Opinion
As I reported recently, the real costs of “Net Zero” are rapidly coming to bite Australians in the arse. For all Boofhead Bowen’s deluded gibbering that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of electricity generation, the proof is in the power bills. They’re soaring. The government which was elected promising to cut household power bills has instead presided over increases of an average of 25% — some as high as 95%.
A large part of the increase is the move to smart meters, which enable power companies to charge different tariffs at different times. This is mostly because “renewables” are sometimes plentiful — but almost always when nobody is using much power. Solar is most plentiful during the middle of the day, but people most use power at night: cooking, lighting, heating, showers, and so on. To stop the grid completely collapsing, power companies have to spin up emergency backup generators.
And generation costs soar.
It’s a very inefficient, which is to say expensive, way to run a grid.
But you can bet that it won’t end there. As supply becomes even more expensively intermittent, power companies will use the smart meters to control demand the hard way — by simply cutting off those who can’t pay. It’ll be like Britain’s “Winter of Discontent”, when power was strictly rationed — forever.
‘Demand response programs’ mean your supplier can decide whether to give you power or not. They enable demand to be reduced at peak periods either by cutting you off completely or by charging you a lot more if you insist on switching things on. These periods, says a very misleading industry comment, ‘are typically when the demand for electricity is highest, such as on hot summer afternoons’. That’s all right, you’re saying, we don’t use much electricity on a sunny summer afternoon anyway. Of course you don’t. Neither does anyone else. Actual peak periods are roughly 7-11am and 5-9pm, and the real threat is during the winter.
But at least the Winter of Discontent was an equal-opportunity rationing. Smart meters mean that power companies can now target individual households.
You can bet the poor will be cut off first. In fact, what will almost certainly be here soon is a tiered, subscription-style power market. Platinum tier subscribers — the wealthy elites who vote for the Greens and Teals — will pay more for a guaranteed, uninterrupted power supply. The plebs will have to make do with a “cattle class” subscription, where the power companies supplies them whenever it damn well pleases.
In January 2030, when you come home on a calm, cloudy and cold winter evening an hour after sunset, there would be two possibilities: you would be charged a much higher rate for your power or it would simply be cut off, depending on whether the supply is just managing or heading for an emergency shutdown. The only times you would risk being cut off completely are on those occasions when you really need electricity: cold winter evenings. In that case you would have no power for heating (gas-fired boilers have electrical controls), lighting, cooking, the internet or charging your car.
We find ourselves headed down this road because of the willful stupidity of the elite classes. These are the useless idiots who, blinded by ideology, set a utopian target with no consideration for whether it was even possible, let alone how much it would cost.
The benefits [of smart meters] are of course for the government of the day as they are there to get them out of the quandary they have themselves got into. There are even now no sensible plans for our vital future energy supplies […]
If our electricity is to be totally emission-free, a constant (note that word) power supply for the UK can be achieved only by means of nuclear power stations. There are no plans for building anything like what we would need for peak demand. If the government can tell utility suppliers to control demand by flicking a few switches, think how much cheaper that is than forking out for half a dozen nuclear plants.
The Conservative Woman
If you still doubt that that’s the plan, you’re not paying attention. Here it is, straight from the ass’ mouth:
Demand response programs are designed to reduce the overall electricity demand during peak periods. These periods are typically when the demand for electricity is highest, such as on hot summer afternoons. During these times, utilities can struggle to keep up with the demand, and may need to resort to using more expensive and less environmentally friendly forms of power generation.
Or just cutting power to the household off altogether.
By reducing overall electricity demand during peak periods, demand response programs can help utilities to avoid the need for expensive and polluting power generation methods.
Smart Energy
So, take it from them: smart meters were never really intended to help you, the consumer, track your costs. They were and are only ever intended to enforce the “Net Zero” regime, no matter how much it costs you.