live it's 90F and 85+% humidity 365 days a year, and I absolutely never use air conditioning. Just leave the windows open and turn on a ceiling fan and it's perfectly nice. If I am leaving my computer on while I go out during the hottest part of the day, I leave a desk fan (on low setting) pointed at it, and it's never overheated yet.

Not many people live in parts of California that need aircon. Bakersfield, Fresno? Sure. But the real population centres just aren't very warm places.

Re:Reasonable idea

[TheGratefulNet]

very similar to how offices are frequently wired. one AC outlet (often different color) is the UPS feed and the other is regular 'house current'. you put the CRT display on house current and the cpu and drives (etc) on the UPS backed-up circuit.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Angostura]

Instead of rewiring entire houses, howabout smart sockets/plugs that can respond to remote signals.

Re:Reasonable idea

[hjf]

Where I live it's often 42C and my server stays in a storage room (under a tin roof, with foam insulation that doesn't seem to do anything). It has an athlon64 and 4 500GB drives (ZFS array). The only time it shut down was when the chipset fan failed and the BIOS detected the overheating and shut down the machine. Sure, the case has 120mm fans and all but they're just pumping warm air.

The OP is stupid and obviously has never been inside a data center. They're much warmer than your average house. Indeed, they're so warm it makes you think the air conditioning is off. But the internet doesn't fry because of the heat. CPUs run nicely even at 60C. Hell, silicon devices are usually rated for 125C, and well-designed equipment uses at least 45C ambient temperature for calculations, and not the usual 25C. And by the way, my Athlon64 x2 with powernow (or whatever it's called) turned on stays at room temperature (!) when idle and no more than 10-15C higher when under load.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Kierthos]

Unless, of course, you're not using A/C regulated by one of these provided thermostats... you know, like a window-mounted a/c unit? Because lord knows, none of those are made outside of California's purview...

Re:Reasonable idea

[pjbaldes]

quote: And I'd almost rather have the power drop than have someone significantly raise the temperature in my home if I had a computer running there. (UPS and a graceful shutdown versus cooking something.) /quote gimme a break, they are no going to turn the heat on in your house..... we are talking a few degrees here. granted, I do not like the idea of someone else futzing with my thermostat, but to use computer overheating as a reason against it really irks me.

Re:Reasonable idea

[moosesocks]

Entire houses wouldn't have to be rewired, and "Smart sockets" would in all likelihood be unreliable, prone to hacks/abuse, expensive, and impossible to enforce.

Instead, a more reasonable solution would be to supply three-phase power to homes, and to split the three phases off at the main breaker/distribution box. A hypothetical arrangement of phases would be

1) Permanent lighting, and other "essential" devices (eg. life-critical medical equipment, and other things that should already have a battery backup).
2) Socketed outlets, low-current appliances, refrigerators.
3) Air-conditioning, other high-current/nonessential appliances, electric car chargers (we can dream, can't we?) ...in order of decreasing importance. For any home that's reasonably up-to-spec, and was wired by an electrician with half a brain, this could easily be implemented with the addition of a transformer box, and re-patching the main distribution box accordingly.

Multi-phase power is already in extensive use at commercial and industrial sites, and is a proven technology that never really found its way into household use (mainly for lack of need). If you'll also notice, only Phase II devices above would really require "clean" power. A/C compressors should respond gracefully to drops in voltage, and lighting can always be dimmed without worrying about damaging equipment.

On the other hand, in NYC, Con Edison has a semi-automated system for alerting customers of possible shortages, and advising them to shut down non-critical cooling and lighting operations. Supposedly, compliance has been high, and the program a success (although such a program would probably only work in a large city). Back when I worked in NYC, losing A/C in the afternoon, wasn't even all that bad as long as we turned off extra lighting, and powered down other unnecessary equipment. By the time the residual "coolness" from the morning wore off, and things started to get uncomfortable, it was time to call it quits. Dress-code restrictions were also relaxed, and we had the option to "shift" our hours earlier.

Re:Reasonable idea

[ArcherB]

This seems like a reasonable idea if there's not enough power to go around. No, a reasonable idea would be to raise prices to reduce demand until you can build some friggin power plants! This is what happens when you dick with the free market, it stops working!

Re:Reasonable idea

[ScrewMaster]

California's problem is much like the problem we're having with high crude prices: profiteering on the part of U.S. speculators. In both cases, the rest of us are being screwed over so a relatively few people can make out like bandits (because that's what they are.)

Re:Reasonable idea

[ultranova]

Here's an idea. Instead of the current typical 200amp service, everybody gets a 20amp service that is "always on", and a 200 amp service that's subject to rolling blackouts.

200 amps ? At 110 volts, that is 22000 Watts. My parent's house, which is rather large and located near the arctic circle and uses electricity for heating, makes do with 10000 Watt connection. So, I'd like to ask: just what the heck are you doing with that much power ? Nuclear research ?

Re:Reasonable idea

[goaliemn]

Here, in Minnesota, I have this already in my house. Hooked up to my air conditioner is a relay that the power company can shut down during peak usage time. I get a discount on my bill for having it (10 or 15% during the summer) and they only shut it off for a maximum of 15 minutes at a time, no more than once every 2 hours, so it doesn't have any major impact on the temp of my house.

Re:Reasonable idea

[NetSettler]

Here's an idea. Instead of the current typical 200amp service, everybody gets a 20amp service that is "always on", and a 200 amp service that's subject to rolling blackouts.

I like this suggestion in principle, though some refinement is probably in order. Here are a few issues that occurred to me:

I have to believe there could come cases where someone was doing some important thing on an emergency basis and didn't get the power to do it. If they'd been ordinarily conservative, and if the system knew that, I could see allowing an exception. So perhaps a bank of credits for conserving energy overall would be good. This is why, by the way, people have suggested just using money as the basis tends to do the right thing.

I also worry with your proposal about the issue of what constitutes a location that would be entitled to this fixed item. Having it be people-based would almost be better than having it be location-based. If I have a house that has 10 people living in it, would I not need ten people worth of A/C or are we expected to huddle in one room? If someone has a mansion that can house 100 but has only one person in it, how much does that get? If a person can classify part or all of their house as an office, can they exclude themselves from the limit? Or do they get separate allocations of dedicated power for their home and their office?

Gerrymandering the way the required energy is divvied up sounds like a task in itself. That doesn't mean the plan is unworkable. But it may not be as simple or as uncontroversial as it sounds at first blush. Alas. That's probably the main reason people point to the option of using money to mediate the decision--it allows everyone to spend their money in different ways, and at different times. But to the extent that there is some life-support threshold below which perhaps we should say one can't go, this still has some merit.

Re:Reasonable idea

[yabos]

I can think of one drawback which is premature wear on the compressor contactors. It's not that good to have them keep going on and off because of the initial arcing which causes a lot of wear already. That plus short cycling the compressor is not good for the air conditioning system.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Ucklak]

My AC uses more than 20 amps.

Re:Reasonable idea

[goaliemn]

its approved by the air conditioning companies. It hooks into the air conditioner, not just a relay on the power line. Its not a 100% power cut off.

Re:Reasonable idea

[loshwomp]

Here's an idea. Instead of the current typical 200amp service, everybody gets a 20amp service that is "always on", and a 200 amp service that's subject to rolling blackouts. That gives consumers the power to choose what loads will be shit down. It would be a little more complex for metering, but, much more effective, and easier to "convince" homeowners to retrofit. (Look... we can give you SOME power that doesn't go out...).

You're just proposing a less-effective version of the solution proposed in TFA. Utility companies will be able to provide optional control of major appliances, e.g. heating/cooling, water heaters, electric vehicles. Consumers will have the power to to decide which of these devices will shed loads. Compared to your solution, this requires no "complex metering", no rewiring of the house, no blackouts (or 90% blackouts), AND you'll get a discount in addition for participating in the program.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Sancho]

its approved by the air conditioning companies. You mean that it's ok because it's approved by the people you'll buy a new unit from when your old one dies?

Re:Reasonable idea

[Sancho]

I have to believe there could come cases where someone was doing some important thing on an emergency basis and didn't get the power to do it. If they'd been ordinarily conservative, and if the system knew that, I could see allowing an exception. So perhaps a bank of credits for conserving energy overall would be good. This is why, by the way, people have suggested just using money as the basis tends to do the right thing. I have to wonder why everyone's trying to put a band-aid on the problem.

Here's a wacky idea--build a nuclear plant or two, and provide the energy that people are demanding.

Re:Reasonable idea

[loshwomp]

why don't we build a few more nuclear power plants to handle the excessive load required by modern technology?

Because nuclear is inappropriate for peaking loads. Nuclear is great for baseline generation; it's best utilized by running 24 hours/day.

We may need more generation, but adding generation of any kind is a poor solution to the problem in TFA (high peak loads), because it has high costs: You have to build the additional generation and transmission capacity even though you only need to use it for a few hours per day. Load shifting (automatic load shedding) actually saves you money by moving energy use away from the peaks, meaning the existing infrastructure can have higher overall utilization.

There is no question that we'll need to expand infrastructure, too -- there's no single solution, here -- but that's a different problem that has nothing to do with TFA.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Versed]

Hows this, I decide what my thermastate is, not the power authority, not the state. Talk abuot Big Brother, now they want to reach into my home and decide for me how warm or cold my home is. Let them start elsewhere to save power, or better yet, build power plants. If some bozo ISP decide that they wanted to control your computer over the internet, or decide what you view on your browser, people here would be having strokes complaining. Just can't understand how they can think invading one's home is any better?

Re:Reasonable idea

[goaliemn]

Actually, I did more research. It splices into the thermostat control line, so it looks like the thermostat is telling it the house is cooled down.

"IS THERE A DANGER THAT SAVER'S SWITCH WILL
DAMAGE MY AIR CONDITIONER?
No,because the Saver's Switch device controls like a thermostat it will not
damage your air conditioner or compressor"

Re:Reasonable idea

[loshwomp]

Here's another idea: Create some competition to SDGE, and the first time they start turning off my A/C during the summer watch me switch to a new provider who builds an infrastructure that can keep up with demand and is willing to provide the energy I pay for.

This is the sort of naive, knee-jerk reaction that makes sense when you don't understand how the grid works.

Yes, of course we can build more infrastructure, and we may have to, but that's not what TFA is about. TFA is about a solution to high peak loads. Building more infrastructure (generation and transmission) is an expensive solution, especially when you only need it for a few hours per day.

Automatic load shedding, on the other hand (the solution proposed in TFA) moves energy use away from the peaks, allowing greater overall utilization of the existing infrastructure. There are pilot programs in many places already, and you will pay lower rates for your (voluntary) participation. It's very unlikely that you'll ever be forced to participate in such a program against your will.

Re:Reasonable idea

[JaredOfEuropa]

This seems like a reasonable idea if there's not enough power to go around.

It seems like a good idea, and like the reader from NZ, we in the city of Delft had water boilers that were switched on by the power company twice daily (we could switch them on ourselves, but if we let them do it they charged peanuts for the power). Note that the article mentions that this would only occur rarely, perhaps a few times a year, and probably not for hours on end either.

But the potential danger is that power companies will see this as an excuse to cut investment in the grid and generating capacity even further, much like government opened up "peak hour lanes" (i.e. the hard shoulder) on our freeways instead of adding proper lanes or new roads. These solutions squeeze a few extra percent of the total theoretical capacity out of the system, and they appear to work a treat... until you hit the limit again. And the crunch will be much, much worse then.

Re:Reasonable idea

[aurispector]

Hear, hear! Some of the other ideas are ok- getting a discount for adding a relay, etc., so long as there is a payback for lack of service, however none of them address the root of the problem. Where I live, the utilities have an agreement with some local high-consumption industrial facilities to shut down during peak consumption times like heat waves. No further measures have been needed.

What I just can not believe is that people are actually putting up with the kind of bullshit they are shoveling in California. Why aren't they screaming to get more power plants built? Why aren't folks putting up solar panels and selling the excess back to the grid? Anything to increase the supply. It's one thing to be willing to pay for electricity, it's another to put up with insufficient supply.

Re:Reasonable idea

[pixiepaws]

Another solution how about having the nuke capacity for peak load and during the the down times generate hydrogen to fuel carss and such likee

Re:Reasonable idea

[Animats]

Instead of the current typical 200amp service, everybody gets a 20amp service that is "always on", and a 200 amp service that's subject to rolling blackouts.

Israel had something like that several decades ago. Houses had two meters, with different rates, and the power company could turn off the cheaper supply during peak periods.

Re:Reasonable idea

[mikerubin]

I think thats a fantastic idea - especially if they secured (protected) the always-on service against weather. Here in New England it would be great to be able to depend on the heating system in a power failure and not just rely on the wood/coal stove

Re:Reasonable idea

[Sancho]

My response was mostly tongue-in-cheek, anyway, but it's good to know that this is how it works. As long as you've got a modern air-conditioner, everything should be fine.

Re:Reasonable idea

[visigoth]

Bingo. Not too different, either, from a big contributor to obscene property prices in some areas: real estate speculators, people who buy up all the properties they can in order to 'flip them'; enough iterations of this and prices are out of sight of the rest of us.

A number of years ago energy distribution was 'deregulated' here in California, with much hype about "increased choices to the consumer means better value". Something like 300 providers were to supply energy to CA's grid. The result was, of course, higher prices, fueled by providers who when they saw big demand increases jacked prices up by orders of magnitude -- Enron, among others, was connected with this. The resulting blackouts and some bad high-level purchasing decisions (so no, the blame was not entirely on the part of the providers!) eventually cost the then-governor his job.

Not that anything was really fixed; with a moratorium on nuclear plant construction -- another decision demonstrating an astounding lack of foresight -- utilities look for band-aids like the remote control thermostat proposal which could just as easily be used as a form of 'demand clipping' to push back on energy providers' price increases.

Speculation, and other mechanisms of abusing markets -- whether energy in any of its forms, real estate, or (gosh!) mortgage credit -- for short-term gain, really amount to nothing more than rape. A few benefit at the expense of the rest of us.

Re:Reasonable idea

[geoskd]

200 amps ? At 110 volts, that is 22000 Watts. My parent's house, which is rather large and located near the arctic circle and uses electricity for heating, makes do with 10000 Watt connection. So, I'd like to ask: just what the heck are you doing with that much power ? Nuclear research ?
Typical Electric Dryer: 2.5 kwatts peak load
Typical Electric oven: 4.5 kwatts peak load (all burners and oven on at once
Typical Dishwasher: 500 watts peak load
Typical microwave oven: 1 kwatt peak load
Typical Desktop comp: 350 watts peak load
Typical Laptop: 200 watts peak load
Typical home stereo: 300 watts peak load
Portable space heater: 1 kwatt peak load
Electric water heater: 2.5 kwatts peak load

If you add all that up, its gets big in a hurry, and that doesn't even count the lights. The basic design of a household system should be that everything that is plugged in and used under normal circumstances can be turned on without blowing breakers. The idea of the breakers isn't to limit power usage, its to prevent fires. Any good engineer will tell you to maintain at least a 50% margin to cover the unexpected, as well as future growth, so 22 kwatts really isn't that much. When electric cars become mainstream, most houses will require a 500 Amp service to provide all the service a household will require, but that doesn't mean that people will draw 500 amps continuous, they will have that capability in a pinch though.

Most homes use about 300 kwatt-hours of power every month. This translates to 10 kwatt hours / day, or 416 watts average draw. You can see that this is a far cry from the 22 kwatts available, but the system has to be designed to handle peak use, not just continuous use.

-=Geoskd

Re:Reasonable idea

[caitriona81]

Time-of-use rates kindof do this - encouraging cutbacks at peak times. Most power companies that do this offer this as an option, so adoption has probably been slower than expected. Basically, the way it works, the power company installs a meter that records not only power consumption, but when that consumption occurs. In exchange for allowing the power company to meter usage in this manner, the customer gets a sharply discounted rate during off-peak hours. However, during on-peak hours, rates are significantly higher. The utility companies, with the consent of regulators, could make these rates mandatory. The resulting jumps from say, $0.08/KwH to, $0.75/KwH or more would probably encourage enough "voluntary" cutbacks to allow time for a long term solution.

Re:Reasonable idea

[trum4n]

Just make more power! DUH. HOW STUPID ARE THESE PEOPLE. If they have the funding to do this wireless shit, i'm sure they can slap a few solar panels on houses to relieve the load problems. But i guess that makes too much sense. The American way is just make everybody's life harder so the profit margin goes up. Electricity is VERY easy to make, i make it myself (4kw). I don't understand how the whole west coast can't make it. IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!

Re:Reasonable idea

[Waffle Iron]

I can think of one drawback which is premature wear on the compressor contactors.

Well, I'm in a similar program. I get a small discount on rates, and the power company is supposed to pay me a few bucks each time they cut power to my A/C unit. In six years, they have yet to cut the power even a single time, so I don't think that the compressor wear issue will be much of a problem for me.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Jerry Beasters]

How about this? I use as much power as I can pay for, and if the company doesn't have the infrastructure to handle it that's their problem, and I should have the right to sue them for it. They don't have the right to change anything physically in my private domain.

Re:Reasonable idea

[scottv67]

This seems like a reasonable idea if there's not enough power to go around.

We already have this in Wisconsin. My AC compressor is connected to a box that is controlled by We Energies. If the electrical demand gets too high for We Energies in the summer, they can turn off my AC compressor via remote control. I get a $12.50 credit during the summer months for this "feature" (whether We Energies activates it or not).

[I tried to copy-and-paste the rates from the We Energies web page but the Slashdick lameness filter will not let me include that info. If you are interested in the details of the plan, please view the PDF on the We Energies website: http://www.weenergies.com/pdfs/etariffs/wisconsin/ewi_sheet21-22.pdf Please refer to the section labeled "Central Air Conditioning Load Management Credit"]

The remote control unit from We Energies controls only the AC compressor, not the fan on my furnace. I can still run the furnace fan to circulate the air inside the house if We Energies sends the signal to cut the power. I am not home during the day (the time when We Energies would disable my AC) so I wouldn't notice if they sent the signal. The house might be a little warmer when I got home (if the AC compressor was off for six hours on a very hot day - the most extreme case) but that's not a huge deal to me. As long as the AC can run at night to cool the house down enough for me to sleep, that's fine by me.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Cromac]

HOW STUPID ARE THESE PEOPLE.

IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!

It is California afterall. And they wonder why people in other states don't want Californians moving in - we don't want them doing to our states what they did to CA! We don't want them passing the same laws or electing the same kind of officials here that they did there.

Re:Reasonable idea

[peas_n_carrots]

Austin Energy (Austin TX) has been doing this for years. They offer incentives for people who voluntarily sign up to have their AC cycled during peak summer days. By reducing peak demand in the summer, which has the highest energy usage spikes, they have been able to avoid building yet another coal/oil-fired power plant. This reduces their costs and reduces customers' electricity bills. In fact, Austin Energy customers pay some of the lowest rates in the state.

All the alarmists crying about their AC being "turned off" haven't a clue about how this works. Even without AC cycling, the AC unit doesn't stay on constantly (not for 99.9% of households). Instead, the AC runs for a while, then shuts off when the set temperature has been reached. As the temperature rises, the AC kicks in to push the temperature back down. There's a small range that the thermostat allows the temperature to play in so that the AC doesn't constantly turn on & off. In engineering it's called hysteresis. Usually the AC kicks in every ~30 minutes, depending on the temperature differential with the outside and how well insulated the structure is. The energy company uses the thermostats to stagger these cycles so that the AC units in peoples' houses don't kick on all at once.
A simplified example: say there are 300 houses running their AC in the middle of the day. Without AC cycling, all 300 of them can kick in from 2-2:30pm and cause a huge spike in power demand.
With AC cycing, 100 go on from 2:00-2:10, another 100 go on @ 2:10-2:20, and the final 100 run from 2:20-2:30. The cycle then repeats. This is transparent to the homeowner and has little or no impact on the set temperature (1/2 a degree variance, perhaps). This is a simple example to give you an idea of what can happen, don't take it as gospel on how the system actually works on a large scale. The power company has a pool of tens or hundreds of thousands of customers, so their cycling pattern is undoubtedly much more complicated.

Look people, if we want to be smarter about our energy and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, we need to take measures like this. This buys us time to implement better methods of extracting renewable energy. Sophomoric and overprotective statements like "don't touch my AC" are based on ignorance. Understand the technology and how it really affects you before crying foul.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Easterner38.9]

A little too much hyperventilation going on here. The California approach involves use of smart meters and will be a voluntary program, most likely involving a peak time rebate, as opposed to critical peak pricing. The basic idea is to use market forces to encourage conservation during peak periods, which is critical given that 50% of the utility infrastructure investment covers the top 5% of the demand, and investment in the grid and in power generation is politically unpopular (NIMBY anyone?). And this is not limited to California -- the three large electric utilities there, PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E, are at the vanguard of electric utility investment in more intelligence in both the meters and the grid as a whole. There are many North American utilities following suit, as well as utilities in France, Australia and other countries moving forward with similar programs. The good news from all of this is that it not only encourages conservation, but also provides the basic infrastructure to permit the selling of power back to the grid as distributed generation (e.g. solar) becomes more of a reality in the foreseeable future, especially as the price/KW drops and incentives such as Schwarzenegger's solar tax credits come online. The posters concerned with the security of this whole setup are rightly concerned and not alone. The risks and challenges regarding adequate protection of the wireless communications two-way communications between the meters and the utility are acknowledged and are the subject of utility industry/meter vendor consortiums. At this time there certainly are risks, but there is a lot of pressure on the vendors to get this right and to do so soon.

Re:Reasonable idea

[stonecypher]

Why aren't they screaming to get more power plants built?

They are. It's NIMBY syndrome. Everyone wants the voltage, but nobody wants to live near a power plant. The coal fumes or the nuclear risk or the whatever's wrong with gas are all too scary. That's why the state has its solar programs: after state-run rebates, you can get solar basically for free. Why? Because people will actually do it. Don't get me wrong, I hate SDG&E with a passion. But, the infrstructure problem isn't their fault. They'd be selling more power if they could; it'd make their pockets fatter, don't forget. The problem is that you get four Californians together, and they can't agree on a set of three options. They get hit with all sorts of power problems, so they get amateur-activist and learn a quarter of the story. They won't fucking compromise with each other on energy, because each of them knows a different quarter - this guy wants solar, that guy wants nuclear, this other guy wants sugar beet ethanol, someone else wants wind and geothermal, none of them know a damn thing about the options they didn't choose, and none of them are willing to budge an inch.

My across the hall neighbor in my San Diego condominium was convinced that nuclear power contributed to global warming, so he was certain we all had to build big wind farms on all our buildings, like that'd even provide enough juice to clean up all the bird corpses.

The major problem with California's energy situation is that for this topic, its activism level is significantly above its education level. Therefore, it's pulling in eight directions at once, and getting nowhere.

Re:Reasonable idea

[stonecypher]

The problem is that the price of action is well beyond the means of the poor, who are the people most vulnerable in weather situations. The free market is great for most things, but you can't sic it on life giving fundamentals like the food or energy supplies.

Re:Reasonable idea

[CastrTroy]

Do you really need air conditioning? What do you think they did a hundred years ago? Air conditioning is a comfort thing. You don't need it. Just drink some more water.

Re:Reasonable idea

[GaryOlson]

..a more reasonable solution would be to supply three-phase power to homes...

Reasonable, yes. But fraught with other hazards. Most industrial machinery requires 3-phase power to operate. I really don't want to provide methods for less scrupulous individuals to start industrial activity in residential areas. Converters do exist to provide 3-phase power from single phase source; but the efficiency makes them cost prohibitive for normal operations.

I would love to have an industrial, manual 5-axis vertical machine tool in my garage -- because I am a professional machinist. Would you really want your residential neighbor to have an industrial 3-phase welder? Would your insurance company?

Re:Reasonable idea

[rothic]

Do you really need air conditioning? What do you think they did a hundred years ago? Air conditioning is a comfort thing. You don't need it. Just drink some more water.

No thanks. I pay for electricity, and I want what I pay for. If they need to build more facilities and raise the prices during peak hours, that's fine.

Re:Reasonable idea

[bitingduck]

LA can get pretty toasty (105+F) for a week or two out of the year, but how hot it is inside depends a lot on hour your house is made. In 11 years here I've never had a whole house AC, and only used room AC for a few nights (the AC was one of the rooms in the house I was renting).

Vaulted ceilings (only a few inches of wood, sometimes some foam, and shingles between the inside and outside) can turn a house into an oven pretty quickly, but a space in between can improve things a lot. One place I lived had an upstairs that we didn't use much in the summer. Though we had some undergrads stay there for a few months one summer and they never used the AC either.

I'm currently in a place with vaulted ceilings, but it's well designed for the environment, with several large oak trees shading most of the roof and a concrete slab floor for about half the house. It's generally quite a bit cooler in the house than at the street, and with a whole house roof fan and some big windows I can vent the heat of the day (which is rarely even that hot) in a few minutes as soon as the sun goes down. My electric bills are pretty uniform year round.

More trees and a little more thought in construction and/or use could reduce peak loads a lot at pretty moderate cost. The thermostats are a good start and can really be a low impact on users-- increasing the setpoint during the hottest part of the day will reduce the load without causing much, if any, discomfort for a large number of people, rather than blacking people out with much greater impact on a possibly smaller number of people.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Fastolfe]

The choice is there, in the hands of the people. If you would prefer rolling blackouts to something that automatically raises your thermostat temperature by a couple of degrees, that's a perfectly legitimate position and one that you and your community should be able to push for. But until we have the switching equipment necessary to allow apartment dwellers to make that decision individually, it needs to be made at a community level.

Given the choice, in an emergency situation where I'd have to choose between rolling blackouts and a modest increase in the temperature of my apartment, I would choose the temperature increase.

Maybe it needs to be approached like this: The utility offers, free of charge, "upgrades" to thermostats and other switches, that allows the utility to send out these "pages" to start rationing. You're free to override that or not install these devices in the first place. If the rationing is insufficient, rolling blackouts start. Communities that elect to push strongly for adoption and use of these devices would benefit by having fewer (or no) rolling blackouts, while others that dig their heels into the dirt will have more. Is that enough "choice"?

Re:Reasonable idea

[Watts Martin]

No, a reasonable idea would be to raise prices to reduce demand... Here's the thing: high prices reduce demand by making consumers say, "Maybe I don't really need [now expensive item]." But with necessities, people don't say that. The electrical grid is most likely to get stressed when the majority of customers are running air conditioning or heating, sure. If you double or triple the price of power during those times, the demand isn't reduced because customers are saying "I guess I don't need to be cool on this day when it's 105 in the shade after all." The demand will be reduced because the poorest customers won't be able to afford their power bills. This has very different implications than raising prices on a luxury item.

This is what happens when you dick with the free market, it stops working! Perhaps, but it's important to recognize that a completely unregulated market matches supply and demand based on who can afford a product or service, and who can afford is not the same as who needs. I know free marketeers start screaming "central planning outcast unclean!" whenever someone uses the word "need" in an economic context, but in a social context, ignoring the difference between affordability and necessity is perilous.

(I should note that I'm not advocating the plan to have the utilities control thermostats, not by government mandate. The idea of allowing consumers to voluntarily put such a thermostat in their home in exchange for a rebate of some kind doesn't sound so unreasonable. Obviously, increasing the generation capacity of the grid is also important, but it's not an either/or situation.)

Re:Reasonable idea

[TClevenger]

If it was your grandmother, she died. Air conditioning is a comfort thing when it's 80 outside, but it's a necessity when it's 107. Guess when it puts the most strain on the grid? Hint: it's not when it's 80.

Re:Reasonable idea

[TClevenger]

Maybe it needs to be approached like this: The utility offers, free of charge, "upgrades" to thermostats and other switches, that allows the utility to send out these "pages" to start rationing.

I believe they're planning to do it like they do for industry. You install this rationing thermostat, and they give you a lower rate in exchange for the ability to turn up/off your A/C when the grid is critical.

I worked for a Nestle warehouse that had this exact setup. PG&E had the option to automatically force the entire plant to their generators when the grid was critical, and in exchange, they paid lower rates. In fact, PG&E even installed a printer that would print out warnings when a blackout was probable so nobody was surprised by it.

Re:Reasonable idea

[sadler121]

If it was as simple as the power company offering a discount to those who installed this, then I wouldn't be alarmed. The problem is that the People's Republic of California has decided to enforce this by law. Leaving you with no choice but to comply.

