Right now in homes across the United States, the water heater is pretty much a loner and the clothes dryer is dumb as a stone.
But within 10 years, “smart” power grids passing information back and forth with “intelligent” home appliances may save enough energy during peak electricity demand to keep utilities from building expensive substations and major transmission lines, say backers of a year-long experiment that begins this month.
Hooked up by wireless connections with home computers and by broadband with local utilities, hot water heaters, air conditioners, dryers and other appliances in the study will shut off or limit power use depending on demand on the wider power grid.
Creating a smarter grid and connecting to individual homes where customers can manage power use — with the incentive of money for cutting back during high demand — could save $80 billion over 20 years in utility infrastructure such as high-voltage transmission lines that don’t have to be built, said Ron Ambrosio of IBM.
Certainly, a more productive use of computational power than, say, talking toasters or refrigerators offering a soap opera.
Now this is stupid. The utilities want me, at my own expense, to wire my home so that they can shut down my appliances at their whim? As soon as you start building “smart” appliances, such as dryers that will regulate the heating element cycle based upon signals from some central command, you just about double the cost of the appliance.
This is being driven by environmentalist that refuse to allow the building of more power plants. They have thrown up so many roadblocks to the use of nuclear and coal power that virtually all new generators are using natural gas. The result: the utility supplying gas to my home just jacked up its price by 40%. And of course my electric bill has also jumped since it is now tied to the price of natural gas, Homeowners are now in competition with the electric company for natural gas. Guess who loses that battle.
Build the infrastructure! Build more coal and nuclear fired power plants!
It’s worse than that Mr. smith. They want you to pay to put expensive “smart” appliances in you house so they can shut down your appliances to keep power going to the big company down the street that doesn’t want to have to conserve power cause they are a big company. If you go down this road they can do locallized “brown” outs for just the homes and keep the big money places up and running full boat. SCARY! more examples of big money ruling our lives…
This is a dumb idea. The road to hell is … Who will decide who’s power will get cut off? Big Business wins out over Home owners? Rich over poor. One of the new selling points on water heaters is on demand with no tank. This saves energy. So would I have to wait in queue to take a hot shower? Like Smith said build some Nuke Power plants. Look at all the CO2 that wouldn’t have been release if we didn’t stop building in the 1970’s. 30 years worth of CO2 savings. This is just away for the Electric companies to line their pockets instead of doing things right. I say this even though I’m a Republican. This is the main problem with a government regulated Industry. You can get crappy service and choice to go else where. We have the same problem with Telecoms. Where is my 10MBs internet pipe both ways.
Paul, thanks for pointing out that the intent isn’t to throw a switch on homeowners, but to rather put a throttle in place.
I for one wouldn’t mind a smart house where I can regulate my energy use while I’m not home.
It would be great to be able to go online and see if I left any lights on, maybe left the coffee pot turned on, or if the kids left the television on before they left for school.
I’m not what anyone would call a tree-hugging-bunny-lover, but in practical terms, we do need to do something about greenhouse emissions and energy use. I have installed compact flourescent light bulbs in my fixtures that can accept them (or they don’t mess up the asthetics) and have reduced the others from 75 watts or more to 60 watts or less. This helps, at least psychologically, but not much.
One of the biggers problems we have is that we have appliances and electronics that don’t turn off, but rather go into standby mode. This doesn’t use as much electricity, but it still uses some. Televisions used to turn off and take a few minutes to warm up and show a picture. Now, they’re instant on, warmed and raring to go.
So, how can we get back to where we are not using as much electricty as before? Well, if intelligent appliances on a smart grid is the answer…why not? The early adopters will pay a premium, but in 5-10 years the cost of the intelligence in the appliance will be negligible. And, since most appliances are only last 10-15 years, we will all be buying replacements within the next 5-7 years on average anyway.
Look, can’t we think about things at least a little bit imaginatively? This isn’t a bad idea, it’s a corporate implementation of a really good idea. Obviously the power companies are not proposing this sort of idea out of pure charity and wisdom. Yet obviously we shouldn’t just run appliances randomly, if we can have them react intelligently to what’s going on with the power system (& everything else in the universe, for that matter). So we all try to muddle through with a compromise, as usual.
There are two main actors with control over the situation– power companies and appliance manufacturers– and both have desires which they are pushing onto the situation. Power companies want to reduce peak load (much more expensive to them than producing any particular kilowatt), but of course they don’t want to charge anyone any less. They’d be happy for people to buy expensive appliances that solve their problem, as long as the consumer pays. Appliance manufacturers want to produce appliances which are competitively cheap, thus they only want to include features which they’re sure consumers will want to factor into the sticker price they’ll pay.
