Smarter Electric Grid Could Save Power 268
Wired has a timely story about putting more of the automated and non-automated decisions behind the use of electrical power into and around households. From the summary: "If the electric grid stops being just a passive supplier of juice, consumers could make choices about how and when to consume power. Power providers and tech companies are working to redesign the grid so you can switch off your house when high demand strains the system, or program your house or appliances to make that move."
A similar story is featured right now on PhysOrg, highlighting a particular pilot project involving "smart meters" in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
Duh... (Score:5, Informative)
I guess the US electric companies always found they could get reimbursed for expensive peak load plants so they had no incentive to apply intelligence to load management.
New for small customers, not large customers (Score:5, Informative)
The primary benefit from a smart grid isn't so much saving energy as limiting peak demand - but it would help in making best use of intermittent generation (e.g. renewables such as solar and wind).
Re:fine I'll say it (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Want to save power? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:fine I'll say it (Score:5, Informative)
How it works in france (Score:3, Informative)
~75% of power is nuclear generated
2nd Step :
At around 11.30 pm and until 7 am (or so), you pay less for your electricity.
That means every one sets their tank based water heater to automatically use only night hours power.
(you can still switch to manual if you run out of hot water).
That way, all those heaters are off from peak hours usage.
Re:Want to save power? (Score:3, Informative)
My TV takes 3 Watts when off and 65 Watts when on and it uses that 3 W to keep the tube elements warm so I don't have to go out and buy another TV. There is a PC here beside my desk that also takes about 3 W so its going to use about $3.56 per year with the new higher rates compared with about $.024 per hour when its on. It uses that 3 watts to run in a suspended state so wake-on-lan works and it boot quickly. My cheap power meter (only reads it 1/2 w or
Re:All of this is possible now (Score:5, Informative)
The mercury "downside" is usually overblown. When compared with the amount of mercury (or any other toxin) that would be released into the environment due to a standard incandescent's power requirements, the CFL actually comes out ahead. And for older folks, the mercury amount is magnitudes less than the amount in the old thermostats and thermometers. Did you call Hazmat when you broke a thermometer? I doubt it, even though we all knew about mercury poisoning.
Ask TreeHugger: Is Mercury from a Broken CFL Dangerous? [treehugger.com]
Urban Legends Reference Pages: CFL Mercury Light Bulbs [snopes.com]
Why Use CFLs? Environment [michigan.gov]
Do handle light bulbs with care. However, clean-up procedures are fairly simple if one breaks. And bring old bulbs to a recycle center.
Also, don't forget to recycle all your appliances, electronics, and batteries. The chemicals and elements contained in those are just as hazardous to your health and to the environment, if not more so. The places that take these items also take the CFL bulbs.
Re:By that logic (Score:3, Informative)
Population density also matters. Again, if you want a homogenous environment, and you cover a rural area, it is going to cost you.
If you are curious, here is a Google Map thingy [google.com] someone developed to track all of the Smart Metering project going on out there.
Re:Ripple control ++ (Score:3, Informative)
The big advantage of the tankless water heater is not the energy savings, it's the not running out of hot water. For large families, this can be a lifesaver.
And believe it or not, the energy savings may or may not exist. It takes a lot of energy to raise the water temperature from cold to hot in just a few feet of pipe. A well-insulated standard water heater can use less energy by slowly heating the water, and then intermittently applying heat to maintain the temperature.
And there may be other expenses involved in installing one. Since the tankless heater uses more gas when in operation, you'll probably have to replace the exhaust vents. Because of this, we were quoted $2,000 (two thousand dollars) for just the installation of a tankless heater. This is on top of the $750 for the heater itself.
Now, keeping in mind that our gas bills are around $15 a month in the summer, and that we have a gas stove in addition to the gas water heater, any potential savings are going to be on the order of maybe $5 a month. It'd take a LONG time to pay off $2750 at that rate.
So we decided to forego the tankless heater. When our existing water heater finally dies, we'll probably replace it with another standard water heater.
Re:fine I'll say it (Score:3, Informative)
Trust me on this. I am an IT provider to nearly 100 industrial sites as part of my commercial client base. NONE of them shut down their systems at night, NOT ONE. They may let a bunch of employees go home, and many don't run 3rd shifts, but most of the equipment stays on, even the lights in most cases.
It's a very rare industrial site that has not learned that the time and energy and logistics of stopping production and starting it again, with product left on the line partially assembled, is not only counter productive, but in many cases simply costs more.
It's easier to use fewer people, or slow the line down slightly, and run 24/7, than it is to stop/start daily.
Commerical (most of them), sure, they turn out the ligths at night, but not industial.
Unfortunately, it's not "at night" that's the issue anyway. It's the few hours at the peak of the morning, and at sunset that are the worst, especially in summer when AC runs on electricity only, where in the winter much heat is from other sources (coal, gas, oil, wood, etc).
AC units kick on and off frequently, every 15-45 minutes depending on the home, climate, and time of day. During the peak heat of the day, everyone is running one, businesses and homes alike. Although it "saves electricity" (assuming your house is well insulated) to use a timer based AC system (wamer when noone is home, cooler when thay are, automatically) the real truth is that now we not only have to deal millions of units turning on and off, but nearly ALL of them turn on about 4:15-4:30, and run continuously while they cool the house down to it's comfort temp from it's all-day noone-is-home temp. This is a MASSIVE load on the system.
