News & Analysis
Smart Grid: Edge of the Authoritarian Wedge
New smart meters will only save the average household £23 a year, with homeowners having to pay for their multi-billion pound roll out through their energy bills, the Government has said. The average household energy bill is £1,132 a year. So-called smart meters, digital devices which will be installed in all households and businesses, are designed to end unreliable estimated gas and electricity bills and stop the need for companies to send out meter inspectors. Instead, information about how much energy consumers have used will be sent electronically to their suppliers. However, documents published by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have confirmed that households will have to pay for the £11.3 billion roll out, and that they will only save £23 a year by 2020. – UK Telegraph
Dominant Social Theme: The miracle of modern technology will help us track our energy consumption forever and ever.
Free-Market Analysis: This article excerpted above is an eye-opening example of how Smart Meters actually work and an honest description of what they are meant to do. DB feedbackers who have had Smart Meters installed have written to us in frustration because instead of developing cost savings, Smart Meters have actually (often erroneously) increased energy bills by fairly substantial amounts.
In fact, people who expect that the technology of Smart Meters will somehow miraculously provide cost savings are exhibiting a fundamental misunderstanding of the provision and utility of the technology. Smart Grid and its Smart Meter technology are part of a campaign of behavioral modification. They are not aimed at making energy use more efficient; they are aimed at forcing people to use less energy. They are increasingly sophisticated tracking devices to inform the powers-that-be of one's energy consumption.
In this article we will examine Smart Meters (and Smart Grid) once again (yes, we have written about them before) and put them into their larger authoritarian context. The article above focuses on the UK; but Smart Grid is a worldwide phenomenon. Governments and power companies the world over busily trying to install a full specrtrum of Smart Grid solutions.
The movement is ubiquitous and aggressive; in fact one could certainly ask how such a global phenomenon takes off and where does it come from. But to ask the question (within these pages, anyway) is to answer it. The technology is being driven by the same Western elites that are promoting global warming and other questionable concepts to centralize power and control within its internationalist institutions.
In the Smart Meter future, your energy company and local authorities shall have the means to determine how many slices of bread you toast, how long you take a shower for (and how hot you run the water) and whether you turn off your PC at night. In the Smart Meter future, your energy supplier and the community authorities themselves shall be able to turn individual utility components on and off based on local statutes and in order to ensure enforcement of specific ordinances.
If you have not paid a parking ticket, you shall perhaps find that your electric car has not charged overnight and you will not be able to use it until the outstanding penalty is rectified. If you have written and posted an editorial or a letter-to-the-editor that has caught the attention of the local censor, you may find your PC has been switched off – or otherwise tampered with – and that you have lost your "communication" privileges for a certain amount of time. There is more of course. One can invent endless extrapolations – some of which would doubtless be considered paranoid. But in this day and age, what sort of paranoia is not justified?
Smart Meters are not inherently a money-saving facility. They are not merely an energy-monitoring device. They are key technology in what will be, eventually, a system of extensive, even all-encomassing rationing. Why is energy rationing going to be necessary? The article makes the point that energy costs are expected to climb far in excess of people's ability to generate increased offsetting revenue. This is not just because energy will be less available and dearer. The government is doing its part as well. The article provides specific numbers from a UK tax policy standpoint:
Tom Lyon, energy expert at uSwitch.com, the price comparison site, said: "The average household energy bill is already £1,132 a year with £84 of that made up by hidden taxes. Policies launched under the previous Government are expected to add a further 6 per cent or £72 in levies over the next decade – this means that the hidden taxes on our energy bills will add up to £156 a year, far outweighing the potential £23 net saving offered through smart metering."
Smart Meter technology is being rolled out in phases. In the UK, we learn, aggressive implementation will begin 2014 and is scheduled to finish by 2019. About 53 million businesses and households will see their old-style meters replaced, the article informs us. Total savings are expected to be in the area of £6 billion, and costs to suppliers are to be cut by around £11 billion. There is also a savings of £1.5 billion "thanks to reductions in greenhouse gases." The numbers add up to a "net benefit of £7.3 billion ... over the next 20 years ... rising to a saving of £42 by 2030." There is a catch though. These savings are not automatic.
