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Alphabet's Nest Wants to Build a 'Citizen-Fueled' Power Plant (bloomberg.com)
Mark Chediak, reporting for Bloomberg:Alphabet Inc's Nest Labs is looking to enlist enough customers in California to free up as much power as a small natural gas-fired plant produces, helping alleviate potential energy shortages in the region following a massive gas leak that has restricted supplies. Nest, which supplies digital, wireless thermostats, is partnering with Edison International's Southern California Edison utility to get households enrolled in a state-established energy conservation program. The company wants to attract 50,000 customers through next summer that could shrink their total demand by as much as 50 megawatts when needed, Ben Bixby, Nest's director of energy businesses at Nest, said by phone. "We are building a citizen-fueled clean power plant," he said.
is power!
If you burn the citizens for fuels you make more power, and need less in the future. It's a win-win
What California needs is to fuel its power plants with citizens.
I've been saying this for years. That will solve their "fruit and nut" problem.
GOOGLE WENT FULL EVAL
"We are building a citizen-fueled clean power plant,"
Uh, no you're not. You are running an energy saving campaign. You are not creating anything new power here.
They actually want to kick appliances off. When the load is high, your blender quits working, basically.
They actually mean "the equivalent of adding a gas-fired power plant by subtracting users who can damn well wait for their smoothies.
Hopefully no one is stupid enough to buy a Nest dialysis machine...
"We are building a citizen-fueled clean power plant,"
A new twist on "Soylent Green?" A conspiracy against cemetery plots? Trumps "Final Solution" to the Immigration problem?
We are building THE EQUIVALENT OF citizen-fueled clean power plant, he MEANT.
Selling 50,000 Thermostats.
Unless he is also trying to get existing Thermostat owners to sign up.
for a crematorium? Last time I checked burring citizens was done either as an occupation of a foreign country ( e.g. Vietnam), as oppression against internal population (Auschwitz), or as an alternative to wasting a lot of land for cemeteries.
Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment.
But it was not necessary.
Socal edison tried this 10 years ago by extending their peak-usage pricing from corporate to residential customers only to find it was effective to the point of creating a profit loss. scheduled blackouts and rolling brownouts are a thing of the past largely due to advances in LED home lighting and a switch from desktops to laptops and eventually tablets. SCE dropped the tiered pricing plan in 2012 --even for corporate customers-- but revived it in 2016 as a boogeyman to scare regulators into remission after their blatant obstructionism and utter failure to contain the porter ranch gas leak. it took nearly a year for them to even acknowledge it was a growing concern.
regulators didnt buy it and the whole thing was revealed in the LA Times as a transparent attempt to muscle the state into letting it open porter ranch wells again despite having made little effort at cleanup or repair. By partnering with Nest and alphabet, it seems like edison is trying the carrot approach to getting the state to look favourably on their business again.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Data Centers need reliable power and cooling. You, not so much.
Too much demand? no A/C for you.
Too much demand? No heat for you.
Too much demand? No TV/PS3 for you?
Basically, this is to teach people that industry's demands are first, next the state, and if there is any power remaining, you.
Get used to doing more with a whole lot less.
Want to use the PS4, better get on the bicycle generator.
There's nothing more laughable than a high tech ad broker going GREEN.
You know what takes up a ridiculous amount of energy? 1) The technological infrastructure required to build and maintain Google's services and the infrastructure it relies on; 2) The mindless consumerism from which Google gets 95% of its profits, i.e. adverts.
So, go fuck yourselves, you vapid, hypocritical cunts. You want to do something about unsustainable consumption? Shut down, and use your warchest to promote limited a less materially wasteful pursuit of happiness. Christ, even switching to a for-pay search service would be good enough - I'd happily pay $10/month for Google Search if it meant I wasn't tracked or served ads.)
My Nest resets itself at least once every other month or so and then I have to re-enter my WiFi network name and password -- super annoying. And no its not because of any power outage because I sat there once and watched it reboot while my TV was on in the same room.
And when something goes wrong, or the system is compromised:
- Heater goes on and stays on, on a sweltering hot day
- Lights start communicating in morse code
- Freezer decides your food is too cold
- Garage door opens, and stays open on a very cold day
i wear only a cape when i rub one off
No fucking way! My home is my ice box.
...Have Alphabet Inc (what a stupid name) turn off the AC at the headquarters in the summer and turn off the heat in the winter. Just circulate the outside air.
