In a seemingly innocuous revision of its Energy Star efficiency requirements announced June 27, the Environmental Protection Agency included an “optional” requirement for a “smart-grid” connection for customers to electronically connect their refrigerators or freezers with a utility provider.
The feature lets the utility provider regulate the appliances’ power consumption, “including curtailing operations during more expensive peak-demand times.”
If this smart grid stuff goes to far, people are gonna start hooking up diesel generators just like in the 3rd world.
Hey, it doesn’t matter that your ice cream has melted when you get home and that a few dozen people die every summer from salmonella because the chicken breasts weren’t kept cold enough, we have to get rid of coal fired generating plants!
Memo to self: never buy a fridge with this feature.
Sounds like there’ll be more than a few baking flops coming from ovens of the nation.
It’s so oxymoronic to be attaching the term “smart” to all the stupid stuff like “smart” meters for water and now electricity. There could be no end to their smart stupidity at this rate, what’s next, a meter for flatulence?
Somewhat related:
http://www.confused.com/car-insurance/specialist/telematics/telematics-explained
“By tracking your vehicle’s movements through GPS systems, insurance providers can assess your driving ability. The following may be taken into consideration:
your location
how long you’ve been driving for
how rapid or measured your acceleration is
how harsh or smooth your braking is
your cornering
All you need to do is fit a telematics ‘black box’ into your car.”
In almost all cases, your car is being driven on “public roads” … it’s in the interest of public safety that your driving characteristics are known and reported… anything can be justified in the name of public safety. Doubt this will happen? There’s 3.5 years remaining in B. Hussien’s term.
Yeah well, I’m not really comfortable riding/driving in a vehicle with them “smart” anti-lock brakes.
One of the things done to convert a passenger sedan to a police cruiser is to disable the anti-lock brakes.
Anything coming out of the EPA should strike fear into the heart of the average consumer. They have already turned California into a basket case and need new territory to pillage and plunder. This “optional” feature would be like giving the Fox in the Hen house the option of eating the chicken feed rather than the chicken. Anyone allowing their appliance to be controlled by the EPA is ripe for a lobotomy.
Lovely. So, heating systems in the northern US could, in principle, be forced by remote control to heat houses no higher than 60 degrees Fahrenheit in mid-winter, and instead of only turning on the power to residential customers between 5pm and 8pm, ovens, TVs and computers could simply shut themselves off at that hour.
Barry (whose house would of course be lit like La Vegas 24/7) could then pretend that the US wasn’t suffering from blackouts because his blessed solar panel and windmill farms never had more than a communist’s chance of getting into heaven of replacing the sea of oil and gas the US sits on but that Barry simply refuses to see exploited while there’s any chance at all that white people who speak English, work for a living and believe in God and his Son Jesus Christ might possibly reap any of the benefits.
Where were these geniuses during the Eighties? Communist Romania could have used that “smart grid.”
That’s what I was thinking. How great is it in the summer to have ice cream soup?! I hope the consumer has a very angry change of heart over this.
Dick, there are blacks and Asians who speak English and believe in Jesus. Just thought I’d point that out.
@Marc in Calgary: The black box insurance would probably be a boon to me as I’m an extremely careful driver. Or it would, if I were the sole operator of the vehicle. My being married to Speedy Gonzales would be problematic in this scenario.
Mutt: These smart pills you sold me taste like sh*t.
Jeff: See, you are smarter already.
Section:
“To make sure we respond properly to the “demands of clean energy,” Obama said this “investment will place Smart Meters in homes to make our energy bills lower, make outages less likely and make it easier to use clean energy.” It’ll also make it easier to monitor and control our energy use.”
Sub-section:
“monitor and control”
And that’s what it’s all about.
marc in calgary said: “All you need to do is fit a telematics ‘black box’ into your car.”
You don’t need to do that. All you need to do is come to their attention, and they can use your phone to track you. Perhaps not is as fine detail as the black box would, but good enough to tell if you’re speeding. They can also download the OBDII box already in your car and discover anywhere from the last thirty seconds up to several minutes of records from all the sensors in your car. From brake and throttle movements to what station the radio was on.
