Posted on 05/12/2009 9:15:30 AM PDT by decimon
Consumers to benefit from savings achieved through increased awareness of energy use but householders likely to pick up some of the costs of the compulsory, nationwide scheme
Every home in the UK must be fitted with a "smart meter" by 2020 to reduce energy use and pave the way for a low-carbon "smart grid", under plans unveiled by the government today.
The new meters will send information on real-time electricity and gas use in households and small businesses direct to utility companies, eliminating the need for customers to stay at home for meter readings or to receive over-estimated bills. However, consumers are likely to pick up some of the costs of the compulsory, nationwide scheme.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
I expect the “smart meters” will communicate both ways, in the new Orwelian U.K., making it possible for the gubernut to know your every minute of energy usage and to remotely control it, eventually.
Your electricity quota for the month is used up. You’re switched off.
This way there’ll be no mass, “rolling blackouts” with concurrent mass protests.
California’s Greyout Davis would still be in office.
“Smart” = “Government Controlled”.
Old people will die of hypothermia.
Elderly living alone will not be entitled to juice. Waste of living space, waste of energy.
They’ll have to move into the gummint-run elder warehouses.
See "demand management" in the fourth last paragraph.
Inevitably.
Before climate change? What an idiot. Was that back when the world was hot and swampy and dinosaurs controlled the meters? Or maybe it was during the time when glaciers covered the world and meters had to be located inside the igloos. What total nonsense. The ONLY reason for the so-called "smart grid" is so someone besides the home owner can control and ration energy usage.
Yes, I thought the same. Except that he is not an idiot but a tyrant.
Well thet may be all well and fine in the UK, as they have always been the governments (kings) subjects, That is NOT ok for the USA. We fought a war for our freedom, to be "we the people", and for government to be the peoples government, not the other way around.
And yet, here we are, walking down the same road as the Brits.
This coming from a country that at one point in time was the largest empire in world history.
You won't be switched off. You'll pay 10x for the electricity you use. If you use too much more, you'll pay 100x. And so on.
Mark my words.
How will Cleese portray the Minister of Silly Arseholes?
They've merely turned it inward. The sun never sets on the British smart meter.
Seems to me it's returning to a time when it controlled every aspect of it's "subjects" lives, with the queens governor, or sheriff or whatever had "first rights" with a bride before the groom was allowed in Scotland. Taxes are about as bad as they were back then, and the government (king) owns all the land. You can't own guns, hunt, pick wild berries on the crown lands, cut wood, etc. Doesn't seem a whole lot different than it was a couple centuries ago.
What no one here has metered usage read monthly or bi-monthly? I don’t get the big stink over it, variable rates are commonly less expensive when averaged annually. I would tend to believe that a real-time rate which the consumer can see would be an advantage. If gasoline prices varied during the day wouldn’t most people fill up at a time when its less expensive?
Even as I type here in Alberta Canada...the local electric company are installing a smart meter on our house. I had no idea they could control our electric consumption from their headquarters.
They told us that it was just so that they could read our meters without sending anyone out. Definitely will have to look into this one!!
I’d have no objection to a more efficient means of meter reading. But read the article, folks. This is about control.
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