A smart electricity grid

Catching up on posting with some excerpts of things found of interest:

More than a century after Edison invented a reliable light bulb, the nation's electricity distribution system, an aging spider web of power lines, is poised to move into the digital age.

The "smart grid" has become the buzz of the electric power industry, at the White House and among members of Congress. President Barack Obama says it's essential to boost development of wind and solar power, get people to use less energy and to tackle climate change.

What smart grid visionaries see coming are home thermostats and appliances that adjust automatically depending on the cost of power; where a water heater may get juice from a neighbor's rooftop solar panel; and where on a scorching hot day a plug-in hybrid electric car charges one minute and the next sends electricity back to the grid to help head off a brownout

It is where utilities get instant feedback on a transformer outage, shift easily among energy sources, integrating wind and solar energy with electricity from coal-burning power plants, and go into homes and businesses to automatically adjust power use based on prearranged agreements.

"It's the marriage of information technology and automation technology with the existing electricity network. This is the energy Internet," said Bob Gilligan, vice president for transmission at GE Energy, which is aggressively pursuing smart grid development. "There are going to be applications 10 years from now that you and I have no idea that we're going to want or need or think are essential to our lives."

Hundreds of technology companies and almost every major electric utility company see smart grid as the future. That interest got a boost with the availability of $4.5 billion in federal economic recovery money for smart grid technology.

But smart grid won't be cheap; cost estimates run as high as $75 billion. Who's going to pay the bill? Will consumers get the payback they are promised? Might "smart meters" be too intrusive? Could an end-to-end computerization of the grid increase the risk of cyberattacks?

More here.

Sunday Funnies

Regular posting to resume eventually.

Rick Santorum's marriage counseling

A "Douchebag" finalist for certain:



And because you wouldn't believe it if I didn't repeat it, here's a partial transcript:

Number one, I think it's great that the president has a date night with his wife. He's a role model. He's a role model in particular, whether he likes it or not, in the African-American community.

And you have an African-American community, particularly in the poor inner city areas, we're looking at out of wedlock birthrates in three quarters to 75 percent (sic) of children being born out of wedlock. Marriage is an institution that's a bridge too far for too many African-American woman and is not desirable among African-American males.

That particular stereotype is a few centuries old: that black men are sexually deviant and irresponsible and thus to blame for the existence of the black underclass -- as opposed to, say, blatant structural racism, the lack of support for all poor people (black, white, red, men, women, children), a legacy of violence and discrimination, etc., etc.

But marriage is an institution that is "not desirable" for African-American men? Really?

Nice to know that social conservatives can profoundly embarrass themselves and the GOP even when talking about something as trivial as the Obama's date night.

Who is capable of topping that this week? It's only Wednesday ...