C'mon, quit with the racist crap. Remember, women and Democrats read this list.
They are rolling diversitouts, now.
Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus
But if the EPA reg's put into place on his watch actually go into effect the number and duration will skyrocket like nothing ever seen in the US before. :(
I liked the term "rolling greenouts". Perfect!
TXU (in Texas) claims that a smart thermostat they sell communicates with the smart meter and allows you (via their web page) or them to shut off your A/C for what they claim will be 15 to 45 minutes during peak load periods. It's been available for at least a year. I don't have one so I haven't seen it work, or know how often the turnoff is used. But customers can (have to?) use the web page to program the thermostat, so the remote setting ability has to work even if it's not used against the wishes of the customer (yet).
I have seen working the web page that shows you readings of consumption every 15 minutes, with the latest reading 24-48 hours old. (In other words, on day X at 12:01AM, the readings for day X-2 appear).
The load center is inside each smart appliance. If it's got some sort of electronic timer or thermostat it has to have a way for a low-power signal to switch the heavy-power-consumption part on and off anyway. Or, in the case of heating/air conditioning, inside the smart web-enabled thermostat. The smart meter here is being used as a communication interface.
A smart METER can also act as a communications conduit between your electric company and your appliances (many of these meters in the USA use Zigbee radio for the last hop) and therefore let the electric company tell your appliances to shut off. The same applies to the smart thermostat that they are selling, but it can also not only turn it on or off, but change the temperature setting.
TXU also has a portion on its smart meter web page where you can register up to 5 "HAN" (Home Area Network) devices associated with your meter. I'd love to see a sample of what people with these devices can get on the web page.
I'm *hoping* that there is a little security in this, so the electric company won't talk (via smart meter) to any devices on your meter besides the ones with the MAC addresses you have registered. It also lets you claim your devices and the guy in the apartment next door (with the meter 1 foot from yours on the outside wall) claim his. That's no protection against something that passively listens, though. I'm also pretty sure that there's something in the design that allows the electric company to see any HAN device broadcasting data close to the meter, registered or not.
Apparently by registering the device, you can get statistics from that device - run times, perhaps even power used, integrated into the web page. Of course, the electric company gets these also. You get to give the device a "friendly" name like "clothes washer", "bedroom AC window unit" or whatever. I suspect that the HAN interface includes something that allows asking "what are you?" and getting back device type, manufacturer, model, version, and other info. That's been available for USB, PCI, and lots of other computer peripherals for years.
It doesn't really do that much good unless the individual home owners *KNOW* about the changing prices and *REACT* to it. If you make it too confusing, they won't. Certain proposals for traffic-load-sensitive tolls on toll roads have this problem. I haven't heard anything definite (there should be signs at the entrance to the toll road) indicating that the per-mile toll charge is less than the value of the pink slip on my car.
I wonder what TXU would do if someone, or a few people, started abusing the hell out of this: they spend 8 hours of "night" charging batteries (free), and disconnect after that, then spend 16 hours of "day" using no grid power and discharging the batteries. (There's still a customer charge of something like $5, so the monthly bill won't quite be zero). Would they object, or encourage them?
I believe the local *water* utility has done this. They may still have to drive down the street once a month.
See?
I told you so.
I told you people that these new smart-meters are costing home-owners an extra $250 - $500 over the course of the life of the meter, while conveying a $100 benefit in manpower cost-reduction to the utilities. That's why it's a false economy.
If given the choice, I'd gladly make a one-time $100 payment to my utility to pay for meter-reading for the next 10 years if it meant that they didn't tack on an extra $5 a month for the "privledge" or "benefit" of a smart meter.
It's coming.
Mark my words - smart gas meters are coming. And they'll spin some crock-of-shit argument for the need for time-of-use metering for natural gas as the reason why it's needed for the residential market, when they (just like the electric utilities) just want to reduce their meter-reading costs - and not much else.
Smart meters are more expensive - and have about half the life of conventional analog wheel meters.
But those pesky software companies will charge utilites a fortune for "needed" updates for the billing software for these smart meters. It's a cash-cow for them too.
You mean just like commercial users who have had those options for a really long time? For example I sometimes work at a facility that has induction heaters. They can run them during the day for the regular electric rate or run them off peak at a very reduced rate. So they run those lines in the evening.
That way it is a win-win. They get cheaper power and the electric utility doesn't have to increase capacity for peak load that occurs for a short time since for all practical purposes you can't store electricity.
Not quite. Consider this:
Household A and Household B both use 1000 Kwh per month. 45% of house A's usage happens during peak hours (when electricity is more expensive for the utility to purchase). But 35% of house B's usage happens during peak hours. But the utility doesn't know this -> because both houses have conventional "dumb" meters that only record total use.
