“Balancing peak and off peak surges in the grid by coal fired plants would prevent wasted surplus energy.”

Did you mis-write? Coal fired plants don’t cause surges. They sort of chug along at a constant speed.

We do now have surplus power in some places at night. With some storage we could shift that surplus to peak times. The largest storage method we have at the moment is pump-up hydro. Compressed air (CAES), we’ve got one facility with at least one more in the process of being constructed.

Bring more wind on line, create more storage and we can start shutting down some of that dirty coal.

And just last week one more coal plant was permitted to switch to biomass. Slowly we get off fossils….

BTW, the government payed farmers to not turn the soil. To “park” their fields (The Land Bank) and let them produce nothing as a way to support crop prices for other farmers. We had too much food production and farmers were going bankrupt.

My grandfather put most of his farm in the Land Bank during his last years. And it provided income for my grandmother after he was gone.

And how “real” does the time frame need to be? If I install a new air conditioner do I need to know what it’s pulling the moment I turn it on? Or can I wait 15 minutes or an hour or a week to find out and still benefit from the knowledge?

It’s not about knowing what you’re spending for electricity on a second to second base. It’s about getting adequate information to let you control your spending.

Some current electrical devices can certainly be run off-peak. Pool sweeps/cleaners and dishwashers are two examples.

Appliances can be redesigned so that they can be run off-peak. We already have combo clothswasher/dryers. No reason that something along that line couldn’t be refined so that laundry could be done in the middle of the night and an occasional ‘fluff’ spin added if desired to keep things from wrinkling.

The insulation in freezers could be increased to allow them to drift through peak hours without allowing temps to rise too much.

And air conditioners can store “cool” with thermal mass during off-peak to lower their electricity needs on-peak. (Already being done on at the commercial level.)

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As for running a business and going back to caves, I really don’t understand your point.

But if it’s relevant, I ran a business successfully enough that was able to retire at the age of 44. Lived a comfortable life for the last 21+ years off of that success.

And I’ve lived almost all of that life off-grid. About 90% of my electricity comes from solar panels.

I’ve got a most comfortable “cave”…. ;o)

Everyone must wash, dry, iron, cook, vaccum, light, etc. All this technology has -0- return unless you are going to wash your clothes after midnight, work the night-shift, etc. All this waste of effort is going to achieve is that one user is going to consume someone elses electricty at a cost-benefit to one and a cost-negative to the other. Anotherwords, All you So. Cal. folks are going to buy up my cheap local power here in Alabama, while I will have no choice but to buy less at a higher cost than I normally do, most likely from New York!~ Where the price is the highest. Another form of social redistribution of wealth and/or resources.

Bob – I’d love to see you run a business, or should I say run a non-business on the government payroll. Be for real! We can’t all go back to the caves, and I’d bet you’d be the first to complain. PS how would you feel if I thought like this – Colorado can hold back all the water it wants, for its own benefit by cutting off the water down stream unless payment is made – another words, California … go get your own. And quit wasting it trying to put out fires, let them burn as nature intened.

America is getting stupider by the day!

http://www.komonews.com/news/tech/59995727.html

http://earth2tech.com/2009/10/22/how-solar-and-skyline-can-jumpstart-auto-factories/

http://earth2tech.com/2009/02/09/google-jumps-into-organizing-smart-meter-energy-data/

Once conservation is profitable then utility companies will start seeing reason to make smart metering smart.

Just look at the study in North Carolina in which people were given smart meters and some help in learning how to reduce their power usages. Overall electricity consumption dropped 20%.

A 20% drop in consumption nation wide would allow us to shut down half our coal plants right now.