Re:Reasonable idea

[datadigger]

My AC uses more than 20 amps.

Close the windows, please.

Re:Reasonable idea

[song-of-the-pogo]

Why aren't folks putting up solar panels and selling the excess back to the grid?

see micheas' post here:

In California If you produce more electricity than your use from the solar panels on your house you not only don't get to sell your excess electricity at wholesale rates you just get credits that expire on your anniversary of having net metering.

incredible.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Kymermosst]

Look people, if we want to be smarter about our energy and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, we need to take measures like this. This buys us time to implement better methods of extracting renewable energy. Sophomoric and overprotective statements like "don't touch my AC" are based on ignorance. Understand the technology and how it really affects you before crying foul.

I have a better idea: Go fuck yourself and keep your regulations out of my home. It's already bad enough the kind of regulation that's been placed on the home. There used to be a saying: "A man's home is his castle." People like you have destroyed that concept.

Again, go fuck yourself.

(Oh, if there's a problem with supply vs. demand of electricity, here's an idea: charge more for the electricity to reduce demand!)

Re:Reasonable idea

[Goghit]

The power company here (British Columbia) tried to bring in a variation of this twenty years ago for electrically heated homes built with a "backup" heat source - wood, natural gas, whatever. The electric heating circuits were run though a second meter so they could be charged a different, supposedly cheaper rate and shut off completely if necessary. And by "shut off", I mean the power company rep would stop by with a padlock and plan to return sometime in the spring when the demand for heating power slacked off a bit. It never caught on for residential construction, in part I suspect because B.C. Hydro itself sabotaged it with changing rates. Following on your suggestion what might work would be a variation of one of the systems for using emergency power generators - wire a few "must have" circuits into a transfer switch so a generator can power them until the utility power comes back on line.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Oktober Sunset]

no, in that situation, rich people can choose, rich people can choose to pollute as much as they like and do whatever they want, and poor people get screwed over. as always.

Re:Reasonable idea

[loshwomp]

And how is deregulating energy providers which would allow competitors to build infrastructure and provide alternatives to state-run energy providers not going to solve this?

It might, and it might not, but you're confusing two issues. Even if you decide to spend money and build an entire new infrastructure, there will always be incentives to utilize it as efficiently as possible. The more you can avoid having to build generation to handle peaks that occur for 2 hours/year, the better.

A private company who chooses to invest in infrastructure in order to improve their ability to deliver power more cheaply will have to be able to provide cheaper (or comparably-priced) energy to established companies, while growing the necessary infrastructure.

Building infrastructure is part of the solution, but it's to improve reliability, not to reduce cost. Cost reductions come from better utilization of existing resources. You can't build infrastructure without raising cost, and building new infrastructure that's used for a few hours per year is the worst investment of all.

And this is the sort of naive, knee-jerk reaction that makes sense when you don't understand how government works.

Utility companies aren't operated by the government, you know. I realize that TFA (which is serious lacking in technical details) mentions mandatory adoption, but that would be so hopelessly unpopular that I can't seriously believe anyone thinks it will happen. On the other hand, pricing incentives that would necessarily accompany voluntary programs *already do* work well.

Re:Reasonable idea

[ravenshrike]

Considering the fact that the population of California continues to rise, your are going to have to install new infrastructure anyway, so you might as well bite the bullet now and build the shit. Rather than give the government any more control over your lives.

Re:Reasonable idea

[davidsyes]

Just put a portable heater near the thermostate and your AC will kick on. For pranks to freeze people in an office where I worked years ago, I would exhale one or more of the silver, square thermostats. About 20 seconds or so later the chiller/ac would start up. But, I ddin't do this ALL the time. After all, it would be the source of false maintenance visits. Putting ice cubes near the thermostat probably would work to kick the heater on.

But, if you're hell-bent on having your AC or heater on on demand, something like that might work. Until new defeats are invented, which, in an escalation, will be defeated again.

Re:Reasonable idea

[davidsyes]

Sounds like Dokter EEvuhl has reinvented a new RealDoll... Or is starting up a new...

Anal Parsons Project...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alan_Parsons_Project

Re:Reasonable idea

[pla]

no, in that situation, rich people can choose, rich people can choose to pollute as much as they like and do whatever they want, and poor people get screwed over. as always.

Give the class-warfare angle a rest, please.

Yes, we have a distribution-of-wealth problem in the world today - Just as we always have, and just as we always will. But that very inbalance means that if rich people "choose to pollute as much as they like", they at least fall into a tiny minority of the population that can afford to do so.

And keep in mind, the lower tiers of "rich people" (the majority of them) didn't get that way by throwing away money to keep their homes an extra degree or two cooler. And even if they really do choose to pay more just to carry on their wasteful habits, well, that makes them a little less rich, doesn't it?

Re:Reasonable idea

[britneys 9th husband]

California is in much the same state; They haven't been able to build a power plant (thanks to the NIMBY's) for at least 2 decades.

Not true. This power plant was built in 2005. Rolling blackouts have a way up shutting up NIMBYtards.

Re:Reasonable idea

[SuperMog2002]

Do you? I wasn't aware that any companies charged a flat rate for unlimited electricity. Where I live, I pay per kilowatt hour used. If the power it out, then I use 0 kilowatt hours, and thus pay 0 dollars.

Re:Reasonable idea

[peas_n_carrots]

Go fuck yourself and keep your regulations out of my home. It's already bad enough the kind of regulation that's been placed on the home. .. People like you have destroyed that concept.

There's a saying "let your dim light shine". Yours truly is dim. Your the "type" that has gotten us into this oil-dependent, blood-for-war quandry due to unmitigated energy wastage. Energy is not limitless, that is a fact. You want sole control of your energy, go buy a generator and do what you like. There's no law that says electricity is a right. In fact, areas which do not take conservationist measures have much higher electric rates. What's your point?

Your response is yet again another example of ignorance. The AC cycling program is voluntary in Austin. They could do the same in CA. Whatever they ultimately decide in CA is up to the politicians, who answer to the voters. That is the way the US system works. You want dictatorship, move to South America. You want anarchy, move to central Africa.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Kymermosst]

First of all, I'll apologize for the pissed-in-my-cheerios post up above. It was first thing in the morning and I had a headache. I probably should have been more awake before posting. Anyway....

We're talking about California here. Since when does any "good idea" the government dreams up get implemented on a voluntary basis in California?

Energy is not limitless, that is a fact.

For all practical purposes, solar energy is limitless. When it comes down to it, almost all energy we have on Earth except for geothermal energy originated from the Sun. Even oil was generated from the Sun supplying energy to the life forms that eventually became the oil (unless the other theory on oil is true: that the source hydrocarbons were primordial, which is a possibility).

But, there are people would rather punish the end-user of the energy. People who spend more time trying to figure out how to make me deal with rolling blackouts and/or thermostats that might let my home office get to 90 degrees without my consent or control. People who would rather spend their time dreaming up ways to control me, rather than put their creative minds at harvesting energy from the Sun.

... is up to the politicians, who answer to the voters.

Hah, if you paid attention, you'd realize that politicians only answer to voters while running for office, not while actually in office.

I stopped writing letters to my congresspeople because it is often the case they send a letter back saying they agree with me, and then vote the other way on the relevant bill. So, evidently my elected officials (Dems and Reps alike) agree with me 100% of the time, yet they don't seem to vote the way I would 100% of the time. Imagine that.

Re:Reasonable idea

[TheRaven64]

Why not generalise this idea a bit. Rather than increasing the price of electricity across the board, increase the price at peak times and transmit the current price along the power lines by modulating the AC slightly. Then, sell plug adaptors (and, later, appliances) that will automatically cut off when the price exceeds a certain amount. If you can run your high-drain appliances at off-peak times, then you get a reduced power bill.

Re:Reasonable idea

[eflores99tx]

We have a similar scheme in Austin TX. They come out and replace your old mechanical thermostat and install a programmable one for free. They don't 'control' your AC. All it does is smooth out the demand spikes by delaying the activation of your AC by up to 5 minutes, if the utility is at a certain level of capacity. I get a smarter energy saving thermostat, and the utility gets one more tool to avoid rolling blackouts.
I find it interesting to see some of the uncompromising attitudes, "I want my cheap unlimited power, gosh darnit this is America!"
Oil is now $100 barrel, it now takes $900 to purchase 1 oz of gold, our military can no longer protect the petro-dollar - we are at the cusp of a radically different reality where we must pay market price for energy with a devaluing currency - something tells me that running our air conditioning for our 5 bedroom McMansions will soon be the least of our problems.

Re:Reasonable idea

[evilviper]

Do you really need air conditioning? What do you think they did a hundred years ago?

1) They stayed the hell away from the south western US.
2) They used the evaporative cooling.
3) They had ice shipped in, and paid exorbitant fees for it.
4) The old and infirm, quite simply, died.

What do I win?

Re:Reasonable idea

[Blue_Wombat]

Yes, I have lived in a house (also in New Zealand - Wellington actually) where they had that as well - it's called "ripple control" in NZ. It is not a bad idea. Also, it's not mandatory, if you don't like it then you can connect your hot water to the supply normally and the power co can't do this. However, if you do connect using ripple control, the quid pro quo for letting them "ripple" to manage your usage at peak times is that it's metered separately and you get the power at a cheaper rate. Mostly, people had it, and it has been an unremarkable feature of the system for 30+ years.

Re:Reasonable idea

[peas_n_carrots]

For all practical purposes, solar energy is limitless.

I stand corrected. I meant to write that power is limited. While the sun's energy will be there for the next billion years, the planet's surface area is finite and limits the amount of power that we can capture from the sun. Power is the key point, because it is the rate at which energy is produced/consumed that is challenging.

Firstly, even with AC cycling, the temperature of the house will not increase to 90 degrees (unless you set the thermostat to 88 or 89 deg to begin with). I've never seen my temperature vary more than 1 degree during the summer with AC cycling. AC cycling does NOT cut off your AC in the sense of not allowing it to run. It simply adjusts the points at which the AC cuts on & off to prevent everyone's AC from sucking down power at the same time. It's a smarter way of power distribution. Are you offended that incandescent light bulbs are being phased out in favor of the more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs? Same amount of light output at a fraction of the power consumption.

Re:Reasonable idea

[ArcherB]

Here's the thing: high prices reduce demand by making consumers say, "Maybe I don't really need [now expensive item]." But with necessities, people don't say that

If it is such a necessity, then the government probably shouldn't have the power to cut it off at their will. It should be my choice to say, "Maybe I'll set the thermostat to 75 rather than 72 today and take a cold shower if I get hot." A high utility bill helps me make that decision, but it is still my decision to make.

Again... build more feckin power plants and the whole problem solves itself!

Re:Reasonable idea

[CurlyG]

Where I live it reached 107 degrees on New Year's Eve (and was almost as hot again just a couple of days ago). Hell, the temperature didn't go below about 90 all night. A hundred years ago many people simply died of heat exhaustion in weather like that. I agree that AC is vastly overused but for many places and people it is more than a luxury.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Grant_Watson]

Are you offended that incandescent light bulbs are being phased out in favor of the more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs?

I can't speak for the GP, but I am, and I say this as someone who is sitting under a couple of fluorescent bulbs as I type. Federal regulation is a heavy-handed step that should not be used in pretty much any case where it can be avoided.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Erpo]

after state-run rebates, you can get solar basically for free

I would love to lower my electricity bills with a solar system. Please tell me where I can find rebates to cover the entire materials+installation cost of a solar system for my California house, or close enough that it makes no difference. I'm not joking. I really want those rebates, but the best rebate deal I've been able to find covers "about" 50% of the cost of materials+installation if I count a tax credit as part of the rebate.

Re:Reasonable idea

[MorePower]

The utility offers, free of charge, "upgrades" to thermostats and other switches,.....

They already do that, the utilities quite regularly send us fliers asking us to accept their special thermostats and get some kind of special discount rate on electricity.

Re:Reasonable idea

[racermd]

I actually participate - yes, voluntarily - in a version of this type of program. It's a program that's been in place for many years and is available to everyone my local power company services.

They offer a control box that sits on the main A/C circuit and will cut power during peak demand situations. If you opt-out of the control box, you get charged a higher rate but keep your residential A/C running as much as you want (and paying all the while). However, almost nobody opts-out because the 'forced' cycling is only slightly worse than normal cycling during a really bad day, anyway.

Some things to keep in mind:

1: The control box is usually installed only on large, whole-house A/C units. Window/Wall units aren't usually connected in this way.
2: There's nothing stopping anyone from using an alternate (read: portable) A/C unit in their home on a different circuit.

I certainly wouldn't give _any_ amount of control of my thermostat to anyone else. This is primarily due to the fact that my thermostat controls both an A/C unit and a furnace. That's just too much for me to risk giving control over.

Re:Reasonable idea

[rtb61]

A more logical step would be to introduce electrical storage capacity in the typical domestic supply. A home with 24-48 hour battery storage capacity for their typical electrical use. That way the whole electrical system can be more effectively balanced (it would make for a far more efficient electrical generation system), brown outs and black outs would be completely avoided and alternative energy supplies can be more effectively utilised. High capital cost but a real effective long term solution (not too costly if the battery storage packs are mass produced).

Re:Reasonable idea

[mysidia]

I have a better idea: Go fuck yourself and keep your regulations out of my home. It's already bad enough the kind of regulation that's been placed on the home. There used to be a saying: "A man's home is his castle." People like you have destroyed that concept.

Guess what, whatever you want to do in your home is your business, so long as you aren't engaging in commerce, consuming public resources, or utilizing public infrastructure. You can disconnect yourself from the public utilities and set your thermostat to whatever temperature you please. It just may not do a lot of good to set the thermostat in that case, as your AC won't work at all without help from outside your house. Your AC won't work without direct help from public infrastructure, unless you have found a new, affordable way of meeting your electricity needs.

The circuit that carries power to your house doesn't belong to you, and the power carried there doesn't belong to you, until your agreement with the utility company says it does.

When your home is taking electricity provided by a public utility, you are engaging in commerce, EVEN THOUGH YOU'RE IN YOUR HOME, and you have to follow the rules that your access to those resources is conditioned upon as a term of the sale: it's called a contract. Electricity DOES NOT belong to you, the power and the infrastructure used to deliver it belong's to the public and the utility.

As a user of electricity, you simply have a pay-as-you-go agreement. If the state deemed it proper, they could assign you a quota of X kilowatt hours per month, and automatically turn you off permanently if you exceed it. They could determine an amperage quota and turn off anyone who exceeded the amp usage. However, those measures would be even more draconian than what they are considering.

A man's home stopped being his castle when he connected it to public electricity, water, sewage, and telecommunications (phone + internet) utilities, cable tv/satellite, that are conveniences, provided by others outside his home, but nothing he has a right to. You disconnect those 5 types of utilities, then many rules would no longer be relevant to you while you're in your home, other than taxes (of course).

Whenever you are acquiring from a public resource for personal use, conditions may apply on that acquisition. Conditions may be imposed later too, as noone ever promised the resources would continue to be available under the favorable terms you have had at one particular time.

Re:Reasonable idea

[cayenne8]

"Look people, if we want to be smarter about our energy and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, we need to take measures like this. This buys us time to implement better methods of extracting renewable energy. Sophomoric and overprotective statements like "don't touch my AC" are based on ignorance. Understand the technology and how it really affects you before crying foul."

Is this voluntary? I have a pet at home...long haired dog, and in NOLA, it gets VERY hot during the summer...I'd not like this to turn the AC off and make my animal hot.

Down here...with the weather, I turn the AC on basically in early May.....and it doesn't go off till Nov....and so far this winter, I've had to turn it on again a few times this winter.

It might be good for people to volunteer to do, when there is noone or no pets at home...but, not good if forced on people that need to have AC running daily...

Re:Reasonable idea

[cayenne8]

"Can't get people to use CFLs? Put a tax on incandescents to make them cost the same as CFLs, and watch their usage plummet."

I dunno....I'm quite against TAX being used to modify behavior. Taxes are supposed to be for the govt. to function in its constitutionally described manner...to provide infrastructure...law enforcement..etc. It should never be used to manipulate human behavior.

Other methods...ok...but, not taxation.

Re:Reasonable idea

[pentalive]

Why aren't they screaming to get more power plants built? Why aren't folks putting up solar panels and selling the excess back to the grid? For what it's worth, many are screaming to get more power plants built. The environmental lobby blocks any attempt. Coal & Gas pollutes, Nuclear is evil mojo (Even though France is doing quite well with it and very safely too), Windmills chop birds and look ugly. And no matter what you want to build some flea or slug lives on the land and your construction will annoy them.

I have a sister in law who's family just put a big photovotalic system in. It would be really nice if the power company would pay you back for all the electricity you make - Here you can only break even so most people only install a system that fills 80% of their needs.

Re:Reasonable idea

[pentalive]

Or they legislate to make it illegal then send out surprise "inspectors" to catch people.

Re:Reasonable idea

[qval]

I'm quite against TAX being used to modify behavior WHY??
Taxes are required to run a government (unless you want kleptocracy like Saudi Arabia/Russia)
Since revenue is required, why not raise it by reducing harmful activities. Instead of discouraging working (a tax on income) or owning property, or buying things, we could discourage emitting CO2, particulates, methane, etc, or discourage smoking or drinking or flying etc etc etc

Let's face it, taxes DO manipulate our behavior, so we might as well conscientiously modify (manipulate being to strong a word) behavior while raising the required funds to build roads and run schools.

And with a tax on incandescent bulbs, you don't make them illegal, just more expensive, so the resulting black market will be much less widespread...

Does this kind of thinking about taxation make me a liberal or a conservative...

Re:Reasonable idea

[operagost]

See, there is a big difference between voluntary and compulsory. None of the hardcore geeks on Slashdot who proclaim their undying (or dying, if necessary) defense of personal freedoms have any business suggesting that government should regulate people's energy use.

Re:Reasonable idea

[operagost]

Do you really need the internet? What do you think they did a hundred years ago? The internet is a comfort thing. You don't need it. Just read the newspaper and write some letters.

Re:Reasonable idea

[catprog]

I am offended that incandescent light bulbs are being phased out to make me put a light bulb in that takes more energy to make then it saves

Let assume all the cost to see a bulb is energy use. Therefore if you save money by using fluros over incandescents then it has to use less energy

has heavy metals so now when people throw them away the land is polluted more then the energy needed to run the incandescent light bulb.

Look at how much heavy metals is reduced by less energy being used

Those energy saving bulbs have to be specially recycled and sorry but most people will not spend the time or money or energy to do that.

That point I can't think of a counter

Re:Reasonable idea

[An Onerous Coward]

It's a little far-fetched to go all fear-mongery about the government cutting off our AC. First, there is the little detail of the California power utilities not being "the government." Then there is the thing where it will probably be a voluntary program where people install the thermostats in exchange for a lower rate. Then there's the thing where not being able to turn the thermostat below 80 is unlikely to kill anybody. Then there is the thing where building more fecking power plants carries its own boatloads of problems, which far surpass the inconvenience of the occasionally slightly warm room.

Cali's per-capita energy consumption has stayed flat for decades, because they push themselves and their utilities to look for conservation solutions first. Would that the rest of the country were more like them.

Re:Reasonable idea

[tjstork]

They could do the same in CA. Whatever they ultimately decide in CA is up to the politicians, who answer to the voters.

In America, they don't. They answer to the hardcore fanatics on either side of the political aisle in various primaries and vetting processes just to get on the ballot. By the time it gets to the general election, its already too late. Just have a look at the Democratic Primary, for example. Which candidate failed in the election (Bill Richardson), a centrist, popular, multi-term governor with significant experience as a congressman, cabinet member, or, somebody that wrote a book and gives good speeches? (Obama)

Re:Reasonable idea

[An Onerous Coward]

1) They stayed the hell away from the south western US.

Honestly, what the hell were we thinking, building multi-million person cities out there? If things take a real downturn, I expect Phoenix to shrivel up and blow away. But the era of cheap energy led to a lot of design decisions that would be impossible to sustain in an era of expensive energy.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Kymermosst]

Are you offended that incandescent light bulbs are being phased out in favor of the more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs? Same amount of light output at a fraction of the power consumption.

I find any federal regulation like that fairly offensive, yes.

Now that you've gotten me started on the CFs: I've never had one last the 5 years they are supposed to, and I was one of the early adopters.

Frankly, I dislike their light quality. I don't like the fact that the commonly available ones won't work with my dimmers (which save plenty of money). I don't like the fact that they don't come in flame-tip versions for decorative lighting. I don't like the fact that they are all necessarily "frosted" in style.

However, I have always used the CF bulbs where appropriate because of the "green" factor. But, I use them in ways that make them more tolerable. Rather than have two 60-watt incandescents in a dual-bulb fixture, for instance, I'd have one 40-watt incandescent and a CF using only 15. That's a big savings while still having a better aesthetic feel. Garage lighting? All fluorescent. Bedroom lighting? All incandescent.

How do you think my dining room chandelier is going to look with CFs in it? You bet I'm pissed off about the soon to be limited supply of incandescent bulbs.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Kymermosst]

The problem is, I am paying for the use of the utility. Also, the infrastructure isn't public as in "paid by tax dollars" here.

What's wrong with doing it the way we do here? The utilities charge more during times of peak usage and tier the price per KWh so that after each threshold you pay more per KWh.

It is fairly straightforward. I demand more, I pay more. The what pays for the upkeep of the infrastructure that delivers it, not tax dollars. The utility manages to turn a profit, which they should use to build more power plants, you'd think.

In any case, like any other good or service, either the utility should deliver the product to me if it has it and is willing to sell, or it should not. What the utility should not do is enter my home (figuratively or literally) and decide how I use it.

In a nutshell: I think rolling blackouts are fine if the utility cannot meet my demand. I think them turning up the temperature in my house (and raising the temperature of my home office and business equipment) is unacceptable.

Your reasoning would suggest that if I buy cardboard boxes from Company A (which enjoys the same corporate status as the local for-profit utility) that once I have paid for it and bring it home, Company A can tell me what purposes I can use said cardboard boxes. "I'm sorry sir, you can only tape boxes between 6 AM and 10 PM and you can't use reinforced strapping tape."

Re:Reasonable idea

[ArcherB]

So tell me. Why is it good for the state government to be able to regulate the temperature in my home and bad for the federal government to mandate drivers license requirements.
Why is one a violation of my rights and privacy and all about controlling me and what CA is doing NOT?

Re:Reasonable idea

[An Onerous Coward]

When did I say that it was bad for the federal government to mandate driver's license requirements? I'm just a bit confused about why you've brought this up. Unless I've said something inadvertent, it seems like a transparent attempt to change the subject.

Which would surprise me, since none of my points are incontrovertible.

Would you feel differently about this plan if your power company decided, as a private entity, that this plan was more sensible than building a mammoth upgrade to the grid to handle the day or two every year when demand overwhelmed supply? If installing such a device was just part of the terms and conditions of being their customer? If so, why the difference? It seems that, whether this is a public or a private move, this is a reasonable reaction to the situation.

Re:Reasonable idea

[aurispector]

Heh. NIMBY is bad enough. The greens are far worse - they're stupid, misinformed, radical and have influence far larger than their constituency. Personally I kind of like the look of windmills and if a bunch of birds get whacked, so what? You can make exactly the same argument about roads and land bound animals. Windmills aren't going to kill off any species. The californians built their house, now they have to live in it. Thank god for the east coast.

Re:Reasonable idea

[jacksonj04]

Why not just introduce thermostats that can be 'hinted' at by the system instead of forcibly switched? I reckon that most people won't be able to really tell the difference if their thermostat is being subjected to rolling power-offs for 30 mins or has been turned up a degree or two, and if they feel they are getting too hot then they can hit the 'boost' button.

I'd be quite content if I could set a thermostat at a comfortable temperature but leave the fine details of how to best use the available power to an external system (Even at the cost of it being a couple of degrees warmer), especially if it can make use of other information such as "It'll be dusk soon, therefore I can leave these switched off for a bit longer" or "These buildings are large offices, so I can cool them down before the middle of the day and they'll take less energy to keep at a sensible temperature".

Re:Reasonable idea

[pla]

You're just another one of those shits who think that wealth is God's way of showing approval of your thieving ways and that poverty is His way of showing disapproval of their unambitious ways.

And I got modded down as a troll?

Re:Reasonable idea

[eugene ts wong]

I like your idea. It would be worth trying. To add to that idea, I think that they should let people cooperate with their neighbours, or whoever, to share and sell electricity.

Re:Reasonable idea

[ArcherB]

When did I say that it was bad for the federal government to mandate driver's license requirements? I'm just a bit confused about why you've brought this up. Unless I've said something inadvertent, it seems like a transparent attempt to change the subject.

Which would surprise me, since none of my points are incontrovertible.


You didn't. I just got off a post where everyone was saying that the government is trying to control the citizens because of Real ID (setting standards for ID's across all 50 states). Then I see this post, where the government wants to control appliances in your home (without a warrant), and everyone thinks it's a good idea. WTF?

Would you feel differently about this plan if your power company decided, as a private entity, that this plan was more sensible than building a mammoth upgrade to the grid to handle the day or two every year when demand overwhelmed supply? If installing such a device was just part of the terms and conditions of being their customer? If so, why the difference? It seems that, whether this is a public or a private move, this is a reasonable reaction to the situation.

Utility companies are not private entities. They are utilities. They are monopolies with government regulations. They could not come into my home and turn down the thermostat without the government's permission. Now if I had a choice of utility companies, and one wanted to do this and the other didn't, then fine. I'd go with the company that stayed out of my home.

There are other ways of limiting power consumption. The number one way is price. As demand rises, so should price. As price rises, so will supply. Increased supply means decreased demand. Decreased demand means decreased price. But because CA has decided that no new power plants are allowed, supply is static while demand goes up. Demand goes up, so should price. Price can't go up so we have shortages. Welcome to CA, land of the brownouts!

It's called the law of supply and demand. It is working for all 49 other states without the government telling how I live in my own home! Release the restrictions on new power plants and the problem will solve itself!

Re:Reasonable idea

[stonecypher]

Why doesn't anyone know about Google anymore? (sigh) The CA state get-a-clue page. Generally speaking, all you have to do is call a local installer - they make a point to know about all the rebate programs applicable in your area, and will often even fill out the paperwork for you, and then their bills seem eminently reasonable, since they're basically being paid by the state. Some counties - Marin and San Diego for example - have incentives above and beyond the state incentives, too. Talk to a pro installer.

You aren't getting 100% from a single rebate. You're getting 100% from a stack of them.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Grishnakh]

1) They stayed the hell away from the south western US.

Honestly, what the hell were we thinking, building multi-million person cities out there?

I imagine we were thinking we were sick of the nasty, dilapidated, crime-ridden east coast (especially the Rust Belt) with its horrible winters, so we decided to move somewhere with friendlier people, low crime (until the illegal invasion happened), new infrastructure, low taxes, mild winters, and no natural disasters, and in exchange we only have to put up with hot summers.

Re:Reasonable idea

[mysidia]

The problem with simply charging more is that this makes it so people can't afford electricity essential to function in today's society, and it permits people who have a surplus of cash to squander the resource in excessive amounts that are (in terms of their needs), merely an extra luxury, to a detriment of the community...

This is like responding to a famine by raising the price of food, instead of rationing, allowing a few rich folks to gorge themselves while 1000 middle class folks starve. It's bad public policy in terms of the allocation of essential resources.

The infrastructure is public as in it exists on the public right of way, and the utility company generally normally has what amounts to a government granted monopoly. The natural resources utilized to produce the electricity also belong to the public, not the corporation who happens to be entrusted with the care for its extraction, use, and distribution.

The utility company turns a profit, but this doesn't mean they build more power plants. It costs a lot of money to build power plants, and if they do, there's no longer a shortage, so they can't charge as much.

IOW: it makes sense from a business point of view to build few/no more power plants, and gain increasing profit from increasing demand, due to the high costs of construction and the very high costs of complying with regulations in new construction, and dealing with communities outrages that they want to build a power plant somewhere in _THEIR_ area.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Kymermosst]

... and the utility company generally normally has what amounts to a government granted monopoly.

I think that is probably the chief problem here. The collusion of the utility and the government to prevent competition.

Re:Reasonable idea

[mysidia]

Take a look at broadband penetration in the US. This shows what happens in the US when you try to make delivery of a service competitive: no monopoly, no requirement that the utility service everyone in the community: result, only Metro areas get high-speed internet service. Many rural areas are left with substandard options. This benefits the utility company (more profits), but hurts the community.

