Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey guys, I'm up to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alsam, I don't know if the science editor
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
Speaker 1: science writer and how stuff works dot com. Colling to this, Allison,
Speaker 1: what is your favorite high tech gadget in the house. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know how high tech it is, but um,
Speaker 1: I believe early in the morning. My favorite gadget in
Speaker 1: the house is definitely in the orange espresso machine that
Speaker 1: we have orange espresso, like it makes espresso out of oranges. No,
Speaker 1: it's orange colored and I think it's fancy and I've
Speaker 1: finally mastered it. Oh the machines orange espresso is espresso
Speaker 1: is kind of a brownish color with this little lighter
Speaker 1: brown foam on top, and then you can't even see
Speaker 1: the brown color because then it's covered by this nice
Speaker 1: steamed milk that I do with a little cinnamon on top.
Speaker 1: That's delicious. Well that's pretty cool. Yeah, my favorite high
Speaker 1: tech gadget is probably the the Xbox three sixty. Of
Speaker 1: course it is because it has games and stuff on
Speaker 1: because you mentioned it on every podcast, not every podcast,
Speaker 1: A few it's been just been really good of late
Speaker 1: because of that that darned Western game. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: my point being as high tech as these gadgets are,
Speaker 1: the electric grid that that that fuels them with their
Speaker 1: energy is not necessarily all that high tech, um. But
Speaker 1: it is a crazy, large, complicated machine, perhaps the world's
Speaker 1: largest machine. I've heard that tauted. And it's depending a
Speaker 1: lot of it's depending on like hundred year old infrastructure,
Speaker 1: some fifty year old assets. It's like this weird mix
Speaker 1: of of just really outdated stuff and just cutting edge um,
Speaker 1: you know technology. Um. And it's to the point where
Speaker 1: it's not really that efficient or not as if not
Speaker 1: nearly as efficient as we need it to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as it could be. And so that's why we're
Speaker 1: talking today about the smart grid, right, the smart and
Speaker 1: this this terms gets thrown around a lot, and it's
Speaker 1: it is it is complicated, Like you can't just you
Speaker 1: can't just go to the you know, nobody can realistically say, hey,
Speaker 1: when are we getting smart grids around here, or you know,
Speaker 1: go to the storm, buy me some smart grids. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little more complicated than that. Um. Like
Speaker 1: the analogy that keeps coming to my mind is like
Speaker 1: think of the Internet, all right. It encompasses data, hardware,
Speaker 1: software users, um, you know, massive companies, distributors. It's a system,
Speaker 1: right right. Power is much the same way, all right.
Speaker 1: The grid is the is a manner by which power
Speaker 1: is produced, delivered, consumed and accounted for. And if you
Speaker 1: follow this fall, it's like this change all right. On
Speaker 1: one end we have generation of power, power plants, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And on the far end we have we have Xbox
Speaker 1: three sixties and Orange Expresso machines. And then we have
Speaker 1: several different links in between. These links are right again,
Speaker 1: generations of one than transmission. Then you have your substation
Speaker 1: and this is where voltages transformed from high to low
Speaker 1: or the reverse using transformers, not the robots in disguise,
Speaker 1: but transformers, electoral transformers. And then you have a distribution
Speaker 1: point right right distribution. And then you have your home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that last smile and the in the home and us.