Same for all the other groups who want average consumers to make their lives uncomfortable in the name of...what the fuck ever.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Or. . . maybe they want to do things like turn on A/Cs earlier in the day to cool off houses while the solar power generation for the day is still high, instead of waiting for people to get home later in the day and manually turn on their A/Cs (after solar power generation has gone down, so you have to use natural gas)?
Coming home to a cooled house is actually a plus for both the consumer and the grid, but don't let that get in the way of your FOX like "'bama's gonna take our guns!" like interpretation. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I love the stupid pro-eco hipster logic on saving energy. Should 50 million people drastically change how they live to save every little bit of energy and have their lifestyles affected on a daily basis
OR
Should someone build a solar/wind/wave/whatever power plant and then 50 million people can do whatever the hell they want. Which one is easier and more reasonable to implement?
They should call the venture Soylent Power.
One could then say in a certain sense that it's green power because it's "powered by people!"
Oh wait, that isn't what you meant?
-Styopa
Doublespeak! Saying 'this power plant is citizen-fuelled' when all they're doing is forcing people to turn off their heat or air conditioning, is like a advertisement for something 'on sale' saying you're 'saving money': you're not 'saving' anything, you're 'spending less', which is still 'spending money'! It's not a 'citizen fuelled power plant' because 'citizens' are not 'fuelling' anything, they are just being forced to use less of what is already generated. Want to have a 'citizen fuelled power plant'? Put them on treadmills connected to generators in 8 hour shifts. Oh and by the way it'll cost more to feed them than you'll charge per kilowatt hour generated.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Great! Good of you to volunteer.
I'll be in to replace all your equipment with low power modules.
I'll decide when your load is too high.
I'll penalize you on your electric bill for using too much.
I'll penalize you on your electric bill for not using a certain minimum amount of power.
I'll add a participation charge, and a non-participation charge.
I'll basically determine when you can do laundry, run your TV, Dishwasher or other high load devices, basically anything over say 50W.
Next, I'll determine how much water you are allowed to use each day, and when you can use it. I'll also reduce the amount of hot water allowance.
You can shower between 6AM and 6:30AM for up to 5 minutes.
Your dishes can be done in cold water.
You don't need a dryer, you can dry outside, or inside in winter.
You can wash clothes in cold water.
You can flush your toilets up to 5X per day.
Next, I'll add a water usage charge, a minimum water usage charge, and a participation/non-participation charge.
This is a the new world order that is coming. Get ready.
What starts out "voluntary" quickly becomes mandatory. Expect scheduled brownouts when the Great Computer gets hungry. Let's see if any resistance will develop. Citizen fueled... doubleplusungood
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Oferfæt Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick
love is just extroverted narcissism
Soylent Power: "The Power of People (IT"S PEOPLE!!)"
Basically, this is how the future will work.
You "Offer" to pay max X for power per KW/H.
The Market sets a per Kw/H rate.
You use electricity, you pay the Per/KwH rate.
If the rate increases past your max you either pay more, or get no power past a certain load.
The people who can afford power get it.
The poors can get power from bicycle power or beg for power for services.
So Google wants people to give up using electricity so they don't have to be more efficient? What selling away their privacy wasn't enough?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Nice wording, folks.
What a stupid story. So Nest wants to reduce demand artificially and take credit (carbon credit... financial credit) for doing so. The "power plant" concept comes in their spin saying, "Removing demand is just like increasing supply. Effectively."
I'd be more interested with what a company like Solar City can do on this front.
I'm wondering if you could have some sort of distributed mesh-network power utility where each node has battery storage and solar panels, and sets its own input and output prices, with more traditional means of generation filling in the gaps.
EOM
California has given up on bringing new power generation online, so it turns to the popular Seventies idea of paying people to conserve more. Conservation is fine is a short-term solution to shortage - of anything - but in the long run there is no substitute for generating more power by the cleanest feasible means. If CA continues to be short of water it will have to start desalinating, and just by itself that will require new capacity. Arizona can't supply all of California's power needs.
Someone has found a way to put some of the unemployed back to work. I can see it now. Vast warehouses with thousands of citizens pedaling away on stationary bikes connected to generators. Although "citizen-fueled" might mean something else entirely...
This is nothing new.
Save power. Use less of it.
Genius!
