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Arizona Trialing System That Lets Utility System Control Home A/Cs
AzTechGuy writes "Arizona Public Service Co., Arizona's largest power company, is implementing a test program that would put customers' thermostats under their control to help balance power needs during critical peak usage times. APS will be able to remote control the customers' thermostats to control power draw from their A/C when there is a critical power transmission issue on the grid. Customers will be able to override these settings if they desire."
BGE already does this in Maryland.
They've been doing this in Toronto for a long time.
It seems like a convenient method of limiting brown-outs. The privacy implications may be enormous for some but for others it will appear to be a good idea particularly since folks can override the system.
Your "peak periods" will correspond quite well with when it's 110 degrees in the shade... exactly when you want the AC the most.
Because when it's 104 degrees in Arizona, the people trialing this system will be content to let the power company turn their A/C down.
No, what'll happen is that all the people enrolled will just override the suggested settings, meaning that they'll have spent the money and still end up having brownouts.
I don't see this as being a smart move from -any- standpoint, unless you marketed it as a way for the power company to turn down the A/C units of homeowners who might not -be- at home during a peak time, but have left their systems running.
Having said that, anyone with pets will tell you that it can get hot enough that they need to be cooled-off too.
If firefighters fight fire, and crimefighters fight crime, what do freedom fighters fight? - George Carlin
I am in Toronto and have had this for 2 years. What other breaking news is lurking around the corner? New, the amazing VCR records TV shows while you play with your slinky?
... my fridge has door on it.
Look, if I'm paying for power, in a government granted monopoly (as most power companies are) I'd better be able to use it how I wish, while paying for it with a reasonable fee based on what I use. If they can't provide what I'm paying for they should either A) Improve the service, B) allow other competitors C) be sued by their "customers". If we had -choice- in power companies, this might not be so bad, but sure, we have an override button in 2010... but in 2020 will we?
It is the most basic of rights to be able to use what you pay for. In many cases, if you don't like what a company wants you to do, you have action, you can A) change to a competitor or B) go without it. If I don't like Sony's policies on firmware updates for the PS3, I can just as easily buy a 360, Wii, or even decide not to buy a game console. But when it comes to electricity, theres no other providers and its just about impossible to go without electricity in 2010 (even most Amish will have electricity in their outbuildings).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
that is all. It is optional, works well, saves money. win-win
Load control using superimposed audio frequency signals over the powerlines has been around since the 1950’s.
What is more interesting are some of the ideas been bandied around with smart networks, smart houses, and internet everywhere. Imagine the electric car in your garage being recharged off the grid. Then, a large generator fails. Automatically a signal is sent out. All of the electric vehicles stop drawing power off the grid and reverse to push stored power out of their battery to prop up the grid. All pipe dream stuff now ... but in the future???
This from the supposedly a (the?) "free" western state.
Fucking losers. Fucking zonies.
This is a very shortsighted approach. Energy needs change over time: right now, the biggest draw on the Arizona grid may be AC units, but in 5 or 10 years it may be electric cars being recharged during the night. The real solution are smart meters, displaying the current (pun intended!) consumption and, more importantly, the cost. Make the cost variable - charge more at peak hours, less when there is less demand. People will figure out the best time to run the appliances and chargers, and what temperature to keep their place at.
Instead of wasting time on a controller for a single appliance, the providers should be concentrating deploying more smart meters and making them less prone to hacking.
It would create jobs... and energy...
Sounds like a GREAT FUCKING IDEA TO ME.
I've been in this program in central Iowa for 6 years. Has been no real pain and I get about a $40 check each year for the times they throttle me...
I understand that without this there will be brownouts but this is exactly when AC's need to be cranked up the most. Couldn't they expand the power grid or install batteries in houses instead of not giving us power when we most want it?
The next day, nobody goes to work as they haven't got enough battery power in their cars.
Bullshit.
You CAN go off grid. If I lived Arizona, I'd totally slap a couple of solar panels on my roof and hook those up to the AC. Don't give me this whiny "oh, but they have a monooooooooopoly" tripe. It's only a monopoly if you're too lazy or cheap to use the alternative energy sources. Especially not in a prime solar location.
