$317 Million for Smart Electric Meters? I don't think so.

This email is about Elizabeth Souder's article in the June 30, 2009 issue of the Dallas Morning News regarding Oncor's plan to apply for a stimulus grant of $317 Million from the fed to retrofit its electric meters with so-called Smart Meters. The article touches on a multitude of related issues in the process of reporting the latest maneuver by NRG, parent of Oncor, to grab tax bucks to underwrite its ongoing program to eliminate meter readers from its workforce and increase revenue via Internet monitoring of each households' use of energy. To add insult to injury, and ignored by all interested in this action: The collection, monitoring (use of) and resale of information to third parties as to consumer use of energy crosses over into the purview of the Federal Communication Commission who's job is to safeguard consumer privacy; it not the area of oversight by the Public Utility Commission, last time I looked.

-

Oncor is the electrical power transmission arm of NRG's triad of electric services in the State of Texas. It has already started and has in place a systematic Smart Meter replacement program in North Texas aimed at elimination of all but a handful of meter readers in order to do away with the cost of doing business using human workers to monitor the consumption of the energy it sells to end consumers on the grid. I.e., wages, insurance, fleet vehicle purchases and upkeep, field supervisors, communication gear, headquarters operation and maintenance yards for all the above, etc.

-

The temporary, one time expense of replacing the meters hardly qualifies as a move to create jobs in a new industy, when one contrasts this to the permanent reduction of their employee work force and capital support infrastructure in one fell swoop, on balance... The five minutes it takes to remove a retaining ring, pull out an old meter, plug in a new Smart Meter and input the old meters' watt reading and test it's comm link with the home office, and walk to the truck to dump off the old meter and another meter for the next replacement on the work order route, never to return... hardly qualifies as the announcement of a booming new job industry source. It practically takes longer to describe this mundane task than to do it.

-

Ms Souder's article also touched on the fact that NRG is interested in getting grant money to build a grid connection from the west Texas wind farm country to cities in removed areas of Texas. I am on record about my concerns regarding the expense of doing this when no data exists as to whether the "line losses" that occur over long distances warrant this expense. In addition there are no data that justifies building a grid from west Texas in view of the time of day probability of there being sufficient power available for more than local use during normal daytime periods when the wind is usually light. Below are two paragraphs that round out the broader issue of power lines for daytime power, written some months ago. Here is the link to the full blog article written and posted on June 20th. http://dfw-alt-e-caucus.blogspot.com/2009/06/wind-farm-power-grid-accountability.html

-

"I would like to see a standard made that adjusts for the actual (not announced, designed maximum) mean power output of mega-watt wind turbine farms. While we in the States are demanding truth in bail out and truth in banking, etc. I'd also like the truth about how much energy wind-farms actually produce between 11 am to 6 pm during summer when electrical demand is peak<ing> and at its highest need in our air conditioned, power hungry state. We are being asked to fund state bonds and national bail out funds to build a national and west to east state electric grid.. So? Just how viable will the need for distribution from far off wind farms be, when the demand for electricity is stretched to the limit during peak loads and existing wind farms in west Texas can't actually, currently, generate and supply the demands of their local towns and cities on an average day during daylight? <There is NO demand for night-time remote power; ZERO because traditional coal fired electric plants must stay on line to keep their fire bricks hot so they will not cool and crack even though there is a "no-load" situation every night for all the excess power capacity needed during air conditioned peak demand summer days.>

-

I'd also like to know why wind farms don't power water pumps to lift water from holding lakes up to higher holding lakes during the night when wind energy is excessive, and then re-use the stored water for hydro power during the day when demand for that energy is highest instead of discounted so oil companies can make mega million record profits subsidized by rate payers and state taxes? It seems to me that stored energy in the form of two and three level lakes using relatively reliable night time air flow to power the pumps for recharging them, are a relatively simple, profitable, no-brainer solution."
-

T. Boone Pickens has a state right of public domain mandate from Texas to build a power grid from the Panhandle to North Texas. His wind farms there just coincidentally will power water main pumping booster stations from the pumped out aquifer to water starved North Texas, too. Has anyone else noticed that pumping water out of that area will coincide with the disappearance of the source of that formally massive water source as the last of the glaciers in the Rocky's dry up and blow away http://www.green-metroplex.com/factoids/Glacier_Park.html forever in the next decade? Once the Ogallala Aquifer goes dry the dust bowls of the last century will be like a puff of a single cigarette smoker, in comparison to what will happen in the panhandle and states just east of the Rockys.

-

In point of fact I am known as a Wind Turbine Maven. However - Common sense is needed before just jumping in and building any other state and fed funded boon-dongles, paid from the public trough, don't you think?

-

Ironically, NRG, according to a prior DMN article, "Gets It." They are apparently building a solar generator plant to make steam to power turbines for peak demand DAYLIGHT hours only in the clear aired desert west. If memory serves, they are merely upgrading for more capacity out of their discretionary funds for future profit making venture capital reserves.

From the desktop of Warren Richardson   pro-active advocate
for conversion to energy alternatives and carbon footprint reduction.
Moderator of http://dfw-alt-e-caucus.blogspot.com/ and the

Webmaster of http://www.green-metroplex.com/ ... You are invited
to come see how cost effective, and even profitable, it can be to

                                                   go green!