Even if the local government struck down the monopoly and allowed anyone who wanted to to hang up their own power poles and string up public property with their own electrical wiring, the barriers to entry are huge... the investment in infrastructure is so incredibly large that only a large corporation [or government itself] can cough up the cash for this kind of venture: to provide the utility to everyone in the community.

In a free, open competitive environment, these investments would likely not be made, because the chance of a good return on that investment is small when competitors can do the very same thing, once there is a serviceable demand for the utility. Competitors will fight over the most profitable customers, while discarding customers that they can't profit from.

If it costs $1 million to wire up community X, and the utility company will net only $100k a year, under competitive pricing, then that community is simply not worth servicing.

Thus the government, wanting to do best for their people, to get this new type of service available: make a deal with one corporation for their use of public property for delivery of that utility.

Corporation benefits, because their profits are protected going forward, according to the terms of their franchise agreement. Community benefits, in that they get a utility, they would not otherwise get so soon, and they get to impose buildout requirements, so _everyone_ in the community is guaranteed to be able have the utility hooked up.

If not for these local monopolies, that also condition delivery of the utility upon delivery to _everyone_, only the most densely populated areas in the world are worth servicing.

It's simply not profitable to extend the infrastructure to rural areas, at rates that are competitive -- in a competitive environment, with no monopolies, profit margins are so low, these houses get left with no phone service, or other utility.

Re:Reasonable idea

[jjk3]

California is in much the same state; They haven't been able to build a power plant (thanks to the NIMBY's) for at least 2 decades.

I'm not sure where you got this idea from? Check out the California Power Plants Database here: http://www.energy.ca.gov/database/index.html#powerplants. I see a bunch that came online in the last couple of years, let alone in the last two decades.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Fastolfe]

You appear to have misread my post. My suggestion was that you have the ability to override, and I was asking if my suggestion offered enough "choice".

Re:Reasonable idea

[FLEB]

I'm wondering if this would be more feasible on a substation or neighborhood basis-- you could use larger and uglier, but cheaper, centrally specified/maintained, and more efficient power storage.

Re:Reasonable idea

[FLEB]

It could be solved, however, by raising price via a tiered-rate system, with negating incentives for people that use the power-savers. Have residential cost-per-kWH stay low for reasonable or basic use, then go up once you reach one or more luxury thresholds, and offer price breaks to the people who install equipment or follow usage patterns that save power and ease demand.

Re:Reasonable idea

[FLEB]

You're just another one of those shits who think that wealth is God's way of showing approval of your thieving ways and that poverty is His way of showing disapproval of their unambitious ways.

Actually, it's more like "Wealth is other people's way of showing approval of your valuable activities or resources, and poverty is their way of... well... not."

There might be injustice in the fact that some people are born, raised, or lucky enough to be spontaneously more valuable than others, or that people may use trickery or schemes to inflate their value, but money is, by and large, a reflection of your value to other people.

Re:Reasonable idea

[FLEB]

Free trade and society works on the principle that the best ideas come about as a natural result of better and more efficient ideas being preferable to worse ones, and by popular preference the better ideas will gain "share" and prosper. By contrast, having a single central source of opinion may not let the best ideas prosper-- that central authority may reject a new idea by inertial resistance, or foolishly reject an old one by novelty or misrepresentation.

By applying a "sin tax" to a practice, it unnaturally weights that practice to become a "worse idea" than unencumbered choice may deem it to be. It's "Central Control Lite", giving the effect of an outright ban, without having to come off as dictatorial.

Of course, this is the idealist theory-- I realize that many people are illogical-- personally self-destructive tendencies, psychological factors (read: people are idiots), and lack (or infeasibility) of long-term thinking mean that sometimes the unpalatable practice of central control may need to be taken in everyone's interest, but it should at least remain unpalatable (and thus scrutinized), so "deviant behavior" doesn't become punished just as severely by the tax law in lieu of the criminal law. (And they can say you're still technically free to do whatever it is, because there's no law against it.)

If the government needs more taxes, the taxes should be levied generally, not on the basis of behavior. (I could see an exception for things like gasoline taxes for road improvements-- the need for that money is directly and rather uniquely connected to the practice of driving.)

Re:Reasonable idea

[rtb61]

The benefit of local with in the household, is people learn to balance their power usage, when they are own batteries ie. the batteries will only supply average demand not peak, they have to decide which items to leave on. Customers could also decide whether to buy or rent the batteries and what kinds of renewable energy sources they also wish to incorporate in the personal household supply.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Angostura]

Don't enforce. Offer householders financial incentives if they install these things. It's voluntary.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Insightfill]

Do you really need air conditioning? What do you think they did a hundred years ago?

1) They stayed the hell away from the south western US.

2) They used the evaporative cooling.

3) They had ice shipped in, and paid exorbitant fees for it.

4) The old and infirm, quite simply, died.

I think people overlook point #1 quite frequently. The population maps of the US prior to WW2 were heavily skewed towards places that were either cold or temperate; it's been easy to add heat to a system for thousands of years, but removing heat on the scale of a building is a relatively new proposition. Post-Air Conditioning, people were able to build anywhere at all.

Houses built prior to that point, esp. in hotter areas, were built to work with the climate not against it. Southern exposures were typical no matter which side was the "front yard", awnings were in place to block high "summer sun" but allow in the low winter sun, and many houses had a single channel for air-flow from the open front door to the open back door. Today's construction is typically the same "insulated box" everywhere in the country, designed to fight the climate rather than work with it.

Bonus: the culture of the hottest parts of the country and world allow for "siesta" where natural human activity comes to a halt during the hottest part of the day.

Re:Reasonable idea

[SQLGuru]

Two words: Faraday Cage.

I'll take your discount, and when I want control back, I'll simply install a Faraday Cage around my thermostat.....the article describes it as an FM signal......last time I checked, those were pretty easy to block. If they were to do something where the signal travelled the wire, then obviously it wouldn't work, but I can block your wireless signal.

Layne

Re:Reasonable idea

[icebones]

Unfortunatly this is not a soley voluntarily system. the apartment complex i use to live in decide to put these in ALL of there units in a bout a 2 week time period right before the summer. All of the residence got a notice on their door that these would be installed and a brief discription, similar to he one above, about how they would work. There was no way to opt out of this. once ours was installed, it didn't work right, the sensors were off on the temperature in the house and woldn't cool properly. (but it would cycle when they told it too, there was an LED that came on when they were controlling it). The result was an apatment that was between 80-85+ deg F during the day (and my wife was at home and pregnant at the time). I called Austin energy a few times and didn't get much help. I finally was able to find an online manual and adjusted the sensor by about 5 deg., but it still wasn't a "comfortable" apartment. Finally we got AE to come out and replace the thermostat with another one and things did get better, but there were a lot of headahces for something that we never wanted put in our apt. to begin with. oh, and our electric bill didn't go down enough to notice either, so much for the discounts.

Re:Reasonable idea

[An Onerous Coward]

It's called the law of supply and demand. It is working for all 49 other states without the government telling how I live in my own home!

You have a strange definition of "working", or maybe you think global warming is a hoax.

Price may be a better solution in theory, but in practice energy consumers only get feedback on their consumption once a month, and they probably don't have a clear idea of how their decisions affect the overall grid. Certainly, they don't know if turning on their AC *right now* will overload the grid. But the utilities do know, and simply being able to coordinate the activities of the most power-hungry devices is more efficient. Your proposal seems to involve jacking up prices until poor people turn off their AC altogether, so that more deserving wealthy people can access all the electricity they want when they want it.

I know, I know. The "free market" is signaling like crazy for the creation of more belching coal plants. But the market isn't accounting for CO2 production, and isn't accounting for the limited supply of non-renewables. It never does, until the limited supply starts affecting the extraction rate. What I'm saying is, the free market shouldn't be the sole arbiter of how much electricity we produce, or the sources of that electricity.

This technology is the leading edge of a new class of technologies, which will allow devices connected to the grid to gain knowledge of the state of the grid. Ultimately, I think it will lead to a sort of auction system, where appliances bid on the energy they use in realtime. If the energy being offered by the utility costs $0.40/kwh, you might have your AC set to shut down until the cost goes back down to $0.20. Efficient allocation of resources, free-market mechanisms, greater consumer control. It might even allow for multiple utilities to share the same infrastructure, reducing the need for utility monopolies. You may adopt a "you can pry my AC from my cold, bloody hands" attitude towards this particular proposal, but I don't think the overall trend is anything for you capitalistas to fear.

Re:Reasonable idea

[qval]

What do you mean by taxing generally? Huckabee's huge sales tax? How about controlling externalities. I see the slippery slope of taxing sin, but isn't every tax bad and discouraging, so we might as well raise revenue in this way. Governments around the world are proposing bans on incandescent bulbs in the next 5 years. A tax is a cleaner, revenue-raising alternative. Think Amory Lovins' feebates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feebate/ if they have to be revenue neutral.

Re:Reasonable idea

[peas_n_carrots]

"[CF] takes more energy to make then it saves, has heavy metals so now when people throw them away the land is polluted more then the energy needed"

Please cite your sources. Otherwise you're just spouting off a bogus conspiracy theory. The heavy metals are a real concern, but that can be addressed by proper recycling. The same issue exists with rechargeable batteries. It's a matter of educating consumers and making recycling centers accessible. Motor oil is toxic too, but it's not dumped dumped en masse into the environment.

Re:Reasonable idea

[baboo_jackal]

Building infrastructure is part of the solution, but it's to improve reliability, not to reduce cost.
Well, if you left it up to private industry to do, the ultimate goal *would* be to reduce cost - the construction of new infrastructure, and the resultant reliability improvement would just be an emergent (and ultimately beneficial) side-effect.

Cost reductions come from better utilization of existing resources. You can't build infrastructure without raising cost
More correctly stated, you can't build infrastructure without expending resources. If it's the Government doing it, then, yeah, you'll definitely pay that cost through taxes. But if it's some corporate entity whose goal is profit, that expenditure of resources will be mitigated somehow (maybe dipping into profits or saved capital, maybe taking a loss, maybe borrowing capital), because for-profit companies have to both be mindful of our future needs (and, therefore, expand in ways that best meet those needs), but also be mindful of *today's* bottom line: If they can't provide a given service at a comparable price to their customers, they lose customers.

Even if you decide to spend money and build an entire new infrastructure, there will always be incentives to utilize it as efficiently as possible.
You're confused about the concept of "incentive." Positive Economic Incentive != Negative Government-Created "Incentive." A positive incentive is some reason to do something that's in your best interests, solely for that reason. The free-market creates those automagically through competition and depending on human nature. The kind of "incentive" you're talking about is actually the same incentive we offer for committing a crime - *don't* do this, or we'll penalize you. This type of incentive requires enforcement and administration (which require additional resources) to ensure it's effective.

Re:Reasonable idea

[Monsuco]

There is no easy answer

Well, except for nuclear power but the uninformed are afraid of those.

Re:Reasonable idea

[loshwomp]

Well, if you left it up to private industry to do, the ultimate goal *would* be to reduce cost - the construction of new infrastructure, and the resultant reliability improvement would just be an emergent (and ultimately beneficial) side-effect.

I suspect we mostly agree, but we're talking about slightly different things. The fact that TFA is poorly written and glazes over important details isn't helping things.

Utility companies *are* private industries, and they are plenty motivated to reduce cost, and far and away the best means of doing this is to better-utilize their existing infrastructure. In many locations they already have time-of-use metering schedules and automatic load-shedding programs that do offer financial incentives. Those exist now and work well. TFA hints at mandatory load shedding -- that's crazy and its not what I'm talking about. The programs in question would only be mandatory *if you enrolled* -- anything beyond that would never be accepted, perhaps rightfully so.

More correctly stated, you can't build infrastructure without expending resources. If it's the Government doing it, then, yeah, you'll definitely pay that cost through taxes. But if it's some corporate entity whose goal is profit, that expenditure of resources will be mitigated somehow (maybe dipping into profits or saved capital, maybe taking a loss, maybe borrowing capital), because for-profit companies have to both be mindful of our future needs (and, therefore, expand in ways that best meet those needs), but also be mindful of *today's* bottom line: If they can't provide a given service at a comparable price to their customers, they lose customers.


I'm not getting dragged into a debate over whether private industry is more efficient than govenment. You may be correct, but it's irrelevant here for my purposes, because utility companies *are* private industry, and they overwhelmingly understand the value of load shedding with respect to building infrastructure. Both are necessary, but for differing reasons.

Do you have a backup generator for your house? You're a private entity, so if the grid is unreliable for your taste, you'd compete with it by building your own generator backup. Only a tiny fraction of us do that, becuase the costs are high, especially for something that gets used for perhaps two hours per year.

You're confused about the concept of "incentive." Positive Economic Incentive != Negative Government-Created "Incentive." A positive incentive is some reason to do something that's in your best interests, solely for that reason. The free-market creates those automagically through competition and depending on human nature. The kind of "incentive" you're talking about is actually the same incentive we offer for committing a crime - *don't* do this, or we'll penalize you. This type of incentive requires enforcement and administration (which require additional resources) to ensure it's effective.

I was actually referring to incentives in general, but in this specific example: The utility company is incented to move as much energy as possible through its grid, which means buffering loads, and they do pass this along to customers in the form of TOU (or real-time) pricing and rebates for load-shedding participation. This already happens, but to date, the lowest-hanging fruit has been commercial and industrial customers.

Cooking Something?

[TheSimkin]

Seriously? We're talking about a couple of degrees here. Sounds like a good idea.

Re:Cooking Something?

[risinganger]

I'm with the parent poster on this one. Until I'd be willing to take complaints about hardware being cooked I would want to see some verifiable numbers being presented. What temperature you normally keep your house, how much higher the temperature can get in 2/4 hours if the aircon was turned off completely and what a change of a few degrees means. Even if they were to change it drastically by say 10 degrees centigrade - do you keep your machines that close to overheating that they couldn't cope with that?

Lets not even get started on how bad an idea having wireless control is for now

Re:Cooking Something?

[Seumas]

I agree. I, as part of society, would also like to dictate how much gas you can buy, cable television you can watch, internet you can use, radio you can listen to, miles you can drive, children you can have, books you can read, light-bulbs you can buy, hours you can remain awake and food you can eat. After all, these are all resources and rather than cranking up supply to meet the demand, we'll just start forcing you to whatever limits we feel are best.

Re:Cooking Something?

[jlarocco]

Sounds like a good idea.

How is avoiding the real problem a "good idea"?

Re:Cooking Something?

[mr_matticus]

Yeah, if there's 1000 people and 1000 fillups of gas available, I'd say it's fair to dictate 1 per person as a general rule.

Most of your other examples don't deal with scarcity. If you change the facts to 500 cable subscribers on a line that can only support 480, then yes, there is going to be some bandwidth throttling or random dropouts. That's basically what you've got here.

If there are six light bulbs and seven people needing one, someone's not getting a lightbulb, but it's probably not fair to let one person take all six. If food supply is down, rationing will hit sooner or later. Placing limits on usage where multiple people have a need for an essential service is a basic part of living in a community.

"Cranking up supply" isn't that simple. That's obviously the long-term solution, but it does absolutely nothing in the present to address the problems of the present for the customers of the present. Your choices are (a) no power or (b) a system which overrides your preference to force greedy and ignorant bastards to conserve. The amount of power available to you is going to work out the same. Instead of black hours and all-or-nothing, there's a possibility of some slightly grey time which keeps your appliances on.

It's not big brother, it's not an arbitrary intrusion. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't require much new infrastructure. It's got quite a bit of potential for abuse, but that's a separate issue.

No one wants blowhards saying some people should sit in the dark so that they can run their A/C at 65 if they want...because those same asses are the ones that bitch loudest when their blackout block comes up. That is, unless you can wave your magic wand and increase capacity and grid management in the blink of an eye.

Re:Cooking Something?

[CommunistHamster]

Well, I certainly trust the power companies not to abuse this feature.

Re:Cooking Something?

[amRadioHed]

I can't imagine they would. I trust the power companies wants to sell you as much electricity as they possibly can and would only throttle it when they have to.

Re:Cooking Something?

[fosterNutrition]

I trust the power companies wants to sell you as much electricity as they possibly can... Well that right there is one way they could abuse it. Imagine your thermostat altering your settings by a few degrees around the time most people go to sleep, and setting itself back before they expect you to wake up: all of a sudden your power bill is a fair bit higher, for reasons unknown to you...

I'm not saying I think that's all too likely, but I just want to point out that it is possible.

Re:Cooking Something?

[CastrTroy]

Maybe it should be designed such that they can only increase the temperature from what you set it at. If they can only increase the temperature, then you shouldn't have any problems with them increasing the bill.

Re:Cooking Something?

[Belial6]

Unless you have a heater in your house.

Re:Cooking Something?

[ravenshrike]

Yeah, emergency situations created by government regulation, followed by deregulation which favored cronies of the government, followed by reregulation. It's worked out pretty fucking well so far.

Re:Cooking Something?

[amRadioHed]

No, even if you have a heater it is trivial for a thermostat to be designed to not allow anything to be turned on remotely. This is not an issue.

Re:Cooking Something?

[An Onerous Coward]

You don't know California, then. California utilities don't get paid based on how much electricity they sell. Search Wikipedia for "decoupling".

Re:Cooking Something?

[amRadioHed]

True enough, I'm still fairly new to the state. All I know is that my bill from SDGE is based on how much energy I use.

Either way the parents fear of abuse seems equally unfounded.

For those of us in cold climates...

[Bazman]

..remember that California is HOT. The thermostats referred to are connected to air conditioning, not, as I first thought, heating systems!

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[teslar]

The thermostats referred to are connected to air conditioning

Thanks for the info, now it actually makes sense to me. Here I was, wondering how exactly turning the heating up would help with reducing electricity...

So I guess that does make the idea a lot more reasonable, although I would still rather feel that if your power grid can't always deal with the electricity demand, then it's the power grid that needs updating - on the other hand, this probably both cheaper and more enviromentally friendly.

That leaves the one concern then: hacking of the system, especially since this is wireless. If the idea is to turn air conditioning down to reduce the strain on the power grid, then bad guys can use the same system and turn the air conditioning up to crash the grid. And what does TFA say about the possibility of hacking?

That is not possible, said Nicole Tam, a spokeswoman for P.G.& E. who works with the pilot program in Stockton. Radio pages "are encrypted and encoded," Ms. Tam said

Yeah right, like that's ever stopped anyone. Also, what is the difference between encrypted and encoded?

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[risinganger]

what is the difference between encrypted and encoded? You mean you don't know? By encrypting and encoding you make it impossible to break into. It's the same reason why the biometric ID's they want to introduce in the UK are impossible to break (according to the politicians). The information community has been sitting on this for decades now as they'd rather see what you're up to.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Dr. Cody]

"Cryostats"?

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Seumas]

I would seriously like to see them prove it is cheaper in hardware and labor to provide and install these units in some ten million households, not to mention malls, offices, restaurants and other businesses.

Not to mention, the whole intrusive government aspect of it, which is no small thing for people to rightfully take issue with.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Rick17JJ]

That reminds me of something that happened at a college back in the 1970s during the energy crisis, when everyone was asked to save energy by lowering their thermostats to 68 degrees. I was taking some classes at a Junior College in Arizona at the time. They lowered the thermostats to 68 degrees during the winter to save energy, as requested, and then several weeks later they discovered that the air conditioning system had come on automatically to get the building down to 68 degrees.

Will these proposed new radio-controlled thermostats be designed well enough to avoid those kinds of mistakes? I still remember riding in a few cars from the 1970s which had government required seat-belt warning devices reminding people to buckle-up. It was annoying when the device could sense the weight of groceries on the passenger seat and repeatedly complain about that person not being buckled up. I suspect these new thermostats will end up annoying some home owners by making similar unfair stupid errors.

Personally, I think that well insulated energy efficient homes with a smaller capacity air-conditioner should be exempt from needing a radio-controlled thermostat for their air-conditioner. Suppose someone has a home with something like R-28 walls, extra insulation in the ceiling, extra insulation on the ducts and double-pane low-e glass in the windows. They are saving plenty of energy already. On the other had there are many homes out there with R-11 walls and single-pane windows. Since they are the ones that are using most of the energy, they should be the only ones to get the big-brother controlled thermostat.

Evaporative coolers should also be exempt from needing these special thermostats, since they use less energy anyway. Furthermore, if someone has a solar powered evaporative cooler, it should definitely be exempt. I don't know much about solar evaporative coolers, but apparently they use a photovotaic solar panel to generate the power to run the pump and fans and whatever is required to make an evaporative cooler work. By the way, from what I recall, evaporative coolers don't always cool as well, especially when the humidity rises.

Someone who built his own solar powered evaporative cooler

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[pla]

not to mention malls, offices, restaurants and other businesses.

Oh, no, they won't install them in any commercial location, only private homes. Making people uncomfortable in their own homes, no problem; Interfering with Holy Commerce, now, they just don't play games there. Won't happen.

Remember, this involves a state that has to pump in water from two states away because of regular yearly droughts that make the US SouthEast this year look like a bunch of crybabies, yet when they implement watering bans, they exempt businesses; And even on mornings when they do actually get a bit of rain, those businesses will still leave the sprinklers on, because it costs less than having Jose drop by and manually interrupt the cycle.


In any other state, I'd consider this proposal offensive enough to incite riots. But California? Heh. Relax and just watch the show.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[ParaShoot]

what is the difference between encrypted and encoded? Given an arbitrary message: Encoding is just a matter of the way you write it. ASCII, UTF-8, braille, semaphore, morse code - different ways of writing (encoding) the same message. Encryption is doing something specifically to make it harder to read, e.g. the Enigma cipher. There can be some crossover - the Caesar cipher (replace each letter of the alphabet with a symbol) is both an encoding and a (rubbish) form of encryption.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Ed Avis]

It's a bizarre system that charges an uneconomic price for energy and then wants to compensate for that by controlling the thermostat in your home. When there is a shortage of power the wholesale price of energy rises. Charge households the true cost of the electricity they use (which will sometimes be more than the current rate, sometimes less) and if you want to install a thermostat that automatically reduces its power consumption when power is expensive, that's up to you. It would depend on your own individual preferences - perhaps most of the time you're not prepared to spend more than $0.20 per hour to keep your room cool, but if you feel unwell or you have guests staying (or you are making pastry) you could program your thermostat to spend more money. Then the scare electricity is allocated to those who are most prepared to pay for it.

I don't mean that power companies should be able to gouge consumers for whatever they can get. Obviously the retail price should be regulated to not exceed the wholesale price by more than a small fixed amount.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[PopeRatzo]

It's interesting that you bring up the 70's. I am reminded that back in the 70's, when Jimmy Carter was president, he proposed and had passed, several laws that were meant to force conservation of oil and gas and to get us off our addiction to foreign oil.

All of these laws were repealed by the Reagan Administration, but if they had stayed in effect, who knows what improvement they might have brought to our current situation, in terms of overall carbon emissions and in geo-political terms.

Hell, if we'd have reduced our dependence on foreign oil in the '70s, we might not be fighting islamoliberalfasciofeminazis right now.

And the Right is now calling Jimmy Carter the worst president while G.W.Bush is in the White House, no less.

Now that I think about it, he also brokered a peace agreement with Israel and Egypt that has never been broken, not once in more than 30 years.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[legirons]

In the UK, you can already turn on and off peoples' storage-heaters by remote control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch

Have there been any stories of this system being "hacked"? All you need to do is create a longwave transmitter that's more powerful than the BBC (and it's on the same frequency as a popular radio channel, so your jammer would be noticed by anyone who listens to the radio). Of course, cryptographic signing has become popular since then and might be used in new systems.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Rick17JJ]

No, I was not suggesting that the thermostat had been lowered remotely with radio signals. Someone at the college had lowered the thermostat, because president Carter had said that was what everyone in the country should do. The college employees just did not realize that would make the air-conditioning come on.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[teslar]

Yes, of course. Please let me rephrase the question: How does "encrypted and encoded" improve over "encrypted"?

I'm just trying to make fun of press-release-speak trying to make us believe that "encrypted AND encoded" somehow ensures superiour security :)

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[ericartman]

Yeah reminds me of the water shortage. Last one the biggest residential water user was then Governor Wilson's house, overused by thousands of gallons a month.Showed it on TV all the time. Same thing happened when the Governor (now Arnold) declared state buildings go to 79 on their themostats. A guy from KCRA went around checking state buildings and the ones that were the lowest in temp (60 degree range) continually were the assembly and govs house, go figure. Only the little guy will have to hack anything, the big boys will never get in the lifeboat with the rest of us, they never have.

Cart

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[jandoedel]

Always remember kids, in Soviet Russia, thermostats turn the heat UP.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[amRadioHed]

Now that I think about it, he also brokered a peace agreement with Israel and Egypt that has never been broken, not once in more than 30 years. See, that's where he lost the Republicans. Why would you encourage peace between two countries that purchase arms from you? That just doesn't make sense.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[barzok]

They lowered the thermostats to 68 degrees during the winter to save energy, as requested, and then several weeks later they discovered that the air conditioning system had come on automatically to get the building down to 68 degrees.

Will these proposed new radio-controlled thermostats be designed well enough to avoid those kinds of mistakes?

My fairly basic programmable thermostat can avoid this mistake. It has a "heat/off/cool" switch on it. If the thermostat is set for 78 degrees and the switch is set to "cool", it won't turn the heat up to get the house up to 78 degrees if it's 70.

This could be made even more sophisticated with these radio-controlled thermostats. If the temperature at the base station is warm, set the thermostats to cool mode and don't turn the heat on at all. And vice versa if the weather is cool.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[adonoman]

It is very possibly to encode a message using codewords, and then encrypt it. This was pretty common before encryption became somewhat reliable.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Tiger4]

So I guess that does make the idea a lot more reasonable, although I would still rather feel that if your power grid can't always deal with the electricity demand, then it's the power grid that needs updating - on the other hand, this probably both cheaper and more enviromentally friendly.

No it makes it LESS reasonable. When people are cold, they can always wrap up in more blankets, quilts, downy covers, whatever. When they are HOT, all they can do is strip to the skin, then broil. There was an Aesop fable about that same topic. The only reason the grid can't deal with the demand is 1) some residual Enron style power manipulation, and 2) deferred maintenance (pocketing repair funds as dividends) that shows up when a transformer or substation blows up.

Anyway, the electric companies here in California already have a voluntary energy cycling program, where they shut down home and commercial Air Conditioning for 15 minutes per hour. The Key word here being Voluntary. The people who feel they can tolerate it sign up for the program, and get a rate discount in return. Meanwhile people who need their cool, like convalescent homes, elderly homeowners, nurseries, and computer geeks with garage data centers, just draw all the power they need.

A rolling blackout of 1 - 2 hours is bad, but being over temperature all days, at the mercy of the power company is going to be worse. I can't believe they want the liability.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Ironsides]

You want to know why Carter is believed to be the worst president? Start with Carters economic policies that caused 17% annual inflation, go from there.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Reality Master 101]

All of these laws were repealed by the Reagan Administration...

It sounds evil when you put it this way, but God Bless Ronald Reagan for repealing that IDIOTIC 55 mile-an-hour speed limit. I don't remember what Carter's other idiotic ideas were, but Carter deserves a post-presidency impeachment for that.

but if they had stayed in effect, who knows what improvement they might have brought to our current situation, in terms of overall carbon emissions and in geo-political terms.

Effectively zero. Conservation and pain will never be the solution. The only solution is better technology that preserves and improves our way of life.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[oldenuf2knowbetter]

"...pump in water from two states away" Which state might that be that California pumps water from?

California is bordered by Oregon, Arizona, and Nevada. No water pipelines cross those states.

On the other side of the bordering states are Washington, Idaho, Utah and New Mexico. No water is "pumped" from any of those states.

I suspect you're suggesting that using water from the Colorado River (which forms the border between California and Arizona) is equivalent to pumping water from two states away.

In any case, feel free to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Stay away or don't visit California unless you bring your own water supply.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[zippthorne]

I don't mean that power companies should be able to gouge consumers for whatever they can get. Obviously the retail price should be regulated to not exceed the wholesale price by more than a small fixed amount.

That's not obvious at all. The price should reflect the market realities all the time. The price must be allowed to rise to market clearing levels.

