Bob Amorosi says

Most consumers know they can lower their energy consumption by changing their use behaviors, practicing conservation, and/or by upgrading their homes and appliances to get better efficiencies. The REAL factors in what motivates people or not to do these things are personal costs both in time / effort and in investment of personal funds.

Investing personal funds for example to upgrade efficiencies must compete with all the other demands on personal finances. The lower the cost to upgrade something, the more consumers are likely to invest in it. Similarly the less time it takes to realize a payback of the initial investment, the more consumers are likely to invest. The latter is especially important in today's world where consumers’ choices today for investment may be trumped by better ones in the near future if they simply wait for them as technology advances at ever increasing speeds.

Home automation technology that is linked to energy monitoring via smart meters and IHDs is the obvious choice for investment. But by WHO? Some consumers don’t want it, while others will. The problem with this is that how do electric utility companies implement this stuff when in the current regulatory regimes, they must provide it to all their customers – with appropriate cost recovery in rate increases for all customers (or government handouts). In my opinion, this is a very inefficient way to commercialize a new technology because it is a waste of money for those consumers who don’t want it.

The solution to this problem is for regulations to change that would allow, or force, utility companies to change their business models to operate more like our telephone and CATV companies, where they provide basic electricity service to all customers, and then sell the new technologies to individual customers willing to invest their money in it. Plain and simple.

Len Gould says

I'm interested to hear that Britain is implementing smart metering throughout. Whomever gets all the pre-requesite infrastructure in place first should win the competition to design and own the intellectual property required to implement all the following steps. There was a day i can remember when that would automatically have been the US, but it seems that for some reason that no longer holds. All the "leading thinkers|" in the US have gone arthritically conservative, yet for some reason still hold all the strings required for any inovation. Wierd.

Len Gould says

Bob Amorosi says

As you know Ontario has already implemented smart metering to all approximately 5 million customers in the province, spread out amongst dozens of distribution utility companies. Although Ontario was among the first to do so, they really don't have all the prerequisite infrastructure in place to enable smart grid functions with residential HANs. In their wisdom Ontario did not mandate that all smart meters be equipped with auxiliary communications, like a Zigbee or similar radio. Hence the majority of the smart meters deployed in Ontario have no capability to directly communicate with HAN equipment in a customer's house.

For future residential HAN equipment to become part of a smart grid in Ontario, they must communicate directly with the meters' AMI radio networks, or alternatively go through the internet back to the utility company's office systems. The former is a very unpalatable option with utility people because a) they don't want anyone directly accessing their AMI networks, and b) adding an AMI radio gateway device to a HAN is a costly and non-standard interface for the HAN equipment makers. The latter is also not something utility people like either because using the internet places a huge extra cost for interfacing their AMI head-end systems to the internet for huge numbers of customers, and besides not all customers have internet services, or have them running 24/7 like their AMI networks do.

The only reasonable solution for Ontario is to replace most of the 5 million deployed smart meters to upgrade them with auxiliary radios installed for future HAN use. I hope other jurisdictions in the US reading this don't make the same mistakes as Ontario did when they deploy their smart meters.

Len Gould says

Chris Taylor says

Regarding changing consumer behaviours with the extra information smart meters can provide, I suspect the IHDs will only have limited impact, certainly after seeing the current capabilities offered. More impressive results will likely follow from the introduction of advanced user interfaces - mobile apps for iPhones and the like. Introducing elements of competition, and more importantly, reasons to keep using them, will help engage end users and drive behavioural change.

Bob Amorosi says

You are correct, IHDs alone will have limited impact on consumer behavior, it's all the other potential home automation and demand responses that are possible with smart grid and new technologies.

Len Gould is one of the visionary contributors to this website who several years ago proposed a real-time Independent Market for Every Utility Customer (IMEUC) on this website which would depend intimately on customers having all the technology for communicating with a smart grid in real time to monitor and make purchases for their electricity.

There are several stand-alone IHDs on the market today that connect directly to a home's utility panel, or alternatively place their own sensors on the utility’s mechanical meter or smart meter on the house, effectively avoiding the need to communicate directly with a smart grid. Studies by Ontario's Hydro One utility company many years ago revealed nearly 10% AVERAGE energy use reductions were typical among hundreds of customers equipped with an IHD in the studies. While this is a substantial energy consumption reduction for the grid when one considers it expanded to millions of users, utility companies are not interested in bearing the cost to provide them to all their customers. Part of this reluctance is they don’t want to depend on customer behaviors alone to achieve energy conservation targets, they prefer more guaranteed demand responses when they need them.

Indeed mobile apps are already appearing for smart phones that talk to HANs and other home automation systems that have been around for some time already. The missing link of course is hooking any of these systems up with a smart meter or smart grid managed by one's the utility company, available ON A LARGE SCALE such that it becomes available to any utility customer willing to use it.