One key concern from campaigners is that most of the savings will be achieved by consumers only if they use the meter readings to change their behaviour. The meters will display how much energy consumers have used and what it has cost them, along with a message indicating whether this is higher or lower than normal. Some are worried that many consumers will not know how to change their behaviour to save money. Zoe McLeod, energy expert at Consumer Focus, the watchdog, said: "To get the full benefits of this new technology customers will need support and advice on how to cut their bills and action to ensure that improvements in customer service are delivered."
This is truly an Orwellian vision of the future in our humble view. Energy companies, industry consultants and no doubt the government itself shall surely enter the field of energy consulting. (Yet another uneccessary and entirely manufactured industry is about to created with all the misapplication of resources that imples.) No doubt gas and electricity companies will offer a vast array of "new energy-saving products." Since Smart Meters are going to generate a great deal of information, consumer energy-consumption data is going to become an extremely valuable commodity for energy companies.
The article quotes Peter Vicary-Smith, the chief executive of Which? (yes, Which? is the company's name), as calling for increased regulation to make sure that companies don't profit unduly from marketing consumer information. Apparently a whole new field of criminal endeavor is about to be unearthed. "There must be zero tolerance to any companies found to be abusing this opportunity," Smith maintains, "or consumer confidence in the roll-out will be severely undermined."
Chris Huhne, the UK's Climate Change and Energy Secretary is clearest about the upcoming expansion of eco-fascism. "Smart meters are a key part of giving us control over how we use energy at home and at work, helping us to cut out waste and save money ... In combination with our plans to reform the electricity market and introduce the green deal for homes and businesses, the roll-out of smart meters will help us keep the lights on while reducing emissions and getting the best possible deal for the consumer."
Really? A deal it is not. This upbeat assessment hides the downbeat actuality. The UK government, in fact, is forcibly imposing Smart Meter technology on 50 million homes and businesses. Government (certainly UK government) never does anything purely to benefit to the taxpayer. A project this massive and expensive must therefore have hidden authoritarian advantages. In fact, we have already presented some of them.
But in order to understand them fully, one needs to understand the genesis of Smart Meter technology. The idea of increased tracking of energy consumption comes in part from M. King Hubbert and the so-called Technocracy movement that was prominent in the mid-20th century. Hubbert is of course also the inventor of the concept of "Peak Oil" – the idea that oil production will at some point peak and then gradually begin to subside.
It is Hubbert's Technocratic vision that informs the Smart Grid that is now being installed not just in Britain but around the world. Hubbert's perspective is purely elitist in our view and conforms entirely to the paradigm of dominant social themes that the Anglo-American elite uses to redistribute the wealth and power of Western Middle Classes to internationalist institutions. Hubbert created first a fear-based problem – the idea that the world will eventually run out of energy due to something called Peak Oil – and then provided a solution via his Technocracy movement.
In a Technocracy, the "expert" shall run a given industrial facility based on his or her dispassionate understanding of what is necessary for the society's greater good. It is a utopian concept and such ideas, as adopted in the 20th century, cost tens of millions of lives. (Think of Cambodia's Killing Fields.) No one is suggesting that Smart Grid will necessarily lead to genocide, but the animating principles are the same: Society is to be perfected by manipulating people into doing what is "good" for them.
In this case, Smart Grid solutions are addressing a non-existent problem. Manmade global warming likely doesn't exist and facilities that seek to ration energy consumption are therefore unecessary. In fact, there is plenty of oil and gas around. Energy generally is the planet's most plentiful and ubiquitous resource and can be harvested in any one of a number of ways. Deep oil, oil-from-shale, coal, gas and other forms of energy not yet refined or implemented can provide a plenteous energy future – and this assumes that energy sources such as nuclear fusion do not become viable.
For anyone who looks into the issue closely, it becomes difficult to avoid the conclusion that energy scarcity is a manufactured crisis (just as Peak Oil was a manufactured fear-based meme intended to justify Hubbert's crackpot Technocracy notions). The real result will not be energy conversation but yet another incredibly massive invasion of privacy intended to lead to further state control of one's life and lifestyle. Such an invasion has nothing to do with the Greening of Western society and everything to do with the inexorable implementation of a power-elite One World Order that is intended, eventually, to reduce Western middle classes to a subsistence level.
Conclusion: The Smart Grid and its Smart Meters surely comprise a Trojan Horse for an Anglo-American power elite that is hell-bent on controlling people's lives and reducing or eliminating their freedom of choice whenever possible. It is another signature of the authoritarian state; its aggressive implementation is disheartening not just for what it portends but for the lack of informed opposition (thus far anyway) to yet another fundamental elite power grab.
