A Peek Into the Future

By David Colker
Date: September 6, 2009
Source: FOX 59 (www.fox59.com)

Ednote: 1984 passed us by without a whimper. George Orwell’s futuristic view of society being observed by “Big Brother” sorta never happened, or was “Big Brother” just late to the dinner table.

The smart grid or green grid that’s on the horizon has some very progressive facets that are important to the society’s future, and also a big brother aspect as well. Once all those little controllers (read below) are connected to your appliances, hot water heater, your pool pump and your air conditioning, guess what? BUT- You’re not in control anymore. The utility can turn off those comfort appliances as energy demand climbs.

ENERGY

Smart meters: Global warming and volatile energy prices have spurred development of digital meters that provide real-time reports of energy usage. They're already in use in some parts of the country, and every utility is incentivizing rate payers to install them.

This year, Southern California Edison Co. will begin installing 5.3 million of them for all its residential and small-business customers. They may give you a bonus for installing them, but the cost of $1.63 billion, is to be offset by a 1.5% rate increase until implementation is complete in 2012.

Once they're in place, consumers will be able to monitor their electricity use via the Internet, as will the utility. Remote controlled appliances, from your computer and eventually your cell-phone.

These devices are remote-controlled thermostats and appliances can happen as soon as manufacturers agree to a single standard for the control chips, according to Paul Moreno of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which is installing 9.8 million smart meters in Northern California.

Wireless electricity: Electricity that travels through the air to power lights, computers and other devices sounds like one of those 1950s-style fantasies. But WiTricity Corp., a company spun off from research at MIT, says it's time to cut the cord. Wireless electricity products using its technology will be available by 2011.

Funded by $5 million from Stata Venture Partners and Argonaut Private Equity, the company has developed a system based on a technology already used in transformers (such as the block-shaped thing on your cellphone charger).

In transformers, power jumps across a tiny gap between two coils. The scientists increased that distance between coils to as much as 7 feet by having them both resonate at the same frequency.

The energy that travels between them is in the form of a magnetic resonance that's harmless to living beings, WiTricity Chief Executive Eric Giler said.

"To the magnetic field," Giler said, "you look like air."

One of the main obstacles will be skepticism about safety. When a post about WiTricity appeared on the latimes.com technology blog, a reader who wears a pacemaker said she'd never get close to one, and a man writing from Japan wondered whether the system might "nuke someone by mistake."