Incidentally, there’s this thing called “IP over power line” which allows computers to use their own power cables to connect to other computers, using the house electrical wiring instead of coaxial cable or twisted pair Ethernet cable. That means a household appliance could be set up to communicate down the power company’s wire to a central command node. It wouldn’t even be difficult to set up. Piece of cake.
On the bright side, you could defeat that with a common or garden variety battery backup unit on your expensive super smart fridge. Expensive and annoying, but not as expensive as having the power company defrost a whole side of beef on you.
Pretty soon you’re going to see whole-house power conditioning units for sale that not only buffer spikes and brownouts, they are also going to act as firewalls to keep exterior data packets from fritzing your “smart” appliances. See a need, fill a need.
Married Guy @ 2.26 and The Phantom,
I’m not so much worried about the insurance companies noticing that I’m an unsafe driver, it’s much more to me to simply know that I’m being monitored constantly, for signs of independence and potential non compliance. I don’t think it’s anyone’s business how much beef I may have in my fridge, or if I like it turned down as low as it can be.
Will my thermostat on the wall be next? I really don’t want to know…
Will my Dr. tell me that I’m to be taxed at a higher rate because I’m now carrying an extra 10 lbs? and because I can’t be taxed extra like smokers can?
Good reasons to keep driving a beater…
I’d rather have a freezer shut down than a blackout because nobody’s freezer shut down, during a heat wave. (Freezers can hold some cold in pretty well for a few hours during peak usage … and they shut down even longer if there’s a blackout.)
And those are the alternatives, as long as the State won’t let useful power plants be built.
More importantly I actually don’t mind the idea of peak pricing being higher – that’s how we use price signals to modulate demand. Economics 101.
(Also, the Phantom said: Incidentally, there’s this thing called “IP over power line” which allows computers to use their own power cables to connect to other computers, using the house electrical wiring instead of coaxial cable or twisted pair Ethernet cable. That means a household appliance could be set up to communicate down the power company’s wire to a central command node. It wouldn’t even be difficult to set up. Piece of cake.
Yeah, except North American power infrastructure is very poorly set-up for BPL (Broadband over Power Line) applications; the internet stuff doesn’t like to cross a transformer boundary, and we use them to connect to the high-voltage lines, between either every house separately or every block or so, on average … this means a lot of repeater infrastructure to even attempt to implement a BPL system that can talk to the Power Company. Which is why they’re not even trying to do things that way even to talk to the meters, instead using wireless on the meters.
Also, of course, if the State ever demanded the power company implement such a feature, they’d simply make it illegal to bypass with a power conditioner.)
You said: “I’d rather have a freezer shut down than a blackout because nobody’s freezer shut down, during a heat wave.” Me too. The problem is that these control items are part of an incremental strategy. They start out reasonable (per your comment and my agreement) and then expand. We’ve seen it in so MANY different government programs as to make it an undeniable strategy (e.g., welfare, smoking restrictions, vehicle fuel economy, etc). By comparison, I believe the NRA (National Rifle Association)fights so vehemently for “NO GUN RESTRICTIONS” because they too know that although the first inch might be reasonable it’s a slippery slope and leads to the end game of banning gun ownership. (That’s why I support the NRA … they “get” it.)
On the bright side, you could defeat that with a common or garden variety battery backup unit on your expensive super smart fridge. Expensive and annoying, but not as expensive as having the power company defrost a whole side of beef on you.
Most folks use freezers for keeping a side of beef frozen, not a fridge. Freezers can be powered down for many many hours before the temperature inside goes from zero F to 30F, as long as you don’t leave the door open.
Both freezers and hot water heaters [DHW] offer inexpensive and effective control for managing peak loads. Many power companies have been using DHW control for 40 years or more. The people who elect to have their DHW controlled get a better power rate. Simple, easy, effective.
All you need to do is come to their attention, and they can use your phone to track you.
How are they going to find that my rotary dial phone sits on the desk in my office plugged into the wall 24/7/52 ?
How does that ‘track me’ when I’m away from the phone?
None of this would be necessary if they simply built power plants and infrastructure to keep up with anticipated demand. The billions already wasted on wind and solar would have been more than enough to power the nation for the foreseeable future.