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White House To Announce IT-Powered Smart Grid
FizzaNawaz writes "On Monday, the Obama administration is preparing announce the next steps that the US will take to build its 21st century electric grid, and IT is expected to play a big part in the plans. The White House is hosting a 90-minute media event called 'Building the 21st Century Electric Grid' and is releasing a new report on what it will take for lawmakers and the private sector to come together to solve this aspect of the energy challenge."
Is there anything the government can't keep it's paws out of?
Ofcourse after all those years of spreading fud about internet connected powergrid - it's about time they build it.
More shovel ready jobs from Odouchebag.
Keep licking the commi's balls. I'm moving on.
... And actually put some thought and investment into a secure infrastructure, this time? The existing implementations are horribly reliant on auxilliary security controls, such as firewalls, to protect systems that rely on plaintext passwords and access controls to protect them from buffer overflows and other rudimentary vulnerabilities. These systems, and the NERC CIPS policies that act as a paper armor against scrutiny, present a real danger to our infrastructure, and pouring more money into procurement is really going to make things worse.
Will Siemens have anything to do with the 21st century electric grid?
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
We all know where this is going ......
an I-phone app to shut down the grid?
Uh, yeah. Doesn't matter how "smart" you make your grid, every watt used has to be generated at some power plant. It's not like our current grid is dumping massive amounts of power into a hole somewhere. So if you want to reduce the need for power plants, you're talking about reducing demand, and the only way to do that through the grid is to turn people's stuff off whether they like it or not. Do not want.
And electric vehicles can only increase demand. Massively, if they were to really catch on.
Lots of generated power goes to waste. Our current grid is effectively "dumping massive amounts of power into a hole." The smart grid helps to reduce that waste.
I read somewhere that Bill Clinton put some solar panels on the roof of the White House. His successor (GWB?) took them off, as soon as he can. So, has Obama put them back on? After all, energy policies begin at home.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
That is setup at his home as he very fat and is on workers comp. So he gets to work from home.
Uncle Fester seems eminently more suited to the job.
Have gnu, will travel.
is no one worried about skynet
I wonder if Bruce Willis will still be around to save us from a firesale once this is in place ;)
Bow before me, for I am root.
IEEE 802.3a400amp
Based on everything I have read about a "smart grid", this is about making sure that everyone has an electric meter that lets the power company (and through them the government) track exactly when and how much electricity they use. "Dear Mr. Doe, we see that you have set your air conditioner to 72 degrees. Don't you think it would be more responsible to set it at 74 degrees."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Cheney's Energy Task Force already did all the research. All they have to do is refer to those files!
you had me at #!
We decided to leave high-speed internet deployment to the private sector. How's that working out? Oh, look, $50 a month for speeds that would make Europeans laugh, and the ISPs are already looking into bandwidth caps on top because they don't want to bear the expense of laying more fiber.
The government handing out monopolies is not 'the private sector'. It's actually those companies becoming part of the government. If prices are high and profits are high then you should wonder why competition isn't rushing in to take a cut of the profits. It's because they aren't allowed to.
Hopefully it won't be controlled by Siemens PLCs, or any other crackable system. Hopefully it will be on its own private WAN.
...you first talk about how you're NOT going to outsource said IT jobs to India.
News flash there, Obama. US job "creation" doesn't really count if we get outsourced 6 months later after we design and build the damn thing.
You want to get your lawmakers involved? Then do what's right and keep US jobs in the US.
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Sony.
It will cost in the 1st year than the entire projected cost of the project, will run into "unexpected" technological difficulties and the failure will be blamed on "unknown unknowns."
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Is it to benefit the people of the country or corporate profits? A true smart grid and new regulations should encourage small energy producers and even individuals to generate excess power. I'd love to put up extra solar cells and a good sized windmill but in most areas there's no reguirement for the power companies to buy the excess power they simply take it and don't pay for it. In fact I'd be charged a maintenance fee just to be hooked up to the grid even if I fed back twice what I used. Look at it this way, if you live in a good area for sun and put up say a 10 kilowatt solar bank every 5 years and wound up with 30 to 50 kilowatts still producing at retirement you should be able to benefit financially from that power you are providing. Let's say a modest farm put up a series of windmills or maybe used bio-gas to produce electricity. I've read of some decent sized dairy farms producing enough to power a 100 homes on top of what they consumed. In some areas they wouldn't be able to sell back the excess power. The power companies complain that all the small providers cause line problems that exceed their value. If we are blowing all this money on a smart grid that should address such problems then government needs to pass laws forcing power companies to accept power from individuals and pay a fair price for excess power. It could reduce the need for new power plants and remove some of the pressure on fossil fuels. I think everyone that can aford it should be encouraged to produce as much power as possible.
