Posted on 09/17/2011 10:58:30 AM PDT by dila813
The U.S. electric grid was not designed to meet the increased demands of a restructured electricity marketplace, the energy needs of a digital society or the increased use and variability of renewable power production. For these reasons, we call today’s power grid “dumb.” Conversely, we call the anti-dote to this stupidity the “smart grid.”
This “smart grid” will ensure high levels of reliability, enhance economic productivity and reduce the environmental impact of producing electricity, according to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
This guy is an idiot....
These liberals can't anticipate what will happen when they put this into a system with people. Just like everyone switching on their lights at the same time causing a grid collapse, the "SMART" thing to do will be for the consumers to all switch on their loads at the same time when it is cheapest creating a surge that just crashes the entire grid.
The only way this even had a possibly of working is if you turned over the HVAC and other major demands to the control of the power company. Even if we wanted to, this cost isn't baked into any of these analyses they are doing.
----------------- And who is? William Pentland ?
I'm a clean-energy wonk at the Pace Energy and Climate Center, which is a veteran environmental and rate-payer advocate in deregulated power markets and operates the U.S. Department of Energy's Northeast Clean Energy Application Center. As a serial career-changer, I've spilled blood, sweat and tears grappling with the full spectrum of barriers and misconceptions about distributed generation and energy-efficiency technologies. Prior to joining Pace, I practiced law in New York City at Paul Weiss Rifkind Garrison & Wharton, LLP and Jenner & Block, LLP. I also wasted a massive amount of money on journalism school at Columbia University and law school at Stanford University. I've written about energy and environmental issues for Forbes, The Nation, Mother Jones and several other publications. Drop me a line -- or two -- at wpentland@law.pace.edu
---------------------- Sounds like a hobo to me
We live in a tourist area and the rich weekenders and winter snow birds leave their A/C, water heaters, and everything on 24/7/365. Imagine how much electricity it would save if they’d just flip the switch while they’re not there. Imagine, too, how much energy would be saved if 30+ million illegals weren’t using it. There wouldn’t be the need to build new plants and there’d be a lot less brown outs. During the 20 minute cuts they did last winter here, they “forgot” to turn ours back on until several calls and 9 hours later.
Your scenario of grid crashes, due to consumers switching on at the beginning of off-peak periods, is (IMHO) highly unlikely. First off, some of the tech that would make the grid “smart”, would help prevent crashes. Second, and most important, the differential in peak vs. off-peak pricing would be just great enough to cause just enough load time-shifting to level off the consumption. It just won't be that drastic a change.
I guess one gets into the “smart highway” concept, when talking about the smart grid.
You can have very smart highway (and road) system. You can design it so that people pay 10 times as much to drive at 3 PM, versus 3 AM (say $1.00 per mile versus 10 cents per mile in the middle of the night - maybe even more during the day).
If you make people pay enough, they will change their behavior...even to the point of spreading out traffic equally all day and all night. That is a highway planner’s dream - you wind up with roads that are always operated at 90% of capacity (right through the middle of the night), traffic always moving at posted speeds, and the minimum number of lanes needed.
But here’s the question: Is that good for societay (as Jesse Jackson would say)? You’d have a situation where everyone is working crazy hours, people are forced to buy groceries at 2 in the morning, and totally messed up lives.
Me, I’d rather stick to the gas tax, build some extra lanes to help handle peak traffic, and give people the freedom to set their own hours.
As to the smart grid, it’s somewhat similar...because it will drive the same types of decisions - having companies shifting hours around to avoid peak electrical costs and we’ll end up having to show up at work at 4 AM. We’ll be nicely synched up with Europe if that happens, but life here would be lousy.
So my vote is to keep flat rates for electricity and keep a bunch of extra power plants available for peak times. Sure, it means the net cost of power goes up...but so does our freedom to organize our lives.
And by the way, I’m not too hot on providing the utilities with real-time information on my power usage (needed for the smart grid), or providing the government with real-time information on where I’m driving (regardless of whether Governor Rick Perry likes that idea).
Yep.
Another goddamn liberal arts major, telling us how things will work in their paradise where everyone will ride around in flying cars powered by unicorn farts.
Riiiiight.
Your supposition on things like HVAC is correct. About half of all power consumed in the US goes into induction motors, such as you find in HVAC compressors and blowers, air handlers, pumps, etc. When you start up a three phase induction motor, there is either a very large spike in current requirements, or... the motors have to be put onto a “drive” that controls how quickly the motor starts up. These used to be called “soft starts” but since the advents of variable frequency drives for 3-phase motors, it is all integrated into the one unit.
Well, that’s all very well and nice, and power companies have been handing out incentives for years for industrial users to get their power factors corrected, to install soft starts or VFD’s, etc, but none of this will matter if we start having huge economic incentives to bring loads online and dump them offline at once as power rates spike up or down.
People who have a little more clue about this than idealistic liberal arts majors know that what they’re effectively proposing amounts to an open-loop control system. And those are difficult to make stable... very difficult.
The problem with the “smart highway” analogy is that every car on that “smart highway” is able to make their own choice - ie, your analogy that people are shopping at 0200.
