BPL promises intelligent power management

Here’s an idea that both the miserly and the tree huggers will love equally. Using scalable, cloud based tech to manage the demand and production side of the power grid - down to the individual user level. All transmitted over the same power grid.

The Department of Energy has just wrapped up a fascinating experiment in Washington State in which it provided both homeowners and their appliances with tools that can sense stress on the power grid. Homeowners who made use of the tools saved money—approximately 10 percent on their electric bills—and the grid was more stable, too.

There were two projects, both of which were run by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory over the last year. In the Olympic Peninsula project, 112 homeowners used new electric meters, thermostats, water heaters, and dryers that were all connected to specialized home gateways. Using software designed by IBM, the homeowners in the study could tell their appliances to react to the changing cost of electricity throughout a day by changing behavior—lowering the temperature of the home or water heater, for instance.

Not only did the system save users an average of 10 percent on their monthly electric bills, but it also reduced peak distribution loads by 50 percent on many days. (from Ars Technica)

The civil libertarian in me does have concerns. If politicians ever get tech savvy enough, they may try to micro manage how we consume energy. It may be time to limit thoer authority before they grant more of it to themselves.