Instead of trying to control individual ACs like this, they should be giving out massive credits to those who go to the expense of installing solar. Even where it won't pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time, installing solar panels will make a difference (probably not so much so in places like Seattle). I would imagine that if you could get 10% of the homes in the nation (even if you were just to do that in So Cal and Arizona and other perpetually sunny places) the relief on the grid would be enormous. With advances in solar cells, combining solar and hydrogen fuel storage/use, and other alternative energy technologies (wind, for example) there should be no problem in providing enough power.
The real problem is that the grid is ancient (relatively) and uses old, broken tech. Unfortunately the adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" doesn't apply when you are pushing outdated technology way past its limits.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
What has happened to English?
Arizona is trying the system. Try is a verb. The act of trying is called a trial. Trial is the noun form of the verb try.
Trialing is a pointless abomination: the verb form of the noun form of a verb.
The next day, nobody goes to work as they haven't got enough battery power in their cars.
Which would save even MORE energy!
Brilliant!
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Idaho power opted for something far simpler several years ago. An exterior radio controlled override that cuts off the compressor motor (most of the load) for a maximum of 15 minutes while leaving your interior blower motor running. You don't notice a thing. If you happen to have two AC units they are alternated. This allows for much simpler peak load control of the power grid and doesn't torch off the customers.
If this were used for recharging Chevy Volts, or cooling deep freezers.
Hell, my parents have had a using a system like this since 1997, and they can't even override it. Granted, they get a discount on their electric bill. However, I'm going to guess that increasing rates hasn't worked and too many roadbloacks, for instance: regulatory, judicial, economic, and otherwise make building a new generating facilities not worth it. It also probably doesn't make sense to do when you've got several million people who have enough money to not have to care about using the set back feature on their thermostat when they are at work. It may also help if these same residents maintained their air conditioner and ventilation more often than once a decade. While you could keep raising rates, it generally starts to hurt lower income individuals.
However, I suppose one could implement a progressive billing scheme for residential customers where for instance as random numbers, the charge for the first kWh was $0.10 and the charge for the 1000th kWh was $50, the costs listed are for each kWh and not the cost of all 1000 kWh. The a monthly bill for a customer using 100 kWh would ideally be much less than 1/10 of a bill from a home using 1000 kWh. Ideally, one would be trying to cause sticker shock for the owners of the extremely wasteful homes having a $5,000 electric bill, while to offering assistance for energy saying improvements to those with lower incomes. However, if a manager tries this they should plan on laying low for a few months. No one likes being shot by a crazy person who is mumbling about the Founding Fathers, I would imagine.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
You get a $25 rebate and a thermostat/switch, and they get to control your AC to adjust your temperature by 2-3 degrees. They cap the number of times the are allowed to do it at 10 times/year.
When can peaksaver be activated? on weekdays (Monday through Friday), most likely between 12:00p.m. to 6:00p.m. from May 1 to September 30. Never on weekends or holidays. for a maximum of ten activations during the summer and only for a total of four hours during any one activation. As an example; in 2008, the peaksaver program was activated only five times.
http://everykilowattcounts.ca/residential/peaksaver/understanding-electricity-demand.php
We have this going on already. The apartment complex where I live opted everyone in. The choice to override the system is not one of going and hitting a button but one of calling the power company and opting back out. That might not be the same as this article but that's not really the point.
The real significance with the setup we have is that it's meant to replace rolling blackouts in that, instead of a full blackout, they will do rolling AC shutoffs instead. This is the first year we'll have it in place, so it remains to be seen if I will care. The facts support the suggestion that we won't even notice, though. For one, we use central air and when used properly it's maintaining temperatures all day, not just at peak times. Though it works harder at peak times, the power company's strategy is to shut it off for 10 or 15 minutes a day. The realities here are two-fold, one is, the house will not turn super hot in that time. The other is, the cooling unit for the central air is in the shade during peak hours, chances are, it will continue to remain cold. The fans are NOT disabled, and thus, the coolant will continue to do its job, probably for a good five minutes. There's also a chance that during the off time, it won't even be in use.
All of those factors, as well as some others add up to my belief that it won't impact our comfort noticeably, and if it helps out the ailing power grid, then fine. I'm all for it. I have experienced summer heat-induced power outages before and I'd rather avoid that.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
Roughly, the first 90% of the load cost is X, the next 9 to 10% cost is 10X. If you need to buy a remaining 1% on the spot market during a squeeze, the remaining 1% will cost 100X.