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Posted by Danny B on 11/22/12 12:02 PM
Dear Bell, as usual, I arrive late. I have copied an excellent, informative comment from an article on the smart grid. It shows that profiteers have sucked out the money from the electrical industry. Profiteers as opposed to investors.
"AMOSBYRD • a day ago
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I've worked in the Utility business as an engineer, utility operator & owner for over 40 years in all areas: Electric, Telephone, Natural Gas, even CATV. When I started in 1972, until the 1980s, the USA had the best Electric Grid in the world. Today, it's not even in the top 20. The reasons are clear, even if no one wants to admit it.
The Electric Utility companies, thru Wall Street, became focused on 2 areas: generation and distribution. There was no profits in Transmission, so the heavy lines were allowed to go to hell. My small utility group in 1979 built more T-Lines in one year than any other utility in America. That record still stands today. Because nobody has built many T-lines since.
Natural gas generation, deregulated electric markets controlled by Wall Street Derivative Enron deals stole all the money, focus from running utilities properly, and ripped off California customers. Now, CONSOLIDATION, the opposite of free enterprise, has rocked the power business again. Complete lack of enforcement of the Anti-Trust Laws have allowed a few companies like Duke Power, to build massive multi-state monopolies that would have been impossible under proper enforcement of Glass-Steagall Laws.
The first thing these Wall Street takeover artists do is gut the utility they purchase for quick profits. They fire duplicate overhead such as: all their field workers, and contract out the work. You end up with a few contractors doing all the work that was formerly done by numerous utility workers. Lineman don't get paid enough and quit. You end up with disasters like New England has where there are not enough lineman, and trucks to put stuff back up. Or, keep stuff up in the first place. Plus, the systems have not been properly maintained due to budget cuts in tree trimming, underground installations, and etc.
A smart grid is just re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It can only operate what is built, and right now, America's Utilities are controlled by Wall Street and not Washington, DC. There have been historic proposals to solve the utility grid problem. I made one myself at a major conference in Melbourne, Australia, last year that was extremely well received in Asia. That would place major Transmission Cables Networks under the Interstate Highway Systems. The benefits are obvious: Police monitored security, no new rights-of-way, available electric vehicle charging stations, available inductive vehicle charging on the move, more revenues for Highway Depts., lower construction costs and etc., etc.
This is the kind of "Old School," thinking that ultimately solves the USA's Electric Grid Problems. Smart Grid helps, but is only a bandage on a dying system. But, absolutely none of these ground breaking solutions can happen as long as Wall Street is allowed to operate our National Power Grid. The Government needs to Breakup the big Power Utilities, and go back to the smaller and much more efficient companies we had prior to the illegal power utility consolidations.
FERC needs to get its head out of its behind and get some muscle and make ideas like the ones I have proposed real."
Click to view link
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Posted by Zenbillionaire on 04/04/11 07:48 PM
@ Huh
Further musings on "fascist monopolies".
I own a 10KW power generation plant. I sell the power I produce to a carrier named Pacific Gas and Electric, who then re-sell it to their customers. How is that fascist? True, there is only one common carrier I can sell my power through and that carrier is heavily regulated by the State. They are in fact a monopoly. I guess that makes them fascists but I'm not certain about where I fit in the picture.
I do own a brown shirt and a pair of english riding boots if that helps.
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Posted by Zenbillionaire on 04/04/11 07:25 PM
@ Huh
"Creating a market?? What the hell are you talking about?"
About creating a market. The idea is to sell something there has been no prior effort to sell, or for which no buyer had been identified. In this case the product is "off peak" power. Before the advent of smart meters it wasn't economically viable to distinguish between power used during peak demand and power used at other times, therefor there was no market in "grades" of power. Now there is. A market is being created.
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Posted by Steve L. on 04/04/11 06:18 PM
@ Zenbillionaire
I can't disagree that the energy companies have a reasonable-sounding hook to get people to install these meters now. There is always at least a purported advantage to almost any technology on today's market. Just think of all the starving people in India that have been saved by GM seed technology (a ruse).
Given the stridency of the implementation, though, there appears to be significant political clout behind mass implementation of these meters. Today there is no direct link to global warming or peak oil; those topics are still controversial to consumers.