Now, if you want to prevent "gouging" (if there even is a such thing), Then you could put limits on how much production is allowed to vary when certain conditions are met, but if they're at max production (and "max production" includes purchasing from other states as necessary or available) and there is still demand for more, then by definition, the prices aren't high enough.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[aaarrrgggh]

Commercial customers can get a curtailment rate, where on 3-24 hours notice they must cut back to a contracted firm service level. Many companies cut back light levels, up the thermostats, and even shut down manufacturingto take advantage of discounted normal rates. Larger users shed several megawatts.

For it to make sense residentially, you have to have a pool of about 10 homes to save 5 kW.

Utilities need to manage total energy consumption as well as peak demand to stretch generation and transmission capacity and control costs.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Lars T.]

You want to know why Carter is believed to be the worst president? Start with Carters economic policies that caused 17% annual inflation, go from there. You mean the Inflation that started under Nixon? That later got under control because Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, who was so good that even Reagan couldn't find anyone better?

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Lars T.]

That reminds me of something that happened at a college back in the 1970s during the energy crisis, when everyone was asked to save energy by lowering their thermostats to 68 degrees. I was taking some classes at a Junior College in Arizona at the time. They lowered the thermostats to 68 degrees during the winter to save energy, as requested, and then several weeks later they discovered that the air conditioning system had come on automatically to get the building down to 68 degrees.

Will these proposed new radio-controlled thermostats be designed well enough to avoid those kinds of mistakes?

Well, all it needs is one guy smart enough to tell the difference between "heating" and "cooling".

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[stevew]

Well - just to let you know - I think that you have a few details wrong.

I've lived in CA all my life (over 50) and have lived through a couple of droughts that are far worse than this one has been. CA has implemented mandatory water conservation at least twice at the county level in my life time. I've personally lost a lawn that cost me $1500 to install because of it. Business's turn off fountains and other water displays in the normal course of these things AND the watering you see at the commercial parks (at least in Silicon Valley) is typically from re-cycled water that isn't fit to drink. The other detail you don't mention is that most of the watering that is going on is also helping to fill the aquifer that is one of the sources of water - it actually is part of getting pure water back from the recycled water.

Further, the (*^(^# state has grown it's population in the last 30 years. We've gone from 19 million in 1979 to around 35 million right now. I would LOVE to see the population back in the 19 million range - but that isn't happening so we do what we can.

Then you have the wonderful court orders that shut down major water projects like East Bay MUD (yeah - I know it's a corny name) that puts their water supply down through the CA delta. But the fish are more important the humans so they can't take the water back out after it's been injected into the delta - meaning they have to go get water from other sources.

Now you tell me the (*#$^ state wants to control my thermostat - I don't think so. This is a half backed piece of nonsense. Next they'll be telling me not to have kids.

Screw that noise.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[stonecypher]

Also, what is the difference between encrypted and encoded?

Encoded just means that there's a formal mechanism for annotating contents. Morse code is encoded. FM is encoded. ASCII is encoded. Printed letters are encoded. In fact, basically any data-thing you do through a machine is encoded. Mrs. Tam is just a numbskull trying to sound smart by padding out her statements with what she believes incorrectly are synonyms.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Solandri]

Oh, no, they won't install them in any commercial location, only private homes. Making people uncomfortable in their own homes, no problem; Interfering with Holy Commerce, now, they just don't play games there. Won't happen.

Edison already runs several programs constraining business electricity use at peak times, including shutting off air conditioners. In exchange for lower rates, you can allow Edison to shut off your AC (or power altogether). This proposal would merely allow them to extend the program to residential homes. I expect it will be very popular too, considering most people aren't even in their homes during typical peak energy usage (usually early afternoon).

Next time I suggest you do a little research before automatically assuming a pro-business conspiracy theory. These shutoffs are already installed in commercial locations, private homes are just next in line.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Ironsides]

At the end of 1976, inflation was decreasing and had dropped to below 5%. When carter entered office it started going up again and kept on going up. Federal Reserve chairmen are one of the few positions that stay around administration to administration. Unless you're saying that Paul Volcker was incompetent under Carter but extremely smart under Reagan? Face it, Carter is the one who caused some of the worst inflation in US history.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Anonymous Coward]

> he proposed and had passed, several laws that were meant to force conservation of oil and gas and to get us off our addiction to foreign oil.

Including the banning of nuclear waste reprocessing in breeder reactors. As a former nukeE, Carter was worried about the proliferation risk instead of the energy crisis -- but he was dead fucking wrong. To this day, thanks to Carter, our nuclear plants take 5% of the energy out of their fuel, and put the other 95% into the waste stream for tens of thousands of years. By reprocessing that fuel and using it, we could extract 15-20 times more energy per unit of fuel input, cutting the mass of the waste stream by a similar order of magnitude, and the remaining crap would be very, very hot -- it would only be hazardous for a few centuries.

I'm all for Yucca Mountain/WIPP... but with breeder reactors, we wouldn't need it, because we'd never generate enough waste to come remotely close to filling it.

> Hell, if we'd have reduced our dependence on foreign oil in the '70s, we might not be fighting islamoliberalfasciofeminazis right now.

Except that the same people that were for reducing dependence on foreign oil were also the same people against nuclear power.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Reziac]

Contrary to popular belief, California is not uniformly "hot". And yes, the proposed system does connect to both heating and cooling systems. You can already get a "free" device from Edision that does the same job.

Northern California is NORTH of ALL of Colorado. The mountain passes along the CA/NV border are usually closed in winter, due to heavy snows. In 1981, the snowpack above Donner totaled 56 FEET.

I'm in California. SOUTHERN California. If you're in the high desert or any of the many SoCal mountain areas, you can count on hard freezes all through December/January, and I've see temps as low as -10F here. -- If I were driving this morning, I'd be scraping frost off my windshield. After having the heat off overnight, it was 52 degrees in my bedroom this morning.

Now, tell me again how someone else should have the right to turn off my heat?

I suspect this is being pushed by Edison, because the way our rate structure is set up, and since they have to buy all our electricity from out-of-state interests (at prices that can only be described as "gouging"), the LESS energy they sell, the MORE money Edison makes. Anything that conserves power makes Edison more money.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Lars T.]

Face it, Carter is the one who caused some of the worst inflation in US history. Face it, it wasn't as bad as under Nixon/Ford. As for Vocker, he wasn't appointed until August '79 - guess who appointed the chairman that ran the Federal Reserve for most of Carter's presidency?

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Reziac]

My house is over 50 years old, and was built before houses in CA were insulated at all. There is NONE in the walls (the R-35 in the attic I put there myself), and it has single-pane windows, because that's how houses were built back then. After all, this is California, we don't need no steenkin' insulation!

Now, I've priced having the house updated (insulation blown into the walls, replace all the windows with double-pane models). Total cost would be somewhere around $10,000. (Somewhat higher if it were done one piece at a time.) I don't know about your money tree, but mine died in the drought, and I sure as hell couldn't cough up that much at once, nor could I pay the $30,000 *total* it would cost if it were financed. (Interest winds up being about double the principal.)

But hey, just cuz I don't make the kind of money that lets *you* buy a new house, it's fine to decree that *I* get to freeze and fry.

BTW my house is hardly unique. Probably half the homes in California, and nearly ALL of those built here before ~1975, are in this same boat. And a majority of these are rentals, or owned by retired people, or by lower-income folks who really can't afford to do major upgrades.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[qwp]

Encryption: @#$SFJD@#$SD

Encoded: 42

"encrypted and encoded" is way better than encoded encryption.. People would be trying to
guess at the switching encryption method for ever.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[oldenuf2knowbetter]

Somewhere over 20 years ago SDG&E (San Diego Gas & Electric) was offering customers an outside unit that connected between the AC compressor unit (the real energy hog) and the power line. Same trick. SDG&E could turn off your compressor at will - with the promise that they'd only do so when necessary and for not more than an hour a day. In exchange for accepting the unit, they knocked $10 per month (IIRC) off your billing. Each month. Whether or not they cycled your AC. Best deal ever.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[PopeRatzo]

The only solution is better technology

Oh boy.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Duhavid]

A device for determining and regulating the amount of crying a person or persons will perform.

Similarly, is a Reostat is a device for determining and regulating how much REO Speedwagon will perform.

What I want is a "Ceostat".

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[jfmiller]

Oh, no, they won't install them in any commercial location, only private homes. Making people uncomfortable in their own homes, no problem; Interfering with Holy Commerce, now, they just don't play games there. Won't happen.

Incorrect. Title 24 applies to all construction in California and is much more carefully inspected for in the commercial sector then in residential. Many have pointed out how easy this is to undo in a residential setting. In a commercial setting not following your Title 24 obligations is a good way to loose a lease or fail a health/fire inspection.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[jbengt]

. . . but God Bless Ronald Reagan for repealing that IDIOTIC 55 mile-an-hour speed limit. I don't remember what Carter's other idiotic ideas were, but Carter deserves a post-presidency impeachment for that.

. . . but God Bless Ronald Reagan for repealing that IDIOTIC 55 mile-an-hour speed limit. I don't remember what Nixon's other idiotic ideas were, but Nixon deserves a post-presidency impeachment for that.

There, fixed that for you

As my frien Jim said at the time: "I don't care how high Reagan raises the speed limit, I'm not slowing down for it"

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[jfmiller]

Fortunate for you that Title 24 does not apply retroactively. You may keep you old low tech thermostat and enjoy the lower energy prices, and lack of rolling blackouts witout any personal cost. Well except from the dirty looks from the Prius driving envirogeeks.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[arfonrg]

No, he means Jimmy Carter. The one who's policies and ineptness cause the US's economic situation to be much worse than it should have been.

THAT Carter...

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Reality Master 101]

but Nixon deserves a post-presidency impeachment for that.

Oops, you're right. I guess it only seemed like a Carter idea. :)

And I think I'm wrong about Reagan repealing it, I think was Bush #1. Ah well.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Reality Master 101]

Oh boy.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man insists on adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Lars T.]

No, he means Jimmy Carter. The one who's policies and ineptness cause the US's economic situation to be much worse than it should have been.

THAT Carter... Ohh, the mythical Carter, that never existed outside the minds of lunatic Republicans who thought Nixon wasn't so bad and Reagan was a great President.

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[mcrbids]

Oh, no, they won't install them in any commercial location, only private homes. Making people uncomfortable in their own homes, no problem; Interfering with Holy Commerce, now, they just don't play games there. Won't happen.

Actually, my Brother-in-law's Father-in-law works as an HVAC engineer. (Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning) He gets flown all over the country to large buildings in order to install their Heating && A/C units.

His specialty is to install "time-deferred" air conditioning units. They apparently build large tanks on/near the building, and run the Air Conditioning at night, to cool the tank of coolant. Then, during the day, the business cools their buildings from the tank rather than directly from the grid.

The businesses get a significant credit for using energy when it's "cheap" rather than during the daytime when the grid is near its peak load, and this cost reduction is what pays for the fancy tanks and equipment.

He makes a very comfortable living installing these units...

Now, when we're talking about HOME units, I'd suggest that rather than institute a state link to the thermostat, we should institute variable rate meters. Not just keep track of how much was used, but WHEN it was used. Then, mandate a bill that's easy to read to indicate how much was used during the peak times and how much money could be saved.

People will program that into their thermostats, or thermostats will be developed to track peak usage, and this problem will pretty much take care of itself without pissing everybody off. (How many people would crow about how "smart" they are for programming their $10 thermostat to not run between 2 and 4 PM, saving $50/month?)

If most of the cost of the energy grid is maintaining the peak load, then utility companies should do themselves the favor of passing that information along to the consumer (in the form of a bill that reflects this fact), and then determine just how valuable that really is to them!

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[Reziac]

But it WILL apply if my furnace ever needs to be replaced. And then I get to freeze at someone else's whim.

As it happens, I already keep my main thermostat set at 62F, because propane is $3.20/gallon, and a gallon only lasts about (are you sitting down??) 10 *minutes*, as guzzled by modern high-pressure gas furnaces. Right now it's actually cheaper to run the electric space heaters. (About $100/mo. to keep it 62F in here, vs. about $300/mo. for propane -- and I only really heat ONE ROOM).

Re:For those of us in cold climates...

[amRadioHed]

Aphorisms are meaningless. Being unreasonable is not necessary or sufficient for making progress. Most of the time it results in wasted time and effort while those more open to reality have gone on to more useful endeavors.

Texas too...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Texas the cities offer free "high tech" thermostats... provided you let them be able to keep your A/C powered off for 15-20 minutes per hour on peak times.

I'll pass. If the temperature is cracking 100, there is a reason I bought my HVAC system, and that is to keep my place at a bearable temperature, not allow someone else to set it the way they want.

Re:Texas too...

[guruevi]

I don't live in Texas, I live in New York where it can also get pretty hot and pretty cold but using good isolation, curtains, a finished basement, fans to pump heat in/out the basement and double pane glass windows and storm doors I have to use my HVAC about 2 hours per day in the summer and my heat about 4 hours (in the weekends, in the week I'm at work so I don't have to run it as much) to maintain a temperature between 55 at night and 65 during the day (0-20 outside) in winter and 68-72 (80-90 outside) in summer.

I don't see why you would even have to run your HVAC during the peak hours, use the stored energy in and around your house to cool or heat your house. Your basement is probably quite cool in summer and hot (because the heater is there) during winter. I have my thermostat set to run my heat and hvac on full right before the peak hours and then I can maintain a decent temperature until late evening..

Horrible...

[gfxguy]

By the time they've got this in everyone's home, intruding in their lives like some third world dictatorship rationing bread, they could have built a new nuclear power plant or two.

Re:Horrible...

[Malevolent Tester]

But nuclear power plants use science. Science is bad. Everything would be alright if we'd just live in caves and hunt our own food, because the pre technological past was idyllic and peaceful.

Re:Horrible...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tase my thermostat, bro!

Re:Horrible...

[KefabiMe]

A lot of people here seem mad that the government is controlling people's thermostats. THIS IS NOT THE CASE!!!

I suspect this is similar to a program Southern California Edison already has in place. If you are a homeowner, you can have Edison install a remote kill switch to your A/C unit. Then, during the summer, Edison can cut your A/C for 30 minutes to 4 hours.

Note:

• This program is completely VOLUNTARY
• The homeowner chooses the maximum time they want their A/C to be cut. You can tell Edison to cut your A/C only an hour at a time.
• YOU GET PAID FOR IT. It's not very much, but I figure that it's cheaper than it would cost to build new power generating plants, and it's *more environmentally friendly* too!

Compared to this program already in place, raising the thermostat a few degrees is less invasive then getting your A/C shut off for a couple hours.

Some places already do this. It's a good idea.

[Kludge]

http://www.cityofames.org/ElectricWeb/PrimeTimePower/Default.htm

Having everyone pulling power willy-nilly from a facility with limited output is a dumb idea. Regulating a more even amount of power to everyone is smarter.

Load management terminals

[ScottBob]

They already have a system like this in place in south Louisiana, some electricity co-ops use load management terminals, which look like a separate electric meter connected to the air conditioner. On hot summer days, they'll shut off the A/C for up to half an hour, to prevent overload to the grid and save money. They don't shut everybody's A/C off at once, they "roll" the shutoffs through the neighborhoods. It can be a bit of an inconvenience because of the temperature rise in your house, but if your house is well insulated, you won't notice it that much. The system is totally voluntary, and you even get a minor rebate on your electric bill.

Re:Load management terminals

[Cragen]

Agrreed. This sort of system (wired) already has been in existence No. VA. for at least 10 years. NOVEC is my provider. A co-op, btw.

Re:Load management terminals

[garcia]

It can be a bit of an inconvenience because of the temperature rise in your house, but if your house is well insulated, you won't notice it that much.

You notice it, like I did, when the condensing unit is powered down and powered back on too quickly and it trips the circuit breaker causing the house's temperature to rise to 88 degrees (with only a dog inside) while you're at work. When you get home, reset the circuit breaker, and attempt to get the house's temperature to something more reasonable, you cannot because they're still throttling you.

The "savings" I see on my electric bill during the summer months isn't worth the hassle and the possibility of having a dog with heatstroke. I now keep a fan running in the kitchen just in case it happens again (it didn't occur last summer for whatever reason) and I'm positive that the "energy savings" is eliminated by running that fan.

Re:Load management terminals

[Hollinger]

Here in Texas, Austin Electric has these as well. You get a programmable digital thermostat for free if you sign up (~$100 value). Since its programmable, you can set hour-by-hour profiles for your temperature, so that while you're sleeping or during the day, your thermostat's a few degrees warmer, saving you a few dollars.

I like the idea. If, after you've signed up, you find it gets too hot in your house, you can cancel it, give back the thermostat, and reinstall your old one.

I'd have one if I had Austin Electric. Unfortunately, I live just a few minutes outside of the city limits, so I have a different (deregulated) provider.

Re:Load management terminals

[evilviper]

The "savings" I see on my electric bill during the summer months isn't worth the hassle and the possibility of having a dog with heatstroke.

Any remotely healthy dog can handle 88F degrees easily. My dogs RUN AROUND in direct sunlight for hours, while the temperature in the shade is 120F, with no ill effects.

Re:ban home A/C then

[Bailsoft]

All air conditioning should be set to maximum for all rooms. Plus all car engines should be radio linked so the authorities can start them at will and rev them up to increase global warming. Plus cars should be fitted with gas guzzlers like in Futurama; I want the ice caps to melt in my life time!

Yes, it does get cold here

[xx01dk]

State control of my thermostat does not sound at all like a good idea to me. Granted, FTFA it's only a four degree swing, but I'm not sure I'd be willing to give up that sort of control. Who sets how low to go? Would I have to or be able to compensate by setting my thermostat higher? Seems that if I'm cold, I'm going to set the temp to where I like it, "the state" be damned. I'll determine what my threshold is concerning how much I want to pay verses how much comfort I want to have, thankyouverymuch.

OTOH I'm all for using less resources and the whole green thing, but I don't think a 1984 approach is what's warranted here. How about giving me more incentives to lower my home heating bill instead?

What I can tell you is that the day that CA is able to set how warm my home is will be the day I figure out how to bypass it.

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[HappyEngineer]

I agree. If there isn't enough power to go around then it's a limited resource and they should be charging more. Actually, they are charging more. A few years ago I was able to reduce my power bill by $100 a month (from $200 down to $100) just by turning off my computer at night. But, if they are still running out of power then they should either build another plant or charge even more for energy.

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[tubs]

They should be building more power stations.

Except shareholders are unlikely to accept a 30 year return of investment.

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[jamesh]

They should be building more power stations.

Why would that be a good solution? Putting more carbon into the air isn't going to make the temperature any cooler!

I think they'd be better off just charging more for electricity (with concessions for those who really need it but can't afford it). If you want AC then you'd better be prepared to pay for it. People lived without it in the past. At the moment, taking steps to save electricity doesn't really save you a noticeable amount of $$$. If the price went up a heap, then people would be more likely to take a look around at what they could turn off. If you could save $50/month just by turning off a few lights, bumping up (or down, as appropriate for your climate and time of year) the thermostat, or paying a bit extra for more efficient appliances then you'd be more likely to do it.

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[hankwang]

A few years ago I was able to reduce my power bill by $100 a month (from $200 down to $100) just by turning off my computer at night.

Was that computer a Beowulf cluster or something? Over here, electricity is about EUR 0.22/kWh. EUR 70 per month for 12 hours per day would mean you have a 900 W computer, or maybe 600 W plus 300 W for the airconditioning.

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[Skater]

Yeah, I run two computers all the time and my power bill is at most $150 or $160 during the hottest months of the summer. In winter it'll be well under $100 (I have natural gas heat). I do turn off the monitors when I'm not using them - either via DPMS or by physically turning them off at night and when I'm at work.

I have no idea how turning off a computer at night would save $100.

In my old place, the electric bill was conveniently split between HVAC and everything else. Everything else - including an electric range, fridge, lights, fans, TV, computers, etc. - was about $25/month, even with two computers on.

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[Rick17JJ]

That must be one monster, power hungry, computer to use that much power when idle with the monitor off. I suppose that would include the power that you air-conditioner uses to remove the computer's heat from your home. I seem to recall hearing that it takes about as much power for your A/C to remove the heat generated by appliances as what the appliance itself uses. So during the summer we could probably just double the actual power consumption figures of your computer.

If you had a Pentium IV with a power-thirsty high-end video cards with a cheap, inefficient power supply, it might possibly use as much as 250 or 300 Watts when idle (I don't know for sure). I don't know how much you are paying per KWH, but even including the effect on your air-conditioner, I would guess about $50 per month at most, for one computer, if I am calculating that correctly.

My computer probably uses less power than most desktop computers. It is plugged a Kill-A-Watt electricity usage monitor, at the moment, which shows that I am using 82 Watts (not counting the monitor). My LCD monitor uses an additional 38 Watts, but only uses 1 Watt when in the sleep state. If I left it on at night the the monitor would be in the sleep state using only 1 Watt. I also have a UPS, speakers and a few other things not on the meter so lets just round it off to 100 Watts.

A pay about 14 cents per KWH for my electricity where I live. If I am calculating this correctly, that would be about $10 per month. During the summer, I could probably call that $20 per month, if I include the added load my my air-conditioner. I hope I calculated that correctly, including the conversion from Watts to Killowatts and canceling of the units. Perhaps, some engineer or math geek could check my math. Here is my $10 per month calculation:

(100 W / hour) * (1 KW / 1000 W) * (24 hours / day) * (30 days / month) * ($ 0.14 / KW) = $10.08 / month

Kill a Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[HappyEngineer]

I haven't plugged it into a Kill-A-Watt in a while, but at the time I believe I measured my system to take 300-400w idle and 500-600w when in use.

I don't have an air conditioner.

The system at the time had a bunch of hard drives that were only used on occasion. To reduce power I've unplugged the ones that are just for backup and ones that contain stuff I rarely use.

I also had 3 crt monitors. I've replaced two of those with flat screen displays which take half the power.

At the time I had a dual cpu system. I've replaced the motherboard so I only have a single cpu that has 4 cores.

I used to have two 500w power supplies in the system. I have since replaced that with a single 750w power supply. That shouldn't actually reduce power usage except that that's one less fan in the system.

I also unplugged some of the case fans in the system.

But, right in the very beginning, before doing all that, I simply saved power by shutting it off at night. I used to leave it on so that I could quickly browse the web. But, now I just power up a laptop for that. Laptops power on fairly quickly.

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[Rick17JJ]

Yes, your computer is using quite a bit of power.

I built my dual-core AMD 4200+ computer a couple of years ago. It has a Gigabyte K8NS nVidia Socket 939 ATX motherboard, 2 GB of RAM and 2 hard drives. It also has a 256 MB video card which uses the nVidia FX5200 chipset. It's 370 Watt power supply has an 80+ certified energy efficiency rating. 80+ certified power supplies are designed to be at least 80% energy efficient when running at 20%, 50% and 100% of the rated load. I use Linux on the computer and have the AMD 64's Cool n' Quiet feature enabled which which drops the clock speed from 2.4 GHz down to 1 GHz during light usage to save power.

My other computer is a small book sized computer computer which uses only 23 Watts when idle (not counting the monitor). It has a 1.85 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2 GB of RAM and Windows XP. One reason that it uses so little power is that it uses the same type of motherboard that a laptop computer would use.

Both of those computers are plenty powerful for the typical web browsing, word processing and checking my email that I do. Running both computers at once, 24 hours per day would not be much worse than leaving a 100 Watt light bulb on all the time. Of course I actually use the much more energy efficient CFL light bulbs instead of ordinary 100 Watt incandescent light bulbs.

• What is 80 PLUS
• Compact fluorescent lamp (CFL)

Re:Yes, it does get cold here

[tubs]

Power stations do not have to be "coal", gas, nuclear, wind, wave, hydro or wahtever. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if parts of California would work fairly well with Solar ...

Electricity shouldn't be a "resticted" resource as such - it's a fundemental part of modern life in the west, and one of the resources we have the ability to produce and transmit. The problem is in the "privitised" sector there is no reason at all to increase capacity, shareholders do not benefit in any way and such a large investment that would take so long to see any returns would never be accepted. This is when idea of putting controlled themestats comes in, the costs are bourne by the user and not the shareholder/owner.

People already pay "more" for electricity if they run AC, why should people who don't use AC have to pay more to punish those that do?

What gear you got at home ?

[butlerdi]

And I'd almost rather have the power drop than have someone significantly raise the temperature in my home if I had a computer running there

What the hell you running in there ? California, with the exception of the Central Valley and a few deserts (not all that populated) is not all that hot. I have run almost all forms of workstations sans AC in 40C + weather with no adverse effects.

Re:What gear you got at home ?

[iwein]

And added to that, if you're running systems at home that are that critical you should really check out some of the new services of this millennium, like ec2/s3 for example... UPS at home is soooo ninetees.

Re:What gear you got at home ?

[DeVilla]

I live in Minnesota and there are days in the summer here that get hot enough that my machine will hose up due to heat. We ended up having to get A/C because the baby was getting terrible sores under the diaper. Creams and powders were not enough. Our choice was to install AC or or let the baby crawl (and later run) around naked. I can't imagine that California wouldn't have days like that.

I guess I'm for letting the Californians deal with their problem how ever they want, but it seems to me that they need to allow the power companies build more plants or live with it.

Re:What gear you got at home ?

[BeanThere]

For a machine to hose up like that just from a hot day, even a very hot day, it most likely means it wasn't well-ventilated enough (e.g. fan outlet too close to a wall or under a table etc.), or a fan wasn't working properly, and combined with that you'd probably have to be playing some serious 3D game or something for a prolonged period. You should leave quite a bit of space for the hot air to blow out and away from the computer.

Re:What gear you got at home ?

[evilviper]

California, with the exception of the Central Valley and a few deserts (not all that populated) is not all that hot.

Right... EXCEPT FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE STATE, where many, many millions of people live, California isn't a giant, record-setting, insanely hot desert... Nope.

The fact that Nevada and Arizona border California doesn't mean anything at all... Weather like the Arctic, that California.

hands of my thermostat

[Erpo]

This is a fundamentally broken system, like the cable companies relying on cable modems (in the customers' houses) to limit the amount of data customers can upload into the network per second. Uncapping, anyone? Unless the meters get smarter, "uncapping" a thermostat would be easy and very hard to detect.

Instead, why not plan properly so that electricity shortages don't happen?

As an aside, I don't think many people will take kindly to having their thermostats adjusted by an outside force. Being told "no" by technology tends to make people angry, even if it's for the greater social good. Ever seen a person get mad at a red traffic light? They don't realize that a red traffic light is not "the man" telling them no. It's a helpful, sensible warning that the cross traffic has a green light.

faraday?

[PrinceAshitaka]

Looks like the prefect use for a faraday cage.

Re:faraday?

[doradox]

All you need to do is shine a lamp on the thermostat making it think it's way hotter than it really is and the AC will run till the cows come home. I've done it at work before as they have the thermostats all "locked down".

Steve

Re:faraday?

[Bieeanda]

My first thought was old fashioned tinfoil. Take the thermostat off the wall, wrap it up like a baked potato, and bask in the cool knowledge that you've stuck one to The Man.

Re:Communism

[gfxguy]

As U.S. continues it's slow downfall into becoming a third world nation, the really shocking thing is how wonderful everybody seems to think this is.

Wait... did I just say that? I guess it's not really that shocking.

They want sockets to have Internet addresses too

[MichaelCrawford]

Quite a while back, maybe ten years ago or so, I read that the Electric Power Research Institute was proposing that each power and light socket have a unique IP address so that they could be remotely controlled by the power company, for the same reason as given here - to reduce consumption at peak times, and to prevent rolling blackouts.

That wasn't feasible at the time, as they would have quickly run out of available addresses, but now with IPv6 that's not such a problem anymore. I expect that the proposal will resurface again soon.

Why not just watch the frequency.

[gerardlt]

There already exists devices for dropping loads when the supply frequency droops - a sign that the generation is not meeting the load. These are designed specifically for areas where generation will occasionally be insufficient, like developing countries. Now that North America is in the same boat (and the rest of the 'western' world is probably going to follow the same course), why not start using these things.

It wouldn't be hard to develop a small micro-controller driven box that would watch the mains supply frequency and apply small adjustments to a thermostat setting as required.

Re:KDE 4.0

[gfxguy]

Yesterday... and I didn't even see a summary, but that just might be my preferences.

No.

[entrigant]

I'll give up my life before i give up my A/C. Piss off.

Re:No.

[Yetihehe]

So, will you commit suicide during blackout?

Re:No.

