For your convenience! “GE Appliances Creates Home Energy Management Business”:
GE Appliances & Lighting plans to be the first major appliance company to provide a whole-home solution for energy management by going beyond the kitchen to provide insight into energy usage in the family room, the basement, the home office, and all other rooms of the house. From the GeoSpring™ hybrid hot water heater, Nucleus™ energy manager and programmable thermostats, to GE Profile™ Appliances enabled with Brillion™ technology and GE smart meters, GE is developing solutions to help consumers better manage and control their energy use and costs.
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“It makes economic and environmental sense for the world to better utilize the power we already generate rather than create more capacity to meet our escalating peak-power needs,” said McCalpin. “If we can better manage when and how we use power, we can control the demand without compromising people’s lifestyles. This is where global smart grid initiatives and GE’s new Home Energy Management products come into play.”
Where smart grid meets the home: To help manage the growing demand, and improve the performance of the nation’s electrical grid, utilities across the U.S. and the world are implementing smart grid technologies – including smart meters on homes. These new technologies can help improve grid efficiency and reduce electrical demand, particularly during “peak” periods (typically 2-7 p.m.). Reducing this peak demand will help limit the number of new power plants needed.
It’s estimated that 40 million smart meters, which allow two-way communication between the utility and the home, will be installed on U.S. homes between now and 2012.2 Among other benefits, these smart meters will enable “time-of-use” pricing programs that incent consumers to lower their consumption during “peak-demand” periods.
This consumer-driven demand response reduction could provide the largest reduction in U.S. peak demand, helping avoid consumption equivalent to the generation of 108 coal plants over 10 years.3 Playing a critical role in demand response, HEM devices could actually communicate with smart meters to automatically reduce power consumption of certain devices when the cost and demand for power is highest, helping consumers save without sacrifice.
Well, that’s one way to put it.
Another is, your appliances — designed in compliance with the green lobby fanatics — will tell you when you can and can’t use certain devices, for how long, and how.
Oh. And if you happen to work from home? Those “peak hours” include the hottest parts of the day. But don’t worry: being comfortable in your own home is a luxury, and we all must sacrifice if we’re going to save the planet from the scourge of its inhabitants.
Thank you, GE. There’s nothing I want more from my appliance manufacturer than for it to stay on at my home once the transaction for, say, a washer and dryer is completed. There’s nothing more thrilling to me than knowing that, when the government isn’t around to check on my light bulbs, my shower head, my toilets, and the amount of arugula I’ve got squirreled away to prevent childhood obesity, you, GE, will be there to throttle my energy use at “peak hours” — knowing, as you must, my energy needs better than I do.
And yes, I realize that — initially, at least — consumers will be able to “override” these factory settings. But as these “smart meters” begin recording your energy usage data as a kind of itemized list, don’t think that the EPA won’t ultimately be studying that data in the aggregate to find things to regulate, and new ways to “regulate” it based on what they’ll determine is your wasteful usage.
Tell me: what in the hell has happened to this country?
This is not the America I knew.
(h/t happy)
Mr. Drudge has a timely companion piece today
This is the future bumblefuck dreams of… what’s important to remember is that all this rationing technology is just gravy – all they really have to do to realize the dream is thwart new power plants.
Thisis what happens when the Govt doesn’t allow the building of power plants. California is a case study in this. If GE had the capacity, it wouldn’t need to think about bending customers over during “peak use” at the behest of Mother Govt.
Oh and that ass clown calling for resource rationing? He should be strung up like Mussolini.
This power management is being done for our own protection and if you sissy boys don’t like it then just don’t fly!
Wait, is that right or is that last weeks bitchnmoan?
(ahem)
…just don’t power manage!
there thats better.
It all started with that dagnab Victrola. Soon as them young folks was able to listen to whatever they want to whenever they want to, the whole world went to hell in a handbasket. It’s about time somebody with a lick of sense figured out how to put a stop to it.
</spiritual ancestor of today’s nanny-progg>
I guess if you’re one of the tools who think this is a good idea, the above sentence makes some kind of sense. To anyone who can still think properly, this is an idea that is fraught with peril. Not only is it idiotic in a sense that if the demand for something increases, you should increase the supply, but if you load-balance your energy production like this, you will still reach capacity eventually, and then you’ll be really stuck because any additional demand will completely crash the system.
Furthermore, why the fuck do these people think our energy use is any of their business? I use it, I pay for it. End of story.
You realize this is the goal, right?
It’s a double-edged sword. I mean, I like having a thermostat that lets me set different temperatures for various times of day, depending on whether I’m at home or away or sleeping. I’d run energy-intensive appliances at odd hours if it let me enjoy reduced electrical rates. But I want to do all of these things on my terms, or at least on terms that my utility and I can settle on.
So I’m not automatically opposed to “smart” energy usage and the tools that make it possible, though I draw the line where control is stripped from me. Fortunately, I can content myself in the knowledge that communication lines between my home and the authorities are very prone to “accidental” disabling, and that the EPA will be stripped of its control long before I am.
Provided we keep our eye on the ball, that is.
Except the line of communication is the power line, or wireless.
I’m afraid that, short of the next Congress having great big brass balls, the only option left is to water the Liberty Tree.
Squid is an optimist. I guess that’s a good thing. Me, I think we’re screwed even more than we were. This kind of thing will only end bad.
“Furthermore, why the fuck do these people think our energy use is any of their business? I use it, I pay for it. End of story.”
Why do you hate polar Bears?
You can make better use of what you have or you can have more, not both
/false dichotomy opposing progg thinking
Jeez, just substitute imposing for opposing there.
I hate polar bears because they’re big and scary and would be quite content to eat me given the chance.
And just how much is all this marvelous energy wise conservation crap going to cost consumers? It ain’t free.
I can see it now, for a mere $600 investment, you too can save a $1.20 per month on your utility bill.
For the children.
HEM devices could actually communicate with smart meters to automatically reduce power consumption of certain devices when the cost and demand for power is highest, helping consumers save without sacrifice.
I just want to know how having some object of mine “automatically reduce power consumption” (translated: “underperform its capabilities” by definition) when the “cost and demand for power is highest” (translated: “when I and most other folks would be using said device”) is in any way, shape or form “without sacrifice”.
Sounds like a fuck of a sacrifice to me.
There will be a big market in “block the communication between this device and the power company” magic boxes once these smart devices become ubiquitous.
Sort of like the idiotic 1st-to-4th gear lockout on manual tranny Corvettes. (To boost EPA figures, the car won’t let you shift from 1st to 2nd during ‘normal’ driving. Well, until you remove the fuse or otherwise disable the lockout solenoid.)
I wonder if GE is going to put the same restrictions on their commercial jet engines?
Here’s hopin’ your next flight is with Pratt & Whitney,
I think we need to ration whackjob environmentalists. This planet clearly has too many of them, we need to spread the love around.
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