Emailing "Stimulating Talk"
For the vast majority of power customers in the U.S., paying the electric bill is based on a meter reading taken every month or so by the utility company. Current reading minus last month’s reading equals number of kilowatt hours used, multiply by current rate of electricity cost per kilowatt hour, add in taxes and fees, and voila, your monthly electric bill. There are some fancy things utility companies can do, of course, such as take the meter reading from a van via wireless meters and spreading out the cost of the bill over an average year so that the “shoulder” spring and fall months take up some of the costs from the winter and summer months. There is nothing very smart or sophisticated, however, in the billing itself.
This may change very soon. “Smart grids” use wireless cell networks (the same ones you use to make calls, check email, download Kindle e-books) to continuously report on energy consumption. This data can then tell the utility company and the customer how much is being used at what times of the day and week. Cell companies are very interested in so-called
smart metering, believing that there is an opportunity here to add another monthly customer to their base. The federal stimulus package includes $4.5 billion to push the technology forward.
The stimulus is also being used to push another environmental dream of the Obama administration, and of anyone who’s ever ridden on the Shinkansen in Japan or TGV in France. The President
announced last week a plan to spend more than $13 billion ($8 billion from the stimulus bill, plus an additional $5 billion over the next five years) on high-speed rail networks in the United States. Various tracks are being considered, including one between Los Angeles and San Francisco, St. Louis and Chicago, Tampa and Orlando, and the Northeast Corridor. In all, there are 10 potential corridors that could some day see trains traveling at more than 150 miles per hour.
According to the White House, if all ten corridors were developed, greenhouse gas emissions could be cut by about 3 million tons per year.
At least one observer is less than impressed.