Being able to shed that top 1% can make a big difference.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Kansas City Power & Light has been doing this since 2007.
Bah, we had this in Sweden 150 years ago.
if you are an undocumented alien...you get no ac? (attempt at humor--might fail miserably)
Is it 5:30 yet?
It'll be voluntary today.
It'll be mandatory tomorrow.
If they weren't planning on making it mandatory, they wouldn't do it in the first place.
Seen it a billion times.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I worked for an IT organization that supported the IT functions of many energy suppliers in deregulated markets. While some people might complain about these programs, they are typically opt-in programs, and if you're a savvy energy customer, you will understand how these programs can save you money in the long run. While many people might be concerned that the utility will turn off their electricity, in reality, it is much more likely that the utility will just turn up your thermostat a couple of degrees. Chances are, they will probably first target the thermostats of the households whose thermostat readings deviate from some average temperature. Many people would not find a degree or two warmer as big of a problem, if they understand that they will be saving a lot of money on their bill. The idea is to reduce the on-peak demand on the utility's infrastructure, to prevent brown-outs or power failures.
That being said, the customer deserves to know on their bill when the utility has adjusted their thermostats. The customer should be able to review their usage each month and make decisions either to change their usage habits, or change their pricing plan to better meet their needs. Time of usage interval billing is a good strategy to save a customer money -- but only if they are willing to take the time to understand their usage patterns and it allows suppliers to avoid purchasing/generating more electricity than their territory needs. In a given month, an energy supplier has to supply as much electricity as the highest demand at a given time. This is an oversimplification, but it basically means that the supplier could end up generating energy that nobody needs. Since they generally can't store the energy somewhere, it will go to waste.
Also, in many places, customers are allowed to shop around and go with an energy supplier that gives them a lower rate. I'm not certain about Arizona's legislation, but places like Texas and areas in the Northeast allow competition and the suppliers generally try to create pricing plans that factor in time-of-use billing to reduce their costs and save certain types of customers money. Though, most competition targets the Commercial and Industrial sector, since that's where the money is generally made.
as long as you can override the setting if need be i dont see the problem. i think alot of people don't understand what they are targeting. people tend to be jerks when power company's put out a warning saying reduce your usage or else service may be interrupted. most ignore it and well we have blackouts. if some jerk has left there ac on wile hes not home whats wrong with them shutting it off untill he comes home and pushes the override. the issue i see hear is it only would effect centrel air systems and not the real power hungry units the window units. everyone knows central air is way more efficient then those units but many cant afford or dont have the setup for central air.
"Trialing"? They're "trialing" it? Seeing as how a trial is an act or instance of trying, couldn't they just be trying the system?
C'mon editors, don't weird the language any more than you have to.
My old water heater had a label on it that said something like "This device is controlled by SRP" or something to that effect. I got the impression it was radio controlled. I cannot find any information on this old program in Arizona. The previous owners of our house were pretty weird so they might have been beta testers or something. Anyone know anything about this?
Here in Utah, Rocky Mountain Power offers a similar program (called "Cool Keeper"). They apparently recently tried to introduce legislation that would make the device mandatory for all new customers unless the customer knew of the program and specifically opted out in advance. And to my knowledge, there isn't any limit on RMP's activations like some other utilities have implemented, nor can the customer override the switch. I hope Arizona's system is more forgiving than that. Plus, I'm pretty sure RMP would actually save more money if they didn't spam us with fliers trying to upsell the program every few weeks (seriously, I get at least one or two packets a month year round). Imagine all the power it takes to make those.
My parents are in inland CA w/ PG&E (near Mt. Diablo). Their 70s era house doesn't have air-conditioning, and I grew up there with frequent 90-100F and periodic 100-110F summertime temperatures. We were able to ventilate at night and close it up during heat of day, and keep things bearable with just table fans and an attic fan to dump the hottest air out of the roof during the day, since overnight lows tended to get down to the 60-70F range even on the hottest days. I don't even think their place has very good insulation, nor is it oriented the best towards the sun. We just tended to avoid the south-facing rooms during the afternoon.
By comparison, I did live for 5 years in the tropics, and there I needed A/C to sleep at night, because the overnight lows were still often 85F or higher, with very high humidity. I never could fully acclimate to that.
