Posted on 09/29/2009 2:59:53 AM PDT by Cindy
A 90-page document released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released on September 24 proposes 77 standards for smart grid development. The report also detailed 14 areas that the government agency will prioritize in order to facilitate development.
Utilities, regulators, and vendors have been waiting for this release from the NIST. The report details specific standards that utilities and developers will be expected to meet in their smart grid deployment. The institute will continue working on cybersecurity standards which should be released by the end of the year.
The NIST began working on a set of standards earlier this year in order to encourage cohesive smart grid development in the United States. A process that normally could take several years has been compressed into a few months.
“At stake is America’s energy future and the economic competitiveness of our nation,” said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as he unveiled the NIST report at this week’s GridWeek conference in Washington D.C.
The report is now up for public comment for 30 days. It is hoped the framework will eventually become a testing and certification process that all smart grid technologies deployed within America will be expected to meet.
Utilities and developers alike are certainly scrutinizing the report as their future will depend upon adhering to it. Transforming the country’s power grid is a mammoth effort – there are some 5.4 million miles of transmission lines that connect 22,000 electricity substations and approximately 130 million mostly conventional electric meters.
(Excerpt) Read more at smartmeters.com ...
They have 4.6 billion to come up with some.
The utilities have a point, that peak hour electricity does cost more. But that's just the nature of the beast, with daily, weekly and yearly cycles in use. Doing the smart grid thing so we can force everybody to swelter in unison in August is almost French, in that we'll have the old folks dropping dead every August.
Actually, I think its more like preventing cascades like the one that blacked out the the North East. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I would have called it a “Robust Grid” rather than a smart grid, but there ya go.
argh...
Just like with the labeling of ‘green’ anything, the use of the term ‘smart grid’ sounds wonderful. Why would anyone want to continue with the old (we’re told) dumb grid when you can have a smart one?
We’re also told this is to give ‘me’ more control of my energy use. Hogwash. I have full control of my energy use now... and I like it that way.
Ok, I know why the politicians use simplistic, evasive terms about what they want to do to you. And I understand why the state-controlled-media echoes those remarks and denigrates those trying to warn us about the program. But what I don’t get is why normal folks hear ‘smart grid’ and just buy into it.
At this point the gov’ment has NO credibility. How can a system that can monitor/control down to the individual device be put in and save-you-money without a huge up-front cost and produce savings without limiting your access to electricity? Stupid, stupid people. Evil, deceitful politicians.
I am currently staying in an apartment in Stockholm, Sweden. I have zero control on my thermostat. The heat is set by “the building” and it never goes above 71 degrees.
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I won’t live in a country that like that, I just won’t.
You may not have noticed, but the utilities have already fixed that problem. They've been trying to make the transmission grid continually more robust for 100 years or so, and pretty much getting a good balance between growth, cost and robustness.
You won't see large scale blackouts again until the load grows to the point that the electric utilities can not support the peak load because the government won't let them build enough plants.
At that point, the only choice is rolling blackouts. The smart grid just turns off Grannies AC so she dies in the heat so that the rides at Six Flags can keep rolling, or some other equally ugly tradeoff.
Oh yes there is. There is technology for ethernet over power lines, which would allow the power company to provide a control channel into every home. All it takes at that point is introducing any of a number of home control systems. And the big suppliers have done this, but in a much more complete way than my simple example.
Siemens describes their smart grid solutions as including tricks like turning temperatures down in a freezer to store cold so the freezer needn't run while power is shifted elsewhere. This is a complete control system, from generator to consumer.
http://www.usa.siemens.com/answers/features/usa_answers/us/en/pdf/smart_clever_en.pdf
Now, the technology doesn't exist in your house at the moment, but the idea is to mandate it in the future, so that you won't be able to sell a house with non-smart-grid furnace, ac, or appliances.
FirstEnergy Bulb Giveaway To Cost Customers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2356668/posts
that they will claim force their hand. We will here the very real talk of doing this for the ‘greater good.’ I am already hearing FirstEnergy trying to explain this as a government requirement. Thousands have contacted the Gov. and the Ohio PUCO over this silly little light bulb. Can't imagine what happens when they try the smart grid stuff.
To be provided for each of the following constituencies:
- Congress
To sponsor coordination and cooperation among federal agencies and power industry stakeholders in the Smart Grid effort to:
improve reliability and efficiency of the electric power system, and to reduce adverse environmental impacts
promote customer participation in demand response and other programs, and have greater control over their electric energy usage
increase the number of renewable energy sources
http://collaborate.nist.gov/twiki-sggrid/bin/view/SmartGrid/H2G
...have greater control over their electric energy usage, sounds like that is the customer right? It is under the Congress heading and if you read further down the collaboration page you find an interesting statement regarding consumers,
“Minimize lifestyle impact to accommodate demand response,” and “- Minimize impact of smart grid (demand response) on lifestyle.”
This whole energy Independence thing through draconian controls is not going to work. The system needs more electricity producers and appears to go unaddressed in the entire document.
Isn't that in the Cap & Tax bill? I know I read that somewhere in the massive documents they've been trying to push through.
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