Words&Dirt

“Fourteen countries are currently implementing smart grids, and, in the majority of the cases, the Energy Internet is being financed by raising the electricity bill to consumers and by taxes paid by its citizens and businesses.  A significant part of the financing of the Energy Internet will go to reconfiguring electricity lines and establishing the substations and other hardware components that make up the physical operating systems.  Much of the rest of the financing will be dedicated to the intelligent communication technologies that will coordinate the complex flow of green electricity being generated, stored, and shared by millions of individual prosumers.

As mentioned in chapter 5, every device in every building will be equipped with sensors and software that connect to the Internet of Things, feeding real-time information on electricity use to both the on-site prosumer and the rest of the network.  The entire network will know how much electricity is being used by every appliance at any moment––thermostats, washing machines, dishwashers, televisions, hair dryers, toasters, ovens, refrigerators, and so on.  The continuous feedback of information allows on-site prosumers to optimally program their own electricity use while the distributed and collaborative nature of the system allows millions of energy players to share electricity in ways that optimize the efficiency of the entire network.  For example, millions of energy prosumers can preprogram their nodes––it’s a voluntary system––so that if the demand for air conditioning spikes because of a heat wave across the region, their thermostat will automatically take itself up by one or two degrees or their washing machine will automatically shift down to a shorter rinse cycle to save on electricity use, allowing the system to level off the increase in electricity demand.  Prosumers who assist the grid receive a credit on their next electricity bill.”

––The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, by Jeremy Rifkin, pg. 143