nsa cia fbi mi5 mi6 submarine weiner transvestite duke nukem forever grab bag homer simpson toilet in the sky sky in the toilet blue red pills on demand in your fridge catch the wave coke new coke old coke your grandpappy's coke machine mosquito coast off the grid conspiracy laughter sadness nose picker redeeming value dnf roundup grave decision wet emission slant sine wave dance dance no i dont want to too bad waterboarded for peanuts while being forced to watch Three's Company reruns with my eyelids taped back and warm jello steeping my hands in buckets of jello my hands in buckets of jello i wonder when i can fly just try so that's why the cat was meowing.
campaign contributions continue to pay off
All this article was, was an announcement for an announcement. (could I get any more repetitive?) A list of people and groups who will be there. Yay! Nothing substantive besides, basically, "this will be awesome, and will use IT!"
Bad even for /.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
"IT types" can barely manage internal networks without glaring security holes, I would never trust them to operate a national power grid. There are few enough control systems people you should trust with the job, and I outta know, I work in the controls industry.
I don't know... that's not exactly the body type I'd picture pushing the Wheel of Pain...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_c4lzk84-Q5U/S_MZB0_tV2I/AAAAAAAAASM/dM18eyQS5kw/s1600/wheel_of_pain.jpg
for the pool on how long it will take Anonymous to crack this thing?
In America, IT powers electricity!
Those campaign contributions continue to pay off.
It is a full shutoff for about 20 mins at a time per hour.
It's election time again. The Obama wants to get re-elected. Time for false promises again.
We have plenty of wealth. This idea that we're broke is a right-wing lie to excuse robbing the poor and giving to the rich.
The US entitlement programs for the next half century ('unfunded liabilities') will cost somewhere around $140T. The GDP of the US is about $13T. The 'GDP' of the entire world is $59T. Not taxes, total production.
What's your plan? Remember, government tax rates above ~17.3% of GDP reduce total revenues by slowing growth and the US is already at about 27%.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I've been there when they buried the cables on the i5 corridor and the Oregon Trail. I've held these cables in my hand. They're as thick as your arm, with many thousands of fiber optic links. I've no reason to believe other trunks aren't as well provisioned. That's the way of these things: digging the trench and negotiating the rights of way costs far more than the cable, so you may as well put as much cable in the ground as you can when you have the chance.
End point technologies have advanced quite a bit since they buried these glass links. One single link is more than sufficient to carry all the Internet there is, with 10x redundancy. The rest of those links remain mostly unlit and wasted.
The Internet is awaiting core switching tech to support this, but the physical links are in place. There's more than enough bandwidth in the ground to carry 1000 times the Internet we have now, or more. The switching tech is 20x current demand. The difference from what you have and what it costs is pure profit. The funny thing is that the tech to put data across a single fiber is moving faster than our use of it, so those dark strands may be dark forever.
Scarcity of bandwidth is a myth perpetuated to make you pay more for bandwidth. In Boise, Idaho on the Oregon Trail I've met CIOs that believe that 512Kbps is a good bandwith to pay many thousands of dollars a month for. And the 50Mbps I pay $50/month to Comcast (100x their bandwidth) passes directly beneath the street in front of them on its way to Europe when I download the latest ISO image for Mandrake.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That sounds like it would be illegal under new WTO rules. Anything that blocks trade is going to be illegal.
For every $1 less in tax, that person will spend that $1 recursively 10x and cause lots in GDP and benefits.
Give that $1 to the govt, and it is 90% wasted down the toilet money, as it goes direct to the banks in interest payments.
YOU CANNOT TAX YOUR WAY TO PROSPERITY.