The incentive to solve the problem is that we now have our power consumption structured randomly, which isn’t especially good for anyone. Appliances that could run at any time happen randomly to run at the same time as everything else, necessitating power plants which could be avoided. (And in riposte to the first commenter, power plants are indeed ugly things to be avoided if at all possible.)
So, how do we as a society confront the problem of making our power use more intelligent, while not conceding too much to the powers that would seek to turn the transformation to their advantage? That’s the kind of situation we’re going to face more & more, going forward, so let’s start thinking about it like we mean it.
This would have happened already, if they could get the utilities to sell power like gas stations sell gas. Right now when the price goes up, you might not find out for another 6 weeks.
AB CD, that is another teriffic point. As it is, power companies charge us based on average use/average cost. If our average use is high during peak demand times, the average cost will be higher. But, like you pointed out, if we don’t know that we’re in the considered “peak demand” time, we pay a higher cost without knowing it. If our intelligent appliances can sense the demand/cost ratio, they should be able to save us money based on what we users program them to do.
G
We need smart meters on the main, that can track usage by time, instead of overall usage. So if you want to use your appliances during peak hours, it will be more expensive than using them during off-peak hours. Then devices can start to have some intelligence about usage costs, and be scheduled to run at low demand times if I want to save some money. If you apply this to home and industry, it would redistribute the load considerably.
But as of right now, my house still has the same meter that was invented by Edison over 100 years ago, with little wheels that turn needles, and a guy that walks by once a month to read them.
With “time of day” metering devices can have some kind of intelligence… if the rate goes up due to high demand, I could have my AC automatically increase the temperature setting, the washing machine would refuse to work, etc. A fairly simple user programmable module on the power jack, receiving power notices over the grid itself would be the solution, with a simple link to the appliance.
But as of right now, I have NO incentive to change my usage patterns, and this is bad for everyone.
Paul – One additional thought. All members of the military are subject to different laws than those that apply to civilans. In practice it is “in addition to” civilian law. It is called the “Uniform Code of Military Justice” or UCMJ for short. It applies to ALL members of the military, regardless of rank. The president is not subject to the UCMJ, and therefore is not part of the military. For example, the President can not be court-martialed, not because he is exempt, but because he is not a member of the military. Same thing for the secretary of defense, sundry other DOD burrocrats or as it has become painfully obvious in the last couple of years, any civilian contractor, even if they are directly attached to a military unit.
Um…time warp?
Flux capacitor?
WTF?
Awake…maybe you weren’t awake when you posted that in here.
I get a summer Discount on my power bill ’cause we installed a box on our A/C that cuts it’s load in half INSTEAD of Turning of my whole house. I would much rather have the a/c slow down and turn on a fan than to loose it completly.
I am not totally against he idea. I would rather see Smart Meters though. Meters that charge you according to the system demand. Then I could decide whether setting the A/C at 80 or 76 was most worthwhile. My wife could decide if she really needed to do that load of laundry at that specific moment. And I could then realize what I am paying to have all those Christmas lights up during the early evening hours. Calling it an Informed Decision would help to gain acceptance.
Yet another news about projects that exist arround for long time. On Long Island, NY (and I am sure in some other parts of the USA, as our power company LIPA definitely is not the best and the brightest) very similar project is in action for at least three years. Essentially, during Summer months (when electric consumption is highest in these parts) LIPA offers wireless control device to be installed at their cost, by them into your AC units. Depending on the overall electircal power demand (or personal whim, as they do not publish who and how makes these decisions) your AC is allowed or not allowed to work (also, regardless of the temperature in your house). As a return for this BigBrother control they offer somewhat (minimally) discounted rate for your electric bill.
Personal opinion: I am VERY enviromentaly conceus and do like to save both power as resource and money in my wallet. However, I never did (or would) participate in this kind of program. I want to save electricity (and my money) on my terms and to have my power in my control. Savings must be 50% or more to even start me thinking if I might participate in such program.
Dusan, I agree with you that it should be the consumer’s control whether and when we save electricity.
That’s why I think the idea of an intelligent appliance that can tap into a smart grid makes sense. We set the parameters on the appliance, the grid holds the variables. if we tell our appliance that we don’t want to pay peak costs for lights, the lights go off. But, we also tell the appliance that we want the refridgerator and freezer to run regardless of electric costs. again, the decision is ours as consumers, not the power company’s.
G
Dusan,
My business (25,000 square feet) is part of that program on Long Island. They shut off A/C for a max of a half hour on a rotating basis on only the top peak periods. Usually, by the time you notice it, it’s over. Max of 6 times total per year.
I can’t believe most of these posts. No one, it seems, wants to be even slightly inconvenienced in order to save power. That’s disgusting. I signed up with no financial incentive at all. Doesn’t anyone care about the bigger picture anymore?
BTW, I do get something out of it. I can control my building’s thermostats (heat and cool) from anywhere via the net.