Speaker 1: So the smart grid in concept is about making each
Speaker 1: link in this chain more efficient on an individual level
Speaker 1: and increasing communication across the grid to make it all smarter, right,
Speaker 1: smarter systems and enabling smarter users. Right, because you can
Speaker 1: have the smart system in the world, but of course
Speaker 1: we need to know how to use it in the
Speaker 1: best way possible, the most efficient way possible. Right, And
Speaker 1: that's why it's so complete. We're talking about upgrading and
Speaker 1: any any huge system, you know, like I said, the
Speaker 1: largest machine in the world, right, and with why why
Speaker 1: should you care about this? Because it ultimately breaks down
Speaker 1: to lower energy bills of course, um, a better carbon footprint,
Speaker 1: and smarter, more informed energy usage. Yeah. And if you
Speaker 1: want to get off fossil fuels, you know, for what
Speaker 1: you know, whether you're talking about political for political reasons
Speaker 1: or environmental reasons or cost reasons, yeah, etcetera. Then then this,
Speaker 1: in many people's eyes, is the bridge to that from
Speaker 1: the you know, from an oil based world to purely
Speaker 1: electrical world. Right, So let's get smart in our house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: around the house. There are a number of things that
Speaker 1: make make up a you know, smart grid just around
Speaker 1: the house. And I got some pretty basic ones like
Speaker 1: motion detectors. Yeah, Like, hey, I'm not in my if
Speaker 1: I'm not in the study and I don't want the
Speaker 1: lights on in the study, you have it set up
Speaker 1: to motion detectors, you know, you know this whole discussion
Speaker 1: on smart good technology did lead me to wonder whether
Speaker 1: someday we could get to um motion detected air conditioning.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it sounds like an awesome idea. The
Speaker 1: another big one and we go into this center house
Speaker 1: stuff works article about Vampire power. UM is an article
Speaker 1: which you read, yes I did. I had to fight
Speaker 1: to get it called vampire power, though you did. Was
Speaker 1: the alternatives they wanted to you phantom load, which is
Speaker 1: the term for it, which when here, Yeah, my wife
Speaker 1: thinks that that phantom load sounds like if you go
Speaker 1: to like change of baby's diaper and it's empty, then
Speaker 1: it's phantom load. It's pretty funny. But but okay, so um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have these smart power strips. For instance, there's a
Speaker 1: massive you can get master slave strips alright with Sons
Speaker 1: and King. Yeah, it's uh basically the ideas you have
Speaker 1: like one dedicated like master plug on this power strip
Speaker 1: and then you have slave plug ins. The idea of
Speaker 1: being like take your entertainment system, um say that, say
Speaker 1: like you have like your your video game console, you
Speaker 1: have your DVD player, your sound system, you know whatever.
Speaker 1: You have several different machines there and they all depend
Speaker 1: on the TV. Like, you're not going to be using
Speaker 1: your Xbox without the TV on, So you plug the
Speaker 1: TV into the master slot and then everything else goes
Speaker 1: into the slave slots. So unless the master um devices on,
Speaker 1: there's not be any power available to the slave slots.
Speaker 1: And the whole reason is vampire power is the amount
Speaker 1: of energy that those those different machines drain even if
Speaker 1: they're on, even if they're off that plugged in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that little red dot blanken at you on your
Speaker 1: device even though it's off. Vampire power and any of
Speaker 1: stuff like Energy Star appliances. You know, for me, the
Speaker 1: the washer, dryer, the front loader, that's good stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: but the Energy Star covers lots of appliances. And then
Speaker 1: smart meters. We trapped from common sense too, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like, do I have two refrigerators when
Speaker 1: I only need one? You know, just kind of common
Speaker 1: sense things like that. So I have to mention, um, sorry,
Speaker 1: mom and Dad that we h my parents are really
Speaker 1: big into having two refrigerators and there are two people,
Speaker 1: and so we went and it was a little surprised
Speaker 1: and like, oh, well, we just turned on the second
Speaker 1: fridge out in the garage and it was really nice.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're you know, cokes and various other beverages
Speaker 1: that I'd like to consume um in the ridge. But
Speaker 1: I was like, why why do they have to fridgerators fronting?
Speaker 1: Why don't they just stick the extra beverages on the
Speaker 1: pantry floor or something like that. It was kind of
Speaker 1: an odd system, but you never know when you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to sit down and drink twenty four Coca Cola's
Speaker 1: in fast secession, you know. I think there's also some
Speaker 1: Coarenta light in there. But in their defense, my husband
Speaker 1: very very very very much once to get a deep freeze.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. So I don't know a lot of people
Speaker 1: are on this too fridge kick. Interesting, Yeah, so common
Speaker 1: sense maybe don't have that second fridge if you if
Speaker 1: you want to get down with the smart good technology.
Speaker 1: But but like I said, the other big one is
Speaker 1: the smart meter, and this is the one that gets
Speaker 1: a lot more play of late. This sounds really cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Smart meters is just basically physical meters, you know, like
Speaker 1: on the wall in your house that allow for two
Speaker 1: way communication between you, um, your home and in the
Speaker 1: wide area network. All right, So how much power are
Speaker 1: you using? How much is available? You know what the
Speaker 1: radio is. It's like you know, the utilities, the utility
Speaker 1: company is able to see how much power hour is
Speaker 1: required on the local level, and you're able to see
Speaker 1: like how much am I using right now? Ideally you'd
Speaker 1: be able to look at a smart meter and see
Speaker 1: like what's your what's your power usage now versus what
Speaker 1: it was exactly one week ago? Right right? That's pretty cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's one of the big things. It's like being
Speaker 1: able to tell until you know what you're using, you know,
Speaker 1: and changing it right in modified behavior or not modified behavior,
Speaker 1: depending on and you know what your power usage is showing.