Bob Amorosi says

Now just imagine the same sort of more complex monitoring and computer interfaces developed for small businesses and residential customers. Needless to say the costs of such technology would be driven down tremendously by the shear numbers of potential customers who already own multiple PCs and smart phones. Someone should be seriously working on developing low-cost monitoring and demand response control products in the electronics industry for these markets, with an emphasis on ease of setup, ease of use, and more comprehensive and easy-to-understand user interfaces that continuously and clearly demonstrate user energy bill savings.

Bob Amorosi says

Chris Taylor says

Bob Amorosi says

No information however on how much their stuff costs per residential customer, and whether the participating customers bear any of the cost or whether it is all paid for by the utility company. I'll bet it's the latter because they do not show any retail information for consumers, and if correct many of the pilot projects will never go beyond pilot projects unless the German government steps in and allows large utility rate increases for all of their customers, or provides large handouts to the utility companies.

Don Hirschberg says

What I am concerned about is all the other stuff. Not my electric bill, a rather minor concern because the weather, not computer programs or exceedingly smart metering make a big difference.

Bob Amorosi says

Your electric bill may not be a problem right now for you, but just wait, rates are going to steadily climb to pay for all the hew renewable sources and the massive refurbishments needed for existing aging grid assets. I promise you your electric bill will become much more of a problem for your pocket book over the next ten years. Computer programs and load shifting encouraged by Time-Of-Use billing are recognized tools that consumers can use to minimize their bills. Consumer education is a secondary benefit from these tools that will show consumers how much energy they use for specific loads in their house and when.

Michael Keller says

There is simply no question that smart meters are being foisted upon the hapless consumer by elitist, half-witted and corrupt politicians attempting to “save the planet” by driving up the price of power, thereby reducing energy usage (and by extension, greenhouse gases). Ontario proves my point, in spades.

Utilities happily go along with the nefarious scheme because they can make more money by passing along the contrived prices created in the wholesale power markets, as well as the costs of unneeded, expensive renewable energy. The later is once again being pushed by the elitist politicians who are invariably socialists (that would be democrats in the US).

Unlike, say the telecommunications, power is not a free and open marketplace. Thus the whole idea of introducing “market-based” prices, as promulgated once again by the left, is complete nonsense.

Bob Amorosi says

You are absolute correct, a programmable thermostat can be the biggest tool for homeowners to help reduce their electricity bills. I'm sure many people who understand this already use one (as I do), I mean just look at the number of these thermostats on the market today which someone must be buying.

Your frustrations are well taken. There is no question that those of us who are already practicing load shifting and some degree of energy conservation (by using a programmable thermostat for example), are not being given any credit for doing so. The utility industry wants MORE consumption reductions from the entire grid, I assure you, and they know renewable sources are going to drive up costs and hence our billing rates.

They also know consumers won’t like the higher rates either. So their response is to actively participate in pilot projects, and to accept government handouts, that implement Time-Of-Use billing with smart metering, and any other hi-tech tools that might help the less technical customers (than you or I) get a handle on how they use their energy and how to reduce their consumption with less effort.

There is much backlash in the US already from consumers to the new smart meters rolling out. In California just yesterday the regulators permitted PG&E to allow disgruntled customers to “opt out” of smart metering, and have an old-fashioned analog meter installed in place of a smart meter. Nice eh… they don’t realize it yet but the opt-outs will pay higher utility bills with an old analog meter than they would with a smart meter. One reason being is that PG&E will have to set flat billing rates for these customers, and you can bet they will set them to a level that is sufficiently high enough to cover all their added costs to make truck rolls to install the analog meters, and the wages for the meter reader guys that must visit your house every billing period, and the added costs to handle these customers differently in accounting than their Time-Of-Use billed customers.

PG&E will have the luxury of data from millions of TOU billed customers on smart meters, and can easily calculate what their bill would have hypothetically been on flat billing rates to use as a base for determining the minimum flat billing rate for opt-out analog metered customers. Then they can easily bump it up to cover the extra costs above, maybe even more too. My point is all those analog customers won’t have any way of knowing because they won’t have access to TOU data to compare with, with no option of load shifting to reduce their bills either. I pity those in California who choose to opt out.

Len Gould says

Michael Keller says

A lot of the Washington republicans are not much better, but at least they offer an alternative to the dismal state of the once honorable democratic party.

Len Gould says

Also, i'd remind you that originally, the US was started as a fair and classless alternative society to the rigid class structure in Britain. Amazing how rapidly the super-wealthy have been able to brainwash you lot into accepting the existence of the most often undeserving upper class again.

Course it sounds like you've probably never thought such things through.

