Beware The Coming Smart Grid

I did watch the Superbowl yesterday. but not for the football because I didn’t care about either team – I watched for the commercials.  There were some pretty funny ones, Doritos put on my favorites.  There were two commercials that caught my attention and sent my “spidey-senses” tingling.  They were GE’s EcoImagination commercials.  If you follow my blog, you know I wrote about GE and their fearless leader Jeff Immelt and my less than enthusiastic support of the company.  GE stands to gain alot from the global warming frenzy that our new government, most of the world and the media are trying to whip up.  And now I know another way they intend to gain based on these commercials.  Something called the “Smart Grid” was mentioned in these commercials.  When I heard Glenn Beck mention the Smart Grid this morning and inform the listeners that he had some information to reveal to them that would be scarier than the socialism he has been talking about, I decided to do a little investigation of my own.

I started on the Department of Energy’s website: http://www.oe.energy.gov/ and clicked on the Smart Grid area where I was told that the grid: “The electric grid delivers electricity from points of generation to consumers, and the electricity delivery network functions via two primary systems: the transmission system and the distribution system. The transmission system delivers electricity from power plants to distribution substations, while the distribution system delivers electricity from distribution substations to consumers. The grid also encompasses myriads of local area networks that use distributed energy resources to serve local loads and/or to meet specific application requirements for remote power, village or district power, premium power, and critical loads protection.”

Sounds like a good idea especially based on the rolling blackouts New York and California have suffered in the past.  But there is so much more to this story between the lines.  I looked up something called the Federal Smart Grid Task Force and found the usual government departments a part of it like the EPA and different parts of the DOE, but it was a little unsettling to see Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense.  In the non-conspiratorial section of my brain, I thought, “My goodness if some outside entity gets ahold of this grid they could shut down America because everything would be connected.”  Thus the need for Defense and Homeland Security to be involved.

But what if the threat is not outside of America and were internal, say the government itself.  The Energy website also provides a guide to the Smart Grid, The Smart Grid: An Introduction. A general reading makes the whole project sound great, but if you let your brain let you go where my brain goes sometimes you will notice the following items:

*”Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) – is an approach to integrating consumers based upon the development of open standards.  It provides consumers with the ability to use electricity more efficiently and provides utilities with the ability to detect problems on their systems and operate them more efficiently.  AMI enables consumers-friendsly efficiency concepts like “Prices to Devices” to work like this”  Assuming that energy is priced on what it costs in near real-time –a Smart Grid imperative —price signals are relayed to “smart” home controllers or end-consumer devices like thermostats, washers/dryers and refrigerators –the home’s major energy users. (They will be connected to all your appliances!)  The devices in turn process the information based on consumers’ learned wishes and power accordingly.” (What if this were the government’s wishes?)

*The platform for this will be built on Google Earth which can now see our homes and us from anywhere.

*”The adoption of the Smart Grid will enhance every facet of the electric delivery system including generation, transmission, distribution and consumption.  It will energize those utility initiatives that encourage consumers to modify patterns of electricity, usage, including the timing and level of electricity demand…It will offer a two-way visibility and control of energy usage.”  (Two-way?!  That is them controlling your electricity usage.)

* The Smart Grid will exploit the use of green building standards to help lighten the load.  (They are telling the auto industry what to make, now construction will be told what to build.)

* The Smart Grid will be motivating, enabling real-time communication between the consumer and utility so consumers can tailor their energy consumption based on individual preferences, like price and/or environmental concerns.  (I’m envisioning a little box that sets off an alarm in your house when the price is going up or you are ruining the environment.  My folks already have a box like this in their home that was installed years ago that controls alot of their energy consumption based on their desires – what if that were in government hands?)

*The Smart Grid is green, slowing the advance of global climate change and offering a genuine path toward significant environmental improvement.  (And there is the global warming propaganda.)

I wish my brain would just function normally and I wouldn’t see the hidden dangers in all this, but can we really trust the government?  Especially now that the left is in charge and has so readily changed our country in only a little over two weeks?  We’ve watched what was just a global warming hoax become a means by which laws have been created here and around the world.  How much further is it before it is really for our own good that the government controls our energy usage.  After all as President Obama said on the campaign trail: “We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep ourhomes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership.”