It'll also be the middle of the day. For quite a large number of residential locations, the home will be empty.
And some large number will also have pets, that get to suffer.
Do you also leave your dog in the car with the windows rolled up? That's a crime, but it's OK when the power company does it for you I guess.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess one way to opt out would involve installing a couple of window A/C units for key rooms. They don't have to actually be in a window, or even visible. Some ducting and a remote control and you're set. If the power companies really want people to use relatively inefficient window units over more efficient central air systems, so be it.
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
Trial is a noun, not a verb. It's the noun that refers to the act of trying something. To quote Old Biff, you sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong.
I challenge the folks that are complaining to read up on transmission and distribution technology and how the power grid actually works. The new intelligent grid, including the meters on the homes, will allow the utilities to use the responsiveness of a constantly communicating infrastructure to make more informed decisions about how to regulate their power output during specific periods of the day and be more resilient to momentary changes in demand. If they don't have to spend so much time and money on regulating the plant output, power will get cheaper...imagine how much it costs to change the output of a given power plant even every hour. Heck less than 40% of the energy they generate makes it to your house anyways..
read up on it...
or how about herniated neck disc?
Cool. Got promised that for the first time in 1971.
I'm still waiting.
Currently such panels can almost pay for themselves before you have to replace them.
Don't get me wrong. I LOVE the idea of solar power. I yearn for the day when we cover a quarter of New Mexico in solar panels and provide cheap clean electrcity for the whole country. I can't wait until the day we no longer send men into the coal mines to die at the hands of greedy bastards.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Hmm...yeah, God forbid they spend all that "remote control thermostat for millions of homes" money on another turbine or upgrades or a whole new power plant. THAT would make too much sense.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Residential systems usually don't have heat storage, but larger systems, with chilled water, often do. Some even make ice at night when power is cheap, to be melted during the day. It would be helpful to have a few hours advance notice of a hot period, so that the system could chill down an insulated water tank for use later.
Power companies generally have a load curve planned a day ahead. That info is available; here's PJM's dashboard, which tells you far more than you ever wanted to know about the power grid for the northeastern United States. (Load right now: 55,292 megawatts. 1,896 megawatts of that is wind power. Spinning reserves are 2,274 MW. Current trouble report: "As of 09:30 hours, a Non-Market Post Contingency Local Load Relief Warning of 11 MW in the Rachel Hill area of FE (PN) has been issued for Transmission Contingency Control. Post Contingency Switching: Open Roxbury at Shadegap, Close Threesprings at Shadegap, open Curryville at Claysburg, open Snakespring at Bedford North." Tomorrow's estimated peak is around 71 gigawatts, expected at 17:30 hours.) The estimation system uses historical data and weather reports, plus bid info from really big users. So one can plan a day ahead if your HVAC system has heat storage.
Routine control is exercised by financial means - all the players submit bids, which have a time range, a low output and price, a high output and price, and a ramp value. The control center crunches on these and decides who generates how much power. Large power buyers can bid, too; they have the option of saying how much they'll cut their load as the price rises. A big data center might choose to be a market player. When there are troubles, the control center can take "non-market actions", like the one above, but most of the time, the outstanding bids determine who does what.
California went too far in deregulation, and had electricity auctions every half hour at one point. There were brokers and dealers who were pure speculators, and this affected live power operations in real time. That caused so much churn that there were blackouts. So now, bids are for a day ahead, and the matching of supply and demand is algorithmic. All this data is public, to keep the markets honest. That's why PJM offers such detailed data about their power grid.
TXU rolled this out in Texas when I lived there starting in 2008 or early 2009. You got a free programmable thermostat that connected to a ZigBee adapter which plugged into your LAN/router someplace.
They would cycle 15 on/15 off at peak as needed, but you were able to override at any time and manage everything online so you could even turn the A/C on/off remotely from work, a hotel, etc, if you forgot to.
Never had any problems, and the thermostat was much nicer than the old (nearly) broken one that came with the home.
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
The new WA State Energy Code going into effect on July 1, 2010 has a bit of this kind of thing in it (for commercial only right now). Basically any new or remodeled building that has a new DDC type control system (larger buildings with central controls, not separate programmable thermostats) will be required to accept a signal from the local utility to change temperature setpoints by 2 degrees up or down throughout the whole system depending on if the system is in cooling or heating mode. And DDC is going to be required more because of more strict "Optimum Start" control requirements going into effect as well.
