Energy Efficienty At the Grid Level

I read an article in the Austin Chronicle, sent to me by a friend, about the proposed plan an investment group has for updating and improving the efficiency of the power grid in that part of Texas.

It's a good idea and one that I think many utilities could consider as a great way to change peak and off-peak power usage, grid maintenance, and more. The dreamy lady at the end of the article who's attempting to detract from the plan has only a couple of worthless reasons for it: it doesn't lower power usage overall and it doesn't treat efficiency on the site-level.

Well duhh, lady. It's a frikkin UTILITY-LEVEL PLAN. Pay attention! She claims that it will "hurt poor people" because it will "make their utilities cost more during peak hours." Yet she then goes on to claim that the focus should be on improving insulation and building improvements so that efficiency is raised. Who pays for that on those poor people's buildings, lady??

OK, enough on her stupidity. Let's get back to these improvements.

I think it's a great idea that enterprise can do on its own without government intervention or help. It will encourage off-peak usage and will also encourage power utilities to explore energy storage for unused power, which is currently either sold off or dumped.

Most people don't know that most power plants have minimum production requirements in order to just be operating (it's how they're built). Sort of like your car is either on and idling or on and moving, but it uses a minimum amount of gasoline either way.

This minimum power production isn't always at grid-requirement, so sometimes there's a leftover. That usually gets dumped unless the utility has a way to sell it to, say, California (which is always demanding power. Even at 02:00).

So I think the plan has merit and if someone makes money by implementing it, more power to them.