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Smart meters, dumb response
Kevin Drum, Political Animal (Washington Monthly)
Here’s a good example of consumer group shortsightedness. My local power company, Southern California Edison, wants to start rolling out “smart meters” in people’s homes, an initiative that would (a) cost money but (b) almost certainly cut down electricity usage in the long run. Here’s the response the LA Times got in a story today about the rollout costs:
“Edison is assuming that people will use and respond to this stuff. . . but we don’t have any guaranteed benefits here,” said Mindy Spatt, spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based Utility Reform Network. “The only thing that’s guaranteed is the cost.”
….”Whether the consumer has a smart meter or the consumer has a dumb meter, the bottom line for the consumer is that the less [electricity] they use, the less they pay, and the more they use, the more they pay,” Spatt said. “That’s a message I’m willing to deliver for free.”
Yeah, I’m willing to deliver it for free too. In fact, I just did. But I don’t expect that this post will really have much impact on my readers’ electricity use. Conversely, a colorful LCD display in your home that showed you, in real time, how much electricity you were using and how much it cost, would almost certainly change your habits over time.
The way the system works is fairly simple: your old meter gets replaced by a nifty new SmartConnect meter, which then connects wirelessly to a display inside your home. It can also connect wirelessly to compatible appliances in your home and you can, if you want, program the unit to automatically turn certain appliances off if the price of electricity goes over a certain level. I haven’t seen what the actual indoor meters look like, but you can get an idea here.
Scoffing at this stuff is dumb. People respond to incentives and they respond more strongly when the incentives are right in front of their faces. Sure, smart meters cost money, but there’s no free lunch. It’s an idea whose time has come.
(1 August 2007)
Press release: Southern California Edison has a business case forecasting more customer savings than costs from smart metering.
Businesses paid not to use power
Kristin Goff, The Ottawa Citizen
When temperatures soared across Ontario this week, businesses like Magna, Royal Group, Canada’s Wonderland and Lear Corp. in southern Ontario responded by cutting back on their power use.
It was a responsible thing to do and helped the York Region’s hydro service deal with the exceptional demands of near-record temperatures.
But the companies, along with others in a pool managed by Rodan Energy, got more than the satisfaction of doing their part for the community good. They got paid for not using electricity.
Rodan’s payment structure “is confidential,” said Caroline Lofthouse, a spokeswoman. But the concept of paying companies for what they don’t use is about to become a lot more widespread. The York Region program was one of two pilots for a provincewide “demand response” program that the Ontario Power Authority hopes to introduce by the end of this month. ..
(3 Aug 2007)
Kenya: Darkness in the Slums
Cyrus Ombati and Amos Kareithi, East African Standard
Following reports that members of the outlawed Mungiki sect thrive in the slum by extorting money from residents in exchange for electricity supply, Kenya Power and Lighting Company sought the help of police in an operation that saw more than 100 persons arrested and charged with electricity-related offences.
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In the labyrinth that is Kenya’s slum, uncoordinated network of all manner of electricity conduits weave in and out of cesspools, posing danger to the inhabitants. Naked live wires protrude from the barren sandy patches. And next to these live wires stands a pool of raw sewer. Welcome to Nairobi’s slum. Here, dwellers have devised a new meaning for “sambaza” (supply).
The new code of brotherhood is contagious and afflicts the affluent and the wretched of the earth in equal measure. It all started as a joke. When a few landlords could no longer cope with the Kenya Power and Lighting Company bills, they resorted to the underworld for help.
And the electricity supply cartel has evolved into a multi-million shilling undertaking. It has sucked in enterprising criminal gangs with scouts and armies. The “disobedient” residents receive a proportional measure of violence from these vicious gangs. ..
When the operation started, the team ran into trouble at Kosovo slums, the base of Mungiki sect followers. But the traditional militant behaviour seems to have thawed considerably after the State’s display of violence in dealing with the sect and other armed criminals.
However, there were still pockets of violence as some residents stoned the law enforcers who had opened fire on the crowd. And in the subsequent days, the officials moved from one household to the other disconnecting power and water supply.
KPLC says more than 100,000 households receive electricity supply illegally. Investigations have disclosed that members of the outlawed Mungiki sect collect money from the tenants. ..
(29 Jul 2007)
China Southern Power Grid June electricity sales to Vietnam up 320 pct yr-on-yr
AFX News Limited/Forbes
BEIJING – State-owned China Southern Power Grid said it sold 268 mln kWh of electricity to Vietnam in June, up 320.34 pct year-on-year.
China Southern Power realized sales revenue of 12.05 mln usd from Vietnam during the month, the company said in a statement. ..
China Southern now supplies electricity to Vietnam through two 220 kv and three 110 kv power grids, with supply output expected to surpass 2.5 bln kWh this year, it added. The firm signed a 10-year 500 mln usd contract in Oct 2005 to sell electricity to the Vietnam National Power Co. This is China’s largest cross-country power transmission project to date.
(2 Aug 2007)
Vietnam exports coal to and imports 2% of its electricity from China.
Black Google power saving figures are wrong
Darren Yates, Techlogg
All the tree huggers in the world won’t save the planet using Black Google. We have the facts to prove it. ..
First up, the 17-inch CRT power reduction between Google and Blackle was nowhere near the 15-watts being suggested and was closer to 7-watts.
But the most surprising result was from the two LCD monitors where the power consumption actually rose by an average of 0.5W. The reason is that LCD monitors consume energy to block light when creating a black screen as the backlight is on continuously. CRT monitors work on a completely different process where three cathode ray guns fire electron beams onto a phosphor coating so that the electron beam creates the light.
So at the very least, supporters of a Black-screen Google are overstating their power savings by about double. At worst, as CRT monitors are continually phased out in favour of LCD screens, the power consumption of a Black-screen Google will actually be more than what we already have with the standard white Google.
(26 Jul 2007)
Theres an update from 2 August, see also Search site cashes in on eco-guilt for a swift pick-up by the Sydney Morning Herald (a broadsheet daily newspaper).