It's goddamn brain-dead Bloomburg paywalling. As soon as you see the text in your browser, hit Escape. You can then read the article without disabling your adblocker.
spending is saving
Waaaaaaaay back in the year 1983 - you may have read about it in your history books, I worked for Pacific Gas & Electric. We had a project to engage customers to raise their thermostats and thus reduce cooling and power loads during times of peak demand. Air conditioning is the single biggest end use during times of peak demand.
This is nothing new.
Save power. Use less of it.
Genius!
And here in Chicago, the local power utility gives you a bill credit proportional to your demand reduction. They will email/text you the day before an expected high demand day and then give you a report a few days later.
For example, "During the Peak Time Savings Hours on Friday, August 19 between 1pm -3pm, you used 0.9 kWh of electricity, which is 0.7 kWh less than your typical use. You earned $1.00 for each kWh you saved. Look for the credit on your electric bill."
The fuel is citizens, and the fire is human suffering.
Google, 1998: Don't Be Evil
Alphabet, 2016: Get in the Oven
My gripe with a plan like this is that there is a lot of "what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine" from the power company. The retail peak-pricing plans I have seen, you have to endure a good deal of disruption to shift your electric use just to break even on such a plan, forget about saving any money on it. If the tech could be used to advantage to allow customers to save money for a barely noticeable change in comfort level (anticipating the peak and pre-cooling the house), I could see a great deal of enthusiasm for this, but my experience is that power company pricing won't let that happen. You will end up paying more, and the power company will tell you that what you are paying for is "the satisfaction of 'going green' as they say."
Sounds like the vampires have managed to set up another nest. Wesley Snipes to the rescue.
The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTU's of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, Alphabet had found all the energy they would ever need.
I'm fine with a smart home. I'm old enough to remember the DAK Catalog and more-or-less drooling over the advanced dreams that the 80s could sell me. But I'm not fine any of this data leaving my property line, or with intelligence or non-aggregated usage telemetry resulting in internal details going over the wire for evaluation. Even if Alphabet "Did No Evil" (which it probably does), transmission to control on the outside opens me up for spying and makes me vulnerable to hack.
If a company wants to provide a means for me to control and automate my life, that's great. Do it with local control.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
is that families using their thermostats do not save any energy compared to families with manual thermostats. Messing with any programmable thermostat is a PITA, nest included. So much so that folks are reluctant to adjust it when their needs change (vacation, etc). Manual thermostats are as easy to use as a light switch so folks make smarter use of them. So, the real reason nest is doing this is just to get paid by the utilities. The utilities are doing this to avid paying billions for a peaking power plant that is only needed a few hours a year.
Reducing peak loads isn't at all the same as using less power.
This is also about reducing aggregate peak demand which is different than just reducing your home's peak demand. It's quite possible for non-cooperative homes to all individually reduce peak demand while in the aggregate increasing peak demand.
The point of reducing peak demand is that your generating capacity pretty much runs flat out 100% of the time. You can't readily bring added power production on-line at a moment's notice. You have to build to meet peak demand, not overall demand. If you reduce peak demand, you reduce the need for overall production.
You are not creating anything new power here.
Indeed you are not. Citizens make very bad fuel which is why crematoriums need to use gas.
or heat exhaustion, depending on where you live.
Why does the Matrix come to mind?
That's what this is.
"Just don't use as much."
Now, sure, that works...up to a point.
In California, the problem is that deregulation has TOTALLY fucked up the power industry. Where it's more lucrative to "sell" power out of state, claim insufficient capacity, then import power (which isn't so heavily price-fixed) and mark it up horrendously and at just barely-there availability.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
By dodging taxes, Google is indeed using citizen as fuel.
it's just further evidence we are being slowly turned into Marxists.
Under free market economics, people get quantity discounts - becasue it costs a certain amount to deliver ANY amount of something, but that cost gets divided across all units and added to the per-unit costs asyou buy more units, and more units enable mass/large-scale production.
Under Marxists, government manages the allocations and the declines "for the public good" of course. The elites and the government get all they need and everybody else is allocated their portion of the left overs. Mussolini invented his hybrid Marxism (Fascism) as a more-efficient socialism that used "private" industry, heavily regulated by government, to do the managing of the rationing.
Younger generations of Americans have never experienced freedom, and likely never will, but the government will increasingly encourage them to use pot so that they will be docile and never notice.
trying to make money out of every disaster that comes along. Every crisis is an opportunity is a good thing.