[Cairnarvon]

When the power goes out, your A/C goes out entirely. This is just about adjusting it a few degrees to prevent that.
If the A/C is all you're worrying about, you should be cheering for this idea.

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

not wanting to be rude, but slashdot is posting some story about thermostats and meanwhile KDE 4.0 is out, but there is no story about it. or did i miss it?

Yup. You missed 'em. Here and here, for starters.

Personally, I can't believe that people are buying into this. I'm paying the utility companies for service. Failure to plan/build the appropriate infrastructure is no excuse. In short:

Failure to plan upon their part should in no way necessitate a remedy on our part.

Re:Communism

[lordmetroid]

I am not Amercan, I am socialist-Swede!

Why not build more capacity?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

You know the one thing that I really don't understand is saving energy via force, and not via using technology. Actually I really don't understand the whole drive to just save energy as saving energy doesn't necessarily even mean saving environment. We have the technology, we have had for long, to solve all our energy problems without sacrificing environment or economy. So why not build more nuclear power? It's environmentally friendly and economic. From western countries, France and Finland are both building new next generation plants, British government is leaning on building more and even in Sweden, who after the Chernobyl, made an alarmist decision to give up nuclear power, is starting to discuss on reverting that decision.

So why not? Why not build more capacity to California and other parts of US? That way you could have your all the energy you need in low price and in time you could shut down your coal and oil power generation plants and take part in struggle against global warming. That would be a real solution to a problem, not a act to play more time, as is this proposition to take over the thermostats.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[Mike89]

So why not? Why not build more capacity to California and other parts of US?

It's not cost effective. I'm from Australia, but I feel I can still answer your question because my father has worked in the electricity industry and explained it all to me as a kid. Here in Melbourne, we have a few days a year of blackouts, typically. This is because in the peak of summer, the grid gets overloaded and rolling blackouts are implemented. Now, for the rest of the year, capacity is plentiful - the few days of overload doesn't provide enough incentive to upgrade, because for the rest of the year the network is overcompensating.

Sorry if I didn't explain it very well, it's been a long day ;)

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[ORBAT]

Just a nitpick, but the Swedes have something like 5 nuclear power plants, providing 50% of the country's power. I have no idea where you get your "facts" from.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[Anonymous Coward]

in the peak of summer, the grid gets overloaded and rolling blackouts are implemented. Now, for the rest of the year, capacity is plentiful - the few days of overload doesn't provide enough incentive to upgrade,

"When it's raining I can't fix the roof, and when it's not raining, I don't need to fix it!"

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

Yes, there are nuclear plants in Sweden, I didn't say that they didn't have, but they did make a decision to give up on them.

To quate Wikipedia: After the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (United States) in 1979, there was a referendum in Sweden about the future of nuclear power there. As a result of this, the Swedish parliament decided in 1980 that no further nuclear power plants should be built, and that a nuclear power phase-out should be completed by 2010. More on..

To this date Sweden has closed one nuclear reactor, and there hasn't been any formal decision on giving up the decision to phase out nuclear power in Sweden.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

Nuclear power is cost effective, it's hugely cost effective. In Finland we have four nuclear reactors and a fifth one being build up. Nuclear energy is used for base load and is being ran in full capacity for 24h providing 27% of countries electricity. To balance the demand and production of power, customers can get electricity pricing plans where energy is cheaper at times when demand is low, and by using both hydro and carbon based power plants to balance production.

On a note it should also be noted that France which produces 79% of it's electricity with nuclear power, uses nuclear power itself to balance the load. So in my opinion to say that nuclear power can't be build to satisfy energy demand because it's not cost effective or allow to scale easily production, isn't valid.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[Mike89]

So in my opinion to say that nuclear power can't be build to satisfy energy demand because it's not cost effective or allow to scale easily production, isn't valid.

I never mentioned Nuclear power, primarily because Australia, thus far, does not use it (and will not be, because of all the 'OMG, A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT RIGHT IN MY BACKYARD' despite the fact it'd be built in the most industrial, eye-sore area possible). We still have 'base loads' of power, based on coal and whatever generation means necessary. Basically the electricity grid works in a way where when there is low load, power can be bought 'off the grid' cheaply. When it's high, the cost increases (sometimes, incredibly dramatically). Sort've like what you're talking about, but for your provider not the consumer.

Even with vasts amount of generation taking place, there is simply not enough infrastructure in some areas to keep up with the load - especially in the heat. And especially in 'natural disasters' - eg. last summer Melbourne had extensive blackouts because one of our major feeds from a power plant was taken down by bushfire. Sure, there could've been a backup ran, but had that line gone down any of the other 364 days of the year, it would've done nothing. Companies simply can't invest millions to prevent "What Ifs" like that.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[DerekLyons]

So why not? Why not build more capacity to California and other parts of US?

Because that capacity is only needed for a very short period annually, which means the amortized cost of the plants in extremely high - far too high to afford. Kinda like buying a brand new pickup truck, and then only using it to purchase your Christmas tree and a couple of weeks later to haul it away.
 
Like most systems, the power grid is designed handle the maximum average load - not the maximum possible spikes. Even if we were 100% nuclear, the same problem would remain.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[multiplexo]

Companies simply can't invest millions to prevent "What Ifs" like that.

Funny, my company is spending a significant chunk of change on a disaster recovery site in case so we can get back online in case something bad happens at our corporate headquarters. Guess we should just forget about DR, it's just a silly "what if".

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

The big question here that you forget is what does it cost for the economy to have unreliable electricity production even for very short times in a year? Costs here are both caused to individuals and to companies. How many people die or can't work? How many companies have to scale down production? How many investments are canceled? There are real costs for having blackouts, even rolling ones.

You also don't take count on that in other countries, in example Nordic countries and southern Europe, there are also hikes on electricity demand, however in these countries there is enough electricity generation capacity to meet the hikes. I also contest the cost position, keeping coal and oil power plants in reserve doesn't cost much to build and keeping them in shape doesn't cost too much.

I would say that this is a question about valuation. Do you value more on saving a few dimes and not build enough capacity, or do you spend more and make sure that in any situation there is enough power.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[ross.w]

This initiative is a demand side solution that tries to take away the peak that occurs over the a couple of hot days in mid summer. To address a demand side problem (peaky demand) from the supply side is not a good idea.

You have to remember that money spent on infrastructure that isn't used much takes money away from projects that would provide greater
benefit per dollar spent.

It's a lot easier and fairer to address the demand side directly by lopping off those few peaks. Having your thermostat set to 25degC (do the conversion yourself) is not going to kill your computer(s). I had three of them running yesterday in a non-airconditioned house that reached 30degC indoors and had no problems.

Having said that, I think a better approach is to let the market do the work. Here in NSW, we have a new system foir new meter installations where you get charged different rates depending on when you use the power. Power that you use during peak times costs 3 times as much, and you get a discount for off peak.

The UK has a similar system, and it requires a special meter that can store the time each kWhr was used. These are being installed in NSW for new dwellings and when meters are replaced for other reasons, but they will eventually become the standard.

The new tariffs give people an incentive to do things like running dishwashers, dryers, washing machines, etc overnight when its cheap. It also gives an incentive to turn up your thermostat during peak times, or run the Aircon earlier when it's cheaper and rely on that insulation you were forced by BASIX to install to keep your house cool through the peak.

Not everyone will do so. Some will need to run air conditioning through the peak to protect their overclocked "data centre" or whatever. Some will do it on one day and not another day. Some will be too ignorant or lazy to bother about when they turn things on.

Those people will pay for their peak usage. Others will be smart and find ways to minimise their peak usage by by what they run at night. By having lots of people doing so. those peaks will be lopped off, money is spent on more beneficial infrastructure, less energy is wasted, less carbon is emitted and everyone is happy, except those who can't or won't reduce their peak usage. No one is forced to sit in a hot room and there are opportunities to save on your bill.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[jbengt]

How did parent get modded up?

Although I do agree that _forcing_ the energy savings shouldn't go over too well, the rest of the comment is mistaken. Saving energy is generally good for the environment, but that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. The issue is one of short-term peak demands outstripping supply. It is definitely NOT economical to address this issue by building more capacity (even though capacity will have to increase because of separate issues about increasing population / increasing energy use). And solutions like this have been successfully used in the commercial and industrial sectors for a long time, though usually through voluntary means like rate incentives and not mandates.

Re:Why not build more capacity?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

I do know what I'm talking for. Here in Finland we don't have rolling blackouts, we don't have to take down industry even when the consumption is in the peak. Yes, there has been talk about possibility on having a situation where the consumption spike is very severe and there is a production loss at the same time: very hard winter plus low hydro level combined to problems with Nordic and Russian networks. When this question is addressed it's seen as wake up call to build more capacity, to build more nuclear power and have enough backup capacity. It's seen as unacceptable to have a situation where consumption tops the capacity.

This is very much a question of valuation. If there would be a situation where industries would have to be taken down because of electricity consumption, it would be a national embarrasment, that could lead to bad PR in foreign press, that could lead investors not to invest in the country, that could lead permanent loss of some industries. That is the real cost position for the nation, and making sure that it doesn't happen is cheap to compared to situation where it does happen. So it's a question of valuation.

Re:KDE 4.0

[Poorcku]

the 2 stories date: dec 14 and dec 29. As of friday (january 11, 2008) it is officially out. so no, there is no story about it :)

Re:KDE 4.0

[FudRucker]

you know mentioning kde in the California thermostat control dept. is off topic, but i will bite anyway, i been a kde fan for years, since Slackware8 with kde-2.1.1, currently running Crux with a hand rolled qt & kde-3.5.8, from what i seen when i took a rc of kde-4 for a test drive i don't think it will be all that usable until 4.2.1 (somewhere in there) personally i think the kde team pushed it out the door way too soon, i hate the new menu scheme/style, and that huge panel needs an autohide & resize feature (i like a small or tiny kicker/panel with autohide turned on) since i like my apps to take up 100% of the screen...

HappyTrails :)

What nonsense

[rastoboy29]

Just charge people a buttload more when the system is overloaded.  Only that will motivate people to conserve.

Or, regulate the industry.  Power privatization has been a perfect example of the failure of the free market.  All it's been is a money grab.  Bastards.

Re:What nonsense

[lordmetroid]

How Orweillian, you blame people doing transaction on a concentual basis with each other. How about blaming the real problem? Government idiotic regulation such as licensing to prevent new people to enter the market. Outlawing of building new nuclear plants and so on and on and on and on and on... ... ...?

In South Africa

[hedleyroos]

We don't call it "rolling blackouts" - we call it "load shedding".

Actually we (the public) don't call it that. Eskom, the only electricity supplier (who just managed to hike rates by 14%) call it that. And the blackouts, sorry, load shedding, take place at random times. This results in businesses like small theatres without the means to buy generators sometimes losing lots of money, and Eskom can't be sued.

This post is sounding like a parody of "in Soviet Russia", but the sad thing is it is not.

How long before...

[sd1248]

How long people start pointing hair dryers at or placing heat packs over their thermostats?

Anytime time some one further regulates our lives someone will find a way around it. The best way to control demand for a limited resource is to increase the price during peak periods. Once the price gets high enough people will actually start to see the cost savings in turning down the air conditioning or better insulating their houses.

I prefer a cooler temperature however I have spent a lot of money insulating my house and only run the air conditioning in the one room I am using. I use less power than people with uninsulated houses that air condition every room even when their thermostat is set a few degrees higher.

Re:How long before...

[Dr. Evil]

Or you could not let the thermostat installation team in through the door.

This isn't the East German government. You don't have to let them in. They're not going to report you to the Stasi.

Re:How long before...

[grumling]

And the utility doesn't have to provide you with electricity, either.

An odd side note: In most cases, a bank will not provide you a mortgage unless the house is considered habitable. Without electricity, it may not be...

Re:How long before...

[Jaime2]

Even better, just install a second thermostat. Hook the A/C up to yours and don't hook anything up to theirs.

Re:How long before...

[Chapium]

If your power company has not already been notified that a resident is on life support, they should be. Many of them track important information like this.

Re:How long before...

[nick_davison]

Once the price gets high enough people will actually start to see the cost savings in turning down the air conditioning or better insulating their houses.

I have spent a lot of money insulating my house. When you can spend a little money, let's talk.

Your first point's a very good one. When people can save money, they'll do it.

Right now, as you point out, you end up spending a lot of money to insulate well, to use solar power, etc.

It may pay off over time but people have credit cards they'd much rather put that money to and save the 20-30% interest. Even if they don't have debt, spending thousands now to save tens of dollars on each bill is hard for a lot of people to choose to do.

And that's why hardcore energy saving remains the area of hardcore enthusiasts, people with a point to prove and those with means... not the majority of the population.

Re:How long before...

[An Onerous Coward]

The best way to control demand for a limited resource is to increase the price during peak periods.

Which doesn't really work when the consumers have almost no idea what they're being charged at a given moment.

The problem is, your solution basically involves setting one "peak rate" for everyone, that covers a broad swath of the midday. That's a very coarse tool for controlling demand. Among the many problems: what if people just choose to "pay for it"? Except, what they're really doing is underpaying, since the peak rate hasn't done what it was intended to do (push demand below the utilities' ability to supply).

Say you have an infrastructure that has just barely enough capacity to give everyone enough (say 20 minutes) of AC every hour, if everyone uses the electricity in a coordinated manner. But they don't; they just turn on when the thermostat says to turn on, so there are often more systems running than the infrastructure can handle, causing brownouts.

But if the thermostat is getting information about the state of the grid, then you can implement variable pricing. Electricity is cheap when demand is slack, allowing AC and refrigeration units to stagger their demand so as to not overwhelm the supply.

Real-time feedback from the grid will make the market for electricity more fluid and responsive. That's where this technology is headed, so I'm laughing at all this doom and gloom from the right wingers.

Rolling Blackouts Turn Off Thermostats Too

[ortcutt]

One way or another, the electric company is going to reduce your power usage in a power emergency, either by raising thermostats or shutting off your power. The former is certainly a preferable alternative to the latter.

Re:Some places already do this. It's a good idea.

[WK2]

There is a big difference between what you link to, and what California proposes. California proposes that every new home built, and every home with major modifications be forced to include one of these thermostats. City of Ames electric department offers a $5 discount to everyone who allows them to install a remote-control thermostat.

deadly to humans

[dltaylor]

My wife takes medication that makes her very sensitive to heat. In her state of health, raising the temperature could kill her.

No way they'll put that in without me having a backup (as we do now).

Re:deadly to humans

[AikonMGB]

I'm a severe asthmatic, and in the summer here (just North of Toronto) it can get pretty wicked.. 40C raw temperature, pus humidex. At those levels, my lungs stop being able to provide me enough oxygen to stay conscious. Add to that "smog" that gets washed up from Toronto and the States, and I need to stay inside an air-conditioned house on the worst of days. Of course, these are the same days that would prompt them to raise the temperature in my home.

For anyone who's health is related to ambient temperature and humidity/large-particle density, air-conditioning is a vital part of staying alive, and there's no way I would ever hand that control over to someone with a happy button-finger, nor a computer program with perfectly optimized sequencing.

Aikon-

Re:ban home A/C then

[ardyng]

Yes, and elderly and infirm people should be restricted to one room of their own houses. ;)

Re:ban home A/C then

[Ross D Anderson]

Mod +1 Dick

Re:This is a joke, right?

[jamesh]

1. If the utility (which charges you for their services) can raise your air conditioning temp by a couple of degrees to ease the load, what prevents them from lowering the thermostat by a degree or two (or, depending on the technology, .45 degrees in order to keep the display showing the same degree you set it at, but increasing usage ever so slightly multiplied by millions of households) to increase their profit at your expense?

They might try this, but they'd get caught (they always do), and there would be a huge class action and they'd never do it again. I don't see a problem.

2. The first time someone dies from heat overexposure, the taxpayer and utility customer will end up footing the bill to cover the liability payout.

How much exactly are they raising the temperature here???

3. It is a slippery slope. What form of control of our daily life will be recommended next {for our own good, of course}?

Oh not the slipperly slope again. Now all we need is someone making a frog in boiling water comparison and the commentry will be complete.

Re:Some places already do this. It's a good idea.

[Seumas]

Both are stupid ideas.

Having everyone pulling power from a properly built infrastructure so that it can handle said demand is ideal. I don't know how long California has been having this problem, but it has been at least ten years and if you can't at least begin to increase your services in a decade, then you don't deserve to be in business.

It's not like the energy isn't available. They just don't have the power grid to handle it. Rather than Orwell-ing me, how about improving your damn services?

You'd want to think twice

[Melbourne Pete]

I'm not sure I'd want to be making too many complaints to the electricity company about my power bill. They could make things pretty uncomfortable for you if they took a disliking to you!

Why a stick when a carrot would do?

[ardyng]

Seriously, I don't like the idea of this being legislated in this way.

I think that a voluntary system could be devised that would get consumers to want this and participate voluntarily. (And I'm sure it has, though I'm too fuddled to try and find a link at this hour of the morning.)

The program I recall was that the energy company would either provide the thermostat free of charge or at a heavily rebated price, and that every time there was a need, they could send a code to your thermostat to raise the temperature by a few degrees to get your system to cycle down for an hour or two. In return for allowing them to do this, the customer who had their system sent such a code would receive compensation in the form of a five dollar (or some other small) credit on their bills.

Also, if you're not home and your thermostat is off, or you're off on vacation, the system records the number of signals sent, not how many times the thermostat was actually raised, so you'd get rewarded even if you weren't inconvenienced.

I'd go for that in a heartbeat, and I think a lot of other people would too, if it were explained to them in this way. Even though I'm living in a household with three other people who all NEED the AC, I don't think having it bumped up by a few degrees would adversely affect us very much at all.

I don't think we need legislation when a voluntary program could do the trick just fine.

As long as there is an override...

[3seas]

Let those who want to participate do so, those that don't want to to also do so and for those who find at times exception to participation, but otherwise would participate, the ultimate control.

Everyone pays for what they use, here in atlanta with teh water issues, more and more are turning to rain collection systems and the same do it yourself attitude can be applied regarding power.

Re:As long as there is an override...

[backbyter]

Chris? Is that you?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15water.html

Economics?

[OgreChow]

Simple way to accomplish the same means: raise the price during peak hours. Works for cell phones, right?

Re:Economics?

[noidentity]

Simple way to accomplish the same means: raise the price during peak hours. Works for cell phones, right?

And that's what they do, when they install the newer electric meters which can keep track of when usage occurs. Until then, it's probably cheaper to install a new thermostat than a new meter. They've had something like that in Austin, Texas for years. You can opt-in for a free electronic thermostat and installation, if you accept that it will limit A/C usage during peak times.

Re:Economics?

[dlevitan]

Simple way to accomplish the same means: raise the price during peak hours.

Works for cell phones, right? I actually had this in an apartment I lived in in upstate NY. The primary purpose is to heat during the night hours since this takes up a large chunk of most people's electrical usage. The apartment was supposed to be cheap to heat because of the on/off-peak meter, a water heater that turned on only at night, and ETS heaters that heated big ceramic blocks at night and let them warm the apartment during the day. However, things really don't work that well. First, once two people took showers, there was no more hot water, so you'd have to restart the hot water if you wanted to, say, run the dishwasher. Second, you needed to predict tomorrow's weather for the heaters, and there was not thermostat setting (at least not on ours - just a dial 1 to 6). If you remembered to do this and/or the temperature was the same, everything would be great. If not, you'd be left with a very hot or very cold apartment. Finally, during the summer, it helped a lot less since there was no way to cool the apartment down without running the A/C constantly.

If you actually put money in and had a big house, I'm sure there's some way to move all your heating and cooling needs to off-peak hours, but it would be expensive. Basically, you'd need something like lake-source cooling (where you use water from a nearby lake to cool down buildings and then return the water) but on a smaller scale. I know if definitely saved us some money, but I'm not really sure how much and it didn't really affect our ways of using energy.

Scotland...

[markowen58]

In Scotland they already have a system that the local meter operator decides when you heating comes on called WeatherCall. You essentially leave your heating on all the time and a two rate radio teleswitched controled meter switches the heating circuit on based on the weather. Granted i don't live that far north so i don't know how people like it or not or feel their liberty is in some way restricted. All i think they care about is being warm when it's cold, which basically they are.

may not be relevant due to the fact it's based around the weather, but equally the meter operator knows what kind of load it will need and when it will need it as it decides.

That said though, a well insulated house will reduce the need for either AC or Heating... build better...

Re:Scotland...

[autocracy]

Is this based upon some kind of central heat plant system?

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

Failure to plan upon their part should in no way necessitate a remedy on our part. Well, sunshine, that's how the world works, though here and in most other examples, the remedy is coming from them, not you.

Regardless of whether it is poor planning, poor policy, poor enforcement, or some uncontrollable outside force (greedy people chilling McMansions while they're at work, for example), power is a finite resource. It runs out when it runs out. This is an unavoidable fact. If there is no power to give, your philosophical argument is meaningless. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Did you support proper planning and capacity by encouraging best performance practices on the utility company? Or did you just ask for the lowest possible bill? Exactly. You're paying for service; we're all paying for service. It's not like you get billed for power during your blackout block time, so your payment is irrelevant.

How would you rather manage it? Either way we're talking about forcibly reducing demand to keep the grid online. That can either mean a few tens of thousands of customers get their power cut for a while, or 38 million people have their thermostat reset five degrees up (with obvious concessions where applicable) for a few hours?

I choose the latter, if for no other reason than that I hate resetting clocks and get annoyed when the DVR or Internet cut out while recording/downloading. Most sensible people would, too.

Re:KDE 4.0

[gfxguy]

No, like I say, it was a one liner (no summary, but that just might be my settings), it was certainly posted on slashdot:

KDE 4.0 Is Out

Anything to aviod solar electricity I guess.

[micheas]

In California If you produce more electricity than your use from the solar panels on your house you not only don't get to sell your excess electricity at wholesale rates you just get credits that expire on your anniversary of having net metering. This is unlike Germany where you get to sell your excess solar generated electricity at retail prices.

Basically PG&E is going to make about $2,000 dollars off of me because I don't use enough electricity. (maybe I need to move some pizza boxes from the office to home, no I can hear the fans in the other room at work even with the door closed)

The only debate we are having is to replace the hot water heaters or the stove with electric instead of gas so that we can increase our electric usage.

California has an electricity shortage and many of their residents are scaling back solar installations and or scheming to use more electricity and they are going to install stupid devices that can be defeated by walking down to the drugstore and getting an instant heat pad to put on the thermostat. (Of course the real nerds will put a second thermostat on the hair dryer that is pointed at the radio controlled thermostat and have it blow hot air at the thing to get the house cool. I guess I need to go patent a really obvious design and get manufacturing lined up if this stupid nanny state regulation gets passed.

Gee this a bad idea that has an obvious workaround by the dishonest and has lots of room for kickbacks and ignores the cause of the problem, I give it about an 80% chance of passing if the elected officials in Sacramento get paid their bribes^w campaign contributions.

Re:Anything to aviod solar electricity I guess.

[LVSlushdat]

This is a good example of the b.s. that caused me, a lifetime Californian, to pack up in 1996 and move to Nevada. Now I really see why so many people call California, The People's Republic Of Kalifornia.......

Re:Anything to aviod solar electricity I guess.

[Ihlosi]

In California If you produce more electricity than your use from the solar panels on your house you not only don't get to sell your excess electricity at wholesale rates you just get credits that expire on your anniversary of having net metering. This is unlike Germany where you get to sell your excess solar generated electricity at retail prices.

Actually, in Germany you sell all of the electricity you generate with solar, because you get a subsidized rate (about twice the retail price). Then you buy all the kWh you need at the retail rate.

Re:Anything to aviod solar electricity I guess.

[blitz487]

California has an electricity shortage

Shortages are the usual result when the government fixes the prices of things at artificially low levels. Allow the price to rise so that demand falls until it meets the supply. End of shortage.

Re:Anything to aviod solar electricity I guess.

[PPH]

There's a reason for their policy. I'm not saying it shouldn't be fixed, but there are political issues with that.

The cost of running a utility breaks down into two parts: capital costs and fuel costs. Utilities incur capital costs in proportion to the peak amount of electricity that you use (or sell back). Fuel costs are proportional to the amount of energy that you consume.

Now, here's the problem. Current billing policies are structured to recover all of the above as if they are energy costs. Therein lies the problem with someone who generates energy, nearly zeroing out their periodic usage. But this customer still uses the grid, both to draw power and to sell it back.

Unfortunately, metering and billing technologies have been slow to catch up. In the perfect world, you would pay a fee based upon your peak use over a certain period. Even if you sustained that peak for only a few minutes and didn't use all that much energy. This charge would be assessed regardless of which direction power flowed. There would also be an energy charge to recover fuel costs. You would pay, or receive an amount based upon your use or generation, respectively.

This idea is both politically unpopular and technically more difficult. In California, fuel costs might be a significant part of your bill. But in some places like the Pacific Northwest, with its large hydro base, fuel costs are very low. As a result, such a scheme would not discourage higher energy use. On the technical side, the metering equipment needed to track peaks in different time frames as well as energy used is much more expensive to install. Now here's the real knee slapper. My local utility spent the last decade installing just such a system. It can track use over multiple time frames and is read via the cellular phone network instead of by hundreds of meter readers. Unfortunately, the FCC has given the cell phone companies to pull the plug on the analog network upon which all this equipment is based.

Around here ...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in a northern state, we pay for the power we use. So, if we use more, we pay more. It's a pretty simple model and it works real well. I suppose in a socialist society, it is a problem because only a few are paying for everyone's power and so they do have to ration it.

Re:Around here ...

[adonoman]

Are you saying there are states where people pay flat rates for electricity? Even up here in communist Canada with government run power companies we still pay by the kilowatt*hour.

Re:Around here ...

[Adversive]

Californians pay for the power they use just like you. They also probably pay more per kW/h.

The problem is that during certain high-demand summer days, California's grid infrastructure cannot provide enough electricity to meet the demand. People are upset because California has not been more aggressive about improving the power grid or building new power plants.

Re:This is a joke, right?

[raju1kabir]

The first time someone dies from heat overexposure, the taxpayer and utility customer will end up footing the bill to cover the liability payout.

Oh please. The first time someone dies from "heat overexposure" because their thermostat was moved from 72 to 74, I'll fork over the liability payout myself. Anybody who is that fragile needs to be in an intensive care unit.

Re:This is a joke, right?

[paxgaea]

"They might try this, but they'd get caught (they always do), and there would be a huge class action and they'd never do it again. I don't see a problem."

Yes, because 'they' ALWAYS get caught (sarcasm)...nevermind that sometimes it takes a generation or more, like the recent release of classified information that the US govt faked incidents to escalate the Vietnam War.

"How much exactly are they raising the temperature here???"

By enough to potentially make a difference for the elderly person on a fixed income who is already keeping the thermostat on the bleeding edge of reasonability to be able to afford the bill. And, thanks for proving my point with your response to item number 1, where that class action suit will raise prices as I pointed out in item 2.

"Oh not the slipperly slope again. Now all we need is someone making a frog in boiling water comparison and the commentry will be complete."

Some of us are concerned about the 'slippery slope' and there is valid reason throughout history for that concern.

no thank you

[TheGratefulNet]

I don't want my t-stat to have an ip addr. I don't want my CAR to have an ip addr. I don't want ANYONE mucking around in my gear or my life, remotely, for some 'greater good'.

everytime there is a bright idea about how to control other peoples' lives, its usually horribly thought out and defective by design.

the only POSSIBLE way this would work is if there was a priority scheme where SOME non-critical things would be remotely controlled and some things always left locally admin'd. but that won't work as we don't have 2 power grids!

hey how about this - instead of limiting peoples' use - why not (ready for it?) BUILD UP and re-invest in our infrastructure.

this short-term thinking is why the US is going to hell in a handbasket. we are not 'running out' of electricity. build it the fuck up and stop trying to limit use on things that should not be limited!

Re:no thank you

[ErikZ]

California not not equal the US.

They've known about their electricity supply problems for years now. This is a solution they came up with.

It doesn't surprise me, and it shouldn't surprise anyone who knows California. Or dealt with Californians moving into their community.

Re:no thank you

[NoMaster]

"The average Californian was not greatly worried by a rise of a couple of inches in the tide-level; he had been much more delicately stricken. Something was happening to his climate ... He disapproved of that, and a large number of Californians disapproving makes quite a noise."

-- John Wyndham, 'The Kraken Wakes', 1953.