Al Gore, in testifying before the Senate and Hillary Clinton, said that it was possible that an energy taxation of households to reduce total energy consumption could eventually replace the income tax. The camel gets its nose into the tent with popular self interest. The occupant of the tent is displaced by the camel's self interest. The smart meter will become the enabler for an eventual (not immediate) world taxing system, complete with energy police, IMHO.
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Posted by Huh on 04/04/11 05:47 PM
@zenbillionaire
"It's about creating a market for an unused resource that we chose to call "off peak power". Stuff nobody wants."
Creating a market?? What the hell are you talking about?
All I see is a fascist monopoly that wants my money. Just look at the ridiculous PG&E "opt-out" plan for smart meters. Price discovery indeed!
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Posted by Zenbillionaire on 04/04/11 03:44 PM
@ Steve L.
"The key issue underlying the need for these smart meters is the need to limit energy use based upon the twin promotions of peak oil and global warming"
Is that the key issue, or is reducing waste and therefore cost the key issue? Could it be that public pressure on power companies has resulted in a "deal" wherein power companies take into consideration the difference between consumption during "peak" hours and so called "off peak" consumption? Power is not free. In who's best interest is this technology? The producer's? I doubt that. All you need do is consider that in the absence of time of use metering the consumer has less control over their energy planning. If there is only one rate to pay, there is no choice. Time of use metering gives the consumer a choice. That increases the consumer's freedom. It has nothing at all to do with Global Warming or Peak Oil. It's about creating a market for an unused resource that we chose to call "off peak power". Stuff nobody wants.
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Posted by Zenbillionaire on 04/04/11 03:44 PM
@ Steve L.
"The key issue underlying the need for these smart meters is the need to limit energy use based upon the twin promotions of peak oil and global warming"
Is that the key issue, or is reducing waste and therefore cost the key issue? Could it be that public pressure on power companies has resulted in a "deal" wherein power companies take into consideration the difference between consumption during "peak" hours and so called "off peak" consumption? Power is not free. In who's best interest is this technology? The producer's? I doubt that. All you need do is consider that in the absence of time of use metering the consumer has less control over their energy planning. If there is only one rate to pay, there is no choice. Time of use metering gives the consumer a choice. That increases the consumer's freedom. It has nothing at all to do with Global Warming or Peak Oil. It's about creating a market for an unused resource that we chose to call "off peak power". Stuff nobody wants.
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Posted by Steve L. on 04/04/11 02:42 PM
I now wince at any commercial use of the word "smart", which I now see as a euphemism for "moronic". I see Smart cars, which are little more than go-carts with standard car seats, that will act as an accordian in any head-on accident. IBM's PR campaigh of working for a "smarter planet" and creating "the decade of smart" tells me everything I need to know about their priorities.
The key issue underlying the need for these smart meters is the need to limit energy use based upon the twin promotions of peak oil and global warming (a.k.a. climate change). Smart meters are the mandatory link to measuring and assessing a household by household energy tax that I believe will eventually replace the income tax. California has started to install them, but I think there may be significant resistance in other states.
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Posted by Zenbillionaire on 04/04/11 02:10 PM
@ DB
"For goodness' sake, Zenbillionaire, you have your doubts? Explain King and his fascist Technocratic theories, then ..."
Oh now don't be coy :)
I have no explanation of Mr. King, I was introduced to him and his thoughts only the other day by your most excellent publication. However I think I can say, based only on your brief description, that I have met men like Mr. King in the past and I do have some thoughts on that subject. Having walked that road personally I can also share some of my own experience and self-criticism.
Technology is almost by definition a tool. Like a revolver or pistol, both of which are tools, it can be used for both good and evil. Is a pistol more evil than a pickup truck? Why? Either can be used to kill in large numbers or to rescue in nearly the same numbers. Chevy K3500's don't kill people. People kill people.
Can I imagine a totalitarian surveillance society that micro-manages its subjects using the Smart Grid as a tool? Absolutely. Can I imagine one that uses the Internet to the same ends? Of course. So why am I unafraid? Because I must recognize the basic decency of my fellows to survive and continue the peaceful enjoyment of the only property I can lay unequivocal claim to; my life.
