Good-bye Peakers, Hello Wi-Fi!This is brilliant. A tech company in Mississippi has bred wi-fi technology with electricity meters, and Burbank, CA, which has a power grid owned by the city is using the technology to cut down usage during peak times.
Why can't San Francisco put $60 million toward this instead of bringing another fossil fuel power plant into the world?
As Naomi Graychase reports in this article, “An example of the immediate effect of this sort of load control,” says Fletcher, “ would be to send a signal to a grocery store that would turn down lights and turn down the A/C, so we can regulate power when there’s a shortage of power in the grid.”
Hmm...big power plant that runs on gas we have to buy from PG&E and puffs nasty smoke to an already smoky neighborhood...or...better switches and control of the power we use? This is a no-brainer: fossil fuels are so 20th century. WiFi is so 21. The kids love it. We could hip out the city's Community Choice Aggregation plan with some of these, especially if we can get the Mayor to cut some sketchy back room deal to make them free!
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