First, Socialists? Read my other posts. I'm the resident hippie communist. :-)
Second, low flush toilets were and still are a horrible idea. Look at the studies. People now, on average, flush their 1.6 gallon toilets two or three times. Because of the multiple flushes, we now use more water than the old 3.5 gpf toilets did. The tinfoil hat crowd notes that most of the political push for "low-flow" toilets came from the manufacturers who wanted to turn repair jobs into new sales.
Yes, I miss my old toilet. :-)
Third, I don't own any guns. Can't really imagine shooting anyone. Would much rather face Judgement Day as someone who got shot than someone who killed.
Finally, I learned my lesson about letting someone else control my thermostat in college. Rented an "all utilities paid" apartment once. The management company made a ton of money by setting the thermostat at 90 in the summer and 40 in the winter.
Let me put it this way. Do you really want to trust your thermostat to the same Enron crowd that caused rolling blackouts in California to line their own pockets? How long do you think it would be before "classes of service" came into being to keep rich neighborhoods cool at the expense of poor ones?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
No, that's ok. If he doesn't agree a comment is "+2 Insightful" but rather "+1 Just another comment", that comment is overrated.
It would be abuse only if he used Overrated to mod a comment down to below its original score, which simply shouldn't be allowed by Slash in the first place.
No, it is smart enought to draw down on the batteries only for a few minutes until other plant (like gas turbines, hydro, etc) can come on stream.
It also does other funky things. Like allowing one to set cascading limits on power consumption at certain price points. For example, price hits X/c kwh, turn off pool pump for a max of 60 minutes. But, never disconnect supply to fridge. Or, if I have a standby generator, synch and run in parallel with the grid, and get paid market pool prices (which will return a profit).
Of course, it also offers increased surface area for infrastructure attacks, but, that is another story.
NO
I buy power at a certain price. I expect to have it.
Power outages will solve the problem when people get pissed off and demand solution.
Political hacks will realize nuclear power was needed 30 years ago.
Problem solved.
Also no I don't want anyone to have control of my house at any time. The climate dbags will then make a bill that gives the EPA control of your thermostats.
NO NO NO NO NO
Jesus I cant believe how many people seem to leave aircon on during the day while at work etc, what exactly is the reason for this?? I am a UK expat living in Thailand...Thailand gets extremely hot and pushes 100% humidity regularly so aircon is wonderful however I only ever cool rooms im actually using and only when people are in the house, as does everyone else I know... If you cant stand being hot for even 30 mins while the rooms cool down can you not at least put things on timers to cool it before you get home from work??
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They have this already in Africa. It's called load shedding.
Welcome to the third world, Arizona.
HVAC/R service tech and company owner here. Bad idea, avoid if at all possible. They turn your AC off at peak times, and you usually won't notice it, but your house will rebound later in the day and your AC will run all night trying to cool back down to temp. The credit they offer does not offset the increased nighttime run costs. Remember the AC is designed for the most part to hold your house and its contents at a set temp, not to pull it down to temp quickly or to cycle temps rapidly. If you have ever gone on vacation and turned your AC way up, and when you get home turn it back down to temp, you can hear your outdoor unit cycling rapidly. It will cool the air, and then cut off. 2 minutes later when the heat from the walls, furniture and everything else goes into the air (hot to cold folks) the unit comes back on. tldr: opt out, bad for your wallet
A truely smart power meter would have several variables to consider at any one time:
0) Current temperature
1) Desired temperature
2) Time of day
3) Day of week
4) Season
5) Current price of electricity
6) Demand level
The first four are very standard, season may or may not be common, but the last two variables are what make a smart thermostat truely smart. It would allow the consumer to respond to price fluctuations/dynamic pricing from the utility and it would also allow the consumer to opt-in to avoid brown or black-outs.
Ken
If it's for air conditioning it makes far more sense to use the solar heat to move things around - just like the 1950s kerosene fridges with no moving parts (burning wick expanded the gas, water was the compressor). It's only because fans and ducting are easier that we're not using solar air conditioning in buildings with a large roof area.
For now.....