The Smart Grid has great potential to do harm in the hands of unethical people. It also has the potential to do great good in the hands of the righteous. The Grid is not the problem, people are. I do not hold with the doctrine of pre-emptive war. When someone uses the Smart Grid to mess with me, I intend to sit down with that person and have a serious heart to heart on the subject of my personal boundaries. Until then, I hope for the best.
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Posted by Cm on 04/04/11 12:15 PM
This smart grid nonsense destroys the power grid for me and I say this with a heavy heart. I grew up in 1950's Cleveland touring through the wonderful Nela Park light displays every December and as a child could lie on the back seat of the car and tell my parents what street or road we were on by the configurations of the overhead power lines.
A power grid in the hands of fascists is nothing I can place any reliance upon.
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Posted by Dan B on 04/03/11 01:35 PM
DB, I don't have much luck with your hyperlink conversion. The sun is driving our weather. Search the Carrington event of 1859. In this event, a huge increase in solar flux was absorbed by telegraph wires and burned down a few telegraph offices. Search "quebec blackout solar storms". You can read about a more recent CME event that blacked our Quebec. The event took 2 seconds to take out the grid.
Our old, antiquated grid acts as a "receiver" for solar flux. This overloads the huge step-up transformers at the generating stations. The only thing that saved the eastern U.S during the meltdown in Quebec was a bank of 100 ton VAR capacitors in the Allegheny mountains. 12 of the caps failed,,, 11 held on. The Carrington event did NOT occur during a solar-max.
The latest in cold fusion news is from Italy. Search "Andrea_A._Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Generator"
This page has lots of info on nuclear remediation. Search on
"Directory/NuclearRemediation/Vesperman".
Search "Nuclear solutions aurora Colorado" This company is currently doing nuclear remediation that cuts the half-life from 2 million years to 43 days.
Depends on which element it is.
If you search
"Click to view link"
There is an excellent page on all the current techniques for nuclear remediation. The smart-grid won't be of much use if the step-up transformers are burned out.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Thanks. We would like to believe in cold fusion but for years and years we have been reading about "breakthroughs" but nothing ever happens ...
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Posted by Ben on 04/03/11 12:42 AM
@ Dan B
"The biggest issue that I want to mention is Brown's Gas. It has been referred to as "gaseous electricity". EVERYTHING about it is strange. I'll mention the most important. It has been proved time and time again that; if you incinerate radioactive material with Brown's gas, it removes all radioactivity."
Could it work on horse manure? Radioactive horse manure? This could be huge!
Click to view link
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Posted by Dan B on 04/03/11 12:39 AM
Let me try links again.
Click to view link
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Posted by Dan B on 04/03/11 12:26 AM
Great Bell, I had a few observations on the topics presented here. Peak oil was a good theory when presented. That was back when oil was believed to be biotic. Now that it has been proved to be abiotic, there are lots of new places to look for it. That is scary for the oil majors. There is just TOO much of it. Search "oil kitchen"
The Russians and Brazilians have perfected their deep-drilling techniques. They found oil [White Tiger field] in Viet-Nam where Americans found nothing [onshore].
The extreme depth results in extreme pressure. BP failed to appreciate this. I have a very old map that shows a VERY larges chunk of the north slope of Alaska referred to as the "Naval # 7 Petroleum Reserve". The Prudhoe field is not large at all. There is talk of very large fields;
Click to view link
Even Cuba has 27 Billion bbls.of reserves. Mexico has huge proven reserves but, PEMEX has no money to produce them. They need to drill 11,000 wells.
Their Cantarell filed is just about dry. It previously provided 45 % of the income of GOV.
The smart grid COULD be a good tool. There is a lot of good ideas going into it. It IS being designed to be universal;
Click to view link
I'm sure that it will be a very useful tool to use against us "malcontents"
Frustrated engineer is right on the money. The design of the basic grid is terribly antiquated. New meters won't fix it. Line-losses are as high as 70%. The have tried H.V.D.C transmission to avoid problems,,, not too good.
The upcoming galactic alignment is going to cause huge problems for the grid, no matter if it has smart meters or not. NASA says that we are going to get a LOT of Coronal Mass Ejections. The "electric universe" theories explain it very well.
The great danger is that the CMEs will knock out all the enormous transformers at the power stations.
Click to view link
This is what happened to Quebec when a good CME hit it;
Click to view link
The 1859 CME lit the telegraph offices on fire;
Click to view link
The transformers are in VERY short supply and take 6 months to install.
