A smart grid diagram from the US Department of Energy.
(Photo courtesy of the US Departmen of Energy)
Some electric companies are working
to put smart meters on our homes.
They want to change how we use
electricity hour by hour. Eventually,
power companies will charge more
when demand for electricity is highest.
Mark Brush reports on a new study
that looks at how people are responding:
Transcript
Some electric companies are working
to put smart meters on our homes.
They want to change how we use
electricity hour by hour. Eventually,
power companies will charge more
when demand for electricity is highest.
Mark Brush reports on a new study
that looks at how people are responding:
Connecticut Light and Power tested the smart grid on about 3,000 of it’s customers. Half of them residential and half of them business customers.
They found that people did respond to high rates during high periods of demand – such as from noon to eight pm.
Jessica Cain is with Connecticut Light & Power. She says there seems to be a limit to how much they’ll change. For example, doing laundry late at night seemed to be a non-starter.
“Doing your laundry after 8pm would be a barrier. And we heard that from customers, both from a residential customer side and then from a business customer side. We heard that changing their business hours outside of that twelve to eight window would be very difficult.”
The power company found the most energy was saved when the utility itself used the smart meter to shutdown things like air conditioners during periods of high demand.
The customers said they liked the “set it and forget it” approach – so long as they could override the system if they needed to.
Phosphorus has been banned from laundry detergents, but has not been banned from dishwasher detergents (Source: Piotrus at Wikimedia Commons)
Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:
Transcript
Add another state banning the
use of a pollutant in dishwashing
detergent. Rick Pluta reports it will
help clear up environmental problems
in rivers and lakes:
Well, there are dead zones in other places, including the Great Lakes.
One of the big culprits is phosphorus. It seeps into the water, and promotes the growth of
algae that chokes out other species.
Phosphorus was removed from laundry detergent back in the 1970s. But that was back
before there were a lot of automatic dishwashers, so dishwasher soap wasn’t part of the
ban.
Now, regulators are starting to catch up.
Michigan just joined at least 8 other states that have ordered phosphorus to be phased out
of dishwasher detergent.
The manufacturers aren’t arguing – some have already started eliminating phosphorus in
their products.
But there are still plenty of other ways that phosphorus is leeching into lakes, rivers, and
streams. The most common cause is agricultural fertilizers.
The home appliance industry is taking issue with a lawsuit filed by several states. The states want improvements made on energy efficiency standards. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
The home appliance industry is taking issue with a lawsuit
filed by several states. The states want improvements made on energy efficincy standards. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
In all, fifteen states and the city of New York have filed suit,
claiming the Department of Energy is years behind schedule writing
updated energy efficiency standards for twenty-two common appliances. The
states say if the federal government would get up to speed, consumers would benefit.
But the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers says there are
good reasons the government is behind schedule. General Counsel
Chuck Samuels says the energy department faces a lot of complex
rule-making.
“It is impossible for any agency to do all these rule-makings. What DOE has been forced to do is to prioritize and pursue those standards
that which will have the most benefit.”
Samuels says refrigerators and clothes washers have become much
more energy efficient. He acknowledges that tougher rules for other
large appliances like furnaces and air conditioners have not been
finished.
Diversion of water from the Great Lakes is a controversial issue. Many worry that diversion could affect life in the ecosystem. Others worry about obtaining sources of fresh water for drinking. (Photo by Brandon Bankston)
Great Lakes governors and their counterparts in Canada are working on a legal agreement called Annex 2001. The document will determine how water from the Great Lakes will be used and who gets to use it. Controversy has already erupted over the possibility of one city’s bid for the water. The city is looking toward the completed Annex for guidance. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:
Transcript
Great Lakes governors and their counterparts in Canada are working
on a legal agreement called Annex 2001. The document will determine how
water from the Great Lakes will be used and who gets to use it. Controversy
has already erupted over the possibility of one city’s bid for the water.