...or until you don't pay your electric bill
The next day, nobody goes to work as they haven't got enough battery power in their cars.
The alternative would be to let the grid fail, in which case they still won't have enough battery power to go to work, and the food in the fridge will be spoiling as a bonus.
The way to improve the situation is to build more generation capacity, but the utilities don't want to do this because it is expensive and will drive down prices on the electric rates.
On the flip side wonder why the electric companies are so quick to give discounts or rebates for new applicances, insulation, etc. I'll give you a clue, its green but doesn't have a thing to do with the environment. By getting us all to save electricity it alows them to maximize their current infrastructure, and their profits. By keeping useage in the 90 percentile of capacity they can create an artificial shortage and charge a premium on their product.
I'd gladly eat a freshly clubbed baby seal steak for dinner and wipe my ass with toilet paper made from thousand year old trees, so don't label me a tree hugger, but since I've moved to Florida I've got a strong desire to build a rain colletion system, a batch solar heater, and put in solar panels and disconnect my wallet from the utility grid and all the political bullshit that goes along with it.
Cap and trade, raise the rates, lower useage, degraded life style....nope fuck you government that doesn't apply to me.
I need to run my AC at max so I can comfortably watch my 50" TV and enjoy this tender baby seal steak.
They had a product called the SuperStat. It was a Honeywell programmable thermostat with an RF receiver module inside it. When the utility called for load control, they'd send out a paging signal and the thermostat would kick the A/C off for the amount of time contained in the message.
S-A also had gray boxes that went outside the house for A/C control, and they also worked with water heater and pool pump control. This is nothing new.
Call it "generating negawatts". Instead of positive megawatt generation, we're generating negative megawatts to shave peak. Yes, I worked with these things, and yes, I work for a utility.
I used to live across the street from a church. They would run the AC throughout the summer 24/7 even though the building was only staffed on Sunday. Would be nice if the city would shut off AC on buildings that are mostly unoccupied.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I know that as a UK resident you might believe you are part of the US but you are not... yet.
Anyway, there is a reason US citizens consume more then anyone else on this planet. It is a culture defined by entitlement. I can have the largest car, so I must have it and then I must use it.
I can have an airco, therefor everything must be airco'ed and it must run all the time.
An American really can't even deal with the notion that there might be something wrong with this attitude. Watch Mythbusters and their constant search for fuel efficiency in a 3 ton pickup with 1 person in it and no cargo. How about driving a smaller car? Oh, they do entire segments on how they get smashed between two trucks driving at top speed. No test of course if the results would be any different with a SUV (Answer: no, SUV's only share the fuel efficiency with tanks, not safety).
And the solution is terribly simple, pay more for your elec so that more power facilities can be built. But that is not an option either because all the profits go to shareholder, not into investments for the future.
It is an amusing system, you got Americans claiming they are the most advanced country, when large parts of the country regularly brown-out. California has had it for years, and no riots yet. When your electricity network is as reliable as one in Africa, maybe it is time to take a long hard look at the way you are running thing.
Don't worry, some American with mod points will remove this post to avoid to many Americans having to be upset by the truth.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
All the power companies are going to do is cycle the equipment at different frequencies. They can do this with water heaters, dryers, AC, furnace, and no one will notice because this equiptment can work find at a bazillion different duty cycles. Yeah yeah, lets get more anecdotes about poor single mothers and their condemned houses running AC all the time. Fuck people, you're suppose to be smarter than that. All the power company will do is control the frequency at which your high load equiptment cycles. In 95% of cases no one at your end will notice. The remaining 5% override it. For those of you unwilling to play such a minor "inconvenience" I suggest you start saving for an off-grid system because this will eventually be legislated. Quite frankly, public energy infrastructure is too important to be affected by you. Start buying LP and batteries ASAP.
every house i've lived in has had one of these. In the summer months they will cycle the AC off (Maybe the water heater too). I've never noticed it happening. If they didn't do this the electric company would have to institute rolling brownouts, which everyone would notice. Obama really isn't trying to take over your thermostat.
In Ontario, Canada the utility has been swapping in smart meters on every household and later will do condo's and apartment buildings. You can sign up to a program where you let them take control of your heating and cooling systems. The idea is that when demand is at it's highest they will automatically adjust the temperature setting up or down a degree or two. This will be expanded later into the same control of you other appliances like dishwasher, washing and drying machines. The owner can still override the settings if desired.