Re:They want sockets to have Internet addresses to

[TheGratefulNet]

"what's that noise?"

"its the machine that goes PING!"

"where is it?" where is that sound coming from??"

"its in all our wall sockets, mate. nothing you can do about it." ;)

Ban stupid government regulations first

[Shivetya]

That prevent the proper and adequate supply of electricity. The hoops my local has to go through to increase generating capacity is shameful. It practically comes down to bribing state representatives in order to build plants. Hell, even when providers try to build "green" sources they are fought in courts by one group or another. It has become downright disgusting how easy it is to prevent any improvement, green or otherwise to the system. It is mainly these roadblocks which result in coal plants being kept in service longer. In some cases making improvements at said plants is difficult as well because of regulation.

You want to ban air condition, then get the government to do so first in their own buildings. Make them come up to the same specifications they impose on commercial and private properties. Make them conserve. Down here in Georgia we are suffering from a regulation caused water shortage. Stupid rules, monolithic government agencies, and ease of filing suits with willing courts have resulted in Georgia flushing billions of gallons down stream with no study to back it up. When the recent reviews didn't turn out like the conservationist wanted they simply went to the courts and lawmakers to get their view imposed. I have two lakes near me near 20 feet down. One of which could generate electricity cleanly provided it wasn't flushing twenty times the water needed for generation down the river. Rivers which because of the volume are near flood stage meaning rains push them over their banks.

If we cannot have comfort in our own homes then something is desperately wrong with the system. We are a nation with great resources, the technology to use them efficiently and cleanly, yet at every corner some interest group gets the government to impose such heavy handed regulation that the public suffers. We are a country that fought for freedom and then began making laws to give it away. Now I bet your the type that would be screaming at government ids and government healthcare yet you turn around and want intervention?

No heat sensors on your computer?

[daemonsito]

As a comment to the article, is mentioned that the computer would melt if the AC would shut down.

Just as it has UPS monitors to know when to shut down, it should have hardware monitors to know whens a bit to hot to work properly and shut down.

Government Control?

[rdnetto]

2 words: Big Brother (the book, not the TV show)

Hacking the temperature swing

[Latent Heat]

You can always hack that 4-degree swing in the thermostat. Too warm? Use a blow dryer to "persuade" your thermostat that it is too warm to get the AC to kick in.

Re:ban home A/C then

[Jesus_666]

During my visits to the States I wondered why AC is so immensely popular there. Most areas don't suffer from enough natural catastrophes to make building your house out of something better than wood unfeasible, so aerated concrete would be a viable alternative to the current "erect some wood beams and bolt the facade to them" design. It's relatively easy to build a house with (you essentialy have huge bricks that you can easily cut/sand/drill into any desired shape) and its thermal insulation properties are awesome. Combined with standard evacuated/argon-filled double-pane windows and mineral wool to insulate the roof you get a level of thermal insulation that is worlds apart from a simple wood house.

Also, even if you have a wood house, double-pane windows and mineral wool will go a long way towards insulating it (make sure you wear a mask while working with mineral wool, though; it generates dust while being worked with and you don't want that stuff in your lungs). The big downside to mineral wool is that as of a couple years ago it was quite difficult to get your hands on in the USA. My brother had to import his from Germany, as that turned out to be easier to do than finding an American vendor. (If that's still the case this just screams "market gap".)


Of course, the foam concrete thing might not quite fit the American concept of moving every couple years; a proper two-family house built according to German standards can set you back about 300 to 500 grand, depending on whether you want a basement - not an investment you'd like to make if you don't intend on keeping that house for the next couple decades. Mineral wool, however, is much cheaper and can already save you tons of money in heating/AC costs.
I think that double-pane windows ought to be the standard in the USA already, so using them goes without saying. The States are pretty backwards when it comes to private house construction, but I don't think they're that backwards.

Re:They want sockets to have Internet addresses to

[Jesus_666]

I expect a torrent of lawsuits to follow when people had the power sockets their computers are connected to shut down, losing unsaved work. It'l probably end in a class-action lawsuit that will prevent power companies from limiting user consumption in any way for the next twenty years.

Why stop there?

[HangingChad]

This seems like a reasonable idea...

Then lets apply it in a lot more places. Remote locks on refrigerators when you've eaten enough for the day. Or cut off your water when you've used your quota. Maybe a machine that dispenses your cigarettes for the day ala 5th Element. Maybe the government thinks you should exercise more so they regulate your TV time. Because, let's face it, a technical solution is just so much more effective than education.

Every really insane piece of regulation started with a reasonable idea.

I think a better solution would be some type of feedback that showed people the demand on the grid and let them throttle their own electricity usage. If that feedback mechanism showed them ways to shift their electricity usage to less expensive times of the day and shows them how much money they saved it would be almost as effective in a much less dickish, Dick Cheney kind of way.

Re:Why stop there?

[ultranova]

Maybe the government thinks you should exercise more so they regulate your TV time.

Hmmm... making all TV sets powered by threadmills would solve the obesity epidemic while lowering power consumptions significantly. They could even be marketed with a positive spin: "Never again miss an episode of American Idol due to a blackout!"

Seriously, threadmills with a wall-socket compatible power output might actually have a market niche. There are, after all, situations where getting electricity is literally the matter of life and death.

Re:Why stop there?

[Sancho]

Education is always a preferred option, but it's not always the better one. The situations where remotely-controlled A/C reduction would be useful are in cases where the alternative is a rolling blackout--where you lose the A/C anyway, along with the rest of your electricity. While education might help some, there are always going to be assholes who just leave the A/C on (and on low temperatures) all of the time, and if there are enough of those, there are still likely to be power problems.

Also, we're not talking about quotas, here. We're talking about reducing the power that the A/C uses for 15 minutes, in order to help take the load off of the grid. Except in an extreme heatwave, this isn't going to cause damage (unlike your water or refrigerator suggestions, which were also asinine for reasons other than emergencies.) And again, if the grid is overloaded enough, you're going to lose it anyway.

Re:Why stop there?

[scottv67]

making all TV sets powered by threadmills...Seriously, threadmills with a wall-socket

WTF is a threadmill?

Re:ban home A/C then

[amRadioHed]

Can we ban commercial air conditioning first? It's warm out, I don't want to have to dig out a sweater and wool cap when I want to go to a restaurant or movie theater.

Re:Grow Houses

[Soporific]

How is someone taking 50K watts and not being noticed? A $5000-$6000 power bill for a private home is going to set off some alarms I would think, not to mention can you even get that kind of power off the pole?

~S

Where's the outrage?

[dcroxton]

I can't believe so many people on Slashdot are okay with this. Are these the same people who cry every time the government wants to expand its surveillance powers? That is something that will, in all probability, not affect anyone -- a bad precedent, but of no immediate import. And yet when the government wants to come in and change the temperature in your house, it's no big deal.

hard questions that expose true motives

[Anonymous Coward]

1) why are they proposing to mandate these remote-control thermostats in private residences instead of government buildings?
2) why don't they just shut down the state and local governments on days when power usage looks like it might spike enough to overload the grid? I.e. tell the government employees to just stay home like state governments in the north-east do for snowstorms and leave all the government buildings set at the lowest-energy-use level necessary to prevent damage to each building's infrastructure?

Significantly reducing the government's use of energy below even the level necessary for the government to operate for the limited duration of a predicted energy emergency would preclude a need for the government to usurp control of private citizen's homes but as this is California the regulators would much rather establish a new foothold of control over private behavior than exercise existing control over the state government's behavior.

This will only lead to two things...

[Kevin108]

Dual thermostats. I'd put one in that the power company could fiddle with all they wanted to that was in no way connected to my A/C or heating unit, which would still be controlled by my own thermostat.

Feeling the Draft

[NetSettler]

Can you imagine what would happen, either locally or world wide, if there is a real shortage of fuel? And prices go up to $30 per gallon or worse? Electricity would costs $2.50 per kwh? OK, this will not happen not today, but it could be the case in 40 years. Than you would think more than twice to even switch on your AC... Some poorer people would not even be able to pay for warming up a meal. Do you know what these people are going to do? I do not want to find out...

I would liken the issue to the the draft. (No, not the one coming in the window when the A/C is not working.) Back when we had a mandatory draft, we all, as a society, cared whether we went to war. But once we had a voluntary draft, many in the Elite don't have to care, at least not in the same way: It won't be their kids. And though they pay lip service to the notion that it's a hard choice, that choice isn't felt by them in the way it is by others. It's below their radar. And they can indulge the illusion that the only reason people join the military is that they want to. The idea that they cannot afford to is foreign to them. This moves toward a two-tier society of haves and havenots, because one can afford to just not care about the human cost.

In the case of energy, the risk of a blackout affects us all. So it's a reason to build more infrastructure. But once the system is "managed" and society has been divvied up into groups who "of course must have power" and "of course must not" in order for the Greater Good to be served, the question of whether to have more infrastructure becomes much more questionable since it is more distant to the decision-makers. I somehow doubt that politicians will have their thermostats going down--what about the foreign dignitaries that might be visiting? Can't inconvenience them. And we'll find that rich people no longer live in "homes", they live in "free-standing buildings that happen to have home-like amenities", or some other dodge that regular people can't figure out... Like the way tax loopholes work. They will also be distanced.

It also becomes like the way we expect a better health care system from a Congress that has its own health care plan that is better than everyone else's. The day Congress is required by law to have the worst health care of any US citizen is the day that health care will be really reformed. The day that going to war means the people who decided it have their kids yanked out of wherever they are and put on the front lines of the first ground force with handheld weapons entering the war, that's the day we'll know when a war is justified. And this plan for thermostat control, I assume it will have similar issues awaiting similar fixes that will never come.

What it is to be a society, at some level, is to all be in the same game. This proposal sounds like it makes everyone the same, but the nature of the dodges will not be apparent and the nature of the risks will be manageable by some and not by others. Power outages are more harsh, but they are also more truthful. They serve as a reminder that something is amiss. Making them less visible is not a certain recipe for making this country better, since the sluggish nature of democracy makes it react only to things that are easily articulated. And this would make it all blurry and disputable, dissipating political energy that might otherwise be better used.

In the end, if global warming ever does take hold, the thermostat may be the absolute only thing in the entire house that anyone wants to burn energy on, so it can't be a solution. The solution expressed by caitriona81 in a related post seems more like it's on the right track.

Re:Feeling the Draft

[grumling]

Another interesting byproduct is that innovation and thought power will be directed to gaming the system instead of inventing new ways to fix the fundamental problems. Just in these messages there have been several good, easy ideas to alter the thermostats to override the system. This leads to a situation similar to the PSP, where new firmware is released, the hackers spend time breaking the protection, the developers spend time working on a new scheme, and less time is spent on innovation.

As for politicians, don't think for one minute they wouldn't happily suffer along with the rest of us. The difference is they would make sure it is on the front pages.

Progressive Midwest

[milligi]

Why does CA make headlines when TSHTF? Missouri offered this option over a year ago. Consider the extremes of wealth and poverty in CA and you will see why this will only penalize the less affluent. The Beverly Hillbillies, Santa Barbarians, and Carmel Squares will continue cooling their mansions to as low as they want (read: can afford--which translates to obscene amounts of $ to common people) all the while keeping their glass walls wide open to the beautiful vistas, swimming pools and landscaping. Why not initiate restrictions at the TOP of the food chain this time??? To paraphrase Diogenes, "Find me one honest consumer earning over $200,000 a year that will close off half (or 3/4) of zir estate and make a serious effort to NOT cool their burbs!"

Re:mad at a red traffic light?

[zmollusc]

I often get mad at red traffic lights as 'the man' has mounted cameras on them so that he can fine me and endorse my driving license if i run the red light even though there is no cross traffic and/or the sensors in the road cannot detect my vehicle (hence i have to wait until another vehicle queues up behind me that is big enough to trigger the traffic lights to change to green).

What if this was about bandwidth?

[goldspider]

If I recall correctly, folks around here aren't particularly thrilled when companies like Comcast impose artificial bandwidth ceilings on their paying customers. Why then is it such a good thing when other service providers do it? How is this any less intrusive?

Re:What if this was about bandwidth?

[toddestan]

If you read the comments around here, I'm not seeing a whole lot of support for this. Most people here support letting the market sort it out by allowing the price of electricity to fluctuate with demand, and allowing consumers the ability to set their thermostats accordingly.

preferential treatment for businesses

[thinkzinc]

When there is an energy crunch, the state and the power companies
can limit household energy so that businesses like Wal-Mart can run at full
capacity.

Welcome to Fascism

[BigChigger]

in the name of the environment.

Opt-in + discount?

[nurb432]

We have something like that here in the summer too.

If you let the power company turn off your AC for a little each day, ( completely, not just change the temp ) they give you a discount. But its totally opt-in so if you are at home or have pets there is no risk of them getting hot when its 100+ outside.

Today

[Matt867]

Today we take over the thermostats, tomorrow we take over the world!

Retail Price Caps?

[mjh]

Ok. So California implements retail price caps, then wonders why there's unbounded consumption?

Simple fix: get rid of the retail price caps.

Re:Retail Price Caps?

[vijayiyer]

Exactly. It's just like the 70's "energy crisis". Why is so hard about understanding supply and demand?

Colorado Springs already there

[ahziem]

About two years ago, Colorado Springs Utilities started offering something similar with an incentive. IIRC, they offered a free fancy thermostat and/or some discount. Sounds like a good idea to cut excess usage: if are not using it, turn it down.

link: Colorado Springs Utilities

[ahziem]

http://csu.org/environment/conservation_res/energy/load_cycling/index.html "The LCPP is a partnership between Colorado Springs Utilities and Carrier Corporation. The LCPP allows Springs Utilities to adjust residential customers' central air conditioning thermostats upwards two to four degrees during periods of high demand for electric power (usually between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.). Thermostats may be adjusted up to 25 times each year."

Cutting Cooling to the Supercomputer

[Cassini2]

My local university tried something like this. They had a fairly powerful computer (64-processors, SGI system) that they used for numerical simulations. It wasn't quite a supercomputer, but for the research group involved, it was their very own "supercomputer."

Enter Physical Plant. They were in charge of providing chilled water for air conditioning. In the dead of the Canadian winter, they failed to see the point of maintaining the 4 degree Celsius chilled water supply. Of course, a good sized supercomputer requires a fairly steady supply of chilled water.

Lot's of simulations bit the dust in the name of "efficiency" and "savings". I'm not sure if the supercomputer ever did work right after the first major overheat, when they completely turned off the chilled water supply.

Feedback

[BeanThere]

Here in South Africa, where electricity demand also currently outstrips supply for various stupid reasons, the government's police of "managing" the problem includes just such a thing: Broadcasting current overall electricity usage in an overlay on television channels, with colour-coding, when usage is high (i.e. it shows it 'going into the red', and asks people to turn off all non-essential appliances etc.). I suppose they've had moderate success, and I suppose it helps, but of course it's not enough. Amongst other things, they've also been working to 'educate' the public to use electricity more sparingly, and encourage the use of e.g. more energy-efficient light bulbs and so on (I think they even had a program where they gave away millions of them).

Time depending pricing: saving the planet?

[Geoffrey.landis]

It's a bad idea that's very close to a good idea. Remotely controlled thermostats for ten million houses would be a systems nightmare. How the heck would you debug that system, anyway?

Thegood idea, however, would be to have time-dependent pricing on power. Power production is very expensive at some times of day, typically mid-day during the air-conditioning season, and very cheap at other times of day, in fact, nearly cost-free from midnight to 5 AM, when the power plants are still turning over but nobody's using much electricity. A lot of people would revise their lifestyles to buy electricity at low rates instead of high if the price accurately reflected the actual cost of production.

Would this save the planet? Well, consider; solar panels product most power at mid-day, and more when it's sunniest and when the days are longest... so solar panels produce electricity at the *highest price* times of day-- pricing that reflected actual power cost would mean the power sold from solar panels would sell at a premium.

Re:Time depending pricing: saving the planet?

[scottv67]

Thegood idea, however, would be to have time-dependent pricing on power. Power production is very expensive at some times of day, typically mid-day during the air-conditioning season, and very cheap at other times of day, in fact, nearly cost-free from midnight to 5 AM, when the power plants are still turning over but nobody's using much electricity. A lot of people would revise their lifestyles to buy electricity at low rates instead of high if the price accurately reflected the actual cost of production.

Gee, I wonder why no utilities have thought of charging more for electricity used during the day and less for electricity used at night:

RESIDENTIAL SERVICE -- TIME-OF-USE
http://www.weenergies.com/pdfs/etariffs/wisconsin/ewi_sheet23-24.pdf

Re:Some places already do this. It's a good idea.

[Tiger4]

Having everyone pulling power willy-nilly from a facility with limited output

You mean people SHOULDN'T draw the power they need, to live the life they think appropriate for themself?

See, this problem was detected many years ago, so we invented this thing called "Engineering" to deal with it. People who practice "Engineering" do things like estimate the expected load, build production and distribution facilities for that load, find back up sources of supply for that load to increase reliability, then maintain and improve that system to stay ahead of the actual demand. This "Engineering" thing was a really remarkable breakthrough. Completely eliminated the need for that rationing thing you seem to be heading for.

Great!

[Bryan Bytehead]

Time to bring out the tin foil! Not for hats, but to block the antenna!

Re:They want sockets to have Internet addresses to

[Tiger4]

"each power and light socket have a unique IP address"?

We'll need IPv8 to deal with that!

Blackout may be preferred for you,but

[John Jamieson]

Sure the blackout may be preferred for you, but, your preference is shortsighted. The last time I was in a big power outage during a heatwave was in the north. A guy who had been injured working on high voltage lines(and was disabled) died due to the lack of cooling.

As long as the thermostatic controls apply to all business and home locations within reason, it is a lot less invasive/costly/deadly than rolling blackouts. (now if they would just insulate building better in CA)

Stupid huge American homes

[VampireByte]

What gets me about this idea of cutting thermostats is I presume it would apply to everyone regardless of the size of their home. So someone with a smaller and more energy efficient home would suffer because of all the electricity cooling these huge "McMansions" that everybody has to build these days.

My sister whines about the cost of heating & cooling her home, like someone forced her to build a 5400 square foot four-bedroom home with 3-story tall ceilings that needs 2 air conditioning systems, all for her and two kids. My in-laws' huge house also requires 2 central air conditioning systems and has two kitchens and only the two of them live there. My father and his old hag bitch wife live in a six bedroom home with a great-room bigger than my entire condo. These huge homes are causing a drain on our resources. Why should people who don't build or live in them have to suffer because of the stupidity of resource hogs?

Already popular in some states

[goofy183]

MG&E in Wisconsin has been offering this as a voluntary service for a while: http://www.mge.com/home/services/power_cntl.htm

The idea is you get a $25 credit for having this installed and then $8/hour of shutoff time and they specific times when they will not shut off your AC. I've seriously thought about it since the possible shutoff times are pretty much while I'm at work.

Actually, even in "cold" climates ....

[debest]

... the peak electricity consumption is still typically in the summer.

Here in Ontario, the power utility (Ontario Hydro) never has issues with providing power in the coldest days of winter, because very few homes or businesses here are electrically heated. We get some pretty hot days in the summer, though, and we end up having to buy electricity from neighboring provinces and states to keep the A/C humming.

Thermo Nuclear

[NetSettler]

I have to wonder why everyone's trying to put a band-aid on the problem.

Because politics rarely involves one person getting their way, no matter how good. So the practical person, for better or worse, examines compromises.

Here's a wacky idea--build a nuclear plant or two, and provide the energy that people are demanding.

I'm actually seriously with you on that. Lots of people fear nuclear. But if you really believe either he global warming issue, or the fact that we're peaking on oil, we're going to need cheap, clean energy soon. I'm all for wind and solar, but don't expect that to deploy in enough time to really work. So your band-aid (heh--see, everyone has one--it's only natural) of filling the gap with a bunch of nuclear plants sounds like the only way forward that makes much sense to address the cause, not the symptom... at least in the next 10-20 years.

Just, please, let's put them above the plain that might be flooded by global warming. And definitely not in the basement of anyone with a government-controlled thermostat.

Re:Thermo Nuclear

[Sancho]

Nuclear power gets a bad rap because of the word "nuclear", and because older designs of these plants have had meltdowns. As we both know, the're really quite safe, and the impact on the rest of the system is pretty well known. Aside from waste disposal (I say, ship it to mars--the technology to make this cheap enough would be useful in other applications, as well, so it's kinda win/win), the impact is extremely minimal. We don't know the impact of renewable energies just yet--though we've seen some environmental impact from giant wind farms. I'm actually more nervous about what might happen if we start deploying fields of solar panels than about the possible impacts of a couple of nuclear power plants 5 miles down the road from me. There just hasn't been any studies done (that I can find) on it.

I don't see nuclear power as a band-aid--more as the natural progression for energy generation. Maybe we'll come up with something better in the next couple of decades, and we can switch to that. If that is cheap, efficient, renewable power, I'd be ecstatic, but the truth is, we're just not there yet.

Re:Thermo Nuclear

[davidsyes]

"Nuclear power gets a bad rap because of the word "nuclear","

Well, then change to word to "Noo-kee-yah" (Carter) or

Nu-kuh-luhr (bush v2 mod 15.2.21) or

New-kea-yuh (the forcoming Ikea power plant in a wood cabinet)...

already here in Iowa

[v1]

Our public utility gives you a discount if you install a remote that allows them to kick down your AC in the summer during the day when their power demand is high. I don't participate in it but I don't see anything wrong with it. It's set to actually turn off the compressor but leave the fan going iirc. It cycles it, so that the compressor only works a certain percentage of the time.

eliminate AC, problem solved

[radl33t]

AC, as implemented, is a waste of energy. Just ban vapor compression AC and design better buildings or require the use of a legitimate cooling technology. Alternatives are more reliable, cheaper to run, consume less energy, and would totally blast away the price of any compressor driven system if built in the same quantity.

$1,300 per kilowatt

[westlake]

If there's not enough power to go around, build up the infrastructure. I pay for a service. You provide it.

You say you pay for the service.

How much are you willing to pay for the infrastructure needed to supply it?

Present construction costs [for a coal-fired plant] run to US$ 1,300 per kilowatt, or $650 million for a 500 MW unit. Fossil fuel power plant

This is what means to have a coal-fired plant in your back yard, as we do.

Ours is privately owned but pays next to nothing in local taxes, thanks to a sweetheart deal with our state and county legislatures. The power is for export, not local consumption.

A large coal train called a "unit train" may be two kilometers (over a mile) long, containing 100 cars with 100 tons of coal in each one, for a total load of 10,000 tons. A large plant under full load requires at least one coal delivery this size every day. Plants may get as many as three to five trains a day, especially in "peak season", during the summer months when power consumption is high.

Communism

[minion]

Anyone pick up on the very obvious communist statement:
 
  Dr. Rosenfeld said. If you can control rotating outages by letting everyone in the state share the pain, he said, theres a lot less pain to go around.
 
First they're going to tell us what lightbulbs we're allowed to use, now this?
 
You know how many old/infirm people die every year due to the heat or cold?
 
Another poster had it right: We pay for a service, make the #(*& service perform like its supposed to. Stop being afraid of atom energy and build more reactors. Right now, its the safest form of energy with the greatest amount of return we can produce.

Re:Grow Houses

[Anonymous Coward]

The bypass the meters with anything above what would be a normal houses power usage, so they never get charged for the extra power.
Sometimes the power company will notice an abnormal load in an area & send a truck out to investigate. This is why growsers will drop everything they're doing to get to the growhouse and shut it down, or in some cases switch to generator power untill the truck is long gone out of the area.

It's not uncommon to have 10 one-thousand watt HPS/MH lamps in a single room for small to mid-sized operations.

This Has Already Been Done 20-30 Years Ago

[NeverVotedBush]

In Oklahoma. I had one. It just shuts down the air conditioner for a few minutes. That's it. They roll through the people with them installed so they can peak shave the power requirements.

It keeps the utilities from having to build more capacity, saves a bit of energy, and prevents blackouts during overloads.

It was part of an initiative from the Carter administration. It all went away later because subsequent administrations played the fool and couldn't be bothered with thinking about this country's energy gluttony.

But it has been done before. It wasn't intrusive. It worked. And it got me a discount on my electric bill because I signed up.

Oh... I want.

[Tatarize]

Oh, I want that. Seriously the ability to monitor every wall socket and tell how much power drain each one is taking. Code up some optimization routines, give access to the power company to certain appliances in my house and get a little kickback money-wise.

So long as they don't know what they are turning off, I get something for the added inconvenience, and I specifically give them access rights myself: I have no qualms with that.

Though a massive solar array in death valley would probably be easier... it gets really hot... it's sunny and we have extra peak power flowing in. Honestly, California should buy up some rights to that new mass producing solar panel tech and setup a shop and start producing. Pave that hot (drive through during the night) part of the state with enough panels to provide peak power to the western part of the country. That, and eastern Washington should just be a windfarm.

Re:ban home A/C then

[the Dragonweaver]

A/C is immensely popular because in hot climates (above ninety degrees in summer) even a well-insulated house will not get cool enough for comfort. I grew up in a cinderblock home (pretty nice one, but it was built during a narrow blip before tract homes with prefabricated walls caught on.) We didn't have A/C. The insulation of cinderblock walls is pretty good and gave us a fifteen to twenty degree drop from the outdoors, but when you had a week or two of temperatures over 100 degrees it became impossible to get any sleep or relief.

And I was a kid, with all that implies. Good health, flexibility, and so on. Not somebody elderly or in medical distress; when they had that huge heat wave in France a few years back hundreds of seniors died because the heat was too much for them, and the temperatures reached were ten or more degrees less than the peak temperatures in California. As somebody pointed out above, many elderly on fixed incomes run their A/C as close to the line as they can to save money; a four-degree rise in temperature could push them over the edge.

Moreover, aerated concrete is not a safe building technique in much of California due to earthquake codes. Concrete and brick don't flex the way wood construction does. Sure, they need to be better insulated, but remember that housing prices in California are still at a stunning ten or more times the median income in many areas; you can bet that better construction will cost more.

Solution? Well, I'd move if we could but Evil Rob's job is here and nowhere else, and it's really hard to give up a job where you're advancing rapidly and doing something you love-- and you literally could not get the same treatment at another company because similar positions don't exist. Ideally we would be able to convince his employers to open up a satellite facility somewhere else, and then send him to staff it, but that's not very likely. :p

Re:ban home A/C then

[Jesus_666]

Yeah, California is one of those places where I'd go with wood + mineral wool. By the way, having a well-insulated house and A/C is not mutually exclusive, of course. The insulation would just mean that you need to run the A/C less, which still results in savings.

By the way, a quick googling got me some quotes. Depending on how much insulation you want, a certain manufacturer wants between 10 EUR/sq.m. (0.43 W/sq.m. K) and 35 EUR/sq.m. (0.14 W/sq.m. K). I don't know much about the mathematical details of house construction/insulation, but there's probably someone here who can use those values to get an idea how much it would cost to insulate a typical house and how much energy that would save.

Since this will be going into new buildings...

[gillbates]

Why not just force them to install solar cells to supplement the building/home's electricity during peak hours?

The peak hours are caused by periods of increased radiant energy by the sun. IOW, during peak solar efficiency.

I suspect, however, that PG & E doesn't want such a solution because it would dilute their monopoly on power. So rather than give the customers what they want and need (by building generation capacity), or allowing them an innovative solution to the problem (solar supplementation), or control demand through increased pricing during peak hours - somewhat unethical because the power company determines "peak hours"), they would rather opt for a solution which makes their customers suffer, while providing no actual benefit to the power company.

This "solution" is the worst of both worlds.

Controlling the product after sale

[FlatEric521]

Once again, it seems like companies want control over the product after they sell it to us to excuse themselves from having to make the product good enough in the first place. We have the RIAA/MPAA making crappy products and selling them at excess prices, then trying to block us from making copies via copyright law. We have the telcos/cable cos trying to manipulate (using traffic shaping, throttling, or just out right attempting to block traffic) the "unlimited" internet connection we pay for because their infrastructure isn't up to snuff. Now it seems like the power companies are following suit and trying to control how much we can draw from the grid to make up for the fact that the infrastructure of the grid is not up to the demands that their customers are placing on it.

Attention Corporations: If you sell a product that doesn't suck or keep your distribution system up to the demands, your customers will be happier and will buy more of your product. We don't need you to keep going to the government to pass laws to excuse your crappy product.