The utility has to come up with a blended (and equal) rate to charge these customers. Because the meters recorded the same usage, both A and B will get the same bill at the end of the month. But because house B shifted some of their usage to lower-cost hours, house A benefits from this by seeing a slightly lower bill because of the conservation or life-style efforts performed by household B.
House B can't *fully* realize or *exclusively benefit* from their own efforts to time-shift their energy usage. Only a smart-meter on both houses can make that happen. This is how smart meters make electricity billing more "equitable" between customers.
It's a similar situation in retail commerce. Credit-card use costs merchants money. So merchants increase prices to cover this cost. When a customer pays for something in cash, he's unknowingly subsidizing the merchant's credit-card operating expenses - and credit-card users realize a small benefit because of this.
Now, all that said, the real question is -> what is the possible magnitude of this imbalance or inequity between house A and house B, and does it warrant the huge outlay on the part of the utility for new, expensive meters, network infrastructure and billing systems?
Remember, it's not a question about whether or not house B would benefit if they used less TOTAL electricity per month compared to house A ->
because even using old dumb metering B would see a reduction in their bill compared to A in that situation.
The real issue is -> how large a difference _can_there_be_ in the peak-use between A and B as expressed as a PERCENTAGE of their total monthly use, and what does that difference work out to be in terms of actual dollars and cents.
It turns out that these differences are SMALL when we are talking about individual residential customers, and do not warrant the huge infrastructure costs associated with measuring / billing them.
And also consider this: Over time, as more and more customers change their usage habbits and time-shift their usage, then you have a situation where the gap narrows and the usage patterns are more equal between homes, rendering the usefulness of time-of-use metering practically zero.
The answer to that depends on how your electricity infrastructure is constructed on a corporate level.
Some (or many, or most?) utilities just maintain a local distribution grid and don't actually generate any power themselves - they just purchase power for re-distribution to their customers.
The north-american power grid is large enough, and diverse enough, to be about to (a) always have spare capacity somewhere on the grid, and (b) be able to move that spare capacity around so it gets to those that need it, when they need it.
The free market (such as it is) has resulted in new, privately-owned/operated plants (mostly powered by natural gas) to be built and connected to the grid to supply "peak" demand power when and where needed. And the owners are compensated accordingly by charging very high rates.
I've never bought into the idea that there wasn't (or wouldn't be) enough electricity supply to meet demand. At least not in eastern part of north-america.
Now, perhaps there have been issues with there not being enough wire (or big-enough wire) to carry this demand, but that's a different story.
Regardless who builds new plants: If the premis is that these costs ARE ALWAYS FULLY RECOUPED during operation (and then result in a profit for the owner/operator) - then what you just said doesn't make any sense.
Don't know about where you are, but here in Waterloo the 3 meters were read by 3 meter readers before the smart hydro and remote water meters were installed. Waterloo North Hydro, Union Gas, and City of Waterloo for Water.
I believe Kitchener had only one or 2 - as water and gas were both Kitchener Utilities, while electric was Kitchener Wilmot Hydro
You don't need to impliment smart-meters or time-of-use metering to reduce electricity use.
You just need to increase the cost per kwh (or add a new tax or increase any existing tax).
The commercial / industrial electricity market is FAR different in terms of metering individual customers compared to the residential market. The scale of use in terms of kwh per month is vastly different.
Individual residental customers do not use enough electricity on a monthly basis to warrant the costs of new electronic time-of-use smart meters, nor the associated costs of setting up and running the communications network nor the new billing systems.
(example of how one company time-shifted their useage)
You're asking for lifestyle changes on the house-hold level to achieve the same results as in your example.
Do you really think it's realistic to expect that to happen - when the benefits (in terms of $$$ savings) are measured in pennies-per-day?
Where I am (a relatively large city near you) we have (or - had) 2 meter readers.
One for electicity and water, and one for gas. Our electicity and water are billed on the same bill.
Our water meters were changed last year and now they are read via some sort of RF/wireless radio link (not quite sure how that works). So now, nobody comes by to read either the electricity or the water.
I think it was a dumb/stupid idea to do that for water, since we still have union gas doing manual meter-reading so why not simply combine that (ie - have the same person read both the gas and water meters).
Now, here's another twist on this issue of remote meter reading:
It's been said that "facility monitoring" is (or was) a BIG part of having someone come by to read the meters.
In other words, when a human is coming by to read a meter every month, what they're also accomplishing is making sure that nobody has tampered with the meter or the hook-up.
So utilities that have switched to smart-meters to reduce manpower costs still have to deploy people to check on the equipment and hookups from time to time.
Again, smart meters = false economy.
On 5/27/2012 8:59 AM, Home Guy wrote: ...
