April 28, 2013
When the government can turn off your household appliances....
"The National Grid is demanding that all new appliances be fitted with sensors that could shut them down when the UK’s generators struggle to meet demand for electricity. Electric ovens, air-conditioning units and washing machines will also be affected by the proposals, which are already backed by one of the European Union’s most influential energy bodies."
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34 comments:
Can't have the serfs using power that the Elite might want.
An expansion at the Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant in east central Georgia, USA, for Units 3 and 4, is scheduled to be completed in 2016 or 2017. The two new Plant Vogtle reactors represent the first nuclear power construction in the United States since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
sssshhhhhh......don't tell the tree-huggers!!
I love the part about electric ovens and air-conditioning being covered. Throw in refrigerators and heating and you've got it.
Makes it that much easier to thin out the herd. You can even target specific areas or groups.
The next step would be putting "Arbeit Mach Frei" over every doorway.
I think Obama encouraged this early in his tenure. He called them "smart meters".
I think people in the UK felt a sense of bonding for a common purpose during WWII, and so now crave a sense of privation.
There'll be an interesting effect when the all-clear is sounded and 50 million refrigerators turn on at once.
They haven't thought that part through.
I could see having a remote shutoff on air conditioners if they're really that hard up for generating capacity. But refrigerators? What on earth are they thinking?
National Grid is a private corporation. So it isn't the government doing the turning off.
This reminds me of the intro to the old TV show, The Outer Limits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CtjhWhw2I8
This is a perfect procrustean solution to a problem that the government created by mandating the use of “green” energy.
UK = third world country.
Government won't limit spending or taxing, but they'll certainly limit electricity.
This is also part of "smart grid" thinking here.
This is the price the UK is going to pay for depending on undependable wind power instead or coal/gas plants.
They will pay lots more and have too little power at the same time...
The only business that should be allowed to tell you have had enough and can't buy anymore is the bar business.
All Your Appliances are Belong to Us.
Hey! The National Grid shut off my pressure cooker!
Can't have the serfs using power that the Elite might want.
this.
We have the "flo-budi" system fitted here in South Africa, it works by remotely regulating the waterheater/geyser. My electricity account has been halved, which is nice. Not so nice is when they forget to switch the waterheater back on...
MG&E here in Madison offered a similar program when we moved into our house (with central A/C). For a cost savings -- I don't recall what -- you could have something attached to your a/c unit that would shut it down if demand outstripped supply. We signed up, but we replaced the a/c a couple summers ago, and the device is gone now.
A bit different than the UK program.
This is great.
As you lay there dripping sweat and wishing you could have a cold glass of water or beer, just lay there and think of...well....the polar bears!
But refrigerators? What on earth are they thinking?
When I lived in England in 1976, my family was the only family in a village of 3,000 people who owned a refrigerator. Everyone else bought fresh meat and vegetables everyday. There were two butchers and three or four green grocers in the village.
One of the most visible changes in England as their standard of living has gone up is the disappearance of butcher shops and green grocers, and the growth of supermarkets.
Remember when William F. Buckley said "a liberal is someone who is determined to reach into your shower and adjust the water temperature for you”?
You can't even do parody anymore.
This comes from the EU in Brussels, and is what they want for all of Europe (and then the rest of the world).
There are more effective ways to gain political power and influence than to start shooting wars.
The UK needs to turn of their windmills and other "renewable" technology, replace them with technology capable of servicing a base load, and which can be reasonably isolated from the environment.
They should probably address excessive legal immigration, and unmeasured illegal immigration. The people of the UK are poorly served by policies designed to displace them at work, school, and throughout society, and also place undue pressures on their electric grid.
There are no renewable energy technologies. There are only renewable drivers (e.g. solar, wind, oil). The technology used to convert potential or kinetic energy to a useful form is not renewable and does cause environmental disruption during recovery of the raw resources, processing, manufacturing, and in actual use.
That said, since the concept of “green” energy is a myth, even within the broad range described in marketing terms, it would be advisable to judge each technology by the character of its content and application-specific value, and apportion their use accordingly to its merit.
A "smart-grid" is just another way of managing a self-imposed artificial energy scarcity for ideological reasons. The Watermelons would have nothing but windmills and mirrors and let us sweat/freeze all for the greater good--all to save Gaia, of course.
I keep telling folks, the only hope for Britain is for the people to rise up and pillage and burn Oxford, Cambridge, the University of London, and the other intellectual pest holes that have infected the country. Henry VIII versus the monasteries would be a good precedent to emulate.
The first salvo was the 'smart' grid. Smart meters on your homes and business. Now it's the electronics that talk to the smart grid in your home. The tendrils of government are everywhere. They are ensuring that you never, ever, come against them. They can use whatever excuse they want, but we all know why they are doing it. It's to shut you down. Period.
Well, if the alternative to turning off your appliances briefly is leaving a lot of people entirely without power, there's a certain logic here. That said, I'll believe the "briefly" part when I see it, and not before. Messing around with devices meant to keep food at safe temperatures sounds to me like a recipe for food poisoning.
And the "we can turn off specific appliances in your home whenever we think it's wise" part is double-plus creepy. Yes, right now they can cut off all your power if they think it wise, but they're rather unlikely to do that if they can help it, because it will seriously piss people off, and even Brits are still, in extremis, capable of being nasty when seriously pissed off. This is designed to be rather a mild annoyance, like all those hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras. They'll get used to it.
Yes Methadras, and worse, "smart-grids" are EXTREMELY suspictible to cyber-warfare, i.e., they are "brittle" in that once someone gets within the all-encompassing digital domain (and one only needs to penetrate once--to break one password) they can go anywhere--as opposed to multiple "stove-piped" systems connected by analog communications. As such they are vulnerable to cascade/"snow-ball" effects in a way that stove-piped systems are not.
What is more interesting is what is going on with Nest smart thermostats in Texas. At least they throw the consumer a bone
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/gigaom/articles/2013_04_22_nest_unleashes_the_power_of_its_smart_thermostat_with_data_driven_services.html
A more detailed spin from Nest
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/513961/nest-thermostat-slays-peak-power/
I suppose building a few more nuclear power plants is beyond their imagination. I suppose they could go one further and build a number of coal fired plants. Then resurrect Arthur Scargill. That will make the Margaret Thatcher haters happy.
campy: Can't have the serfs using power that the Elite might want.
I once lived in Bananarepublica. Electrical shut-downs were the status quo, with power being unavailable 4-6 hours/day. But I had the good sense to rent a house in the Big Man's neighborhood, so my abode was never without juice under normal circumstances. When nature, rather than incompetence, curtailed power delivery, my neighborhood was back online in double-quick time, when others often went weeks without power (or water).
Coming soon to a country near you, so I thought y'all might appreciate the helpful tip.
cubanbob said...
I suppose building a few more nuclear power plants is beyond their imagination. I suppose they could go one further and build a number of coal fired plants. Then resurrect Arthur Scargill. That will make the Margaret Thatcher haters happy.
The current "PLAN" is to shut coal plants down, go all wind and triple energy bills.
good luck with that....
This is a perfect procrustean solution to a problem that the government created by mandating the use of “green” energy.
Glyn Willmoth
To socialists, the answer to problems is always the same: more government control.
Trey
Hey, they are arresting housewives in Illinois who try to block installation of smart meters in their own homes and the Texas legislature is considering laws that make smart meters optional and voluntary.
This is Fourth Amendment stuff in the US of A.
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