The Smart Grid Endgame

by Tony Chavira

Way back in the dark ages of October 2009, the Obama administration began a new strategic investment. Exploiting the economic collapse, the President was able to conjure up $3.4 billion for the first and simplest steps toward developing a “smart grid.” Earlier this week, he mentioned the project in passing, but I got the impression that the term fell on deaf ears.

Without any context, it’s hard to throw out terms like “smart grid” and expect that most people will understand how and why it’s absolutely necessary. And it’s amazing how quickly vagueness turns to misinformation. For example, lots of crazy conservative pundits have been pounding their chests and throwing proverbial shit at the idea that the government is going to begin banning incandescent light bulbs this upcoming January. I call these people crazy and liken them to apes because phasing out light bulbs isn’t really what their argument is about. According to them, by banning incandescent light bulbs the government is telling us what we can and cannot purchase. And yet, Republicans vote consistently to continue the ban on drugs and heavy military arms, and if that’s not government-mandated freedom elimination, I don’t know what is.

News flash, faux-libertarians: state, federal and local governments constantly use the expertise of professional engineers to make the country more efficient. Title 24 laws in California are currently being updated, requiring that new construction be greener and more efficient. The county of Los Angeles requires all new buildings to be LEED certified.

At the consumer level, the federal government requires a certain degree of energy efficiency from your car and household appliances. The very fact that you have to plug your i-devices into an electrical grid is proof that you’re not free from efficiency standards. Otherwise, you’d see a lot more competition: just imagine powering your iPhone with a pocket-sized diesel engine. Or powering your washer and dryer by shoveling coal into a steam engine. Some methods are just more efficient than others. Get over it. Watch this commercial for the Nissan Leaf and you’ll see what I mean:

The stupidest part of these government-interference rants is that the feds are only banning incandescent bulbs for their own use; complainers can still buy old, outdated bulbs to their hearts’ content. The real problem is that people are totally clueless about the goal. If you tell people that the government wants to save money and be smart about its energy use, most of them will get it. It’s a pretty relatable goal.

But we all know that solving the energy problem requires more than replacing everyone’s light bulbs. As we slide into summertime, more metropolitan areas are going to see “conserve energy” commercials, and most people are going to have to do things like turn off lights when they leave rooms to cut down on powers bills already bloated from blasting AC all day. Some savvier, techier people out there have taken their energy stewardship to another level and installed power meters in their homes to keep track off how much they’re using, even to audit their homes and maximize savings.

But even without a monitor, you can do the kind of energy auditing the government’s been doing since the power grid went up. It’s just three easy steps. First, figure out how you spend energy. If you live in Alaska, you probably need a lot of heating; probably a lot of cooling in Florida. Certain parts of the year require more lighting than others. Et cetera.

Second, compare monthly bills. If you spend no money on heating or cooling in April, and it amounts to a 30% price reduction from February, you can figure out how much it costs to heat your home.

Third, mix it up. Use a blanket on days where it’s cool but not cold. Try a month without watching television and see what it does to your electric bill. Leave on a night light and notice the difference in pennies. You will definitely see it.

This is only the vaguest, roughest version of monitoring your energy. Slapping sensors, meters and sub-meters on everything will guarantee that you know exactly where your money is going and exactly where you’re wasting energy. Maybe that idle computer or turned-off television is actually an electron-sucking power vampire. Maybe the 24-hour security system uses more watts than you expected. Or maybe fewer, and your neighbor’s been stealing your power all along. You never know till you install the meters.

Imagine a whole neighborhood monitored this way. When a city can see which neighborhoods need the most power at what times of the day/week/month/year, it can do its best to allocate resources as they’re needed. Power companies already do a version of this, and try to balance where energy goes in urban areas to avoid an ever-increasing number of rolling blackouts each summer. Once the system is fully digitized to maximize its own efficiency, the first step toward President Obama’s smart grid strategy will be complete.

Now imagine your appliances turning off when you start wasting energy. They are taking information from the grid, considering how much power they require, and selectively turning off to keep you from spending too much money, overloading your circuits, or triggering a neighborhood blackout.

Now imagine batteries installed everywhere. Your home has one and so does everyone else’s on the block, in your neighborhood, in the city. If your home’s in danger of losing its power, your battery turns on. If your neighborhood’s in danger of losing power, everyone’s battery turns on. And if the whole country’s power system is hacked by some evil super-terrorists, all batteries turn on and we continue trading/working/reading/ browsing facebook like nothing happened.

A national smart grid will ultimately allow even the smallest, most pointless device to plug into the wall and communicate with others across the grid. Since each has the ability to protect the grid, it cannot all be hacked and cannot all be completely shut down by cyber-terrorists. It’s like a human nervous system: just because one neuron dies doesn’t mean they all do. And if you get a concussion and knocked out, all the little neurons will still be working to put you back online.

Now imagine 50 years into the future. If the smart grid can be even partly powered by solar and wind, we will pay less for power while protecting against terrorists at the same time. Add on the electric cars we'll be driving (which will also communicate with the smart grid) and we’ll have a way to prevent funding physical terrorism as well.

President Obama’s plan is to fight off cyber and physical terrorism by forcing you to pay less for energy while never getting your power cut off. That is what a smart grid does. Now get on the boat already and buy some efficient light bulbs. God Bless America.

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