Smart Grid Scare – Moon of Alabama

March 12, 2009

Smart Grid Scare

Uncle $cam points to a scare story about the Smart Grid: Smart Grid: Government spying targets Rural America

Smart Grid is closely related to the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), and both programs are designed to spy on Americans. Even more disturbing than the purpose of these government-condoned intrusions into our lives is the fact that the Obama Administration feels that Smart Grid is so important that it had to be funded in the stimulus package—which is supposed to be used for emergencies only. What’s the emergency? Why does Smart Grid need to be implemented within 60 days of the bill passing?

Oh boy.

I have been working on 'smart grid' or 'intelligent grid' stuff for this company – a German electricity provider that is a leading force in alternative energy projects. In short: Smart Grid is a system to balance decentralized electricity production with decentralized consumption.

Today big electricity production plants generate electricity and small entities, companies and households, consume it. As daytime usage is far higher than nighttime usage a lot of expensive central generation capacity is only used part time. Another problem is that today's electricity distribution network has significant transport losses due to long distance balancing.

In future we will still have some big electricity production plants but also lots and lots of smaller and decentralized ones – be they from wind generators, photovoltaic systems on single home roofs or biomass generators on farms. We will also see innovations in energy storage especially for cooling, heating and for electric cars.

To optimize such networks one will want to provide some control instance that can coordinate the distributed generation side and, as far as possible, also the consumption side. Additionally local generation should be balanced with local consumption to lower energy transport losses.

Photovoltaic generation only works when the sun shines, peaks and droughts of wind generation are more or less unpredictable. Traditional air cooling needs a lot of electricity over the day, electric heating in the winter too. In average we therefore always keep a lot of overcapacity in electricity generation for which costs all electricity users have to pay.

Now imagine a cooling/heating systems that generates cold or heat over windy nights from wind generated electricity, stores it for some hours and releases it as needed in daytime. Then have a centralized control that manages that to minimize the total peak electricity generation and transport need. Imagine a system that is intelligent enough to control the future 100,000 electric cars in a city plugged in to reload between 10:00pm and 10:15pm in a way that minimizes their peak loading need. Without a control system all cars would start reloading immediately when plugged in and the peak capacity needed to handle that would be quite big. But if 10,000 cars start loading immediately, the next 10,000 half an hour later and so on, the peak need will be much less. With a 4 hour loading period per car at no time more than 50,000 electric cars would load at the same time. The peak capacity need would be halved.The price to load up would be less than otherwise.

To be able to manage that the electricity network will need an additional communication layer (this was my part) that is able to manage the decentralized items according to their needs.

There is nothing nefarious about that – the forming standards to do these things will be open. Of course such a system could get abused to snoop on everyone's electricity consumption habit. Every system can be abused. But we have laws or are at least supposed to have laws which prevent such.

And what has a smart grid to do with the National Animal Identification System which tags livestock animals from birth to death to be able to trace back diseases?

Absolutely nothing.

Europe has such an animal identification system using ear tags for about 20 years. When "mad cows" with BSE were found the system enabled the authorities to find the source herd pretty damn quick. Mandatory animal tags also disable farmers to evade taxes by selling unregistered animals. That is the real reason why some of them hate them. Why pay taxes?

There are many such scare stories out there about useful technology and effective government plans. It's good that Uncle $cam posts such stories here. There are really some issued out there to be paranoid about and he helps us to watch out for them. To sort them out is not always easy. But 'smart grid' and NAIS do not really belong into that category.

Somehow the U.S. seems to have more people concerned with such issues than other countries. I often wonder why that is the case.

Posted by b on March 12, 2009 at 18:34 UTC | Permalink

Comments

in my research i occasionally will go through military publications & in one a couple of years back there was an article on new technologies that could serve the military — i think it was a winner of a competition at one of the military academies — and one of the technologies was using power grids to detect weapons in neighborhoods. i’ll have to see if i still have it somewhere.

Posted by: b real | Mar 12 2009 19:25 utc | 1

one of the technologies was using power grids to detect weapons in neighborhoods.
Now that what be a real interesting application of physics – but what physics? I have no idea how that was thought to work.

