Being more smarter is a good thing.
Edit 4/16/09: I add another section to the original post regarding my contemplation of the smart grid:
Trying to promote sustainable energy practices is going to be an uphill battle, because America doesn't care about where their power comes from nor do they care to engage it. I can fully understand the latter, but not so much the former. That said, I was privy to a presentation today on how my utility will follow through with smart grid ideas. You should know by now that I am extremely skeptical regarding smart grid and I really haven't changed my opinion after everything I've heard and studied. So take the following while acknowledging my bias.
I will say again, and I will continue to repeat, that Smart Grid is Synonymous with Smart Consumers. Smart Grid = Smart Americans. You cannot have a smart grid without having smart Americans.
This may be, of course, a fully irrational idea...knowing how ignorant most Americans are regarding their energy use and supply.
The lion's share of Smart Grid is how to educate the customer to his/her own use, and to allow the customer to modify their usage/energy behavior based on more information. Today, most utilities, SMUD included, only send one piece of data per month (total usage and the cost) to the customer. Indeed, with traditional metering and the once-a-month read, even the utility only has one piece of information regarding that customer's usage. If, somehow, their usage during the month could be provided back to the customer combined with an idea on time of use, then the customer has more information with which to modify their behaviors.
Now...if the customer chooses not to change their consumption habits, then a smart grid, in essence, is almost a complete waste of effort.
The means to create this additional information for the user is to install a smart meter, capable of archiving their usage data. This is the core of any smart grid -- replace every meter on the grid with another meter -- one that is IP addressable, capable of being remotely accessed, either through IP or a wireless connection, one that has the capability for remote disconnect, and one that ultimately provides the customer with more information regarding their usage than today's meters.
This is the basis for AMI, advanced metering infrastructure. The whole point is to force consumer change by giving them information which which to modify their energy use behaviors. If they don't, then what use is all this? There isn't one, and I'm cynical enough to assume that most Americans don't give a shit about their electricity unless they are in the dark.
Along with smart metering comes this awful, horrible level of complexity that's going to be needed to manage all this.
Consider, for a start, just the eight thousand percent increase in data that either SMUD or the customer will have to manage. We will post a collector on a transmission tower, wirelessly gather up 5,750 customer's data into our billing systems from each aggregator (thereby eliminating meter readers). OK, so data storage is much easier than it used to be. Nonetheless, the critical question is how are utilities going to disseminate all this information? How is the customer going to interpret all this? Will there really be substantial changes in their usage patterns, changes that could have been accomplished by simply changing billing practices? Oddly, that might turn out to be the easiest piece going forward, because we haven't even yet considered that this smart grid (supposedly) will reach into each household and business, communicate wirelessly with millions of smart-enable appliances and gadgets, turning them off, turning them on, changing the pitch of an owner's wind turbine, changing the PV array's output, drawing power from the million's of PHEVs or charging them, communicating to their customer's iPhone or Treo or cell phone what they're doing and what they're going to do...
You can see my utter contempt for such a system. This whole smart grid will get to be so expensive to manage, and will result in, perhaps, an 3% increase in efficiency (which is a high end guess), that I can't possibly envision a case where this will result in 1) less energy production, 2) more efficient use, or 3) cheaper power for consumers.
First off, consider the 15,000 IT/Smart Team jobs that will be need to be created solely to prevent hackers from fucking with the power network, once we "remote access this" and "remote access that." That has a cost.
Second off, consider that there are going to be a good third of Americans who will think "you can't tell me what to do in my house," so good luck creating a wireless HAN (Home Area Network) that allows the utility to dig into their washing and espresso machines and turn them off when demand is high. Many will never bother to allow the utility to "address" their so-called smart dishwashers.
Third off, another third of Americans just simply won't give a shit about any new information the utility provides about their usage. Rates are cheap enough. It's cost and time effective to simply defer thinking about the power bill and just pay the damn thing...and get back to watching the NASCAR race.
Fourth off, metering change outs are expensive. A few thousand million of them are needed. And if the technology migrates to something those meters aren't capable of, then a few thousand million more change outs will be done. You have to consider, you have to, that in twenty years' time these new meters today will be obsolete. Indeed, every twenty years for the past century, meters have been replaced with new meters, it's nothing new, except that as the complexity increases, the overall cost will increase.
Remember -- look to the California ISO and tell me that that duplicate institution has managed to decrease electric costs to consumers by extracting market efficiencies, and then tell me that even more complexity will result in a decrease of electric costs to consumers by extracting grid efficiencies.
I find this a terrible thing. Technology <> Energy. It never has. Spending billions for technology to save millions in energy is total madness, yet this is where I see us going.
Original post: And here's a nice little smart action I took to save 'lectricity.
In my zeal for saving electricity at home, I went out and bought 45 compact florescent lamps in lieu of all those energy squandering incandescent bulbs. I determined that I would be saving about $6 a month in reduced energy costs, which is substantial, really. I was initially stoked.
Now a dose of reality; I had no option but to buy CFLs made in...you guessed it, China. Just like every vitamin C tablet currently made, all CFL manufacturing occurs in China. Xiamen. Zhejiang Shendu. Weihai. Leedarsen. Zongqshan Jinneng. Hangzhou Sky-Lighting. Ningbo Qiyuan. And of course, ignore the costs and energy associated with shipping them 6,500 miles to the depot store where I collected them. Those costs don't count.
But you can count on good old Chinese manufacturing quality, producing bulbs with an expected 6,000 - 10,000 hour life -- much better than any American made incandescent.
So, after less than one year, I've had six CFL failures. Six of forty five, for ~5% of their stated life. It turns out that the US Energy Star program doesn't recommend CFL installations in locations where the light isn't going to be on longer than 15 minutes. And wouldn't you know it...my six bulbs were installed in locations that were cycled frequently and remained on for only a few minutes at a time...can you imagine where these locations might be in my house? I happen to have 2.5 of them.
I am also aware that another branch of the Federal government passed legislation that will effectively ban the incandescent by law by 2017. Remember the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007? Apparently our energy security and independence will be predicated on the purchase of all our nation's lighting from foreign slave workers. That certainly sounds secure and independent, doesn't it?
I will be forced into a position of having to constantly replace cheap Chinese CFLs in my bathroom because they are the only lamps available by law and they aren't supposed to be left on for less than 15 minutes.
Hooray for the 130 year old incandescent lamp!
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