Comments on: The digital energy revolution? Charge it with values! https://energytransition.org/2018/05/the-digital-energy-revolution-charge-it-with-values/ The Global Energiewende Tue, 29 May 2018 06:35:02 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 By: Mike Parr https://energytransition.org/2018/05/the-digital-energy-revolution-charge-it-with-values/#comment-6995 Tue, 29 May 2018 06:35:02 +0000 https://energytransition.org/?p=17199#comment-6995 Adding to what James has said (I agree with most of the points): all electro-mech meters (which last almost for ever) could have been converted to real-time metering – the tech to do so was available in the 1980s – it was not done because there is much more money in ripping out the old electro-mech and putting in solid state meters (which will need replacing on a far more regular basis than the electro-mech). In the case of the butler or agent, in FP9 there was a project which developed household agents – which would negotiate with other agents, DNOs and TSOs. This concept now seems to have been dropped in favour of the DNO/TSO reaching into the home – a very slippery slope.

Indeed, the focus with respect to data and control is centralisation – not decentalisation – which goes in exactly the opposite direction to where generation is going.

]]> By: James Wimberley https://energytransition.org/2018/05/the-digital-energy-revolution-charge-it-with-values/#comment-6969 Sat, 26 May 2018 12:20:24 +0000 https://energytransition.org/?p=17199#comment-6969 “The hardware of digitization like smartphones and servers is resource-intensive.” A smartphone weighs <150 grammes, most of which is the aluminium or polycarbonate case and glass. These use abundant resources and are and SFIK are readily recyclable. The SOCs are very small and light. Ms Groll is on stronger ground on servers: but here to the main issue is energy supply, which is rapidly being resolved.

Agreed on the need for a stronger framework on digital privacy. I've been arguing for a decade (***samefacts.com/2008/12/energy-the-environment/dumb-user-meets-smart-grid/) that future smart home AIs must be the slaves of the customer, not the utility that owns the meter, and represent her or his interests only in the high-speed negotiations with the grid. Utilities should not be allowed to reach inside the home space to control appliances like EV charges directly. They can send messages triggering a contractual obligation (say for demand response or V2G), but it's the task of the robot butler ("Jeeves") to carry it out..

It should be fairly easy to require individualised data consumption records only be held for a very short time, like cellphone traffic data, before being irreversibly anonymised through aggregation for analysis. Make the same exceptions for law enforcement and national security under a court warrant.

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