Posted by: b | Mar 12 2009 19:38 utc | 2

Somehow the U.S. seems to have more people concerned with such issues than other countries. I often wonder why that is the case.
however beneficial systems like the one you are working on, b, there will always be folks like uncle and myself expecting said systems to exploited for “nefarious” ends. right now, saying there are laws that should regulate these systems is great, but in practice i don’t have a lot of faith in my “elected” leaders to uphold any laws or regulations.
anyway, the US is big country. maybe that’s why it seems we have more people concerned with issues like these.

Posted by: Lizard | Mar 12 2009 19:55 utc | 3

There may well be good things about a smart grid but one thing we know is that if something has an adverse potential for the citizens while potentially enhancing govt. power, it will be used for that end.

Posted by: Bilejones | Mar 12 2009 20:06 utc | 4

Posted by: Bilejones | Mar 12 2009 20:06 utc | 5

Interesting thread …
In Btitish Columbia, where I live, there are a large number of mountains and rivers, some of which are dammed to use for hydroelectric power generation.
The power authority can decide when to open the dam to produce more power, and when to let water accumulate in the reservoir. This allows them to buy power for local use from other sources when that power is cheap, and then sell surplus generated power when external sources are expensive, thus making a profit by “saving” power in the reservoir until it is most profitable.
There is an electrical engineer on duty 24 hours a day reviewing information on power sources and costs, and also carefully monitoring reservoir levels and rainfall predictions to maximize the return on the generator plants.
I’d be interested to hear what methods of power storage are being proposed in the smart grid project you are working on.
Note:
This Canadian province has also privatized much of its formerly government-owned power generation and distribution system. It was once the pride of the province, built half a century ago when money to finance the dams and transmission system was borrowed based on long-term water and power sales contracts to US areas.
Under NAFTA there is concern about irrevocable changes allowing privatization of both water and power once a single private entity trades in them, allowing “fair competition” from private entities.
Another recent development is that the right to generate power from smaller streams and rivers is now sold privately and not much regulated.
Finally, natural gas generation in BC is now controlled by Kinder Morgan. Richard Kinder is a Texas-based former Enron executive.
I’m not sure what the situation is in Europe, but here in North America power and water are a contentious issue, one which NAFTA and other agreements seem to have been created to exploit.

Posted by: jonku | Mar 12 2009 20:07 utc | 6

http://wwwBlueServo.Net is a program to let you idly spy on the Mexican border from your computer, useful for retired people on fixed incomes to boost their income, since in theory, you are supposed to receive a reward share of an drugs seized based on your tip, and that could be a hefty retirement for the right cocaine bust, except, like the poor around the world, those rewards and grants in aid always end up with middlemen.
It’s also good to remember that when video cam on your computer is on, they can look back at you while you v-chat with your pals, and if you’re Lime.netting, they can search your computer files while you’re blathering about Brittany showing her p*ssy.

Posted by: Cheap Charlie | Mar 12 2009 20:14 utc | 7

jonku: hello up there! here in montana, privatizing our energy companies was/is a huge disaster. contentious issues indeed!

Posted by: Lizard | Mar 12 2009 20:17 utc | 8

By the way, whatever happened to Power-Line Carrier (PLC) broadband? In the US I presume the telcos crushed it by dint of bribes to Congress. Seemed like a nice way to curtail the existing oligopoly.

Posted by: …—… | Mar 12 2009 20:19 utc | 9

Paranoia hasn’t let me down yet, and then consider that the US was founded on distrust of government.

Posted by: yuri | Mar 12 2009 20:34 utc | 10

Don’t know about all of Europe, but (at least) parts of Western Europe has privatized its energy supply (buying and selling power to consumers). Note that the actual infrastructure can be owned by some companies while other companies are allowed to use the infrastructure at a fee. A lot of the smaller Energy companies over time are either grouping together to form “new” companies under a new brand name, or they are bought up by bigger companies. This happens across European borders, resulting in Energy companies based in one country controlling the Energy supply in another country. This has worried some local governments.
This is just what I have observed over a period of a few years as a consumer.

Posted by: Eye in the Sky | Mar 12 2009 21:22 utc | 11

#9, I’m not sure that bandwidth-versus-RFI problems were ever economically solved for PLC.
However, bringing broadband to the boonies is part of the same bill.
That would be a good thing, I think.