Speaker 1: So are these things out, Yeah, they've been, uh, they've
Speaker 1: been using them in different locations and actually UM like
Speaker 1: commercially they've been available like for commercial UM buildings, UM
Speaker 1: in various stages for a while. Like for instance, I
Speaker 1: recently toured the the Woodward Art Center here in Atlanta
Speaker 1: for an article about their their various green innovations, including
Speaker 1: a green roof and UM they have this really cool
Speaker 1: display out front, like on a touch screen where like
Speaker 1: visitors and this is also available online UM where you
Speaker 1: can like you can actually see their real time energy usage.
Speaker 1: All right. So so that's that kind of thing has
Speaker 1: been around for a little while, and uh an example
Speaker 1: of of people rolling it out on a more local level. Um,
Speaker 1: it's I think they have these things in California and
Speaker 1: in Texas. Right, six thousand apartments in Oklahoma City. We're
Speaker 1: giving given smart meters and smart thermostats and gave tenants,
Speaker 1: you know, an idea of how much power they're consuming
Speaker 1: and how they were spending. And apparently that went really well.
Speaker 1: So another big thing that smart meters could enable is
Speaker 1: something called a time of use pricing. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Right. So think about your electricity bill and
Speaker 1: however much it runs, and it's just this lump sum, right,
Speaker 1: but think about whether, um, that energy bill, that electricity
Speaker 1: bill was broken out according to different rates of the day. So, um,
Speaker 1: when there's a huge demand for energy in the middle
Speaker 1: of the day, when everybody's at work and using their
Speaker 1: laptops or doing whatever it is they're doing, maybe you
Speaker 1: have a higher price. Um. And then at night, when
Speaker 1: it's cooler and energy you demand has uh dropped off
Speaker 1: a little, then your through rate might be lower. Right.
Speaker 1: And it turned into gret Deory. It could almost be
Speaker 1: like playing the stock market. You know, it's like, what's
Speaker 1: the energy price right now? Should I should I watch
Speaker 1: all my children, you know, or should I just go
Speaker 1: play with my actual children in the art or something.
Speaker 1: Because because of the cost of electricity right, so, we
Speaker 1: could redefine how and when energy is consumed I UM.
Speaker 1: I talked to UM a member of Green Tech Media
Speaker 1: really David Leeds, author of the Smart Grid in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, which is a fabulous free online source if
Speaker 1: you if you're out there and you're thinking, I really
Speaker 1: would like a hundred and thirty six pages of really
Speaker 1: good info about smart grid twenty minutes Robert Allison are
Speaker 1: giving me, I want the whole king computer. Well this
Speaker 1: is this is they're aimed at. We're aimed at totally
Speaker 1: different audiences here. But yeah, this isn't enough, and you
Speaker 1: want some really hardcore data. I highly recommend Green Tech
Speaker 1: Media for that. But but anyway, I was talking to
Speaker 1: him and he pointed out that one of the crucial
Speaker 1: things this is stumbling block to some of this technology
Speaker 1: is you need regulatory reform to encourage consumer involvement in
Speaker 1: smart rid by eliminating single fixed retail rate for most
Speaker 1: electrical consumption. All right, So what's the problem with this, Well,
Speaker 1: that's because you're just flowing up paying a flat fee.
Speaker 1: You know, it wouldn't be an issue of like, what's
Speaker 1: what's electricity price? Right now? That you know, we would
Speaker 1: want to bring in time of use rates all right,
Speaker 1: implemented in your smart smart meter on your inner home
Speaker 1: energy management system. Right, so your gut instinct is, oh, no,
Speaker 1: my my electricity bill is going to be higher, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that would be mine. Well, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one of the ongoing sort of concerns, and that
Speaker 1: has to do with the with actually, uh, implementing that.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the smart grid technologies. You
Speaker 1: have to do it in a way so that you
Speaker 1: don't just you know, spiked the cost of electricity. But
Speaker 1: but that's that's kind of a whole another issue that
Speaker 1: people are dealing with, right, and then businesses, um, you
Speaker 1: have to wonder how this would affect them. Would they
Speaker 1: be psyched about point of views I'm sorry, time of
Speaker 1: use pressing or or or not? I mean, would they
Speaker 1: have room to maneuver, would they have room to really
Speaker 1: change their behavior? I mean, would it be something like, um, well, gee,
Speaker 1: you know, we're using a lot of energy and there's
Speaker 1: a real heat wave of coming coming through, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we should implement a teleworking policy exactly like it's
Speaker 1: getting like due to the heat and the cost of electricity,
Speaker 1: it's like more expensive to keep the office staffed, uh,
Speaker 1: you know in certain hours of the day. So yeah,
Speaker 1: let them. Maybe that solution is letting them work at home.