Don Hirschberg says

Len, you routinely discount anything you disagree with by requiring peer reviewed evidence being cited. Alas, the Jesus story cannot furnish anything close to the evidence you require. On the other hand we have far better evidence, indeed their very written words, of Greeks of four hundred years earlier. As far as I know Jesus wrote nothing. But never mind, we knew about right from wrong long before his time.

Oh, and I disagree with your mind-set about corporations (and much more) from which good things flow. I’ll say it again. We have too many people to allow solution to man’s problems. Arithmetic is unforgiving.

Len Gould says

Malcolm Rawlingson says

The cost of the useless gadget now adorning my wall is billed to me. It is such an advance on the original meter that I am now fully unable to determine the rate of my electricity usage by watching the speed of the rotating disc. Instead I am confronted with a digital number that appears to resemble a series of "eights". They do flash which I suppose reduces the consumption of the meter by a few milli-watts. That savings alone should knock out a few coal plants - at least in the minds of our politicians who are unable to distinguish between a milli-watt and a mega-watt.

What is particularly irksome is that the said useless item was made in Mexico no doubt causing great amusement among the nice Mexican folks that made them.

As a tool for reducing or controlling electricity consumption it is a 5 billion dollar bust. Fortunately I do not have large electrical appliances preferring to use natural gas for my large energy needs. Once I find suitable technology for converting natural gas to electricity I will be requesting disconnection of said useless device from my house. While I may still have to see it daily as I leave the house, at least I will have the satisfaction of no longer having to pay for it.

And as an added bonus - I can read the gas meter - it was made in Canada.

Malcolm

Malcolm Rawlingson says

Bill Gates is spearheading an effort through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to eliminate 12 treatable disease you speak of from the world. He notes that he is amazed by the complete lack of progress in the development and application of vaccines for many of these diseases since they were eradicated in the west. Note that it is Bill Gates (NOT our elected politicians OR religious leaders) that is doing this. We have allowed populations to live with leprosy when we know how to cure it. We have allowed poliomyelitis, small pox, TB and dozens of other diseases to continue to plague the world populations when we have known the cures for 60 years or more. So much for charity from the west. With "friends" like that the third world does not need enemies.

In short there is no excuse for what the west has allowed to happen other than we are all (including you and I) complete self-centred hypocrites and that includes every single western socialist and every single western conservative.

But, of course, using Don's pessimistic analysis the treatment of these diseases is a lost cause since everyone is going to die of starvation anyway as there are too many of us to feed.

Perhaps he is right. Perhaps we need to think outside the planet

Malcolm

Don Hirschberg says

Malcolm, while maybe a billion of us have an excess of food available there are 7 billion eaters. And we privileged are not all obese and I have never ever wasted or thrown out food.

I have observed people on food stamps in the checkout lanes. They often use two baskets, one with eligible stuff and one for ineligible stuff, cigarettes frozen lobster, fancy convenience foods. Even in the eligible cart I don’t see potatoes, dry pasta, dry beans, carrots, cabbage, house- brand bread, etc. - but these take some effort and a little knowledge to prepare. You want me to soak beans overnight? I wonder what percentage of food stamp users are justified.

You wrote:” In short there is no excuse for what the west has allowed to happen other than we are all (including you and I) complete self-centred hypocrites and that includes every single western socialist and every single western conservative.”

What nonsense. “Allowed to happen? “ Surely you don’t mean this. Item: After WWI the US shipped huge amounts of food to Europe, saved the Belgians from starvation. After WWII there was the Marshall Plan, perhaps the biggest act of humanitarian action ever- to name two.

Today the undernourished and those with bad health service are most often extremely poor, ignorant, and superstitious, have high birth (and death) rates and live in high crime situations. They are very difficult to help. Item: every day (not year) about 20,000 children die from diarrhea from contaminated water. Now a sanitary water plant is the answer we think of, that is usually impossible. What is possible and extremely cheap is to put a little bleach in a water vessel and let it stand. (We combat soldiers put a Halizone (spl) tablet in our canteen before refilling from a stream.) But few of the people who might be helped will take the trouble. Much enlightened effort to help is fatuous and alas so often a waste of money. I have talked to some wonderful former Peace Corps people who can relate heartbreaking failures in cases which they had once considered successes.

Bob Amorosi says

I must agree with you Malcolm because by themselves, the only thing smart meters facilitate is Time-Of-Use billing for the utility company. They don nothing by themselves to reduce your energy bill. I also sympathize with you that most people wouldn't know how to read them easily, the digital displays on them designed to cycle continuously between cumulative total kWhrs and other useful information for the utility company, they were never meant to be simple to read by consumers. Indeed not even utility companies manually read their digital displays, since the meters are networked wirelessly through an AMI network to be read electronically remotely by the utility.