The various different loads on a “smart grid” power system aren’t going to be that smart. Not even remotely. They’re going to be programmed to shed load based on marginal costs of power, and economics of electric power is going to work pretty much the same way for lots of folks (eg, office buildings are going to bring their HVAC systems online at largely the same times, and drop them offline at largely the same times to conform to the business day) so we’re not going to see lots of little choices made, we’re going to see large numbers of similar or identical choices made.
In the power grid, the grid operator and power generator have three variables:
Voltage, frequency and available current capacity.
Of those three variables, the grid operator can control two: the voltage and frequency.
The customer(s) control the current demand vs. current capacity. The only way that the operator can control this last variable is to shed load - the “rolling blackouts” are one example of the operator shedding load to make the load fit within their ability to supply current at a specified voltage and frequency.
Even now, we see these eggheads starting to discuss allowing the frequency on the grid to wander outside previously established parameters:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-06-24-power-grid-appliances-electronics_n.htm
This is stupid, in the extreme. Allowed to wander far enough outside parameters, this is going to result in some costly damage somewhere, because we EE’s have been able to make some pretty well-founded assumptions about the stability of the US power grid frequency for decades. We have had amazingly well regulated frequency. Now these eggheads realize they have only three variables they can change, and they can’t lower the voltage enough to shoehorn their idiotic ideas into reality, so they’re going to play with the frequency.
My choice is the same as yours: Build sufficient power generation and transmission capacity (and the latter should have good redundancy), and put peaker plants near large load areas (ie, cities) for use when the demand exceeds the transmission capacity into an area.
sounds nice - but what good is a smarter grid when there is no new power generation. This appears to be the solution when power becomes even more scarce and needs to be rationed.
One of the intellectual elites (cant remember which one, there are so many) made a comment that the middle class uses too much air conditioning.
So, the city needs more power to keep dems & illegals a/c going, just flip a switch and everyone’s a/c in your little subdivision goes brown thanks to those nice smart meters and new smart appliances they gave tax credits for.
just seems like there are a few things missing in this assessment...
If it isn’t that much a dramatic price difference, then it is of no use, because everyone will ignore it.
From what they saw in California, the price difference was significant because they raised the peak rates to pay for this SMART GRID.
In other words, zero savings to the consumer, the only way to keep your rates the same was to throttle your usage.
The only reason for the smart grid was to support variable sources of energy and not to make the grid more robust, that was a advertised side benefit.
There are already real world examples of people all starting their loads up at the same time.
The solution, have the electric company control the switching on of the loads instead of the consumer.
Never a solution that doesn’t involve big government or central control.
You clearly know too much and have too much sense to ever be “Green” (in the collectivist sense) about power issues.
Me, too.
btrl
A “smart grid” actually makes a lot of sense. IMHO, there is no reason for conservatives to oppose it on principle. As it now stands, with the “dumb” grid, consumers are paying too much for the off-peak periods, and not enough for the peak-load periods. In effect, the off-peak consumers are cross-subsidizing the peak-load consumers. Cross subsidies are decidedly against conservative principles, such as “user pay”.
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Yeah, that is why the power company put a smart meter on my house, so they could work the grid and charge me more for power...and oddly enough...be able to monitor my power use much more effectively. Who’s home?
Twenty years ago telephone companies started charging per call and monitoring use and built up databases of calls to bill.
No one saw a problem with it. Now it is normalized in this country that all calls are tracked and monitored
Put your collars and leashes on folks, you are owned!
Yes, pirated or paid for by marijuana growers, but with the totalitarian pressures over farm animals and registration you wont be able to hatch a batch of chicks without the government knowing.
Whoa! That's a little apocalytic, isn't it?
We're talking about marginal rate differences that might entice some people to shift some of their electrical consumption -- not forcing them into becoming dwellers of the night.
I mean, putting the laundry in at 11pm just before bed or starting the dishes washing isn't going to cause societal disruption.
“We’re talking about marginal rate differences that might entice some people to shift some of their electrical consumption — not forcing them into becoming dwellers of the night.
I mean, putting the laundry in at 11pm just before bed or starting the dishes washing isn’t going to cause societal disruption. “
Dream on, I promise you it won’t end there. By the time they’re through, our power grid will be a NIGHTMARE. You’ll have some base load capability, but not much. You’ll then have all this green crap that will be dependent on whether the sun is out or the wind is blowing. What you won’t have is peak load capability (to speak of).
All of that becomes possible with our Smart Meters - they simply control what you operate, based on what’s available. Believe me, if it was just staying up half the night to do laundry, they wouldn’t be so gung-ho on imposing this infrastructure.
“The problem with the “smart highway” analogy is that every car on that “smart highway” is able to make their own choice - ie, your analogy that people are shopping at 0200.”
Actually, I agree with your post...but I suspect that rich people (like Al Gore), or politically-connected companies (like GE) will ‘find’ ways around the nightmare world of the Smart Grid and thus exacerbate this backwards world even more on us helpless people.
But others, with enough money, will likely be able to buy their way out...but as power becomes more and more scarce, it will be very expensive to do so...and so you will end up with ‘choice’ as in smart highways, but only the top 1% will really have that choice...as the other 99% will be affected.
Until the black swan event.
I'm not sure, but I think your scenario could come true. Smoothing out the peaks leads to a higher base load but they will want to lower the base load. The real problem is they want to kill carbon emissions and we can't get needed base load without it.
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