Re: Smart Meters in communities
From: Valerie McIntyre (valerie333windsong.bc.ca)
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:57:33 -0700 (PDT)
Thanks, Hans. I appreciate your understanding of the smart grid and your
concern for our future energy needs. I have a couple questions for you:

Re: *"the grid must become able to shift electricity back and forth"
*
How will this "smart" back & forth shifting of electricity impact the health
and longevity of living organisms?
The biological risk aspect is missing from your analysis. As far as I know,
there are no *independent* studies showing wireless technologies are safe
and that's my main concern about having wireless routers and smart meters in
community, especially when we claim to be modelling sustainability.
Sustaining what? Currently, farm animals, whales, birds and bees are under
stress from wireless radiation, and we have rising rates of brain tumors and
childhood leukemia.

Re:  *" ... the introduction of the policies and reforms necessary to keep
this a livable planet."*

IMHO, the Smart Grid will have to get a whole lot smarter before it can
sustain a liveable planet. My hope for the future is not in the Smart Grid,
but in New Energy Movement inventions. We need to demand access to the
clean, cheap, harmless energy technologies that are being kept from the
mainstream market by vested interests.

 ... back to the building-consensus process.
I'd appreciate hearing about/from other communities engaged in this
discussion.

:-) Valerie



From: ehrbar (ehrbargreenhouse.economics.utah.edu)   Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011
08:34:27 -0700 (PDT)

Smart meters are part of the smart grid, which is the
electric grid of the future.  Renewable energy is
distributed, while fossil electricity is centralized.  The
grid therefore, instead of distributing electricity in a
one-way shower-like distribution from big centralized
producers of power to many consumers of power, the grid must
become able to shift electricity back and forth between many
so-called prosumers, who produce electricity with wind and
solar power and consume it for their home use.

Another feature of the electricity supply of the future is
the need for more coordination between production and
consumption of electricity.  For instance the defrost cycle
of the refrigerator, which uses a lot of power, should be
scheduled at times when there is an excess power in the
grid.  Many other examples like that, some of it is already
being done today with the scheduling of irrigation pumps for
agriculture.

For all this, the electric grid must be integrated with
modern information technology, you need smart meters and
smart applicances.  The smart grid is an electric grid which
at the same time acts as an internet for all the devices
that produce, consume, or store electricity.

Many electric utilities resist the introduction of the smart
grid, because they want to remain the sole suppliers of
electricity and they do not want to use this part of the
business to distributed small suppliers.  They are trying to
scare consumers by saying: if you have a smart refrigerator,
the electric utility can see how much food you have in your
refrigerator, and they will take your children away from you
if they think there is not enough food in the refrigerator.
This all is just scare stories, smart applicances are not
wired to check for food in the refrigerator but to optimize
the timing of electricity consumption, and all this can be
overridden by the consumer for a price.  These scare stories
are similar to global warming denialism, invented by the
fossil industries to retard the introduction of the policies
and reforms necessary to keep this a livable planet.

Hans G Ehrbar
Wasatch Commons, SLC UT

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