However, and there always is a however. Along with this change based demand system. The power company will also adjust what you pay per kilowatt depending on the time of day or more sinister is adjust cost based on actual demand on their system. Why is this something that steps up the fear factor. Because they determine the break point on when the rate changes and they don't have to tell you. As we know from experience in past history. If given the power to decide where the load break point is, you can be sure that line will go lower and lower and the price will go higher and higher. There is also no incentive for the power company to fix/maintain, let alone increase the capacity of their infrastructure. Paying more for less is a very popular revenue plan of all these conglomerates or monopolies.
The case of Ottawa Ontario where the city begged for people to cut back on water use. They invested in a plan to hand out energy efficient products including shower heads, toilets replacements etc. Now because people have cut back, the city water department has run out of money because there is less water to charge for. So the city is jacking up the base water rate by 20%. So you once again get less for more.
Ontario power corp is embarking on the same plan and you have to be insane if you expect a different result.
A much better idea is time-dependent pricing, so that consumers can make the trade-off themselves between using power at peak times, or at off-peak times, and revise their decisions on a day by day basis. This would mean consumers could save by moving to technologies like air conditioners with thermal storage, so they can run the AC at night, when power is very nearly too cheap to meter, instead of during the afternoon peak.
However, for some reason utility regulatory boards don't like time dependent pricing.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I could go for something like this because I do understand the realities that grid controllers face. However, I'm also a believer that if I do something for a company, they have to do something for me. Well a programmable thermostat is a shitty gift. Don't get me wrong, they are wonderful devices. I have one. However I got it at Home Depot for about $45. They are cheap and easy to get. So having one as the reward for helping them wouldn't cut it for me.
This reminds me of _Brazil_. Oh, Robert De Niro where are you....?
It is grid capacity. That is one of the big problems. Regardless of how much you generate, the electrical grid can transmit only a fixed amount to a given area. Yes that can be upgraded but it is expensive of course. You have to lay much larger lines over long distances, hundreds of miles potentially. So you can have a situation where even though you can generate all the power you could need, you can't get it all to the area it is in demand in. You are overloading a main distribution line and if you do you'll probably blow a transformer.
That's the real problem, and not an easy one to solve.
Also I think nuclear plants could well be designed to deal with variable loads. While the old ones that the US has may not, I don't see why new ones couldn't be built better. Nuclear subs all have highly variable plants. They can be shut down, run to full power, or anywhere in between all while the sub is under way. The companies that build these (like GE and Westinghouse) are the same companies that build civilian plants, so it isn't like they don't know how. While there may be technical/economic reasons not to build all reactors like that you could certainly do some. Have a plant with 6 reactors 5 fairly non-variable, one highly variable.
limiting power draw of non-critical appliances like AC is only the first step, long term it is also planned to permit electric cars or plug-in hybrids to release power back to the grid to absorb surges.
Currently there is a standardization effort called smart energy to design the protocols to connect all your appliances. Right now it looks like zigbee smart energy will become dominant in the US (which is built upon ipv6 unlike previous zigbee standards that used it's own network layer)
The way this works is that your electricity meter have one or two low cost RF or PLC trancievers RF based systems will mostly use 802.15.4 (b or g). These can communicate with the utility on it's backhaul linkage (Often sub 1GHz RF) and with your appliances (2.4GHz).
This is one of major enablers to be able to utilize unreliable power generation like wind or solar as it permits the grid to function (i.e. no brown-outs) without grossly overcommisioning thermal power. Note that if you have significant hydro power available it is also possible to use those as fast response regulators, but most places do not.
I've had this in my house for over a year. Why is this a story?
Just do what the guv'nor said,smoke em out( turn off the Air conditioners) and the illegal immigrants can't hide inside and troopers will do their job.
Make them use swamp coolers and live in caves! But seriously, "earth sheltered" housing needs to be taken more seriously.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
What can a utility do?
Increase low-pollution generation capacity.
"Not in my back yard."
companies never want to invest in safety. /. just had an article on just about every nuke plant leaking radiation into groundwater. They only way to due nuke it to keep it out of the hands of the capitalists & corporations. It's always cheaper to pay the fines and buy off a senator than make things safe.