Speaker 1: Maybe the solution is having a cista, letting us all
Speaker 1: after lunch, come back around twilight when it's cooled off
Speaker 1: a little bit, more shorts all the time. We already
Speaker 1: have shorts Friday. You do know that, right, are you
Speaker 1: going to bust out the shorts Friday? Come on, I
Speaker 1: don't really wear shorts and lasts him at the beach?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, right, okay, So yeah, there are a number
Speaker 1: of different different things I think that you know, a
Speaker 1: company could do. And that's the thing they would have
Speaker 1: the freedom to sort of play with it. And who knows,
Speaker 1: if we got to the point where we had had
Speaker 1: you know that the time of use pricing available, maybe
Speaker 1: flat fee stuff would still be available for people who
Speaker 1: could you know do that And it's kind of like
Speaker 1: are you paying paying by the download for something? Are
Speaker 1: you paying like a flat fee for unlimited downloads kind
Speaker 1: of a deal? I don't know, you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: speculating on different ways that well gas companies offer floating rates,
Speaker 1: I think as opposed to fixed price plans like you
Speaker 1: can lock in your price for you know, a period
Speaker 1: of twelve months. But so maybe maybe they could do
Speaker 1: something similar. I have to wonder how the power companies
Speaker 1: feel about this, because if we're all getting smarter about
Speaker 1: the way we're using power, then doesn't that mean we're
Speaker 1: using less and doesn't that mean that they're you're not
Speaker 1: going to get as much money from us. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's I think in places that's kind of concern.
Speaker 1: I think the example that that Leads used was was
Speaker 1: it's kind of like convincing Starbucks to make it their
Speaker 1: business to sell less coffee to the consumer, so certainly
Speaker 1: on people's radar. Well, and another thing that that smart
Speaker 1: meters would allow us this thing called demand response, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty cool idea, and this is where utilities would, uh,
Speaker 1: we'd give an incentive to customers to reduce their consumption
Speaker 1: at critical peak times. All right, So It's like we're
Speaker 1: talking about like an hour you know, during the summer
Speaker 1: day when it's like where electricity is just really being pumped. Right,
Speaker 1: So certain people will have like pre agreed on their
Speaker 1: contract that if they cut down their usage during those hours,
Speaker 1: they'll get an incentive check. So you know, yeah, so
Speaker 1: moving out of the home for a little bit, we're
Speaker 1: gonna come back around to the home in the end.
Speaker 1: But you move back up the chain and you hit
Speaker 1: the distribution section, all right, and and and we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna breeze through some of these these middle areas
Speaker 1: a little a little faster. But like with the the distribution,
Speaker 1: it's like if you has his tying into smart grids, right,
Speaker 1: and it's it's like the smart grid stuff in your house.
Speaker 1: It kind of like flows back up the channel. Like
Speaker 1: the more you know about what's being done on the
Speaker 1: then consumer end, the smarter each link in chain going
Speaker 1: all the way back to production can be. Right. So
Speaker 1: you were talking about giving incentives to customers to not
Speaker 1: use to not stuck up power at peak demands, Well,
Speaker 1: how is that going to help a distribution point because
Speaker 1: maybe they will not have as many outages going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like we were talking. We kept talking
Speaker 1: about hamburgers when we're going over this before because it's
Speaker 1: like because it's lunch time. Yeah, but it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like imagine you have a table and there and
Speaker 1: they're being sent four hamburgers. Whether they're gonna eat it,
Speaker 1: you know, is a is a different, different issue. But
Speaker 1: there's something sent four hamburgs, but maybe they only need three.