Global warming is a very easy phenomenon to understand. The data show that it is very real. The temperature readings ARE accurate. You can't argue with them. The data collection is another story. A quick search will show that many thousands of data collection stations have been culled. I didn't say removed, I said culled. Most of the high altitude and high latitude stations are "culled" Both Canada and Russia have complained about this.
The promoters of this farce were SO sloppy that their famous "hockey stick" failed to show the medieval -warming period OR the little-ice-age.
Concerning energy; Farnsworth achieved hot-fusion in 1965. He was immediately de-funded. His "fusor" was a perfect solution to all energy problems. It was immediately buried. Wiki claims it didn't work. There is plenty of proof that it did. NOBODY in power wanted a solution to all of our energy problems.
Cold-fusion has a remarkable history. The Italians seem to have new results. The experts are running it down,, of course.
Click to view link
One thing that must be kept in mind is a side issue to cold fusion. Experimenters start with PURE palladium electrodes. After the experiment progresses, they end up with dozens of elements. The standard claim is that there is NO transmutation outside a nuclear reactor. THAT idea has to be tossed out. If you're curious, search "Platinum Cannon" Thomas Moray did a LOT of transmutation years ago.
Regarding Brown's gas. You should read Eagle Research. MANY experimenters are producing FAR beyond the Faraday limit of Brown's gas. Many companies are producing units to improve mileage. They work very well. You should look at the work of Bob Boyce. Check Panacea University. Check Peswiki.
A few people are starting to do good replications of Stan Meyers work. Now that Paul Pantone is out of prison, expect to see great improvements on the GEET technology. It is an extremely interesting plasma conversion effect that Can't be explained at all.
The biggest issue that I want to mention is Brown's Gas. It has been referred to as "gaseous electricity". EVERYTHING about it is strange. I'll mention the most important. It has been proved time and time again that; if you incinerate radioactive material with Brown's gas, it removes all radioactivity. ALL the radioactive material stored in various pools could be rendered non-radioactive. Here's a link to get you started;
Click to view link
My fingers grow tired. I could give you lots of links on the various ideas for removing us from the centralized control that comes with the centralized distribution of power and water. Maybe next time.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Thanks for this great update.
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Posted by Zenbillionaire on 04/02/11 11:56 PM
@ Frustrated Engineer
"I'm interested in what others think."
First off, I'd like to say I like what you think.
In 1978 I worked for a small company in Sunnyvale CA called Robinton Products Incorporated, founded by an engineer named Mike Robinton. As an aside, we grunts called the company "Robot Rabbits". Please don't ask why, it had nothing to do with Mike, who was an outstanding engineer, though it may have had something to do with the management team that supposedly "worked" for him :)
We built remote power metering systems. These were boxes that replaced analog power meters with a digital equivalent that could not only report the amount of power a customer used, but also the time the power was consumed. The idea was to support "time of use" billing with the intention of reducing the cost of power used during off peak periods, which was mostly at night when big power users were offline and people were at home cooking dinner and watching television. It was a good idea but it suffered from poor network communications.
Each box had to be hooked up to a telephone line and data communications were limited to 300 baud, which was the state of the art at the time. The upside was that meter readers weren't needed once these intelligent boxes were installed.
Unfortunately they weren't very reliable, which usually meant that a meter reader had to go out to the customer site anyway. To the best of my knowledge the company is no longer in business.
There may be some draconian plan to enslave the world behind the Smart Grid, but I have my doubts. As you point out, its necessary technology, perhaps even "enabling technology", if we're to have local power generation and electric cars. Road use taxes come from gasoline sales and are collected at the pump today. How will those taxes be collected when people drive their sparkling new EV's home and plug them into a wall socket? Those of us who abhor taxes might caper with glee at the idea of a free lunch in such a world, but TANSTAAFL. Somebody's going to pay for those roads and Smart Meters are how that's going to happen.
Similarly, how exactly will the producer of local power get paid for the energy he's generating and selling to the grid without a meter that can keep track of net energy flows? He can't.
I'm not saying Smart Meters work. I have two of them and neither one works. But I will say that they aren't a bad idea and that we need to figure out how to make them work if we're ever going to be free of centralized power.
And I'd also like to thank you personally for speaking up.
Reply from The Daily Bell
For goodness' sake, Zenbillionaire, you have your doubts? Explain King and his fascist Technocratic theories, then ...