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i think this is a terrible idea.
1) keeping the cooling on all day while you're at work uses LESS energy than having to re-cool the house when you return from being at work all day
2) it's kind of stupid to move to the FUCKING DESERT and then complain that it's too hot and you need cooling and water.
I also believe that pumping water into the desert to make lush golf courses is not just bad for the environment; if people need that water for drinking or raising crops, it's immoral
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Sorry but I don't want to give any control over what I do with my house to the electric company. It seems like a very bad precedent. Maybe a good incentive for people to go solar though.
I can see this becoming part of the Cap and Trade bill. The government will control the utilities, and your thermostat, too!
This might be a great idea, we'll just have to trial it out and see if it impacts the system. I'm trialing to think of any disadvantages, but it sounds OK. Arizonans might find it somewhat trialing to their patience to turn down their thermostats, just to find that AzElCo simultaneously trials to turn them up, but those are just some of the trialations and tribulations of life.
And if it doesn't work this time, they can just retrial again later.
$META_SIG_JOKE
As a utility employee who models the dispatch of this resource, let me confirm that dozens of utilities already do this. If anything, the story here is how late to the game APS is. As for the likelihood of everyone overriding the control signal, in practice this gets used a few times a year. Usually the technology doesn't even turn off the AC unit's fan, it just turns off the compressor, for an hour at a time at most. It's a pretty minimal inconvenience. It's also much more valuable from the utilities point of view than a solar installation that can't be controlled. You might think that solar is just as good because it puts out the most power when AC load is high, but the ability to get more power instantaneously and on demand (say, when a plant goes down or a 100MW steel furnace comes online) is a lot more useful than an incremental and intermittent PV array. By implementing these programs, utilities are avoiding the cost of building expensive peaker plants with similar capabilities, which in normal, non-peak conditions are too expensive to run, so they just sit idle anyway. That's the only thing that's kind of lame about these programs is that (my opinion), customers who participate are paid a small fraction of their economic value to the utility.
They do this in Florida quite a bit, and so far I haven't encountered one that you can't get around simply by flipping the circuit breakers for the air conditioner. It might take a couple tries, but you can usually just cycle the power once and it will come right back on.
TRIAL is NOT a verb, damnit! The verb form of this word is "try". TRY it sometime. The phrase the article poster was attempting to use, before failing, was "Arizona is trying system that lets utility system control home A/C's" Or something like that. This is just one of those little things which pisses me off. This is just like when someone means "multiply" and instead says, "times", such as "You take three and TIMES it by four..." well, the word that person was looking for was "MULTIPLY," but hey, I guess this is what happens when we stop requiring people to learn the language.
Xcel energy gives you a discount on your summer electricity bill if you participate in the program and they install it for free. I've only seem them shut off the AC a handful of times during typical summer. When it's off, it's not off for very long, maybe 15-30 minutes max. I believe they call it the Super Saver Switch or something like that.
It's so humid up here in the summer you gotta run your AC a lot. In AZ it's drier and maybe not as big of an issue to keep houses cool (the architecture differences also help too).
-m
http://www.invisik.com
Hydro Quebec has a sweet deal for homeowners who have dual energy. When the weather is above -12C (about 15F), we can use electricity to heat our homes at 4cents per kwhour. Below that temp, home heating systems get a signal to go dual, with the second system being gas or oil heating. When in dual mode, the electrical cost increases to 10 cents per kwhour. Problem is with heat-pumps that are most efficient, the warmer the outdoor temp. At -12C, efficiency is low enough to just keep on electricity full time.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I get $40 per summer for allowing them to turn off my AC for up to 4 hours a day between 11am and 8 pm, plus I got a sweet new touchscreen thermostat.
"Show us your papers AND your thermostat!"
http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=5249894
When Colorado Springs announced that they were going to shut off 2/3rds of their street lights, they neglected to mention that the 1/3 that stayed on would all be in affluent neighborhoods
http://www.gazette.com/articles/springs-97715-police-colorado.html
El Ranchito employee gunned down in darkened parking lot
"The killing came a day before Colorado Springs City Councilman Sean Paige questioned in an e-mail why streetlights throughout the city had been turned off to save money while the affluent Old North End neighborhood had been spared and still had all its streetlights."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."