Slashdot Mirror
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.)"
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.
..remember that California is HOT. The thermostats referred to are connected to air conditioning, not, as I first thought, heating systems!
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.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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...).
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.
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.
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!
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.
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
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.
Looks like the prefect use for a faraday cage.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
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.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
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.
/* This sig is disabled. Press CTRL-W to enable. Thankyou */
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.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
How is avoiding the real problem a "good idea"?
Maybe not
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?
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!
Simple way to accomplish the same means: raise the price during peak hours. Works for cell phones, right?
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.
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%.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
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.
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.
Work bio at MMWD
Makes quite a lot of sense. It will require rewiring most homes though.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
...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.
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?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
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.
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.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
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.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
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.
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.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
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.
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.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
-- If we don't stand up for our rights, now, there will be no right to stand up for them later.
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.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
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.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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!
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!)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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....
... is up to the politicians, who answer to the voters.
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.
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.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
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?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
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
Don't waste those cycles! Put them to use! http://www.distributed.net/