The city is looking toward the completed Annex for guidance. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:
Dan Duchniak says he’s an environmentalist.
“We have the low-flow showerheads in our house, we have the low-flow faucets, we have the high-efficiency washers and dryers, our kids know about those, you know, they think they’re fun.”
But Duchniak is in the middle of a bitter fight with other environmentalists and officials over his area’s largest natural resource: water from Lake Michigan. Duchniak is the water manager for the City of Waukesha, Wisconsin. It’s just west of Milwaukee. Waukesha is only about 20 miles from the Lake Michigan shore. Right now, Waukesha gets its water from wells that tap an aquifer deep within the ground. But Duchniak says the wells won’t sustain the long-term needs of the city.
“As the water levels drop, the water quality degrades, and what happens is we’ve seen an increase in different water quality parameters, one of those being radium.”
And radium is a health problem. In very high doses, radium can cause bone cancer. To solve its water problems, the City of Waukesha might ask for access to Lake Michigan water. But even though the community considers the lake part of its back yard, there’s a major problem. Even though it’s close, Waukesha sits outside the Great Lakes basin.
That means the area’s ditches and streams drain away from the lake. Rain water runoff and treated water from the sewer system flow toward the Mississippi River Basin. The governors and premiers might include a rule in the Annex 2001 that says communities sitting outside the Great Lakes basin must return treated water to the lake, if they use it.
Engineers who study water in the area say Waukesha could make the case that the city is already using Great Lakes water. That’s because the city’s wells tap into water beneath the surface that supply water to Lake Michigan. But environmentalists say that argument isn’t going to fly. Derek Sheer is with the environmental group “Clean Wisconsin.” He says Waukesha would be pumping a lot more water directly from the lake than the underground aquifer would replace.
“They’re not returning 13 million gallons of water back to the Great Lakes by any stretch of the imagination.”
But the city of Waukesha knows that if the finalized Annex 2001 looks anything like the early drafts, the city would have to return most of the water it uses back to the lake. Waukesha’s water manager, Dan Duchniak says that could be done in a combination of ways. The city could pump it back to the lake, pump it to a nearby stream that flows to the lake, or stop using the ground water completely and let it flow back to the lake.
People on both sides of the water issue seem to agree on one thing: because of the huge amount of water in the Great Lakes system, and its natural ebb and flow, the amount of water the City of Waukesha would take would not harm the Great Lakes’ ecosystem. Even if it’s not pumped back.
Art Brooks is a professor at the Center for Great Lakes Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“The amount of water they intend to withdraw would probably lower the level of Lake Michigan on the order of a millimeter or so, probably less that five millimeters per year.”
But it’s not just Waukesha that has environmentalists worried. Professor Brooks and environmentalist Derek Sheer say if Waukesha gains access to Great Lakes water, it could set a dangerous precedent. Sheer doesn’t want other states and countries to start withdrawing Great Lakes water.
“If Waukesha and Arizona and Georgia and all these other places start pumping large amounts of water out of the basin, we could see a dramatic lowering of the water in the lakes.”
The city of Waukesha says it needs the water and would abide by whatever the Annex 2001 agreement sets down. And Waukesha’s water manager, Dan Duchniak, says that includes what it determines about return flow. He says arguing about the issue right now is a waste of time, since the Annex isn’t done. Beyond that, Duchniak says Waukesha is part of the Great Lakes system, and is not about to suck the lakes dry.
“Lake Michigan is in our back yard. We can see Lake Michigan from here. We’re not that far away from it.”
The experts say Waukesha would only be the first in line to ask for Great Lakes water. With suburbs sprawling away from the big cities on the lakes more and more towns will be eyeing the Great Lakes when demand for water exceeds their underground supplies.
A draft of the Annex could be ready this year, but it will most likely go through a lengthy series of votes before it becomes law.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Christina Shockley.
A smart grid diagram from the US Department of Energy. (Photo courtesy of the US Departmen of Energy)
