Smart Grid == Electricity Rationing

The pitches are flowery, you sign up and the power company puts this thingy on your electrical wire and it can control your house or specific appliances, cycling them on and off at times the power company deems best for the power company. You get money back, a few dollars that a timer would probably beat in money saved. Surely you have heard the ads, they are everywhere.

Come to think of it, doesn’t this resemble the cycling of the grid that is done in third world countries, they have hours in a day when they get to use electricity, and then times when it is cut off. LIke what California is now doing with their ‘rolling blackouts’ because they refuse to build enough power plants to satisfy demand. The only difference is power is cut in zones for fixed times, not by appliance.  The problem in third world countries is they don’t have enough generation capability, so ‘they have to share’. We saw this in Iraq, where they now have power in Baghdad for near 24/7 … And life improves.

If you get to decide, then you are free to buy what you can afford. If they get to decide, then it’s rationing no matter what the ’smart grid’ name. Understandable in an emergency, sat a hurricane or fire damaged the power plant locally, but not what free people want.

Power companies have faced the problem of everyone on a hot afternoon wanting to run their AC unit, for well, since the begining, it’s called peaking generators — These are specific type, fast response generators, usually higher cost electric generation, that are designed to ramp up to full load quickly, and supply the peak demand the customer wants. At other times ‘base load generators’, like nuclear power plants, carry the load. It’s complicated but the marvel of modern engineering allows you to flip the switch and power comes out, whatever you want. In many places, these peaking generators are located close to the areas where the peak demand load is, not at the main power plant, that sleight of hand saves wire capacity.

The alternative is to cut the power, because you cannot supply a load which is too big for the generation capacity and wires.

So these stories are now popping up, about the ‘USA electric grid is in danger’ risk. hackers, or something or other — It’s another emergency, hit the switch, eject, eject. Oh wait, maybe it’s just another crisis that we shouldn’t let go to waste, because you know, we can use that crisis to do things we couldn’t do without the crisis mentality:

U.S. power grid seen at risk

Key members of Congress launched an effort Thursday to protect the nation’s electricity grid from criminals, vandals or U.S. enemies, who could use the Internet to cripple computers that control the generation and distribution of power.

The effort, led by the chairmen of the House and Senate homeland security committees, follows reports of hackers – possibly working for foreign governments – probing power controls for weaknesses.

Legislation sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi Democrat, would authorize the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to supersede the power industry’s self-governing body in setting security standards.

The grid is increasingly dependent on control systems operated over computer networks including the Internet.

Sorry, but this has been going on since, whenever or something. For the longest while people have fiddled with the grid. Illegal hookups, bypassing meters, all kinds of shenanigans. And now we are told that only the government can secure the networks used by the grid controllers from hackers and spies. Sure, that’s like telling us only the government can secure the borders — Right? Well that worked out swell, hasn’t it.

It’s bunk … The power companies know how to protect their networks, their equipment, they know what systems should be network attached and which should not. They know how to run firewalls, real firewalls, and how to block hackers, spies and other nefarious actors.

The biggest threat to the grid — Recent solar storms associated with Solar Cycle 22 (the 11-year sunspot cycle that began in 1986) have had an unprecedented impact on electric power systems. The great geomagnetic storm of March 13, 1989, plunged the entire Hydro Quebec system, which serves more than 6 million customers, into a solar storm triggered blackout. Most of Hydro Quebec’s neighboring systems in the United States came close to experiencing the same sort of outage. These giant solar storms can destroy generation equipment, so the threat is real. Fortunately, our space weather prediction has gotten better in recent year we can see the solar storms coming, which gives us a few hours to safe our systems to prevent permanent damage.

The second biggest danger to the grid is the government re-working it so they can control it. And with that control, there goes your freedom.

Something else to consider, all those windmills that are going to save us from ourselves, they all need like capacity, conventional generation capacity, else you have to shut off the grid when the wind doesn’t blow. Oh wait, might that not be the goal, not the problem. Wake up before you hit the switch and comedy duck with a sign in it’s beak, ‘electricity is off until noon tomorrow’ — Or the smart grid monitor on your fridge says “POWER IS OFF”.

You do not want government running your electricity grid. No way, no how.

Well, what if it’s an emergency, would that work for you?