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Posted by Dave Jr on 04/02/11 07:25 AM
@ JM
These websites are designed to liberate YOUR stored energy potential.
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Posted by Vauung on 04/01/11 10:35 PM
@ JM
Thanks for amazing links. This from the first:
"For centuries, science and technology have led us toward greater centralization--of population and industrialization. For the first time, technology in the 21st century has the potential for reversing this trend toward centralization. We have the means for allowing families and even individuals to provide their own necessities and even some luxuries. It is possible for us to start moving off the grids of distribution created by centralization, ultimately to survive and prosper by personal efforts."
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Posted by JM on 04/01/11 08:56 PM
@Frustrated Engineer
Look at the following. Hopefully they will lead you on a path to new insights.
Click to view link
Click to view link (see #6.)
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Posted by Ol' Grey Ghost on 04/01/11 08:50 PM
Here in our portion of the Republic we recently went through this mass installation of the Smart Meters. Some people in a form of protest try to charge the employees with Criminal Trespassing for coming unto the property to install the meters.
Local law enforcement officers had already been through some training on the subject and had been instructed to advise such protesters that they could keep the employees off their property but because of a contractual obligation between the company and the protesters, the company could disconnect the power ASAP.
Many protesters then gave in and started complaining about higher bills almost instantly. The interesting part was the training for the LEO's. Who came up with it and who decided that it was or would be necessary? Why have the "men with guns" ready to deal with any protest over what is generally a matter handled in civil court?
Gotta keep an eye on 'em or they will try to steal your socks...
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Posted by Frustrated Engineer on 04/01/11 08:45 PM
I'm a long time reader and fan of the Daily Bell, but never posted before. I've read the previous articles and comments on this website about energy, and feel that as someone who has numerous engineering work experience for both energy and construction companies, perhaps I can add my perspective.
The main problem dealing with energy nowadays is the old saying, "out of sight, out of mind." What I mean is that 99% of the people have no idea (at least in the US) how power currently works, and only care when it doesn't work.
Guess how young the transmission lines and transformers are that I deal with on a daily basis. The youngest transformers were installed in the early 40's; the oldest, the 20's. On a daily basis, I have to make sure that 90 y.o. technology can handle the daily increasing needs of 21st century power.
A lot of free market types try to say we need decentralized power plants b/c we have a top down monopoly. I'm all about decentralization, but how are you going to have localized power, when as engineers, our "local" customers prevent us from even upgrading our existing infrastructure. How are you going to build these localized plants systems.
Try to build new power plants to help offset the loads. No Nuclear plants b/c of the waste/corruption. No Coal plants due to the carbon emissions. No natural gas plants b/c they don't want to transport natural gas. Try to upgrade transmission lines. No right of way through our property. Tear up the street for lines? You'll drive all our business away b/c customers can't park; I'm getting an injunction. Now if force was used to perform these upgrades, there would be criticism of government force.
Now the other problem with building a new infrastructure is the lack of knowledge to do so. There are very few power engineers left in the US. Due to lack of interest (most EE's want to go work for Google/Facebook/Wall St), many colleges have completely eliminated all power engineering courses. I was recently reminded of this fact at a recent professional society meeting. There was a survey done of all the energy companies of the US, and for one portion of grid engineering, guess how many engineers are considered qualified throughout the entire US? A little less than 200 (not making this up). Most of them have over 30-35 years experience.
The biggest problem all of us see? The loss of knowledge that is going on right now due to retirements in the industry. We can't find anyone to work. Most students are completely uninterested in our industry. To build a localized power infrastructure is one thing (aka John Robb), but it's another thing to get people to build it, and MAINTAIN it once it's built. Believe me, it's a daily challenge.
As an example, I remember when data centers were built at 25W/Sq. Ft. I received a request the other day that will require 250W/Sq. Ft. (FYI-It takes a lot of energy to not only run the new blade servers, but as much so to keep them cool to prevent overheating. It's why companies are trying to build in-rack cooling, b/c CRAC's are becoming ineffective.)
It's one thing to say get off the grid, but it's completely unrealistic for 80% of the population that lives within the urban areas.
I'm interested in what others think. Thanks and sorry for the long post (it's been a rough day).
Reply from The Daily Bell
Thanks for such an interesting and heartfelt post.
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