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Well, if you force enough large-scale generation (coal-fired baseload plants) offline at one time owing to onerous regulation it's quite possible there won't be sufficient time to have alternative generation online to provide the necessary margins for peak loading.
So much of the recent additions to the grid is non-reliable sourced (wind/solar) so there's a pretty large risk.
IMO the use of natural gas, while currently plentiful, for central-station generation is an egregious error in judgment for the longer term.
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Sure, and make the US even less competitive. That's a sure-fire winner.
Made up for in large part by the relative numbers of residential customers as opposed to commercial.
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Simply nonsense. They're not doing it for the fun of it.
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I agree, because natural gas should be used for residential / commercial heating in the winter - not to generate electricity to run air conditioners in the summer.
Because when the natural gas runs low (10 years, 50 years from now) there's going to be a calamity to try to figure out how to keep people warm in the winter...
I didn't say that I agree with any sort of hyper-green agenda to force people into energy conservation.
What I meant was that if you're hell-bend on doing it (forcing people to use less) then simply making it more expensive in an up-front manner (with a tax of some sort) is more logical than incurring the costs associated with implimenting crazy and expensive new ways to measure it's time-of-use.
No, that does not make up for it.
If I manage a plant, and if I can save $10,000 a month by altering some aspect of when I use electricity (and it doesn't add other costs somewhere else) then yes, I say give me a smart meter, and let me impliment the change and save money - even if the smart meter is going to cost me an extra $20 a month in some new fee invented by the utility.
If I'm a home owner, and if I time-shift 10% of the 1000 kwh I use per month to save 5 cents for those 100 kwh, then I'm going to be rewarded with a savings of $5. After you add the $5 a month extra new fees for the smart-meter, there's no savings - no reward for time-shifting my use (or setting my A/C to a higher temperature).
So do the math, and tell me if an individual home-owner is going to turn off (or turn down) their A/C during the hottest months of the summer ->
just to save a lousy $5 a month (the cost of a latte at Starbucks).
Collectively - yes. Residential electricity use is huge. But residential usage decisions are made on an individual level, and that's where your reasoning breaks down.
They're doing it because (a) customers will end up paying the entire cost (meters, network, billing) and (b) the utilities will save on meter-reading costs.
Customers will end up paying $500 in new costs over the life-span of the new meter, while the utilities will save $100 in manpower costs.
Why?
Because local utilites are in a monopoly position. There is no competition when it comes to metering. Home owners can't choose Company A vs Company B when it comes to the DELIVERY of their electricity. There is only 1 set of wires going to your home - not 2 or 3.
On 5/27/2012 12:12 PM, snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote: ...
And if the C-sequestration people are intent on actually accomplishing something, nuclear is even better (just to light the fuse :) ).
Besides heating, NG is extremely valuable as a chemical/fertilizer feedstock as well.
On 5/27/2012 11:56 AM, Home Guy wrote: ...
You have the data to prove that contention?
We (local rural electric co-op) are switching and like many others that have posted here, are _not_ charging a dime to the end user for the remote-reading meters (even if some have).
Collectively, it will save money for the end user because the collective demand leveling will show up on the overall grid.
Your focus on an individual doesn't address the larger issue that the utility has to provide for the peak demand and the peak is controlled by a very large number of little loads. Getting those spread out by modifying habits of a sizable fraction of those numbers (and yes, while you may be one of the intransigent and refuse to change any habits simply out of obstinacy if for no other reason, many will look to save that small monthly amount) will wind up allowing for far larger savings than simply the meter readers by minimizing upgrading of substations, transmission lines and even generation. If it doesn't eliminate growth demand, it can at least slow the rate.
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One word: "plastics"
Please explain the existence of "rolling blackouts", then. It happened in Texas during both peak load times in the summer, and in the winter when the excuse was that some of the plants on standby had some equipment freeze or fail when they were needed.
If you get a chance, please read the book "1984" by George Orwell. It explains a bit about the constant shortages, and why the system can't meet everyone's needs.
Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus
Please explain the existence of "rolling blackouts", then. It happened in Texas during both peak load times in the summer, and in the winter when the excuse was that some of the plants on standby had some equipment freeze or fail when they were needed.
You did not quote the following paragraph which was part of the same post:
-------- Now, perhaps there have been issues with there not being enough wire (or big-enough wire) to carry this demand, but that's a different story.
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Texas is doing strange things when it comes to power.
There's a town in Texas that has a huge battery building (molten sodium battery). The battery is charged during off-peak time, and then feeds power into the town's grid during peak demand. The single power line supplying power to the town is not large enough to supply the power the town needs during peak demand, and instead of beefing up the line or adding a second line, they built this battery at about half the cost.
Where else in the US besides Texas is having rolling blackouts during the past year or two?
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