Power Rationing & TOU Pricing Is Coming Soon!

Comments made 3/1/2011 in the UK by Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid (based in the UK; National Grid also operates in the eastern USA including Mass.; New Hampshire, Rhode Island and upstate NY from Syracuse toward Albany & into the north country, and probably other areas of eastern NYS)

From the internet, 2 sources:

Steve Holliday, Chief Executive of National Grid plc, is arguing the case for a £200 billion ($320b) investment in the new smart grid. This technology allows power to be rationed at peak times for selected customers (probably those least able to pay). £200b is a large figure – enough to keep Mr. Holliday in bonuses for many years to come. And it might be a surprise to learn that the National Grid would be one of the principle beneficiaries of the proposed investment.

Don’t count on constant electricity under renewable energy, says UK electricity CEO

Electricity consumers in the UK will need to get used to flicking the switch and finding the power unavailable, according to Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, the country’s grid operator. Because of a six-fold increase in wind generation, which won’t be available when the wind doesn’t blow, “The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It’s going to be much smarter than that.

“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”

Families would have to get used to only using power when it was available rather than constantly, said Steve Holliday, chief executive of National Grid. Mr. Holliday was challenged over how the country would “keep the light on” when it relied more on wind turbines as supplies of gas dwindled.

Holliday has for several years been predicting that blackouts could become a feature of power systems that replace reliable coal plants with wind turbines in order to meet greenhouse gas targets. Wind-based power systems are necessary to meet the government’s targets, he has explained, but they will require lifestyle changes.

Under the so-called “smart grid” that the UK is developing, the government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose. Governments may, for example, decide that the needs of key industries take precedence over others, or that the needs of industry trump that of residential consumers. Governments would also be able to price power prohibitively if it is used for non-essential purposes.

Smart grids are being developed by utilities worldwide to allow the government to control electricity use in the home, down to the individual appliance. Smart grids would monitor the consumption of each appliance and be capable of turning them off if the power is needed elsewhere.

Comment on Holliday’s comments:

And this guy Holliday gets paid to spew this poppycock! How could any consumer possibly accept this trash? Holliday needs replacement quicker than NYPA’s Richie Kessel. (Al Isselhard)

Note Steve Holliday’s wonderfully creative use of the word “smarter”. In the old days, it used to mean positive things like “more intelligent”, “better dressed”, “sharper”, “quicker”, “wittier”. In Holliday’s Newspeak, however, it means “rationed according to the whims of Big Brother.”

That consternation from solar panels is as nothing when wind power is concerned. The wind can and does die down suddenly over vast geographic expanses, causing utilities to lose up to 99% of the wind power they had expected. As worrisome, the wind can just as easily rise up unexpectedly, overwhelming the power grid. Whether there is too much or too little wind power, blackouts again loom.

Unlike most conventional power plants, solar and wind technologies can’t be powered on and off as needed to meet the varying demands of customers. These still immature renewable technologies, prematurely brought to market by politicians seeking alternatives to fossil fuels, are entirely hostage to the weather.

The smart grid would solve the problem of instability by controlling the customers instead of the technologies. To protect the grid from sudden drops in the power being produced, for example, the smart grid engineers would reach into our homes and businesses to instantly turn off our refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, air conditioners, and other smart appliances as needed to match the sudden power losses.

The smart grid and the smart meters with which they are integrated would control customers in other ways, too — by changing our lifestyles to have them better conform to the technologies the politicians have chosen for us. Here the smart grid engineers would reach into our pocketbooks, by pricing power cheaper in the middle of the night, on political criteria, to encourage us to soak up an excess of power that their anti-fossil fuel scheme has produced. Most of that excess power, they fantasize, will recharge the batteries of our electric vehicles as we sleep. But electric cars are going nowhere, the marketplace has made clear — they remain unaffordable even with big rebates on the vehicle’s purchase price.

Neither will wind and solar systems go anywhere — cash-strapped governments throughout the world are slashing subsidies to them, leading to numerous bankruptcies and an inevitable collapse.

But Holliday's comments really aren't that far off the mark when considering what our friends in Ontario, Canada are now facing. From Nationalpost.com 4/19/2011 (Parker Gallant): "Ontario electricity consumers received the latest whack to their pocketbooks Tuesday. The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) announced that electricity rates will rise anywhere from 8% to 15% beginning May 1. The biggest increases will hit consumers who are part of the province’s brave new world of time of use (TOU) pricing. For off-peak electricity (between 11 pm to 7 am), the cost of electricity will jump 15% to 5.9 cents a kilowatt hour. Mid-peak electricity (early morning to 11 am and early evenings) jumps 10% from 8.1 to 8.9 cents per kWh. Peak use electricity (11 am to 5pm) rises 8% to 10.7 cents a kWh from 9.9 cents."

With the wind industry heavily promoting the shut down of coal-fired electric plants and nuclear power plants - the days of unexpected brownouts and blackouts and extremely expensive electricity will soon be upon us. The result will be more crippling than $7/gal gasoline. The wind industry is attempting to force or bully consumers into expensive, low quality, intermittent electricity upon us for their own self serving benefit and the uneducated general public will likely fall for this ruse.