Slashdot Mirror
Smarter Electric Grid Could Save Power
Wired has a timely story about putting more of the automated and non-automated decisions behind the use of electrical power into and around households. From the summary: "If the electric grid stops being just a passive supplier of juice, consumers could make choices about how and when to consume power. Power providers and tech companies are working to redesign the grid so you can switch off your house when high demand strains the system, or program your house or appliances to make that move."
A similar story is featured right now on PhysOrg, highlighting a particular pilot project involving "smart meters" in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
more like power plants are idiotically designed to not be scalable and when they fail to supply enough power, they blame the customers. It's not like it came as some big shock that people use more power during the day than at night. They knew it, they didn't plan for it when they built the plant, so it's 100% their fault and they should fix it without forcing the customers to fix it for them.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Speaking of "duh"...
Read about how the scientists attributed as having agreed upon the existence of global warming were named without their consent, nor had they voiced any such affirmation on the matter.
Global warming is a fallacy; a red herring being used to line pockets and consolidate power in global policy bodies like the UN. If you have actually bothered to step outside recently or looked at temperature trends for the past several years, you'd notice we are amidst a global cooling trend. This has nothing to do with greenhouse gases. It is due to lower levels of solar output, particularly in relation to sunspot activity.
Oh, and by the way, the new scare term is "global climate change".
Carbon footprint is the son of the-artist-formerly-known-as-global-warming and inheritor to the throne of red herrings. Carbon dioxide, which is purported to be at the center of the crisis, is a life gas. Many people might argue that having stuff around that promotes life is a good thing. More carbon dioxide contributes to greater plant growth and oxygen production, which helps us be more active and think more clearly. Carbon dioxide is at the lowest levels it has been in recorded history. It is hardly a problem. If anything, we need more carbon dioxide, and less scare-mongering pseudo-science... and maybe a refresher in seventh grade earth sciences.
That said, we have a planet awash with hydrocarbons, wind, solar radiation, and water. All of these are energy sources we can harness today and simply don't, or constrain our production of raw material or energy derived from those sources.
Look, we are on a planet which has teamed with life for millions of years. Given that oil derives from living matter, it is inconceivable that we have managed to locate or use anywhere near all of it in the last century. Even if this were not the case, we have a plethora of known oil reserves we've yet to tap which have been put off limits to drilling for little or no reason, other than the duplicity of politicians and oil companies. Have a look at the U.S. National Geological Survey maps.
Water is a hydrogen fuel storage source with its own combustive catalyst, oxygen, built right in. I mean, we drink what could potentially be our most inexhaustible terrestrial fuel source. The planet is more than two-thirds covered with ocean, and we have even more locked up in tundra ice, freshwater, and cloud systems. It's as insane we don't make use of it as it is that we don't use more steam-powered engines capable of more work for less energy.
Supplemented with wind turbines and solar converters, we'd be so completely independent of energy concerns that we wouldn't even be having this discussion on power savings.
You want to save some energy, get a hybrid conversion kit for you vehicle that lets it use water as a supplemental fuel source. Get a small wind turbine or solar panels and pull your deficit off the grid during your peak usages and sell power to the electric company by pushing your excess out to the grid during low usage. Insulate, insulate, insulate.
Oh, and anyone who doesn't like me exhaling because it raises my carbon footprint and contributes to global warming... well, they can just hold it in until they are blue in the face.
What incentive do you the householder have to get one of these 'smart' meters? Isn't it just annoying that it cuts out your dishwasher for the convenience of the power company? Why not bypass it by plugging the dishwasher into the always-on circuit?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Ahh, good old shiver-in-the-dark or swelter-in-the-heat ascetic environmentalism. Screw that.
Depends on where you hit it in the cycle. Give it that signal when it's just about to start the compressor, and it's going to heat up outside its set limits. So the power company will be spoiling my food in order to save energy. Given the energy it takes to make that food, I'm not so sure that's a win. It's certainly a loss for me.
They do if you want to use hot water at any given time. I don't want the power company deciding when I can shower without freezing my ass off.
If the power company cuts off my A/C, my house is going to get hotter than I want it -- significantly hotter. And then when it comes back on, it's going to have to work long and hard to bring the temperature down again, which it probably won't be able to until the middle of the night. I don't pay my electric bills in order to swelter in the heat.
And all at a significant cost in comfort. Reducing electricity use is not the only criterion for evaluating a proposal.