White House To Announce IT-Powered Smart Grid

FizzaNawaz writes "On Monday, the Obama administration is preparing announce the next steps that the US will take to build its 21st century electric grid, and IT is expected to play a big part in the plans. The White House is hosting a 90-minute media event called 'Building the 21st Century Electric Grid' and is releasing a new report on what it will take for lawmakers and the private sector to come together to solve this aspect of the energy challenge."

Re:Also a pony and a flying car for everyone.

[yarnosh]

I had read that there's actually at lot of capacity that just goes to waste over night. If most EVs charged over night, it wouldn't be much of a burden on the grid as a whole (though local transformers might need upgrading). At least not for a while. I mean, it would be a while before most peopel ha gone electric.

Re:Also a pony and a flying car for everyone.

[catmistake]

if you want to reduce the need for power plants, you're talking about reducing demand, and the only way to do that through the grid is to turn people's stuff off whether they like it or not.

That would only increase demand. One way to reduce demand for power, and it works well for anything but is not popular, is to tax the living hell out of energy usage that goes beyond some acceptable and reasonable daily allotment. This way energy hogs would subsidize the energy cost for those that conserve.

Re:Sigh

[Doc Ruby]

Thank you, one dimensional Republican.

Re:Also a pony and a flying car for everyone.

[NotSoHeavyD3]

This is pretty much it. The number I heard is that only for about 100 hours every year is the grid at capacity.(In the summer from from what I remember. Lot of people using their AC's.) The entire rest of the time there's a surplus of power. Of course one thing that doesn't get mentioned is that the new meters necessary for the smart grid are quite accurate. (People get kind of pissed when their bill goes up because their old meter under measured their energy usage.)

Re:Also a pony and a flying car for everyone.

[rubycodez]

as former manager of the engineering/design group of a power switching systems company, I know a bit about smart grids. But how in the U.S. are we going to get away from the evil of the U.S. government and the mega-corporations that have it in its pocket? A smart grid in *those* hands becomes a tools of yet more artificial scarcity creation, more throttling/restrictions/capping, and a "kill switch" for the government. Instead of bringing online the cheap abundant energy of this earth, we'll be rationing the fossil fuels for another century. The first priority isn't a "smart grid", it's alternative energy (and integrating that into the "dumb grid" by decades old means works well enough). This "smart grid" and all this wailing about conserving is at this point in time a distraction from the core issue, that there is no shortage of energy on planet earth. A health growing civilization uses energy; we should be *increasing* our use of energy, not decreasing it.

Re:Maybe you should stick to what you know

[Artifakt]

There's long distance transmission losses - electricity used to push more electricity along high tension wires for hundreds or even thousands of miles. When a plant in western Pennsylvania or even southern Georgia is sending power to meet peak demand in New York, those transmission losses can be over 50% of what's produced. When the north-eastern grid failed a few years ago, TVA plants in Tennessee and even South Carolina were sending power all the way to Arizona and New Mexico to stabilise the western grid, at up to 85% losses. (And if they hadn't, that blackout would have been nationwide and probably lasted a couple of days minimum for everyone). So yes, "dumping massive amounts of power into a hole" sometimes describes it quite nicely.
      Interestingly, it was a locally smart* power grid, built and managed mostly by the government, that basically became a rock solid line against the cascading failures and then started helping everybody else recover.

*TVA's not all that smart - built mostly during the 30s and 40s, but it has upgraded control networks several times since then, notably when the nuclear plant at Watt's Bar became part of the grid. Basically, TVA control is 1970s tech, but the north-eastern grid from Niagara on down includes a lot of incompatible privately implemented control systems dating back, in some cases, to the 1920s.

Re:Sigh

[Vaphell]

if you design a system that can be described as 'you can gamble with someone else's money all you want - if you win, it's all yours, if you lose, we got you covered' you seriously blame people who exploited the system? It was an obvious and perfectly rational thing to do. When there is no fear of loss, riskier behavior is unavoidable as there are only 2 options left on the table: a win and a fucking big win. It's universal, that's how people behave - be it sandbox, casino, stock market.
When the building that collapses, architects and engineers responsible for shoddy work have their asses dragged to court, while lawmakers producing crap legislation that brings whole nations to the knees walk free.

Letting banks fail was a right thing to do - it would be painful but it would instill fear in the hearts of banksters. Bailouts made them feel like gods who have the whole world by the balls and now they take the full advantage of the fact