How far is the Smart grid Going?

[lacajun]

http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.c...Management/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=87275

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[cranky108]

So smart grid is intended to take the place of coal power plants?

I guess if you are going to dream, dream big.

 

[SnTMan]

It's the "demand control" that does it.

 

[cranky108]

Don't you mean "goverment control".

 

[SnTMan]

Functionally, yeah.

 

[jmw]

Savana power presents this primarily focussing on remote meter reading but they say this will enable them to:

....start and stop service immediately without service calls.

and with smart switchboxes selectively start and stop different rings in the home?
Not simply to initiate supply to new property owners or cut them off when they leave maybe?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[cranky108]

Something like that was proposed, but the state did not like the idea, so it was forgotten.

The idea was that you purchase a 10 or 20 KWH card from your local store, and swipe it on the meter.

It was intended to reduce costs for poorer customers, by reducing the service calls, late fees, meter reads and billing costs.
Sort of like pay as you go cell phones.

But you would have the same problems with either of these with people who are really hot headed.

Really we had one customer who was so mad that we had cut him off, that he borrored the neibors chainsaw and cut down the power pole.

 

[jmw]

Prepayment meters (for gas electricity and water, Schlumberger did a water meter with a battery powered solenoid valve attached) are nothing new. They don't need to be "smart".
If the "smart meters" were only used to cut off people who don;t pay (not always easy because there are regulations in the UK about who can be cut off and who can't) or when properties change hands, fine but once you have that ability some one will always want to put it to another purpose.

PS Anyone who chainsaws a power pole when there are plenty of speed cameras in fully functioning order needs watching.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[JohnRBaker]

Speaking of the UK, years ago there were coin-operated water heaters installed resulting in a sort of 'pay-as-you-go' climate.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA

http://www.siemens.com/plm

UG/NX Museum:

http://www.plmworld.org/p/cm/ld/fid=209

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[jmw]

Someone over at Linked in has started a smart meter thread and one of the posts raises a new point: data security.
It appears they rejected them in the Netherlands in part because of fears that too much information on individual households was going to be accessible to the first hacker to access the system.
From usage patterns it would be easy, they thought, to assess which houses had lots of devices, and when they were likely to be unoccupied.
This lead me to wonder about the next generation Stuxnet/Duqu virus but one which, unable to easily target the central power distribution system computers could attack the individual homes in a mass co-ordinated attack and disrupt service by either switching everyone off or switching everything on all at once to bring about a brownout.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[KENAT]

I remember the neighbors coming around trying to 'buy' 50 pence pieces for the electricity meter on a fairly regular basis.

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