Posted by: Obelix | Mar 12 2009 21:48 utc | 12

b: The deal is that the power use information will likely end up in the hands of law enforcement to find out if you’re growing marijuana indoors. And stuff like that.
Also, there is a whole segment of the US population that might easily see such information gathering as the prelude to enforced power rationing. Many rural Americans fear that any form of government-led environmentalism will threaten their basic rights to do as they please with their land, and will thus oppose such moves not on their merit, but based on this sort of fear.
Which turns them into tools, of course. Just like Uncle $cam.
I remember during the California brownouts, the ones caused by Enron price-gouging… I was talking to a relative in California who was sure the whole thing was caused by environmentalists. I pointed out what I knew at the time: That availability doesn’t go down that quickly to cause that kind of problem, only in one state, so it couldn’t be environmental laws making it harder. My uncle would have none of it. Obviously it was all to save some suckerfish somewhere, and now people were dying because they didn’t have air conditioning.
Haven’t talked to him since the truth came out. O well.

Posted by: Enoch Root | Mar 12 2009 22:12 utc | 13

@12 yeah, if they really want to spy on the goobers and their fatso militas, that’s the way to do it.

Posted by: …—… | Mar 12 2009 23:53 utc | 14

Yes b, the coordination of electric distribution certainly seems to be a benign and even useful step to implement with today’s advanced process and control technology. Optimization at first thought always seems prudent, a good strategy. But we all know that good doesn’t exist without an equal and opposite force, the negatives. How far will we go in allowing the minuses to dominate our souls just to obtain the benefits?
Of course such a system could get abused to snoop on everyone’s electricity consumption habit. Every system can be abused.
And in today’s political climate do you even suspect it wouldn’t be? It is absolutely certain. Anything that can happen, will happen; and that doesn’t just apply to fuck-ups in control system design’s.
National Animal Identification System which tags livestock animals from birth to death to be able to trace back diseases?
NAIS, as envisioned, would include all 12 of my wife’s chickens, each individually registered, to say nothing of her 9 guinea hens and two bee hives. The paper work, the bureaucracy, the equipment (chips) we would have to buy, how the fuck could we ever afford to comply. And our compliance would be MANDATORY. And it doesn’t stop there. The licensing of seeds, so close to perfected by the corporate kleptocrats, just let the wind blow their GMO pollen over our fence and their intellectual property rights trump our trespassing on my property of your genes rights. Then we can’t even grow our own food anymore but have to fit into the system well enough to be able to buy their GMO crap. Worse, long term genetic fuck-up of everything the planet has so freely provided us for the last four billion years in nurturing our ascendance to this level of intelligent hubris will take centuries if not millennia to bring back into balance and then maybe give another ‘intelligent’ experiment another shot at it.
The need for NAIS is in factory farms not small rural sustenance farmsteads. Get a grip they won’t stop (unless we stop them) until they control the economics of even the air we breath. Witness WATER. A small probably temporary victory for real people vs corporate persons.
Vermont is very rural and has a growing population of small independent farmers and gardeners and back to the landers existing in a voluntary web of local economics; the anathema to the corporate CEO’s model. The states small scale agricultural community has been experiencing an ongoing onslaught of attempts to undermine the small scale producers in favor of large scale operations for at least the last seven or eight years. Not that the large scale operations are very profitable. They are even more victims of the corporations but just don’t quite see it yet. Back during the avian flu scare (which I don’t believe is a moot point at all) I did a lot of research because of personal interests and became convinced that corporate agricultural entities are collectively concerted (in effect if not conspiratorial) in trying to end the competition of the small scale producers.
b, it’s not often I’d say this but this time I will. I think you are wrong in your ‘sorting out of issues’ in this case. Whether you are a paranoid or not you will still reap the effects of technologies not just ‘gone wrong’ but applied with obsolete and pernicious billiard ball mentalities.

Posted by: Juannie | Mar 13 2009 0:12 utc | 15

those are damn fine points, juannie. it’s certainly not paranoid to think that evil fuckers like anyone who draws a paycheck from Monsanto aim to benefit from undermining local food production, because controlling the food supply is a major component of controlling the population.
i’m glad uncle provides such a copious amount of links.