By adding some inteligence to the grid, we can stagger the times AC units come on and off. By allowing some tollerances, and some minor schedule adjustments, we can 1) prevent every AC unit from running at the same time, 2) cool your house earlier one day, and later another, balancing your electric use with others, 3) keep your house withing 3 degrees of your target at all times, 4) charge you more for unaceptable "comfort" levels (if you like it colder in your house than 78 degrees in the summer, no problem, we'll just charge you more), 5) we can avoid a lot of "surge" use, avoiding lots of expensive supplement power, and lower to overall cost WITHOUT building more power plants.
We do need more power plants. As people bring home plug-in hybrids or full electric cars, we'll have to account for this. We can't have half of california plug their car in at 5:45PM and expect all of them to start charging at once...
The good news is (most) electronics are getting more efficient. As we switch light bulbs, get more inteligent and more efficient ACs, fridges, and other appliances, use lower power PCs and TVs, and start doing other things like eliminating "sleep creap" from devices, throwing out plug-in scent warmers, etc, we can offset a bunch of it, but not even close to all. I can only hope that all of our NEW power will come anything but fossil fuel.
Re:fine I'll say it (Score:3, Informative)
I had a few, and when going through my previous home a few years back (it was INCREDIBLY poortly insulated, and I did everything I could to save power and avoid $350 bills), i took a serious look at what those things were costing me.
On average, they only burn about 4 watts each. I had 4 of those for 18 total watts (a few diferent types that used different power loads), and one candle plate (thing you set jar candles on to melt, used 17 watts).
Over 30 watts, running 24/7/365 (and often with dried up cartidges we'd forget to replace). You know what? Not only did it waste a lot of power, they damned things actually don't smell as good, or last as long, as some scented oil in a diffuser (spherical bowl with some wooden wicks stuck in it). I have 4 of these in my house now. You can pick up a good diffuser at a nature shop, world market store, or other places, or make one yourself by hitting a craft shop. The oil itself is cheap in bulk, and I cut it 3:1 with perfume base (aka rubbing alcohol). It's about $5 worth of oil to fill one, but I only do that about 3 times a year... Same cost in plug-ins for that room? $4 every 45 days... more than twice the cost not counting the electricity saved!
warning: If you have small childred or michevous cats, you may want to 1) place your oil difuser out of reach/access or 2) use strong double sided tape and affic it permanantly in place (if you have a spot you can do that to). I have 2 of mine in wall mount sconces, one above the fridge, and 1 in my bedroom on top of the gentlemans chest (about 5 feet off the floor). Getting spilled oil out of a carpet, furniture, or other surface is not something I plan to ever have to do.... (again)
Re:Ripple control ++ (Score:3, Informative)
And there may be other expenses involved in installing one. Since the tankless heater uses more gas when in operation, you'll probably have to replace the exhaust vents. Because of this, we were quoted $2,000 (two thousand dollars) for just the installation of a tankless heater. This is on top of the $750 for the heater itself.
Gas bill during the summer dropped more than half, and our only summertime gas appliance is the heater.
Fact is, we only used the old tank about an hour a day total, and the rest of the time it was just burning tons of gas (cubic feet of gas?) for no reason.
Think about it a second... It takes a huge amount of energy to heat water. Yet the side mounted exhaust is just a little 3 inch pipe thats only a little hotter than the water. If it was "so much less efficient" then there would have to be a giant flamethrower out the side of my house. Which would look cool, but doesn't happen. I can only conclude it's more efficient. Or I could read in the manual that it's about 85% efficient, which isn't much worse than the best tank.
Finally I question his payoff rate. Unlike a tank thats only guaranteed for 8 years, my tankless is for 25 years. And he must live in texas or something to only pay $15 a month. I'm saving about $20 per month, 12 months/year, and 25 year lifetime, thats $6000. Thats $4K of pure profit for me. And only a fool would think that gas prices will drop over the next couple decades, making it an even better deal.
Re:Ripple control ++ (Score:2, Informative)
CFL bulbs in a plastic case (Score:2, Informative)
Re:fine I'll say it (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, in the summer, you should wake at 78 degrees, it should rise to 85 when you're not home, return to 78 in the evening, and rise slightly to 82 at night. In the winter, you should wake at 70, it should drop to 62 when noone is home in the daytime, return to 70 in the evening, and settle at 66 when sleeping. A tolerance of +/- 2 degrees is permitted in the thermostat (if set to 78, it will rise to 80 before cooling to 76, then slowly rise back to 80, etc...)
This is the Energy Start setting you need to comply with in order to receive EnergyStar certification fro your home, and the accompanying discount on your power bill.. When you signed up for EnergyStar discounts, you AGREED to these settings. Failure to maintain them, should your power company be aware, could leave you lible to repay any back discounts you recieved. I've never heard of this, but EPA certified programable thermostats all use this default setting (and some can not be overridden if they're monitored by your power company, something Califiornia is about to pass into law).
Re:Duh... It's Old Hat (Score:2, Informative)
Near as I can tell, the advent of the smart meter, an idea back then whose time had not yet come due to the cost and reliability of the technology involved, has brought about schemes to exploit the lack of reliability of people in order to extract more profits from them. Other than that, it would seem this whole thing is just another rehash of an idea already in successful operation over two decades ago and not limited by having people voluntarily doing something.