Attention Innovators: If the corporations continue to ignore the demands of the customers, you might be able to make a killing by creating a better product. In California, more efficient A/C systems might become the rage is this law passes.

Wishful thinking, isn't it?

Duke Energy and Power Manager

[CristalShandaLear]

Duke Energy in my area (Cincinnati, OH) is asking customers to voluntarily sign up for this with the incentive being saving money off their astronomically high service bill. They call it Power Manager.

A local city blog, The Cincinnati Beacon covered it from a Big Brother standpoint but I can't think of a piece of information they don't have about me already. A commenter on the site said the same thing.

Hell, they're in control of our households anyhow. They know when you're there, when you watch tv, curl your hair, surf the internet, pretty much all by your usuage. If you have service with them, they have your name, ss# and personal info, credit report and all the details of your financial life at their disposal. If you work for them, they also get your pee on demand, guilty of drug use or not, an extra special background check and your solemn promise to barely mention that you work there, let alone anything you might actually see or do. I don't like it but the few dollars in savings is tempting. A few minutes of turning off the air conditioner seems trivial in comparison to what they already have on us.

Another workaround

[Weaselmancer]

Put one of these in your window. Simple.

Doctor, it hurts when I do this

[ebcdic]

It should be obvious that California - at least southern California - is not fit for human habitation. Expending arbitrary resources so that people can live there is stupid.

Re:Communism

[peas_n_carrots]

I am not Amercan, I am socialist-Swede!

No, you're an idiot who sounds like a redneck high-school dropout. Now go back to cleaning toilets at McD. No one cares what you think anyway.

Lets change the scenario

[Whatsmynickname]

Microsoft comes out with a "remote power management API" that allows PG&E to shut down your computer remotely when it feels it has to. Reasonable idea also? I don't know, it seems like ALL past efforts from various companies to do various versions of remotely controlling computers has led to Slashdot outrage, so why is this all of a sudden different?!?!?!

Also, don't these remote control features have the potential for abuse, as Slashdot also always likes to point out? All of a sudden, government has your best interest at heart? What gives here?

Re:They want sockets to have Internet addresses to

[Jaime2]

Good idea. I'm in my shop cutting wood on the table saw. The power company sees that my neighborhood is due for a blackout, so they turn off the lights in the shop (which has a higher draw averaged over time since the saw is only on 2% of the time). Brilliant! How about they turn off my fridge for a few hours after I go shopping? What about the garage door opener? I bet if they did this, someone would die the first day.

Just raise the damn price during the day. People will change all by themselves.

Economics to the rescue!

[ductonius]

How about we take that fancy gizmo-setting-altering technology and put it to use on electricity meters. Instead of charging the same rate at peak usage as at 03:00 everyone's meter changes the price of electricity constantly to reflect demand. Also, put a big fat display on the front of the meter showing what the current price is. The first time people see they're paying $1.50/kWh I can guarantee you that all the thermostats in California will get turned up instantly.

More generally, when people end up paying the actual price for the electricity they use, lights will go off when they're not needed and CFTs will become economical. Putting one shirt in the dryer will cease to be an option. There will be a sudden increase in demand for electronic devices where the on/off button *actually turns the power off*.

Re:They want sockets to have Internet addresses to

[Fastolfe]

Neat idea, but I would tie it to energy prices and make it directly under the control of the consumer. The utility could then increase prices significantly when they're in a crunch, and my devices could power off when I decide it's too expensive for them to run.

NO ONE CONTROLS MY STUFF !! /shouting

[dindi]

OK, I do not want on-star start and stop my car, lo-jack to see where I go, or the power company control my thermostats.

Seriously. The US has to educate its citizens not to over-use energy by cooling their homes to 22C. I understand that airco is necessary in offices or workspaces, even homes at warm climates, but what is the point of moving to Miami when you have to wear winter jackets because you can freeze to death in: malls, restaurants, cars and buses, everywhere else.

Most of the US people I know down here (in Costa Rica) maintain sub 22C in their offices, then they wonder why they have allergy, cough all the time and have cold symptoms. All this at 1200m height where in a properly built house you do not need airco at all. It is sunshine out there, middle of the dry season, and I have several computers running in a room (yes I am working on all of them, and they go offline when I am done).

OH, if you come down here to visit the beaches: get a room without air-conditioning so you can enjoy the tropics as they are.

PS: I do not mean to flame anyone, I really mean that the airco overuse has to go!

Re:NO ONE CONTROLS MY STUFF !! /shouting

[imsabbel]

I have to agree to this.
The use of AC i encountered in the US is horrible. Made a mental marker to always bring a jacket as i was constantly getting cold insides.

My main guess its something to do with the dresscode: Without 20C even in the middle of the summer, somebody might sweat with his long-sleeved shirt and tie. So instead of dressing according to the season, its energy-waste time.

Ha!

[SvnLyrBrto]

California may be hot if you're from Alaska. Me? I moved here from Florida, and I was chilly pretty much the whole first year I lived here... clear through the summer. Remember, we have that cold ocean current coming down from the arctic controlling our weather; not the east coast's Gulf Stream.

Remember the old Mark Twain quote about how the coldest winter he ever saw was when he was in California for the summer? It's true. Sure, we'll have the occasional 90-degree heat wave. But mostly, it's in the lower 50's now, and it'll be in upper 50's and mid 60's come summer.

cya,
john

A better idea?

[C3ntaur]

Why not instead regulate the power companies so they don't tamper with capacity and force rolling blackouts to raise prices? Enron? Anyone?

give back the billions for those TOU meters then

[Locutus]

They are already getting the ability to shut down selected homes with those new Time Of Use meter the public is paying for. Now they want to be able to control devices inside the homes? Not so fast big brother, not so fast.

LoB

Illinois has this already

[sanjosanjo]

ComEd in Illinois offers this on a voluntary basis - and they give you a monthly credit for doing so. http://www.exeloncorp.com/ourcompanies/comed/comedres/save_energy_money/energy_savings_program_with_comed.htm They hook up something to the air conditioner (outside the house) and this allows them to cycle the loads in a given region. They have well-detailed arrangements for how much time the air conditioner can be off at a single time and during which hours it can occur. It seems like a very good way to minimize the system load and they pass some of their savings on to the consumer. My friend has been using this for a few years and they have only need to activate the thing a couple times. It's especially useful for people that have an empty house during the day.

zero to unconstitutional in about

[superwiz]

1 court decision. If they can't provide the service and cut you off it's one thing. But to have police-enforced power to tell you what the temperature of your home should be? Ok, seriously, why doesn't California secede first? Home of the brave... right. Here's an idea: (let's see how that flies in California) give utilities the power to stop television broadcasting and cable transmission to force people to save power on TV usage. How is it even conceivable that in THESE UNITED STATES a state is even considering a vote on this? The whole appeal of the electric power was that it provided a universal supply that could be used for any device without having to report to anyone what these devices were. If utilities have the power to regulate how you use your devices, the game is over. You might as well have every electric utility require its own kind of power socket and its own type of power supply. I mean, why would anyone care if the devices they buy are regulated after the purchase by an entity A (power company) or an entity B (the device manufacturer)? At least in the 2nd case there will be constant pressure to improve quality (just like there is with cell phones). Wow! Just Wow! I just can't wait for all the shills telling me how I ignore community needs and how I lack empathy for the poor people. C'mon. I dare you. I double dare you. I am not even going to mention the myriad of alternative generation methods that are coming about right now. This is the beginning of the end of this bankrupt philosophy: "we plan for your own good and if can't figure out how to plan your good, the things which you can do in your life will be cut and you will not be able to provide them for yourself because we are the ones who plan".

another scenerio

[josepha48]

Some kid would hack the system and then cause rolling blackouts, by simply turning everyone's AC to 40 when the temp outside is really warm, like in the 90's or above.

Windmills are dangerous!

[slashqwerty]

even when providers try to build "green" sources they are fought in courts by one group or another

This reminds me of Trempealeau county in Wisconsin where they have all but outlawed windmills. Trempealeau county is a rural community with lots of available wind. But due to someone's lobbying efforts the county board has decided windmills are too loud and cast dangerous shadows! In particular the lobbyist has convinced the board that the rhythmic nature of the shadows and sound will cause health effects in children. So now windmills constructed in Trempealeau county must be at least one mile from the nearest house. You can not draw a circle two miles in diameter in Trempealeau county without overlapping a house.

Generation *and* Delivery

[evought]

The problem is not just generating the power, but also delivering it. This is especially a problem if, for instance, all your power use is downstate and all of your power generation is upstate. Sudden shifts in power usage can overload points in the grid and fry transformers, trunk lines, substations, small plants caught in the cross-fire. That is a big cause of roving black outs. The big black out in upstate New York was not caused by a lack of power, but a difference in phase between two different plants (which can severely damage turbines). A plant had to shut down to avoid damage, which caused the grid to redirect power, which caused...

Anyway, you could conceivably solve the problem by running a lot more, much larger wire and heavier duty transmission infrastructure, but, at the moment the problem is that they don't know where to *do it*. Deregulation and haphazard growth has made a maze of wiring and the electricity takes paths they don't expect. Because of deregulation, no one can agree on whose job it is to fix.

Another decent conservation measure is just to put a display in the house that shows what you are being charged for and how much you are using. Charge more for peak usage and watch the load drop. There have been studies demonstrating that cars can get better mileage with the simple of expedient of displaying the instantaneous gas mileage. Some models now have that as a feature. Even people who are not particularly conservation conscious start acting differently when the information is right in front of them. A lot less Orwellian and lets market dynamics do its work.

It's not a shortage; it's bogus "deregulation"

[Reziac]

This is probably being pushed by Edison. They already offer "free" monitoring devices that curtail energy use during peak periods. Remember that as the industry is currently set up, the LESS power you use, the MORE money they make. So they're all for conservation, because it profits EDISON.

But the root of the problem isn't any "energy crunch" or even CA's very high usage. It's that a decade ago, some idiots decided "deregulation"** would be a wonderful idea, and did so.. but one of the requirements was that CA must sell all its generating plants. Which they did. To out of state and foreign interests... who now sell the power they produce (from plants formerly owned by CA_ back to CA at over 5 times the base price before "deregulation", with a rate structure that doesn't even allow you to run ONE LIGHT BULB before you get dinged for the highest possible rates (so the actual increase is somewhat more than 5x. My average bill went from $8 to $40 -- and I use 25% *less* power now than I did then. And my bill went up about 30% since last year even tho I've cut my usage *again*, by some 20%. Naturally my bill is much higher in winter, when I need to use the electric heaters.)

**CA copied the Montana Power model, blithely ignoring the fact that MT Power's "deregulation" was a scam perpetrated by MT Power's owners as an exit strategy -- I forget the details but it put millions in their own pockets, devalued MT Power's stock value to essentially zero (destroying the retirement funds many MT residents had counted on), and quadrupled the cost of electricity in MT... where probably half of all homes have electric heat, because that used to be cost-effective if you couldn't get natural gas (the cheapest option).

Los Angeles' then-mayor Reardon (THE man we need for President!) saw through this scam and refused to join in, despite massive pressure from Sacramento. So Los Angeles still owns its generating system, and L.A. residents still enjoy low rates and freedom from rolling blackouts.

I foresee a thriving market in portable heaters/coolers, followed by prohibitions on the sale of such devices. (Roof-mounted swamp coolers are already illegal in Palmdale CA!)

Required for building permits

[evought]

According to this: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59639 it will be required to get a building permit, not optional.

Re:Required for building permits

[Easterner38.9]

Requiring PCTs in new construction is a far cry from mandating program adoption. The smart meters are being rolled out and are utility-owned. Under the California model, the PCTs are consumer-owned (and can be swapped out). Consumers will have to opt-in to the program to be impacted by load control/receive the peak time rebate benefits.

Bird deaths by windfarms not that high

[evought]

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59639 among other sources. As it points out, newer turbines are much less prone to causing bird deaths, but even old turbines are often less fearful than people predict when they are put in. Wind turbines make *noise* and this drives birds off, unlike flat panes of glass which are a silent/invisible menace.

In many cases where raptors are absent, it is not necessarily because they are killed, but because they do not like being near the turbines and will go elsewhere. Same result as far as the rats go, of course. I don't support the exclusive use of any technology, though: the solution to pollution is dilution. If we use multiple sources of power, the specific impact of that one source may be reduced to the point where the environment can handle it. Otherwise even acres of solar panels affects albedo and thus climate. If we use wind in conjunction with other things, we provide somewhere for the raptors to go. Learning from the experience in your source (I am having trouble confirming the rat problems from other sources), we need to maybe build a buffer zone around wind farms in rat-prone areas where predator species can have a buffet on the fat ones that come from the rat-preservation zone. Importing snakes might not be a bad bet either...

This is one reason I don't bother the falcons around the farm when I am raising chickens. I take some steps to protect my birds, but I know the raptors are useful in their own right. Same with snakes. If I lose a bird now and then, it is worth the trade.

Dogma of any kind is misplaced. This is a learning experience.

Re:Bird deaths by windfarms not that high

[evought]

the solution to pollution is dilution.

Your dipshit little slogan is exactly what has led to the gross pollution of rivers, lakes and the ocean itself. Next time, consider thinking before spouting ignorant little mantras.

Dogma of any kind is misplaced. This is a learning experience.

Not to you, apparently.

Every single process that humans have undertaking has costs. Every single one of them pollutes. Horse drawn plows pollute. Making solar panels pollutes. Manufacturing bicycles for commuters and replacing their tires pollutes. Tidal and geothermal energy production causes changes in the local ecosystem and geothermal in particular in the water table. The worst impacts occur when *any one process* is used to the point where its particular form of pollution overwhelms the environments ability to absorb it. Using different technologies and causing different kinds of impacts maximizes the environments ability to maintain itself. I have a degree in ecology and experience in simulation to back it up; how about you?

Threadmill

[evought]

making all TV sets powered by threadmills...Seriously, threadmills with a wall-socket
  WTF is a threadmill?
  A type of spinning machine? Many of them do come with wall-sockets (my wife's is treadle-powered), but I don't know how you power a TV off of that. Maybe the GP is just pulling the wool over our eyes?

The real facts

[Anonymous Coward]

California is going to mandate that all new homes have a thermostat with a ZigBee radio so that it can talk to the new meters that will be installed as part of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) program that is now underway. All three major utilities in California (PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE) expect to have all their meters replaced with new "smart" meters by 2012. This will include both residential and commercial customers.

There will NOT be any mandatory thermostat adjustments. Enrollment in the program will be optional. If you do enroll, during critical power shortages, your thermostat will be set a few degrees higher. In exchange, you receive a better rate for ALL your power. Even after your thermostat has been adjusted, you will be able to override the settings, but you will pay a penalty for doing so, since you signed up the for the program.

All the people complaining that the utility should just build more infrastructure do not understand the issues regarding power demand. In California, there are perhaps 10 days a year where we are critically short on power. At those times the power companies are buying every bit of power they can, even though they may be paying TEN TIMES the normal price. However, if enough power is not available, they have to start rolling blackouts to keep the grid intact. Doesn't it make more sense to reduce the consumption on those peak days? Of course, there is another choice. Start charging people a higher price when it costs the utility more to generate or purchase electricity. You will see this soon. Power will cost more during the day (at least in areas where air conditioning is the major load) and a lot less at night. During power shortages, pwoer might cost many times the regular price. This would reflect the true cost of the power.

As for who is a fault with the current situation, it has been almost impossible to build any new transmission lines or power plants for quite some time. SDG&E just recently tried to start building a "peaker" plant that only will run during power shortages - the same 10 or so days I mentioned before. The plant will emit about the same annual pollution as 15 cars. It is powered by natural gas. Everyone in the area where they are building are protesting (it is fairly close to a school). The same people who sit outside the school idling their SUVs for 20 minutes every day waiting for their kids are protesting a natural gas power plant that will help prevent blackouts. Give me a break!

I fail to see how anyone could be against conserving power during shortages. I also am disappointed that so many people can be so uninformed, yet still feel qualified to comment.

Charity where it belongs

[evought]

The problem is that the price of action is well beyond the means of the poor, who are the people most vulnerable in weather situations. The free market is great for most things, but you can't sic it on life giving fundamentals like the food or energy supplies. Then, if you must, give electricity subsidies to the poor, but don't fix the price *of the entire market*. Would you like a Stinger missile to swat that fly? :-)

Except in the case of illness, the poor (and much of the not poor) can just deal with some heat (and yes, I've been there). We have suddenly made something which people did without for millennia into a survival need. It is not (in almost all cases). Many cases of heat exhaustion are caused by people moving from air conditioning set too low to high temperatures outside-- they cannot adapt to a 40+ degree change that quickly. At a re-enactment event at Fort Knox, with blistering heat, we had less people falling over on the field (in armor) than we did un-armored people going from the air-conditioned exhibit hall to the outside. Air-conditioning perpetuates the problem as much as it helps.

a computer is a lot less sensitive than your baby

[YesIAmAScript]

Computers run at 160F plus, a room getting to 120F won't faze them. You'll be unhappy about other things before your computer gets sad, well, unless you built it wrong. Any computer you buy has been tested in a 140F hot room before sale, of course one you built yourself may be different.

As to your baby, rashes and sores like that are due to friction from humidity, not from heat. Computers don't care about humidity much either.

I live in California without A/C. No problems. I grew up in Michigan (similar to Minnesota, very humid and at times very hot) without A/C. I know humans aren't the best adapted to harsh environments, but Minnesota was populated by families with babies for decades before A/C.

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

Well, sunshine, that's how the world works, though here and in most other examples, the remedy is coming from them, not you.

Ye gads, man... Just because "that's the way it is at current" does NOT mean that it's as it SHOULD be. When was the last time you showed up at a meeting of your local utility board? Created some noise? Don't think your complacency is universal.

Regardless of whether it is poor planning, poor policy, poor enforcement, or some uncontrollable outside force (greedy people chilling McMansions while they're at work, for example), power is a finite resource. It runs out when it runs out. This is an unavoidable fact. If there is no power to give, your philosophical argument is meaningless. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Did the power in California "run out", or did they not buy power from other grids for monetary reasons? There's power to give, but they'd rather inconvenience their customers rather than hitch up their drawers, bite the bullet, and listen to gripes about rate increases. "The easy thing to do" != "the RIGHT thing to do."

How would you rather manage it? Either way we're talking about forcibly reducing demand to keep the grid online.

Bond issue. New plants vs. increased rates for power purchases from other grids. NEXT!

hat can either mean a few tens of thousands of customers get their power cut for a while, or 38 million people have their thermostat reset five degrees up (with obvious concessions where applicable) for a few hours?

Which "obvious" concessions were you thinking of?

I choose the latter, if for no other reason than that I hate resetting clocks and get annoyed when the DVR or Internet cut out while recording/downloading. Most sensible people would, too.

I choose to live in a state with a healthy power grid. Most sensible people would, too

Freudian Slip?

[PPH]

That gives consumers the power to choose what loads will be shit down.

Re:Reasonable idea? BE UNREASONALBE, a PITA...

[davidsyes]

Then, if you can store your energy, then TAKE YOUR HOUSE OFF THE GRID AND TELL PGE "scrrrrew you!!".

But, you'll probably be told you'll have to pay for service even IF your meter to/from PG&E never budges. Then, you may need a lawyer, then the state may tell you EVERYBODY has to pay, unless they are their own utility. Even THEN, there'll be a myriad of rules and regulations so hamstringing as to COST you anyway. Maybe make you give up.

Easy way around this one.

[checkyoulater]

Um, don't they realize that the thermostat is just low voltage control for the air conditioning? What's to stop someone from installing a simple jumper wire across R and Y terminals inside the air handler? You don't need a thermostat at all, in fact. What about all those fancy wine cellars that have refrigeration units. Those compressors are controlled by low pressure switches, and have no stats at all. Of course, only the rich people have those, and as far as I know measures like there are only supposed to affect us plebes.

Here in Toronto, the utility installs a small relay inside your condensing unit to take out the compressor. It has nothing at all to do with your thermostat.

Space heaters and Portable AC?

[Dillenger69]

How do they plan on controlling every space heater and portable A.C. unit?
My garage office space is totally uncoupled from my home's thermostat.

Inflation

[Geoffrey.landis]

Inflation rates fluctuate; overall, it's not clear that the Carter administration had much more of an effect on inflation rates than, say, the Nixon year inflation. see:
inflation rate 1914-2004 chart
(Nixon, as you recall, has inflation so bad that the technique of dealing with it he came up with was to install wage and price controls).

In any case, to the extent that a presidential administration has an effect on the inflation rate, much of it is due to controlling, or not controlling, the deficit, and since the effect of debt continues to show up as interest payments years later, it's not clear that Carter's fiscal conservatism shouldn't be credited with the lower inflation in the early 80s.

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

Ye gads, man... Just because "that's the way it is at current" does NOT mean that it's as it SHOULD be. When was the last time you showed up at a meeting of your local utility board? Local utility board? Somebody doesn't understand PG&E at all. For what it's worth, they have been contacted, as have state legislators. Don't assume complacency. The way it SHOULD be is irrelevant to solving the immediate problems. It's philosophical hot air. The problem needs to be addressed now.

You want to complain about infrastructure, do it. But to do so at the expense of ignoring the current situation in places like California and New York, which is a preview of what other states face in the coming decades, is an egregious error.

There's power to give, but they'd rather inconvenience their customers rather than hitch up their drawers, bite the bullet, and listen to gripes about rate increases. There isn't power to give. Purchasing power at astronomical rates is not a solution. It's an emergency stopgap that is already used at a sensible level. The transmission system can't support the kind of plan you have for continuous purchasing from other states, and it's not a solution. Excess capacity is not as extensive as you believe, especially when margins for emergencies are taken into account.

"Refused to buy" at outrageous markups isn't exactly the case. Clearly your understanding of legal, capacity, financial, political, and practical issues is lacking. Yet another blowhard jackass who doesn't live in California, doesn't understand California, and offers no solution to a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

Bond issue. New plants vs. increased rates for power purchases from other grids. NEXT! Okay, but "increased rates for purchases" isn't a solution to a capacity problem in the near term or the long term. It is at best a supplement for peak demand in isolated cases. The expense involved is several times the normal rates, and with low efficiency and no term stability. As for the other, what about for the next five to ten years before those plants and grid modifications are online. You are not solving the problem of RIGHT NOW. There are two options, unless you've got some "just add water" power plants in your pocket.

Which "obvious" concessions were you thinking of? Hospitals, datacenters, certain kinds of factories and warehouses...

I choose to live in a state with a healthy power grid. So what country do you live in? 'Healthy power grid' is oxymoronic in the United States.

Re:Communism

[evilviper]

You know how many old/infirm people die every year due to the heat or cold?

I do, in fact. They, however, die from not having ANY cooling or heating, most certainly NOT from their thermostats being 2 degrees off, for a couple hours a day.

No AC for You!

[WryCoder]

Of course, they will need to outlaw window mounted AC to make this workable. Bake the peasants in Bakersfield!

The folks sitting in the ocean breezes will wonder what all the fuss is about and can continue to devote their activist time to blocking nuclear power.

Re:a computer is a lot less sensitive than your ba

[evilviper]

Computers run at 160F plus, a room getting to 120F won't faze them.

Not true at all. If you want your computer to be able to operate in 120F degrees ambient for any length of time, you need absolutely massive fans to cycle huge amounts of air through the case. Far different than existing PC designs.

CPUs may be able to take 160F degrees without flinching, but the fans and heatsinks supporting them simply aren't designed to keep the CPU cool in such high ambient temperatures.

Unless you're lucky enough to have a fan pointed directly at your DDR RAM, you can expect that to overheat first, locking up your computer in no time. If you cool the RAM, expect a terribly shortened life for your hard drive, unless it is also directly, actively cooled. Next up is probably the northbridge (non-AMD64 systems), as they all too often run near their limits even with cool ambient temperatures, and often don't have a fan. Expect a short lifetime for your PSU as well, as they are bearing 200F+ temperatures, as they have to deal with the ambient heat + heat from nearby components + heat it generates as well.

You can certainly design a computer to handle such temperatures, as the components can handle such heat, but nobody does, and you wouldn't want to be within earshot while it is operating.

What about a voluntary system

[sjames]

Where I used to live, the local co-op wanted to shave the peaks off of their load to avoid having to buy expensive spot power. Their solution was to offer a discount to customers willing to allow them to install a remote controlled switch on their A/C units. A sufficient number of people happily accepted their offer and the peak load problem was solved.

If Ca. wants a deregulated industry, it should let the industry come up with appropriate financial incentives. Otherwise, it should re-regulate it end to end and be done with it.

Re:a computer is a lot less sensitive than your ba

[toddestan]

Any computer you buy has been tested in a 140F hot room before sale, of course one you built yourself may be different.

Got any proof of that? Quite a few laptops I've had to deal with don't take too nicely to temperatures above 100F.

One way they might do this

[Duncan Blackthorne]

I just read this Business Week article that talks about a test program they did in Washington, where a change in line frequency was used to trigger appliances and air conditioners to shut off. Personally, I'd never voluntarily participate in a 3rd party controlling my electric usage, and if it were forced on me I'd disable their ability to do so. If my house is too hot then I should be able to cool it down, or if I need clean clothes then I'm going to do what must be done, not be late getting to work or any other appointment because someone else decided to shut my dryer off.

My local power utility already has this - optional

[jroysdon]

We already have this in Modesto Irrigation District for at least 4 years. It's optional at this point, but I've signed up for it every place I've lived. You get a $5/month credit during the 5 peak months for letting them install this box on your AC unit. Basically, during peak times they can tell your AC to not run for up to 15 minutes per hour. So it's not like you're without AC. For 45 minutes it's on, for 15 off, and so on, and only during peak times. With a regular fan (the kind on a stand that moves left to right, right to left, repeat) pushing the air around you don't even notice it.

Economic incentives

[johnhoward666]

Instead of turning off people's air conditioning, why not install a meter in people's home that displays the current cost of electricity.

As demand increases and supply falls, the electricity price becomes more expensive.

That way, people are responsible for deciding if they want air conditioning at 18 degrees Celsius or 24 degrees Celsius or at all.

Southern California Edison already does it

[BovineOne]

Old news. Southern California Edison has been offering the ability to do this for awhile by adding an external device on the outside compressor... http://www.sce.com/RebatesandSavings/Residential/_Heating+and+Cooling/SummerDiscountPlan/Details/default.htm

As others have noted, this is also done by other utility companies throughout the U.S. too. For instance, Austin Energy (in Texas) also offers a radio controlled thermostat program: http://www.austinenergy.com/Energy%20Efficiency/Programs/Power%20Partner/index.htm

California Title 24

[Rafe_Aguilera]

This will most likely be in the "Mandatory Measures" section of a Title 24 report. Anything on that list MUST be done and be signed off on by the Building Inspector. Title 24 applies to all new construction as well as additions or remodeling that extend the conditioned envelope by a certain square footage or a certain percentage, whichever is lower (100 sq ft or 10% I think).

Re:(un) Reasonable idea

[pentalive]

I don't know If I trust PG&E to do it that way - They will probably just declare a power emergency and turn off everyone's AC for an hour or two.

Also, This new thing will not be voluntary, If you build new or remodel much you have to install this thermostat too. No incentives, no choice. Just do it.

I wonder if that means the power company can make "surprise inspections" to see if your thermostat is the "controlled" kind and that you have not tampered with it.

California to Steal power from BC again?

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Great,another california energy crunch.

They still haven't paid for the electricity from British Columbia, Canada that they freely chose to buy on the open markets a few years ago during the rolling brown-outs.

California claimed BC somehow took advantage of them and simply won't pay for the choice they freely made, when really the problem was a typical internal american problem ... Dick Cheney's friends intentionally reducing california's generating capacity to jack up the price to improve their profits.

You people in california better let the utilities adjust your thermostats beyond your control

You won't be stealing your power from us this time.

don't like it

[AnyThingButWindows]

Not everyone likes the same temperature. I like 70 degrees. My wife likes 75 degrees. I am quite sure that your neighbor might like a different adjustment. I may not like the temperature that he does. I won't adjust my house temp to save someone else energy. Sorry. Not gonna happen. If people are worried about energy costs, then they may want to think about lobbying for a thermal, nuclear plant. Both are cheap, and cost effective. This sounds like an attempt to further move the west coast into communism. With a Nazi as governer, I am not surprised.

Uhhh, yeah

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Why not vote for politicians who help build new energy plants instead?