Posted by: Lizard | Mar 13 2009 1:11 utc | 16

Juannie-
Very nice post!
One thing to consider about such a system is; who “owns” the production of power from private property? Will it be like a mineral right, and could it be sold separate of the property?
This seems like this would be the corporate angle on it. Privatize the whole thing and charge customers not only for power but also when they wanted to do some thing that might decrease production, like planting a tree close to a house.
And in some future; methane collectors in every Lazy Boy chair sold.

Posted by: David | Mar 13 2009 2:04 utc | 17

?Will the pending carbon credits initiative pass through to the private home power generators, or will the utilities, forced to pay private owners who feed the grid, simply turn around and steal the carbon credits, so they net out zero, and in return the private owner generators get meter monitoring, automatically turning off their refrigerator and space heater at 3AM, because Joe City needs to get his Prius re-charged? Then to cover a loss of revenues for redirecting power to city electric vehicles, will our rates go up, but the rebates remain the same, and carbon taxes wipe out any income the private owner generators make on their 25-years-to-a-payout solar panel and wind mill pro-formas? It’s a suckers’ bet if you self-gen now based on a pre-carbon tax still flat rebate life-cycle. They’ll get your power and carbon credits, you’ll get the shaft on carbon taxes (and ‘climb the mast at 3AM’ task.)
It sounds “all to the good” green and huggy, until you realize they’re transferring those $100B’s we’re paying to the Saudis, into the National Department of Homeland Carbon Cap & Trade for Rural Re-electrification & Meter Automation bank vaults, and once Joe City realizes that his Prius doesn’t pencil anymore when he gets a carbon sales tax bill on the manufacturing, and higher electric costs to pay to DHCCTRRMA, then they got you. You can either drive a push cart to work, or tele-commute on Big Brother’s Department of Homeland Snoop Your Bandwidth, Power Bill and Bank Account.
This entire CC&T clusterf–k could be avoided by making Iceland the Global Aluminum Battery Supplier using their geothermal generators to turn bauxite into aluminum batteries, that you buy carbon tax free to “refuel” your car once a week or so like returning soda bottles for a deposit, but there’s no Ginormous Bureaucracy there. Never fear, Obama doesn’t believe in Malthus! We are all safe in the arms of Jesus!

Posted by: Clarence Darrow | Mar 13 2009 2:40 utc | 18

CD 18) For the inevitable smart aleck who has never heard of aluminum batteries: http://www.instructables.com/id/SI9EIU1FB7FYOG7/
“The ship’s 200 aluminum batteries contain about 50 GW.h electricity when fully loaded, and deliver power to the national electric grid for 20 to 25 Euro per MW.h (substantially below the current residential rates of 45 to 50 Euro per MW.h).
What about US? The US electric grid uses 97 quad-BTU’s of electricity per year.
1 BTU = 2.9307107 × 10^-7 megawatt hours, then
97 quad-BTU’s = 2.84278938 × 10^13 kilowatt hours = 28 x 10^6 GW.h
So with only 1,758,714 giant aluminum battery ships in continuous transit, ok, extra ships to offset the 6 day transit time, so with only 2,044,643 giant aluminum battery ships plying the Atlantic between the US and Iceland, we can meet today’s energy demand, although not the electrical demand once everyone converts to Prius’,
and then the electrical grid will be overloading by more than 100 times capacity.
But we could do it!! It takes the US ship yards about one year to build a ship that size, with a crash program, we could completely eliminate Saudi oil by the year…
206477 AD !!!!!!! Just over ten times longer than humans have existed!!!
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/aeo02/conf/pdf/hutzler.pdf

Posted by: Hut Zler | Mar 13 2009 3:02 utc | 19

I think its interesting the chips for the animals was mentioned with reference to the smart grid. what most people dont seem to know, is that in the stimulus package obama pushed, is a provision to purchase millions of chips to help regulate things like energy use, water use, gasoline use, and all that info collected by the chips, which are imbedded in humans, tied into your bank accounts to help you pay for what you use. no more money, a cashless society, cant buy or sell without a chip in your wrist. kind of sounds biblical…