Ontario has orphaned most of the 5 million smart meters by not ensuring utility companies equip them to interface to any in-home hi-tech tools for consumers to help them manage their energy bills.

Len Gould says

Len Gould says

Len Gould says

Don Hirschberg says

Thank you for the kind editing suggestion Len but I did NOT mean simply “uneducated.” Actually, when I wrote my description of the very poor I had in mind Malcolm’s comments referring to the world situation. But you seem to want to use your talents about US poor. The poor in the US usually have cars, color TV (often more than one) cable or satellite service, DVD players, refrigerators and freezers, micro wave ovens,automatic hot water and heat. Many own a house with A/C. A very large percentage of US poor are obese. This is off the top of my head. If I wanted to take the time I could tell you much more about the US poor.

A high percentage of Blacks are classified as poor in the US. Yet these people nearly always have access to the same schools as whites. But how these people are benefited by “free” education is dramatically different. Current figures are like this: Those Blacks who finish high school (i.e. presumably the best educated Blacks) test at the level of white 8th graders. These are very discouraging results. They are true results corroborated results and that is why nobody wants to talk about them. Where I said these people were “difficult to help “I was thinking of people such as sub-Saharans but it applies also to US Blacks albeit to a lesser extent.

Len Gould says

Bob Amorosi says

Unfortunately the electric utility industry with its heavily regulated monopolies cannot be disassociated from government intervention because governments control regulation, period. So Michael and Don, get over it, because until regulation changes, don't expect anything else than government intervention in the utility business. That includes doling out handouts to pay for anything new for all consumers, or alternatively substantial rate increases for all consumers to pay for them. BTW I should also point out it also includes DECIDING what policies and ultimately what the utility industry should be doing for anything new too....

Get the violins out to soothe your frustrations.

Don Hirschberg says

Anyway, I don’t think I have espoused any theories here. I have presented facts. Some of them might be wonky to you without in any way reducing their validity. Alas, there is a great supply of unpleasant things that are true.

I don’t want to be rude Len, but rather than sending me away, perhaps you could merely avoid reading my comments.

The test result data and what US poor own (above) can be found in recent columns of syndicated writers Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.

Len Gould says

b) Poor people own less that rich people therefore their situation is their fault?

Wonky.

Len Gould says

Don Hirschberg says

I find there are some people so convinced racial differences don’t exist that they are blind to their own observations. Item : Just a few weeks ago I read an article by a professor who claimed American Black athletes are not superior in any way to American whites – a myth he said.

I have never once seen a white man beat an American Black in a dash or hurdles race. Despite drawing from a pool 1/6th or 1/7th as large nearly all the multimillionaire NFL running backs are Black. I have seen good basketball games with ten Blacks on the floor at one time. What’s the random chance of that : 1 in 6^10 = 1 in 60 million or 7^10 = 1 in 282 million of seeing 10 Blacks on the floor. Does one need peer- reviewed evidence?

Cognitive testing is 100 years old and has for as many years been refined. What surprises me and adds credence is that tests of widely different design give such similar statistical results. (Spoken verbal, written verbal, pointing, pictures) There was a big issue raised some years back that American tests gave an edge to middle class American whites. That appeared to have been a valid contention in that Black scores were so far below white scores. So these tests were given to Korean children. The Korean children scored a bit better on the tests than American whites. Nevertheless the tests were revised once again to try to eliminate any bias.

As an aside it is cogent that North Korean children have average IQs exceeded by no country. Today these children are disadvantaged by almost any measure, and Koreans have been abused throughout their history. The Japanese are only now acknowledging that Koreans are not sub-human as they have traditionally considered them -perhaps to excuse their egregious treatment of them.

As to the similarity of all Homo sapiens’ DNA I would point out this similarity is common to all primates. Before we knew about DNA Homo sapiens knew they had viable young in all racial proportions. In a word we are the same animal. But so are English sheep dogs and Pekinese, and quite likely the wolf.

Some can object to what I write because it is statistical. Some can object to me calling man an animal. Objections noted. I hope I do not have to say again that I have no theory about race. But then I don’t have any theory about gravity yet I believe it (without peer-review) and abide by it every day.

Len Gould says

Malcolm Rawlingson says

That my good friend is a long long way off.

Malcolm

Malcolm Rawlingson says

People below the poverty line in North America are not poor they are relatively poor. To me poor is not having enough food to eat, having to walk 10 miles to get water, no schools to send the children to, no medical treatment available, no roof over your head. By that (much more meaningful) definition there are no poor people in North America....just people who think they are relative to everyone else.

Like Don I have had the misfortune to see people who I know are on welfare walking out of the beer store carrying a 2-4. I do not begrudge them anything - but please please please do not tell me these people are "poor"

Malcolm

Len Gould says

Len Gould says