Investor’s Business Daily editorializes:
No longer the stuff of science fiction, a little-noticed change in energy-efficiency requirements for appliances could lead to government controlling the power used in your home and how you set your thermostat.
In a seemingly innocuous revision of its Energy Star efficiency requirements announced June 27, the Environmental Protection Agency included an “optional” requirement for a “smart-grid” connection for customers to electronically connect their refrigerators or freezers with a utility provider.
The feature lets the utility provider regulate the appliances’ power consumption, “including curtailing operations during more expensive peak-demand times.”
Smart grid abuse predicted in Steve Milloy’s 2009 book “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.”
When I was forced to accept a “smart meter” I was told that it was to make sure that they could produce enough electricity during peak hours to prevent rolling brownouts.
I pointed out that I had a contract with them to provide as much electricity as I could pay for. If they started rolling brownouts or rolling blackouts in my area I would sue them for breach of contract.
If they need more capacity, make more. But they do not have the right to steal some from me if I am paying them for it.
Wow, there’s a concept! Come to think, the normal response to any shortage is to make more of what’s short.
Even if power reduction in peak times is a good idea, and it probably is, I want to make that decision myself and manage my own energy usage.
I already do that with my watering. My sprinklers run from 2 to 6 am, three times a week, when demand on water pressure is at its lowest.
It is also very likely, per your comment, that the cost of setting up the remote connection will be greater than the electricity shifted and the net will be a loss instead of a gain.
The only businesses that are ashamed of their best customers are bars and utility companies.
How about just eliminate the conservation regulations and get out of the way of energy producers? Let the market decide how cold we run our refrigerators. Too novel an idea?
The best answer to this is about a million lawsuits from those made sick by spoiled food in shut down refrigerators, (and it will happen). Sue the EPA, the refrigerator manufacturer and the utility companies.
In many places years ago before electricity came to rural America, people used the old Servel gas refrigerators. They used no electricity, instead they used a small flame like a glorified pilot light to evaporate the coolant and it would circulate naturally and cool as it re-condensed. Although they could not make ice, they were very reliable and long lived and were immune to power outages or fluctuations.
I don’t know, this does make some sense. If you can keep the fridge a bit cooler than normal before noon, and then let it warm up on its own a bit, from 2: pm – 5pm. we could cut peak use power a bit, This would be much more beneficial to saving energy than adding a windmill or solar.
However, the extra cost for a controllable fridge might not be worth the benefit. Cutting peak demand in ways that do not ruin our productivity is the only real way to use less electricity per unit of our output.
My first thought was something like they would have to pry the bottle from my cold, dead hands. Tbe post had no link so I couldn’t tell what EPA was trying to control, but it looks like it is time to attack these oens with constant and unrelenting ridicule.yd
I’m get happier and happier about being old so i’ll escape the full force of state controlled lives later generations will endure. But the worst thing is that future generations are being already brainwashed at schools to accept this as ‘normal’ and will be completely at ease with being number 34465476864522454789 in the United States of the World. The worst science fiction stories become reality.
I’m glad i lived in the best of times.