The Stimulati

So having vacuumed up all those loose stimulatory nickels in Washington, SMUD is primed to spend north of one hundred and twenty million dollars to install new metering and other more smarter stuff, forming the floor for our upcoming smarter grid.

And while those in control are saying that this stimulati has created or saved 640,000 jobs, SMUD is ready to eliminate a fair number of meter readers once wireless metering is installed. Loss of jobs, of course, is [in part] how our smart grid is projected to save money in the long run.

I'm guessing that when we stack all those saved nickels, when we devise long term budgeting for the smart grid, we happily include the savings from these eliminated metering positions to make a stronger business case for smart gridding, but I warn that we will totally fail to account for myriad other jobs that will need to be created and filled to manage the fourfold complexity of this technology. We will underestimate this by a long shot...a long shot.

I'll say it again -- look to the California ISO, then tell me that duplicate energy monitoring and control functions along with the creation of extremely complex marketing arrangements has decreased the cost of electricity in California...has made energy and capacity trading less expensive for utilities. There are whole divisions in PG&E, whole business divisions, that now exist to trade energy through the ISO, to detail outage requests, to process the tractor-trailers full of market settlements, to manage marketing risks, to lawyer lawsuits and subpoenas and summons and testimony before FERC and...all that didn't exist before.

Then tell me that our smart grid's gonna do the same, it's gonna shave costs. Please identify one instance in human history, just one, where the use of additional technology has led to a overall reduction in total energy use.

I dare say there isn't one. Smart grid, in my opinion, isn't at all about saving the world or using less power or any of that horseshit -- it's about expanding the role electric service providers have in providing that electric service, expanding the role of nine hundred thousand new vendors providing new meters, new home area networks, new smart enabled products, gadgets, appliances and services, under the rubric of "increased reliability and decreased costs." That technology will pave the way towards hassle-free billing, metering, and delivery of electricity.

Uh-huh...