Id rather see $1trillion given to the rich people, as they will spend it wisely, so they buy a big boat or large house, that creates jobs through more gardners, mechanics, cleaners, car sales.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Actually the alternative energies with scale problems do help. One of the biggest problems in power generation and distribution is covering the peaks. Small sources of power that are very expensive per MW but have a small cost per unit can be a lot more worthwhile than a big unit that gives you a lot of excess power. Cheaper per MW doesn't help if you need to build something huge and expensive to do it, you don't need most of the power it produces and could instead bring a few windmills or similar small units online instead. It saves on capital costs and saves on fuel costs as well until eventually you reach a point where you are better off firing up that big thermal unit because you'll need it ready in a few hours. Short construction time and very short activation time are the advantages even if you do have a bigger cost per MW.
Also there are a lot more options other than photovoltaics and windmills. There are also hybrid options in use such as solar pre-heating as successfully used in at least one coal fired power plant and it has cut coal consumption. While the PR folk for any type of energy generating industry will pretend that their source of energy is the "one true energy" the only sane approach is to use a blend of energy sources. Photovoltaics are good in some situations, wind in others, hydro, big thermal plants - but they all have situations where they are perfect and others where they make very little sense.
As for putting panels up and taking them down - there's no point pussyfooting around and pretending both situations were anything other than making a petty political statement with a lot of press exposure. Reagan is dead and gone and there is no point trying to pretend he wasn't interested in politics. Excuses have been found after the fact but it was very clear from the newspaper coverage at the time that it was about "making a statement". Reagan was all about pushing the idea of the USA as a land of plenty after Carters oil shock doom and gloom - the solar panels didn't fit the image so the press were told they were coming down. You don't make a big deal about a new roof or any of the other petty excuses.
black box chips built in China by the lowest bidder, with no control of the actual code, no doubt carefully written by an adjunct of the PLA.
Not if its national defense. Power grids are part of national defense.
The WTO would have absolutely no basis to comment on anything. The OP is absolutely correct. Unless they make it illegal to out source (strictly within US boarders), this move is dumb.
You don't get it, do you? Nobody takes you seriously drinkypoo.
I took a peek at your post history.
There, it's shown that You ran away from simple questions asked of you here that show you're also nothing but a troll http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2225174&cid=36390518 which your evasion in your running away from that simple question makes you out as a logically invalid off topic troll (because that's a fairly simple question asked of you that you ran from which shows you are nothing but an online trash troll).
Is that the IT-Powered Smart Grid is ACTUALLY powered by out of work IT professionals. A large hamster wheel has been constructed towards this end.
When the load is lower (like at night) they turn down generation (stop using goal, gas, oil, etc) at various power plants. As the load rises, they turn those plants back up to meet that load. The fact that the grid isn't "at capacity" doesn't mean you're wasting energy, it means you're saving energy, by not burning as much fuel. The grid itself does have limits too, but not running it at those limits is like driving your truck around without loading it down to 100% of it's carrying capacity. That's not exactly waste.
Now that's not to say that there isn't energy wasted in the grid due to other factors like transmission, but a surplus of "grid capacity" is not the same thing as a surplus (or waste) of power.
....tons of money into wireless networked smart meters and other equipment that basically has only make-believe & pretend security. All operating in the 900MHz ISM band and is easily interfered with by cordless phones, baby monitors, any other 900MHz spread spectrum radios, etc.
Unfortunately, we don't even have a good plan for "dumping power into a hole' Check out the Norton Compressed Air Energy Storage System which will ramp up to about 3 gigawatts of storage. This is a better plan for capturing that excess capacity and utilizing it when it is needed.
Leave the government and the 'lawmakers' out of it...
Smart Grid technologies are being tested and deployed world wide by private industry. The White House has no business in this, and nor should it. They just want to take credit for it.
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The Morgado powerhouse MYT "Mighty Engine" is capable to easily run ocean water desalization systems to get good clean POTABLE DRINKING WATER TO EVERY DROUGHT-STRICKEN PEOPLE ON EARTH, as well clean water for growing crops in the middle of the Sahara Desert. He is working on a small backpack-size to give us a flying experience like Superman flying with the birds. Skyscrapers can use tons less electricity to have Heating & Cooling supplied.
Light weight Space Shuttles re-fitted with the Mighty Engine/MYT can now easily reach Mars in 3-4 MONTHS TRAVEL TIME once the slumbering of NASA wake up to the possibilities. Every passenger jet in the world can now schedule Moon flights and Moon Arrival Times now boarding, and passengers could visit the Moon's surface wearing the MYT backpack, no need for roads now fellas.
conveys to me people to are around computer applications with little training and very little pay