Speaker 1: Smart grid is like knowing that they only need three
Speaker 1: hamburgers at this time, so you don't send five. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're getting smart about our hamburgers and our power, using
Speaker 1: more Hamburger analogies to come. So so yeah, the distribution
Speaker 1: area involves that also involves something called phase or management units,
Speaker 1: which is just allows us to keep more precise tabs
Speaker 1: on electrical usage in the smart grid and take a
Speaker 1: lot of the guesswork again and out of supplying it. Alright,
Speaker 1: so let's move on up to the substation. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: again is where transformers convert high to low voltage or
Speaker 1: the reverse. And an example of a smart gride optimization
Speaker 1: at this point would be monitoring and correcting the voltage
Speaker 1: and the transformers. All right, we're talking really basically real
Speaker 1: time ability to monitor and tweak millions of transformers and
Speaker 1: reduce wasted power and improve in efficiency. So again, it's
Speaker 1: that it's the smart the smart meter in the home,
Speaker 1: like all that information, like going back up the chain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. The system would detect a higher low
Speaker 1: voltage level of reading um that's exceeding the normal threshold,
Speaker 1: and it could automatically send this corrective action to adjust
Speaker 1: the voltage back to normal. Yeah, and it and apparently
Speaker 1: in a lot a lot of cases you would have
Speaker 1: people who would in the past would be underjuiced, you know,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be getting enough power, but more often than
Speaker 1: not overjuiced. So I think you're overjuiced on regular basis, dude. Yea,
Speaker 1: you know there's a lot of free coffee around here
Speaker 1: that up. But but but anyway, Yeah, it's it's like
Speaker 1: be down to the hamburgers again. It's like preventing a
Speaker 1: situation when we're sending five hamburgers to a table that
Speaker 1: only needs three. Yeah. I thought this was really interesting
Speaker 1: and I'm glad you brought it up because historically the
Speaker 1: utility companies have had little control beyond the substation, and
Speaker 1: that's where we're at right now in the chain, uh
Speaker 1: talking about so North American utility is being highly riscoversed.
Speaker 1: Have never really wanted to admit to problems of low
Speaker 1: voltage and supplying the voltage to customers that can regularly occur,
Speaker 1: and so the challenge of optimizing the energy going to
Speaker 1: this huge network from the substation meant that, yeah, some
Speaker 1: consumers were going to have to live with this low
Speaker 1: subpart voltage. All right, Now we're going to roll up
Speaker 1: another link on the chain back towards power generation, this
Speaker 1: time transmission, and we're not going to spend much time
Speaker 1: on this one either. This one is basically we can
Speaker 1: start using super conducting cables to reduce line loss, so
Speaker 1: less electricity is lost in transit on the lines, and
Speaker 1: your three to five times and more power. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds pretty smart to me. And so now we roll
Speaker 1: back one more and now we're at the generation level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the point of generation, whether whether it's the coal plants
Speaker 1: and the nuclear power plants or whatever we're talking about.
Speaker 1: And sadly, we still are talking a lot about coal
Speaker 1: and more more and more though natural gas right now,
Speaker 1: and even if alternative energy like wasn't in the picture.
Speaker 1: At the very least, it would be a situation where
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be rolling out more and more like coal
Speaker 1: power plants, more and more natural gas to solve a problem,
Speaker 1: you know, uh bye bye. By making everything on the
Speaker 1: rest of the chain smarter, we're not having to just
Speaker 1: create extra energy to account for shortfalls, right I started
Speaker 1: think of it. Um. Here in Atlanta, we like to
Speaker 1: build highways, right yes, And instead of building um, you know,
Speaker 1: train system or more efficient highways, usually we just add
Speaker 1: a lane to the highway, right yeah, exactly, that's the
Speaker 1: perfect perfect picture to paint. Yeah, it's instead of adding
Speaker 1: just more and more lanes, so you have this just ridiculous,
Speaker 1: ungodly um. You know, a thick road that scares my
Speaker 1: mother to death. You would actually you know, it's like, actually,
Speaker 1: let's streamline the system. Let's let's make the system smarter,
Speaker 1: not um, just more out of control and just you know,
Speaker 1: increase the base. Um. But the the the integration of
Speaker 1: renewables and alternative energy sources is a part of the
Speaker 1: smart grid and part of the plans for a smart
Speaker 1: grid future. UM. One of the problems, though, is you
Speaker 1: can't necessarily count on some of these uh, these renewable
Speaker 1: energies as as well, like take wind energy. Right, so
Speaker 1: you mentioned the Great Texas Window of two thousand eight
Speaker 1: where wind energy drops substantially in just three hours, and
Speaker 1: the amount that was lost was comparable to basically losing
Speaker 1: a large sized conventional power plant um in the system.
Speaker 1: Operators that were unfortunately working that day, they had to
Speaker 1: resort your emergency demand response, which meant they were cretailing
Speaker 1: power to interruptable customers in order to avoid a blackout. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the weather, yes, And the weather is
Speaker 1: is basically not a predictable thing. I mean, we can
Speaker 1: forecast it to a limited degree within a very limited timeframe,
Speaker 1: and if you can't really book for energy as much
Speaker 1: on it. So that's just the reality of that. Now
Speaker 1: that this this is where a storage issue comes into play.