Saving a few percent only offsets the need for growth by six months or so. I.e. it's pointless in the long run.

Make more efficient plants, or different sources of energy, perhaps. But stop with this idiocy of living a pseudo-Spartan life.

But politics and power were never about logic anyway. It's about scaring people so they'll vote for you so you can wield power.

Old news... sort of.

[NerveGas]

    A lot of places already ask you if they can install power controls to your central air, so they can switch it off whenever they feel like it. They make no bones about it, they tell you that your house temp will go up a few degrees.

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

Don't assume complacency. The way it SHOULD be is irrelevant to solving the immediate problems. It's philosophical hot air. The problem needs to be addressed now.

Complacency is exactly what we're getting in a crisis situation. As these yutzes are evidently scandal-ridden, what's needed is to get a competent management team in first. As for the way it "should be"? You need to know where you're going before you get there, Princess. Knowing where you "should be" is a good start.

You want to complain about infrastructure, do it. But to do so at the expense of ignoring the current situation in places like California and New York, which is a preview of what other states face in the coming decades, is an egregious error.

Who's complaining? I'm pointing out the obvious: The emperor ain't wearing a stitch.

The current situation in CA and NY shows political short-sightedness unparalleled. H'wever, "business as usual" isn't going to cut it anymore. New solutions are needed...and where do they start?

There isn't power to give. Purchasing power at astronomical rates is not a solution.

"There's no power!"

"Wait, there's power, but we don't want to PAY for indulging our excess!"

Make up your mind.

The transmission system can't support the kind of plan you have for continuous purchasing from other states, and it's not a solution.

I never said it was a long-term solution. I was simply refuting your assertation that "OMGPONIES, THERE'S NO POWER!!!"

...and if the other citizens of CA want to let the McMansions you mentioned suck up all available power, fine. Otherwise, get some SANE zoning ordinances. This, once again, is a problem for the politicians to solve instead of fobbing it off on constituents.

As for the other, what about for the next five to ten years before those plants and grid modifications are online. You are not solving the problem of RIGHT NOW.

...and you're missing the obvious: PG&E does NOT have the field staff to drop these in all at once. Not by a LONG shot. If you look at the time needed to deploy these boxes in a sufficient number of locations to make a difference, you might just find that you could deploy some tidal harnesses like the ones PG&E shanghaied in San Fran instead. Long-term, renewable power. It's what you asked for, but why don't you have it? Thank PG&E, the folks you seem to tout as having a solution. Indeed.

Hospitals, datacenters, certain kinds of factories and warehouses...

Hospitals have backup generators. So do most datacenters and critical factories. Here's a thought: if you do NOT allow exemptions, how long d'ya think it'd be before "industry leaders" start looking for a solution?

So what country do you live in? 'Healthy power grid' is oxymoronic in the United States.

Like it's our fault California uses less power than Texas yet can't meet their power needs due to political maneuvering. Wake up, Buttercup. You need to go look for your prince instead of hand-wringing and wailing.

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

As for the way it "should be"? You need to know where you're going before you get there, Princess. Knowing where you "should be" is a good start. I can't tell if you're trolling or incompetent. Knowing that you need additional generation capacity has absolutely no bearing on the fact that current demand outstrips supply and you need some method of managing it. It does nothing to address the fact that part of that management solution is a forced curbing of available power--rolling blackouts or reduced feeds into homes are the only options. Purchasing power is not feasible on the scale you describe.

New solutions are needed...and where do they start? Quit changing your tune. New solutions have nothing to do with the article or the current discussion. If you want to talk about long-term solutions, do it elsewhere. This is about management of immediate needs, not talking about something that will help in five to ten years.

"Wait, there's power, but we don't want to PAY for indulging our excess!"

Make up your mind. Yeah, I guess it is just incompetency on your part. There is not sufficient generation capacity in California. Purchasing power from elsewhere is part of a management plan, but it is not practical or viable as a solution to the rolling blackouts. There is not enough surplus power available, nor would that much purchasing fall within voter-supported legal mandates. It is also a disastrous notion to suggest that reliance on emergency transfer capabilities and the availability of excess power.

If Nevada wants to build a bunch of power plants for the sole purpose of selling the capacity to California with guaranteed availability and can do it without some of the extenuating roadblocks in California, then fine. Otherwise, purchasing power cannot meet the demands. It is not a solution, period. Power is already purchased as is practical, available and allowed. It is not sufficient.

I was simply refuting your assertation that "OMGPONIES, THERE'S NO POWER!!!" It's assertion, genius, and no such assertion was made. Generation capacity is insufficient. Fact. Rolling blackouts are the current solution. Fact. Purchasing power from elsewhere in the grid is not viable, either in the short term or the long. Fact. Regulating demand by cutting the load a small amount across a large number of customers is doable (despite your mistaken rail against field staff capacity), cheap, and low-burden.

You're not getting any traction. Texas is all the gluttony, none of the environmental concern, and none of the conservationist spirit of California...sitting on oil fields with vast expanses of empty space. It is not a model for anything.

PG&E, the folks you seem to tout as having a solution Nothing of the sort. You are truly dense beyond compare.

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

It does nothing to address the fact that part of that management solution is a forced curbing of available power--rolling blackouts or reduced feeds into homes are the only options.

...and here's where your entire rant breaks down. You ignored the deploy time, Einstein. Just how long will it take to outfit California with these thermostats, at what cost?

Let's break it down for you. At the 2006 census, there are 13,174,378 homes in Cali. We'll ignore industry for right now. Now, let's take what might be the average install time for this. Call it 30 minutes per install for getting there, installing and testing it. That's 6,587,189 man-hours of work. That's around 274,466 *days* of work, or around 751 *years*. Now, with PG&E having around 20,000 employees, we might figure about 10% of that will be actual install techs. That's actually par, as they'll only deploy around 2000 of them at a time for any outages/installs. Dividing 274,466 by 2000 gives you an answer of around 137 days, 24/7. Can't do 24/7, of course. 8-hour shifts, lets say, and only half of their day will be installing these; the rest is dealing with whatever emergencies arise. So, you're telling me that in 2.25 years, (figuring $15/hour, at a cost of around $98,807,835), you'll have a solution.

But wait... where's your solution for NOW?

By that time [2 years hence], you could already be WELL on the way for a renewable energy source already being studied in San Fran: the tidal harness. At that time as well, according to PG&E, they'll have a plant ready to service another 950,000 homes.

Note the TOTAL cost of the tidal project. $3,000,000 to $5,000,000. Looks pretty darn reasonable compared to that $98,000,000 for your little quick-fix patch. Also, at 2.7 million per plant {after initial deploy}, you're going to be hard-pressed to find a more cost-effective power solution. In addition, it's clean, renewable, and scalable.

Congrats on the spelling error of mine, BTW... It's one of the few I tend to make, and you must feel {in CA parlance} just like, totally special. Still doesn't change the fact that you're too dumb to run the numbers before you run your mouth.

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

Now, with PG&E having around 20,000 employees, we might figure about 10% of that will be actual install techs. That's actually par, as they'll only deploy around 2000 of them at a time for any outages/installs. Dividing 274,466 by 2000 gives you an answer of around 137 days, 24/7. Can't do 24/7, of course. 8-hour shifts, lets say, and only half of their day will be installing these; the rest is dealing with whatever emergencies arise. So, you're telling me that in 2.25 years, (figuring $15/hour, at a cost of around $98,807,835), you'll have a solution. There are so many holes here I don't know where to begin. For starters, PG&E services roughly 40% of California's population, so you're dealing with about five million accounts TOTAL, including all corporate customers. PG&E also contracts out work to HVAC companies for supplemental features and installations such as these, in addition to operating a number of partner programs with corporate customers that involve little interaction with PG&E technicians at all. Being conservative on their ability to farm out work, we'll say PG&E actually does half of these installs (probably it would end up being closer to 1/3 or less). You're down to 2.5 million homes. This works out to 1.15 million man-hours. Dealing in 10-hour shifts (the actual work schedule) and using 2000 general purpose technicians (which already excludes the reserves for dealing with primary infrastructure problems and emergency staff), devoting half of their time (a THIRD excessive concession to your thought-problem), results in an end result of about 115 days, or less than four months.

PG&E technicians are salaried, so those costs are fixed. There is an opportunity cost of added strain on scheduling, and that's certainly a cost factor, but a recoverable one.

Maybe you should use your head a little more. No $5 million project is going to provide power to a million customers...you've clearly misread the materials. The cost for the machinery alone to supply that amount of power vastly exceeds $5 million, not to mention astronomical service costs (divers, submersibles, etc.) and the boring and excavation needed to connect services to the land power grid. That's completely ignoring the fact that starting today, such a facility would NOT be online in 2.25 years' time (your original figure).

Like your short-sighted citation of Texas (which also has its own rolling blackout problems in summertime), your head just isn't screwed on straight and you continually fail to grasp the entirety of the situation. It's complex, but you're not succeeding in the slightest.

Still doesn't change the fact that you're too dumb to run the numbers before you run your mouth. Maybe you should finish before running yours, especially when you've laughably compared a $5 million *pilot project* to an actual full-scale deployment and operations plan for production and connection to the grid.

I mean, really. How much deeper a hole can you dig for yourself here?

PS - There is no such place as 'San Fran'--just like 'Cali' doesn't exist.

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

What cracks me up is your stubborn need to be right. I started this as a discussion. But hey, let's put an end to your rant once again by looking at the numbers. The official PG&E numbers, taken from their 2006 financial numbers. Found here, it states QUITE clearly on page 7 of said report that they've got 10,000,000 of these installs to carry out. That's right, Spanky. 10 mil. How long will it take them? Gee, look at page 7 again. Seems to say that it'll be done in 5 years. Does seem to make your statement seem a bit...well... uninformed.

PG&E technicians are salaried, so those costs are fixed. There is an opportunity cost of added strain on scheduling, and that's certainly a cost factor, but a recoverable one.

Fine... you want the TOTAL cost of this fiasco? Check page 79, Cupcake. It's ok, we'll wait...

Wow, you might be saying to yourself. They estimated this project cost at 1.74 BILLION dollars. That's right, billion, with almost *55 million* going out to tell you just how nifty this project is. That's right, $55,000,000 goes to the marketing department, and the most damning statement is at the end of that paragraph:

PG&E Corporation and the Utility cannot predict whether or to what extent the anticipated benefits and cost savings of the advanced metering infrastructure project will be realized.

So you're advocating a 5-year, $1,740,000,000 project that may never, in their words, realize any real savings whatsoever, and does NOTHING to add new power capacity. Great police work there, Lou!

Like your short-sighted citation of Texas (which also has its own rolling blackout problems in summertime), your head just isn't screwed on straight and you continually fail to grasp the entirety of the situation.

Count the number of blackouts in CA. Feel free to compare to Texas's rate. If you need to be schooled again, I'll be more than happy to engage.

Maybe you should finish before running yours, especially when you've laughably compared a $5 million *pilot project* to an actual full-scale deployment and operations plan for production and connection to the grid.

Got REAL numbers, Twinkie, or are you just blowing more smoke out your wazoo?

PS - There is no such place as 'San Fran'--just like 'Cali' doesn't exist.

Gee, guess you're SO anal that you can't handle basic abbreviations used the world over to refer to the Land of Nuts and Flakes. Not my problem, since you evidently figured out which locales I was referring to....and as I was born near Victorville, I'll call my home state whatever the hell I please...

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

What cracks me up is your stubborn need to be right. It's not a need to be right so much as marvelling at your ability to be off the mark entirely.

it states QUITE clearly on page 7 of said report that they've got 10,000,000 of these installs to carry out. [...]Seems to say that it'll be done in 5 years. Ah, but where was this in your initial calculus? It's your need to be a bigger and bigger dumbass that is problematic. Do you read and comprehend ANYTHING? PG&E has 5.1 million electric accounts and roughly 10 million meters--these began to be installed in 2006, with what I initially assumed to be half in place. Turns out it's closer to 40%, but it's a factor you utterly failed to include in this response or your original math! Introducing them in a five year plan also speaks to planned deployment, not possible deployment. They could have them installed much more quickly should the need arise or via an add-on to existing meters, and since we're on the subject, we're nearly halfway into that period already, with, it would seem, nearly four million units already installed.

Has your critical and logical reasoning center been so damaged that you can't process basic operations like this? You keep proving yourself to be an increasingly uninformed and boneheaded person. These meters are already in place in large portions of the service area with a feature that simply needs to be turned on.

Your remarks on the cost are also misguided and selective. The capital outlay involved is part of a PG&E strategic plan that involves replacing aging meters. The particular capability outlined in the article is one feature of the new meter installation, which adds a cost, but a marginal one. It's not a $1.7 billion experiment in cut-load power--it's a CPUC-authorized expenditure to replace old meters with one benefit being the SmartRate metering technology.

But no one expects you to be able to reason, clearly.

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

It's not a need to be right so much as marvelling at your ability to be off the mark entirely.

Actually, looking at both figures, I was MUCH closer to the mark. Sucks to be you! BTW, "marveling" only has one "l".

It's your need to be a bigger and bigger dumbass that is problematic.

...as contrasted with your need for name-calling...

Turns out it's closer to 40%, but it's a factor you utterly failed to include in this response or your original math!

Hey, sweet-cheeks? If you'd looked at the math to begin with, you would have HAD access to the same answers I had in the PG&E statement... but blow hards like you love to pull numbers out of their wazoo. Whining when you're proven wrong just cements the idea that you're of such ilk. I'm betting you've have NO field experience, and boy, does it show.

Introducing them in a five year plan also speaks to planned deployment, not possible deployment.

You gave clear estimates on the possible deployment. Don't try to hide the fact that your numbers were further from the mark than my "guesstimate"...

They could have them installed much more quickly should the need arise or via an add-on to existing meters, and since we're on the subject, we're nearly halfway into that period already, with, it would seem, nearly four million units already installed.

Feel free to cite your source for the "40%"...or is this another number pulled from your nether regions?

These meters are already in place in large portions of the service area with a feature that simply needs to be turned on.

Source cite, please!

The particular capability outlined in the article is one feature of the new meter installation, which adds a cost, but a marginal one.

Looks like you didn't bother reading the PG&E statement I so kindly referenced earlier...

Which leads to my next point. You sound just like the Sicilian in the Princess Bride, yelling "inconceivable" at anything you can't wrap your head around.... either that, or you're a PG&E employee whoring out time on /.

Either way, you're amusing the hell out of me {and a number of CA-based friends that've read your posts...}

You also, as is the norm with your kind, ignored the most important part of the prior post: That PG&E has NO idea whether this 1.74-billion-dollar pet project will show ANY kind of return WHATSOEVER. Instead, you'd rather moan that the power generation ideas out right now are somehow less desirable than spending the better part of 2 billion dollars on a program that the company pushing it can't guarantee results on. Now, feel free to look up "alternative" power generation methods, and THEN tell me that the needed power couldn't be generated by a less costly method...

It's not a $1.7 billion experiment in cut-load power--it's a CPUC-authorized expenditure to replace old meters with one benefit being the SmartRate metering technology.

Damn, son... How can you be that far off the mark? Fine, looks like I'll have to cite yet ANOTHER source while cheerfully pointing out your pitiful lack of source material. Ready? Here we go! From the CPUC site:

In response to D.06-11-049, PG&E filed AL 2946-E on December 8, 2006 for approval to install 5,000 devices by June 2007, giving PG&E up to 5 MW of AC Cycling. Based on research and analysis, PG&E recommends offering both residential and small commercial customers an option of choosing either a switch or a Programmable Controllable Thermostat (PCT).

Gee... How many did CPUC allow to be installed? Even including the 10,000 additional units with tentative approval, it's sure not 40% of 10 million, by a LONG shot....

Call all the names you want to. Your vitriol underscores your plight: dumb AND miserable. You have our sympathies.... and on that note, have a great day!

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

Actually, looking at both figures, I was MUCH closer to the mark. Hardly! You more than doubled the service area, pretended it was merely residential customers, and arrived at an absolutely staggering amount of work time. My figure is representative of what deployment schedule could be followed, but that was purely hypothetical, since PG&E's actual priorities lie elsewhere.

At no point did you suggest an idle plan that is part of the normal replacement cycle (generally the scheme PG&E is following)--you created a bogus hypothetical that insisted they could get it done no faster than the allowance you made. This is patently incorrect.

BTW, "marveling" only has one "l". Check a dictionary. Either spelling is appropriate. Nice try, though.

...as contrasted with your need for name-calling... Sweet-cheeks, buttercup, pot, kettle...

Your comprehension difficulties and woeful errors in basic parsing aren't name calling. I'm questioning your competence. Your $5 million plan to provide power to a million customers, your math approach based on the entire service area of California (two and a half times PG&E's actual one--which puts your "guesstimate" that you're so proud of at 0.9 years, since PG&E services only 40% of the number of households you presumed and my response worked within your original assumptions, which, it is clear, are not based in fact.

You also, as is the norm with your kind, ignored the most important part of the prior post: That PG&E has NO idea whether this 1.74-billion-dollar pet project will show ANY kind of return WHATSOEVER. The "$1.74 billion" project is not solely limited to the project started by the article referenced here (comprehension errors are now beyond count with you!)--the meters and the capital outlay do not solely benefit this project discussed in TFA.

Predicting the savings of this plan cannot be modeled because it has never been tried before, and the procedural issues will have to be worked out. This is standard language--utility companies operate on a cost recovery basis in a decoupled system, so their assertions are guarded and conservative. Failing to meet projections is a far greater issue than not making projections. Keep harping on it all you want, but the "no one knows" answer doesn't carry the significance you seem to believe it does, and the project's costs are not solely dedicated to this "experiment."

Instead, you'd rather moan that the power generation ideas out right now are somehow less desirable than spending the better part of 2 billion dollars on a program Now you're just making things up. This issue of increased generation capacity is a wholly separate issue. Quit trying to shoehorn things into the discussion that aren't there. You're pushing a false dichotomy.

Gee... How many did CPUC allow to be installed? From someone who just learned what CPUC is, you're trying awfully hard to figure it out. Initial rollouts are usually part of pilot programs. In case you hadn't noticed, your information is quite out of date. Rollout has planned completion in the 2010-2012 range. Starting today, a new PG&E generation facility would not be available before 2017, and that's being optimistic.

Your vitriol It's yours. In case you hadn't noticed, you're the only one relying on crutches and cute names. Pointing out your continual incompetence is simply a matter of course. The basic errors you're committing are ones you'd expect of students.

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

If you can't provide numbers, cold hard numbers, then with all your yammering, you're not able to prove much.

At no point did you suggest an idle plan that is part of the normal replacement cycle (generally the scheme PG&E is following)--you created a bogus hypothetical that insisted they could get it done no faster than the allowance you made. This is patently incorrect.

I gave a rough guesstimate of around 13,000,000 units deployed. I never said EXACTLY 13,000,000, and anyone with sense would have read it as such. I never took your population count of 38 mil as meaning EXACTLY on the mark. H'wever, your estimate was off by double mine, and you loved those numbers... as long as they proved your little theory. Once, h'wever, you found the numbers were MUCH closer to my estimate, a game of "look at the monkey!" ensued. Nice try, but when it comes to who's closer, you've been way off. A pedantic mind-set isn't doing you any favors, it would appear.

The "$1.74 billion" project is not solely limited to the project started by the article referenced here (comprehension errors are now beyond count with you!)--the meters and the capital outlay do not solely benefit this project discussed in TFA.

You're hilariously lazy. Here I gave you the source and *page number* in the report from PG&E themselves, and you STILL couldn't be bothered to look. Here, Mr. Couch Potato, let me quote from their report directly:

The CPUC authorized the Utility to recover the $1.74 billion estimated SmartMeter(TM) project cost, including an estimated capital cost of $1.4 billion. The $1.74 billion amount includes $1.68 billion for project costs and approximately $54.8 million for costs to market the SmartMeter(TM) technology.

Man, you'd look a lot smarter if you paid attention to the obvious. Must be all those trees in the way of that forest.

Starting today, a new PG&E generation facility would not be available before 2017, and that's being optimistic.

A huge MAYBE on that. H'wever, what about the ones about to come online that I mentioned earlier? Missed that, too? You must not've had your Wheaties today. Now, let's note that this quote is from their *2006* report. More on that later.

In addition to ongoing investment in our existing hydroelectric and nuclear facilities, for the first time in 20 years PG&E is also back in the business of owning and operating new power plants. As part of our long-term resource plan for customers, construction recently began on the first of three state-of-the-art facilities. The plants will be on-line between 2009 and 2010 and will generate enough power for 950,000 homes.

Now, let's look at your "math" again. 2018-2008 = 10 years to not get more generating power online. Now, looking at THEIR math, with groundbreaking in 2006: 2010-2006 = *4* years from ground-breaking to online. That's less than HALF the time you said it'd take to do nothing. Pardon if I trust their math, as you apparently have trouble with yours.

Now you're just making things up.

I'm the one citing sources. You're the one that's not been able to provide ONE correct set of numbers so far. Even better, you seem to think that you're above having to prove your work. Fine. Show the numbers or shush.

In case you hadn't noticed, you're the only one relying on crutches and cute names.

Can't even remember your first post? Considering the rest of your material, it's not surprising. Here, let's refresh your memory:

Well, sunshine, that's how the world works, though here and in most other examples, the remedy is coming from them, not you.

That's funny. My profile name isn't "sunshine"... Could it be that you started the name-calling? No, even with basic proof in front of you, and considering you typed it yourself, you COULDN'T have started that. No sir, n

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

I gave a rough guesstimate of around 13,000,000 units No, but nice attempted retcon. You gave an estimate of 13 million households in the *state* from a census fact sheet. You said this didn't include commercial customers. You worked your figures assuming PG&E was the only energy supplier in the state. The similarity (loose, at that) to the number of meters was entirely accidental.

Here I gave you the source and *page number* in the report from PG&E themselves, and you STILL couldn't be bothered to look. This issue was closed long ago. The SmartMeters are not being installed solely for the sake of this project.

That's funny. My profile name isn't "sunshine" That was a tongue-in-cheek response to your high and mighty "I pay my bill, you owe me and your problems are not mine" tone, something you started with, snide and ignorant, but have remarkably managed to keep up this whole time.

H'wever, what about the ones about to come online that I mentioned earlier? Those address generation needs for new customers and reduce general strain on the system. They are not demand-based plants to supplement summer highs caused by air conditioning. They are baseline generators. You just don't get it, do you?

Short-term demand upticks due to air conditioning cause a fundamentally different problem. Without creating such an excess of generation capacity that the upswings are easily buffered in (which would be wasteful and costly), the infrastructure requires short-term solutions. Long term capacity increases are not a complete solution. Until power really IS too cheap to meter and too abundant to worry about, there needs to be a multifaceted approach. Building plants dedicated to providing summer capacity (your apparent solution) is a tremendous waste and a terrible delay. The plants coming online are not part of that. The process to getting that capacity online was started many years ago and is part of a strategy to meet growing baseline needs. This is not the same as a need to meet peak demand.

Your one flippant and ignorant comment sparked this, but it's clear you weren't being glib. You really are just that dense.

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

I'm waiting to see if you've the intestinal fortitude to produce ANY figures whatsoever from ANY external sources. Numbers, not cheesy rhetoric. Show me that 1.74 billion couldn't be more appropriately used funding projects KNOWN to produce results, in less or comparable time. Better yet, any number of green technologies, which CPUC has indicated about 12 years hence, will be generating a greater chunk of PG&E power than you think. Check their site for details.

I'm ready when you are... but if you can't produce any other citations, calculations, or other verifiable sources of information other that just "what you think..." then don't waste your time replying.

Hint: In addition, be prepared to consider what amount of public education and awareness regimens would ultimately be necessary to effectively educate a sufficient portion of the populace as to the vital need to eschew its power-hungry ways... which is, ultimately, the only true solution.

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

Your continued attempts to derail the discussion into something outside the bounds of the topic will not succeed, no matter how much baiting you lay on.

The issue isn't about green sources "generating a greater chunk of PG&E power than [I] think"--which is a remarkable position to take, considering green power hasn't been discussed at all here and you have literally no way of knowing what I think on the subject.

The issue also isn't spending the $1.7B on something else--for the umpteenth time, the capital costs are not solely for this project. They are part of ongoing infrastructure expansion and renewal, and they introduce other capabilities and features beneficial to PG&E's primary goals, just one of which is the one on topic for this discussion.

The topic at hand is also not getting people to change their consumption habits voluntarily, nor is it increased education. Like the baseline capacity argument, your spurious $5 million power plant claims, your repeated failure to recognize the structure of the new meter rollout, your ongoing refusal to recognize the different between short-term upswings and long-term growth, and your generic misunderstanding and ignorance of the organization, operation, and points of concern for the California power grid, this 'calculation' issue is irrelevant. You're attempting to force the discussion into irrelevant arenas.

What more information you could possibly want, I do not know. I do know, however, that you'd continue to misunderstand, misapply, and generally warp any information you're given. You haven't managed to properly use any source yet, so why should anyone expect you to start now?

Re:KDE 4.0

[UncleTogie]

Suit yourself, stupid...

The issue also isn't spending the $1.7B on something else--for the umpteenth time, the capital costs are not solely for this project.

So you're saying that their SEC filing was misleading? Fine. File a complaint with the SEC...

But wait. What proof do you have to counter PG&E's own SEC filing?

Not a damn thing. Not one reference. So, until you can produce any verifiable information counter to their own statement that this project, in itself, will cost that amount, you're simply full of shit.

Your continued attempts to derail the discussion into something outside the bounds of the topic will not succeed, no matter how much baiting you lay on.

Misleading how? Simple fact: The population of the state of California is growing well past its capacity to support. Take your average CA resident and ask them to give up their electronic goodies for the better good. Feel free...

Feel free to bask in the shit you catch for even suggesting it. Most Americans are too damn self-centered to even consider not cooling their McMansions.

That is the basic fact that begs for additional generation. These goobers aren't cutting back, and further draconian measures will only alienate the people that PAY those bills. These stopgap measures that get passed on to the customer are simply that: Mickey-moused schemes that ignore the fact that unless you make some SERIOUS infrastructure upgrades, you're simply digging the hole you're in at a slower rate.

In addition, your failure to even read the aforementioned reports suggests a rather... closed mind. I'd be happy to check YOUR sources... if you had any other than your navel.

You're attempting to force the discussion into irrelevant arenas.

You mean I'm asking questions concerning the long-standing California power crisis that you don't have the means to answer. Tough cookies. Don't get pissy with ME 'cause you can't produce any material that proves a word you've said.

You haven't managed to properly use any source yet, so why should anyone expect you to start now?

I make decisions based on a variety of sources, just a few of which I've named. Feel free to name yours anytime.

You won't. I guarantee it, and that's not bait. Any sound mind can give a source {or sources} for what they know, if they have one other than themselves.

You don't, and I think it's funny as hell that you try to convince people by force of will. You must be a hoot in PC shops: "My hard drive is the problem, even though you're telling me the problem is the motherboard! I'm right, and you better replace it now!"

Got numbers, bitch?

Re:KDE 4.0

[mr_matticus]

So you're saying that their SEC filing was misleading? No, I'm saying you don't know how to read, even on the PDFs you yourself link. The SmartMeters are REPLACEMENT METERS. They are part of the normal INFRASTRUCTURE REPLACEMENT CYCLE. This MONEY WOULD BE SPENT ANYWAY. The meters PROVIDE A WIDE RANGE OF ADDITIONAL SERVICES, JUST ONE OF WHICH IS THE REMOTE CUTBACK DISCUSSED IN THE ARTICLE. It's not terribly complicated, but you keep boneheadedly trying to make it so.

Not a damn thing. Not one reference. Read the PDF you actually linked to. Since you can't, give this a whirl: DCSI SmartMeters.

You mean I'm asking questions concerning the long-standing California power crisis that you don't have the means to answer. Tough cookies. Don't get pissy with ME 'cause you can't produce any material that proves a word you've said. Perhaps instead of spewing more and more bullshit, you could look up at the topic of the discussion, or maybe even read the article. You see, we have these things called topical discussions. The topic here is peak demand. It is not baseline generation, population growth, renewable energy, or long-term abatement strategies. It is a response mechanism to short-term demand surges.

That's at least the seventh time it's been said, and you still can't quite manage to wrap your head around it. You want to talk about those other topics? Do it in response to an article about one of them.

I make decisions based on a variety of sources With your reading comprehension and critical reasoning, it's generous to represent them as informed decisions.