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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Machines sharing information with other machines is more efficient than having one of us humans gumming up the works. But could a smart grid or precision farming, in which the machines inform each other and make subsequent decisions, significantly reduce energy use and, thus, greenhouse gas pollution?
A new report from eclectic billionaire Richard Branson's Carbon War Room says yes. The report claims potential savings of nearly 20 percent of current global emissions, or more than 9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The changes could come quickly too, with pollution down 1.5 billion metric tons by the end of the decade.
But what are we really talking about? First off, it's smart meters for home energy use that maximize efficiency. And building-wide systems that ensure the lights or air conditioning turn off when not needed. It's also smart transportation—planes, trains and automobiles that can talk to each other to more efficiently move goods and people. Finally, it's smart agriculture—for example, sensors in the ground that measure moisture or fertility and prevent farmers, or their automated proxies, from over-watering or applying too much fertilizer.
Many barriers exist to ubiquitous machine-to-machine communication, not least of which is a lack of shared standards. But enabling the machine conversation might ease our climate change crisis.
—David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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3 Comments
Add CommentHello, has anyone not seen Terminator? Just kidding but reliance on such a network could lead to major problems if a catastrophic failure (ie. EMP, major solar flare, terrorist, etc.) occurred.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe moral argument seems to have shifted from climate change to using power at night. The Smart Meters link in the article shows that Smart Metering has only pushed up the cost of daytime electricity. The overall cost is not reduced to the consumer. Solar water heater installation costs the same as a Smart Meter. Shifting to night time energy usage does not reduce energy used. There is a better argument for solar water heaters than there is for Smart Meters. EV demand is not high and fast charging stations will not be used when people can charge cheaply at home. The average person drives less than 30km a day. Smart Grid technologies are already pushing up the cost of EVs. I expect there will be an EV tax or pump tax, demanded by other grid consumers who feel they should not pay for EVs straining the grid. Not to mention all the bad press EVs will get from angry Smart Metered consumers. The moral high ground of the EV driver will crumble while the costs of EV driving will rise. Smart Meter breakdowns already show us there is another side to the Smart Grid that may not have been factored in. Maintenance and repair has it been priced in? We all know that the more complicated a system the more prone it is to failure. So people will be paying more money for a worse service. There are also security and hacking concerns that will reduce service and increase cost in to the system. The ongoing cost of security maintenance do not feature in most cost models. But the cost is worth it right? To save the planet by pushing us on to night time usage of coal when solar is not available.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisprobably the lack of protocols is based on economy, (you buy us, you stay with us kind of stuff) it would be relatively easy to adapt a common protocol such as CANBus, which is installed on lots of cars already to a lot of appliances, which don't require the speed of data in a car.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thison the other hand, as donscott said, an integrated system is as resilient as the weakest link, which means a crazy hacker feeling he is the son of the taliban could try to flood plantations or cause a major crash...
I wonder what would big data companies would do with your electric metering data...