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The 'Radio Network of Things' Can Cut Electric Bills (Video)
We all love 'The Internet of Things.' Now imagine appliances, such as your refrigerator and hot water heater, getting radio messages from the power grid telling them when they should turn on and off to get the best electricity prices. Now kick that up to the electric company level, and give them a radio network that tells them which electric provider to get electricity from at what time to get the best (wholesale) price. This is what e-Radio is doing. They make this claim: "Using pre-existing and near ubiquitous radio signals can save billions of dollars, reduce environmental impact, add remote addressability and reap additional significant societal benefits."
Timothy noticed these people at CES. They were one of the least flashy and least "consumer-y" exhibitors. But saving electricity by using it efficiently, while not glamorous, is at least as important as a $6000 Android phone. Note that the guy e-Radio had at CES speaking to Timothy was Scott Cuthbertson, their Chief Financial Officer. It's a technology-driven company, from Founder and CEO Jackson Wang on down, but in the end, saving money is what they sell. (Alternate Video Link)
Timothy noticed these people at CES. They were one of the least flashy and least "consumer-y" exhibitors. But saving electricity by using it efficiently, while not glamorous, is at least as important as a $6000 Android phone. Note that the guy e-Radio had at CES speaking to Timothy was Scott Cuthbertson, their Chief Financial Officer. It's a technology-driven company, from Founder and CEO Jackson Wang on down, but in the end, saving money is what they sell. (Alternate Video Link)
It's not about turning it off when it's needed, it's about flattening the peak of the load curve by synchronizing run cycles. For example if your furnace needs to run 30 minutes out of every hour to maintain the set temperature (and so do all your neighbors), then the smart grid can synchronize the furnaces to run every other house for 15 minutes, then run the other houses, etc. This will smooth the load the power company has to deal with without anyone having a decrease in service. It removes some of the spiky demand associated with the random effect of appliances cycling on-and-off at will. Excess capacity can be scheduled to improve service for everyone and reduce the peak design requirements.
My utility charges me the same rate day or night. The time of day that my equipment turns on has no bearing on my final bill.
Sorry, but that's just straw-man paranoia.
Almost all of these schemes (a) adjust within a preference (b) allow you to override and (c) don't allow anything to be broken remotely. And you can stay out of them entirely. In fact these schemes don't need everyone to participate nor in the same way. But if you play passive-aggressive you're going to get some oversized bills for no gain in effective control or comfort.
Conversely there are plenty of dumb pure-commercial solutions out there. Including the one with fixed user name and password "admin" and "1234" exposed to the Internet. No "government" nor "utility" involvement in that one.
In our case you set a desired base temperature and any adjustments are relative to that, so you can be as warm or cool as you like relative to the next person.
We also take security seriously and will not allow any remote access however much the bling might sell it until we've had enough scrutiny to get it right.
A well engineered system should actually improve comfort and control while being deft enough to slip in savings.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Business logic dictates the price spike are going to happen with the usage spikes.
What are you some kind of socialist? what do you have against pure profiteering?