In a press conference downtown today, Governor Kaine announced that Dominion Virginia Power will be beta testing 46,500 smart power meters in Charlottesville and Albemarle, CBS-19 reports. The devices can communicate with Dominion in real-time, wirelessly, allowing both Dominion and customers to know at any time how much energy that they’re consuming. Not only does that make it easier for customers to conserve, but it will allow demand-based pricing, basically selling all energy via a real-time, automated auction, a sort of a never-ending conversation between our appliances and power stations about how much we need electricity right now and how much we’re willing to pay for it. More details about this are available on Dominion’s blog.
I’m so geeked about this that I will pay to use this service, if I have to. (I’m a big energy grid geek.) Here’s hoping that they’ll partner with Google PowerMeter for that extra touch of awesome.
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