Posted by: hickfromthesticks | Mar 13 2009 6:11 utc | 20

Smart Grid and Smart Wires have intrigued me since I started getting into alternative energy production on a personal level.
I think a distributed generation system which is not just hub-and-spoke, but which is capable of lateral transmission, is more efficient. With future proliferation of distributed generation, balancing the ebb and flow of usage and generation will be critical. Also, Smart Grid does not have to be active, it can be passive and unrelated to central computerized control. Here is a reference I found helpful.
http://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/iq9bO_1Ib0rRuH_ve0A2jA/Divan-20071102-GCEP.pdf

Posted by: Evan Wilson | Mar 13 2009 6:37 utc | 21

anyway, the US is big country. maybe that’s why it seems we have more people concerned with issues like these.
Maybe the problem with the U.S. is the same problem that occurred with China and the U.S.S.R.
It’s too big. A government organization can’t get too big, or else it grinds to a standstill under bureaucratic overhead, infighting, and competing interests.
But the number of people in the U.S, and the geographic size, means that we have a very small number of people managing a little more than half of an entire continent.
So the reason so many folks in the U.S. mistrust government initiatives would be because so many people in the U.S. are shut out of the decision making process —
which means most folks are only policed, and have no say over the policing —
which means that there are a lot more people in the U.S. living outside the formal governing system than there are in smaller administrative areas, like Britain, France, or Germany.
Maybe the solution to the U.S.’s problems is breaking up the Union and giving a lot more power back to local governments.
As much as i hate Bush and the Limbaugh crowd, i always hafta give a nod to their rhetoric. It’s just so damn unfortunate that all their supporters are too stupid to see it’s just smoke and mirrors.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Mar 13 2009 7:09 utc | 22

I’ve started feeling more and more like a redneck lately, and reading a story like that just makes it worse. To think that everything you do can be monitored is horrifying to me, but I’ve always shrugged it off thinking, “Oh, well, the infrastructure to put such a system in place would take forever to build, so I don’t have anything to worry about. They’re just talking crazy.” Then I find out that the infrastructure is already either in place or being put in place, and I’m about ready to crap myself.

Posted by: IanTheGreat | Mar 13 2009 8:33 utc | 23

Hut zler’s comment is more about wasting time than anything else. there is no reason why ALL energy would have to be transported from Iceland aboard ships. Are all the rivers supplying hydroelectric power going to suddenly dry up? will the nuke plants run out of uranium? ALL the coal and ALL the natural gas gone? No wind? All gas and diesel gone too?
trying to blow smoke up my ass by posting a bunch of calculations and linking to a battery that has not even been built irritates me.
it aint funny.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 13 2009 9:43 utc | 24

“The state takes power by yards and returns it by inches”… Is a comment David wrote a while back…
However, I respectfully disagree. The Repressive State Apparatus (RSA)is an induced non- static labyrinth for which there is no string, of course, unless you have wealth, power and money. It never, ever, relinquishes power not even an inch. Much like the thought experiment of the ratchet effect as has been spoken of on MOA numberious times.
RSA is rule by thuggery, by fiat, and by raw power. The idea of ‘checks and balances’, is just that, an “idea”. In short, a myth, having its own aetiology; Institute, institution, institutionalization.
Having said that, as with most of my posts, I post them for edification , amusement or both. It is up to the reader to determine for themselves the value and intent. And while I am often less pragmatic than our host b, and others, I am aware, in addition, as are yet, others, in the belly of the beast, in that my own hermeneutics are as honest as I can be and that others here along with me seem to be Masters of Suspicion as well. I mean we have spent years here exposing, exploring and deciphering the the machines of loving grace. I, strictly speaking for myself am okay with being thought of as ‘that one’ mostly because I have seen and had first hand experience with my own reaction to it; the dehumanizing monolith we call the machine, the coercive power of law, Federal, State and Government. Many of my favorite posters here are heroes of suspicion too.
I wasn’t going to reply to this post as the point is moot. But I have noticed the recent calling out and antagonism b has had with a few posters here, including, but not limited to Myself, Malooga, Monoclyus, lizard and others. Just an observation.
When b says, “we have laws or are at least supposed to have laws which prevent such.” I question if he truly understands, American power, The Fed, the State at least with regards to American Western law sees itself as the re warder and punisher giver and taker of power. A demagogue.
The State as God. And that god wants control from alpha to omega and everything in between.
As Gurdjieff said, “Fairness? Decency? How can you expect fairness or decency on a planet of sleeping people?”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 14 2009 8:08 utc | 25

this North American Union article at dissident voice. sure feels like the noose is slowly tightening. one glimmer in the article: that states asserting states rights could slow the process.

