Reply to post: Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

Jellied Eel Silver badge

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

That's where it is going - and here in the UK we have a tax payer funded, government backed "smart meter roll out programme". Backed by most of the most competitive tariffs being restricted to having or accepting both a smart meter and payment via direct debit.

Yup. But as I often say, such is politics. The curious thing is energy has enabled us to do so much, whether at work or at leisure. It's an input cost to just about every human activity, so the more expensive energy gets, the more expensive things get.. Which is I guess a good or bad thing depending on how one views things like inflation, energy poverty or just poverty in general.

Californians and Texans have been learning about this economic truth in the last year or so. They've been sold fancy 'wholesale' energy tariffs, which may have been great when there was a surplus. When there's not.. Well, that's just business. Caveat emptor etc.

Politicians have been vaguely honest about this though, mixing the truth and the barefaced lies. So they've promoted 'renewables'. The 'renewables' lobby have encouraged this because they earn billions from generous subsidies the politicians make us pay. The lobby tells us that 'renewables' are so cheap! Yet oddly, our energy prices keep rising.

So the solution is obviously 'demand management', which means when your 'smart meter' flashes red, you might want to turn out the lights.. before the 'demand management' turns them off for you to avoid blackouts..

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