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.....according to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

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.

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”.

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.

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...