Posted by: Lizard | Mar 14 2009 19:40 utc | 26

@Uncle $cam – @25 – I did not mind your post at all – indeed I value all your posts and click most of your links too. The post above was an issue I could say something about because I have experience with it, and maybe gained some insights, so I took it on.
We can all push for alternative energy and decentralization of energy production and less general use of it but what does that mean when we do not implement the tools that make this possible?
Is the “government” the enemy? Yes if you are libertarian, Sometimes if you are somewhere in the middle. On the other site Malooga (and Debs and maybe others) accuse me of not being socialist enough. How are they going to implement socialism without a strong government?
I miss them.
This site has from its start carried voices from the Ron Paul libertarian side to the Marxist side and I have always, I believe, stayed in the middle and allowed all voices (excluding crackpots and spamers).
Recently I felt that I was pressed to be somewhere else than where I belong and that made me state my position clearly.
I am a social democrat in the historic sense (not in the sense of the current German party named “Sozialdemokraten”). I am for a reasonably powerful state that can achieve good for all but also for a market based economic system and libertarian freedom wherever possible without doing harm to the other aims.
Utopic? May be. But other ideas presented here are too.

Posted by: b | Mar 14 2009 20:23 utc | 27

b, I have not interpreted any posts from you as antagonistic toward any of our regular posters though I have read you disagreeing with or arguing your position. My experience is that you have always stayed in the middle and allowed all voices even during some of the most heated interchanges. However I’d like to continue this discussion because I believe it vitally important to our long term, maybe even short term well-being.
On this subject while I respect your opinion, an opinion I would have agreed with in my years as a industrial process control engineer, I now ardently disagree.
We can all push for alternative energy and decentralization of energy production and less general use of it but what does that mean when we do not implement the tools that make this possible?
The smart grid does not nothing to help implement either alternative energy, decentralization or less general use. The grid is necessary and economically viable only for the large scale centralized power production and distribution schemes. Sure I could put clever digital control modules to monitor and control my home usage of on-site generated power but why bother. Over my lifetime it would be a hell of a lot more sensible for me to develop the habit of turning lights off and extend that common sense practice to everything in my life. The essence of less general use of.
The government is not just an enemy to me as a libertarian or someone in the middle. There I might be more inclined to experience such but the government as it now exist is based on a philosophy of dog-eat-dog/selfish-gene/social-Darwinism/cutthroat-capitalism and total domination and subservience. This applies even to the minions closer to the emperor even though through a combination and perks for a job well done plus a great deal of denial and repression of one’s real human virtues, may make life seem better. The further away the worse it gets. As Uncle$ indicates, the thuggery is also part of the competitive ethos at the top and giving an inch is indicative of weakness. The advantages are just too great and any softness/humanness is a liability. The most successful thugs at the top of the pyramid are most certainly psychopathic. They have to be to get the edge. If we avoid this realization we’re a really weak opposition.
To not see the eventual use of the smart grid as an inevitable surveillance/control technique in the emperor’s growing arsenal of WMD (Weapons of Mass Domination) is basking in the ill conceived consolation of unwarranted hope. In my (in this case informed) opinion.
I too b, miss Malooga (and Debs and maybe others) (I’d definitely add Mono to the list but there are many others as well) and I hope if any of you are lurking you’ll check in. While Unc$ may post for edification, I lurk and read her for that and most of you are quite valuable to that end for me.
as i post this, nice to see you again Mono.

Posted by: Juannie | Mar 14 2009 22:42 utc | 28

“…nice to see you again Mono.”
Uh… thanks. Good seeing you, too. Did I go somewhere?

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 15 2009 1:03 utc | 29

Scares the hell out of me. This shit will end-up causing a revolution. These dickheads just keep pushing on our freedom.

Posted by: Don | Mar 15 2009 1:37 utc | 30

Back to Main