Speaker 1: Like one of the big things about electricity is that
Speaker 1: for the most part, um, we have to use it
Speaker 1: as soon as we make it. Um. To go back
Speaker 1: to the hamburgers, It's like, imagine if there was no
Speaker 1: freezer in the back with extra hamburgers. All the hamburgers
Speaker 1: are on the grill, you know, and we're cooking them
Speaker 1: and we're just gonna have to eat them, and if
Speaker 1: we don't use them, we're gonna waste them. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's that kind of situation. And and sadly,
Speaker 1: the storage isn't isn't. The storage technology is is developing.
Speaker 1: We have some some very good storage going on in places,
Speaker 1: but not to the point where where we can, you know, say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: summers coming up, we need to you know, we need
Speaker 1: to store a whole bunch of power away to deal
Speaker 1: with you know, those guys running a c out in California. Right.
Speaker 1: But to your point, batteries do back up the guts
Speaker 1: of the grid you'd mentioned. In Charleston, West Virginia, there's
Speaker 1: a substation that unfortunately used to overheat every time too
Speaker 1: many customers do you current through it? So then what
Speaker 1: did American Electric Power do? They installed the battery, just
Speaker 1: play electricity on peak demands and the substation stopped overheating. Similarly,
Speaker 1: up in Alaska, they used to suffer outages with every
Speaker 1: glitch on the power line between Anchorage and Fairbanks, so
Speaker 1: they installed the soccer field size battery to cover the
Speaker 1: line during filling field size battery. It's crazy, it's a giant,
Speaker 1: giant battery, And I think that kind of like gives
Speaker 1: you an idea of what we're dealing with here. It's like,
Speaker 1: we just can't put soccer field size batteries everywhere, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think by historic district people would yeah, really object
Speaker 1: to not like that. It comes back to the story
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier with the shopper and the ant.
Speaker 1: Do I have this write the grasshopper, we just eat
Speaker 1: and eat and eat, and then the ant would store
Speaker 1: away for winter, and then winter comes and then the
Speaker 1: ant the grasshoppers like, whoa, I don't have anything to eat,
Speaker 1: and the ants like silely, grasshopper, I got food back here.
Speaker 1: So we want to be like the ant in terms
Speaker 1: of our electricity usage, but we're really more like the
Speaker 1: grasshopper at this point. We're somewhere in between. Working towards anthem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're becoming smarter grasshoppers, and I think we're working towards
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal. Yeah, the ultimate The ultimate goal is
Speaker 1: is the is the smart grid we're talking about, just
Speaker 1: like I say, making the chain between generation and usage
Speaker 1: smarter another uh, And this is where we tie back
Speaker 1: around to the user is um this this idea of
Speaker 1: distributed generation and storage. And this is where at the
Speaker 1: user end of the chain, it's gonna way you. This
Speaker 1: is you like like, um, A rough example would be like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know it's gonna get get hot. You
Speaker 1: might have some shortfalls getting some um some electricity during
Speaker 1: certain times of the year. So maybe you have a
Speaker 1: lot of wind and you have a couple of wind
Speaker 1: nail wind turbine things put up right R two, couple
Speaker 1: of slap a couple of solar panels which you can
Speaker 1: rent now by the way. Oh cool, Yeah, yeah, solar panels,
Speaker 1: or you know, you're some sort of battery system, et
Speaker 1: cetera where you're doing you're generating or storing power on
Speaker 1: the user end to uh to sort of help out
Speaker 1: the supply coming in from the rest of the chain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. Yeah. So if you guys are using
Speaker 1: smart meters or of any experience with smart grid technology,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, you know, regardless
Speaker 1: of your if you're like if you're part of like
Speaker 1: some sort of a test case in a particular city,
Speaker 1: or if you're just doing a lot of stuff on
Speaker 1: your own end to just you know, sort of force
Speaker 1: the smart grid at the local level. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear about it. Yeah, send us an
Speaker 1: email that science stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, we'll be chatting up smart grids on Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter to where on Facebook you can find us
Speaker 1: a stuff from the Science Lab and Twitter we are
Speaker 1: labs stuff. R L is the master of tweeting, so
Speaker 1: be sure to tune in check out his tweets. So
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Uh, tune back in next week and
Speaker 1: we'll have two more exciting podcast about something from the
Speaker 1: wide world of science. Yeah, and thanks for listening. Guys.
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