Category Archives: Smart Grid

Information on the latest piece of the enslavement grid that governments, utility companies, and environmental groups want to shackle us with.

Kenmore Laundry Appliances Will Connect for Remote Diagnosis

A new customer service technology, Kenmore Connect, enables some Kenmore and Kenmore Elite washers and dryers to communicate directly to service experts. The technology lets customers find out if their appliance is running correctly or receive instructions with a phone call and a push of a button. The system sends real-time diagnostic information from the appliance to service staff who can offer assistance and solutions to customers.

Kenmore’s field testing results showed a significant reduction in the need for in-home visits for customers who used the feature.

The appliances do not need to be hard-wired to send their information. To send information, the customer holds the phone mouthpiece over the appliance power button and press a button on the appliance to send the diagnostic data.

Service personnel can monitor more than 100 different data points to diagnose the unit and offer a solution. The data includes cycle and option settings, operational information (e.g., air/water temperature, estimated load size, spin speeds, fill/drain times, unbalanced load issues, etc.), details on the factors that contribute to the cycle time, status of certain electrical and mechanical sub-systems, and the mechanical issues associated with each error code.

via appliancemagazine.com

This article gives the impression that Kenmore, a Sears marketing brand, is developing this technology in-house. I can guarantee you this isn’t the case. The Kenmore “factory” is a floor of offices on the Sears Tower where corporate suits make phone calls to other corporate suits who work for companies that really do make things, like Whirlpool or LG. No hints on who is providing this technology for Kenmore but I know for a fact that Whirlpool, Miele and most of the other manufacturers have already started implementing this feature in some of their models. Soon, as appliances become more computerized, they’ll all have it. Heck, they’ll *need* this feature just to be able to troubleshoot ’em!

But the real reason for all this connectivity is more insidious than just the gee-whiz factor or for diagnostic help. It’s also to make future appliances more compatible with– and controlled by– the coming Smart Grid. More on Big Brother’s Smart Grid here:

http://fixitnow.com/wp/2010/01/14/smart-grid-green-dream-or-just-another-big-brother-control-grid/

I don’t believe for a minute that the only data they’ll be sending is diagnostic info on the appliance. They’ll be collecting and sending all kinds of information; for example, how often you do laundry and is this “too often” (as determined by soon-to-be-announced government “standards”), are you using HE detergent, and are you using too much detergent. And just like it’s come out now that there are audio listening devices in your computer router, digital television set, and the NSA randomly listens in on your computer microphone and cell phone, you can be certain that this remote “diagnosis” will be yet another way for you to be surveilled.

But I’m not a big fan of all this computerization for another very practical reason: from a reliability standpoint, they SUCK! The electronics used in appliances are not near the robustness and quality of electronics used in cars, for instance. They fail at much higher frequency and at much greater expense than the simple, rugged mechanical controls they replaced. And let us not forget the 5th Law of the Prophecy: “Electronics and wet appliances do not mix.”

Can I hear an “Amen?”

Smart Grid: Green Dream or Just Another Big Brother Control Grid?

 

Smart Grid Diagram-450x247.jpg

 

What is Smart Grid?

Smart Grid is a planned enhancement to the existing power distribution grid that will, in theory, have the capability of meeting growing electricity demand by more efficient distribution without having to build new power plants. One of the ways this lofty goal will be accomplished is by using two-way technology. Where the current power grid is one-way– power flows out from the power plant, through the grid, to the end user with no feedback or communication with the power plant– the Smart Grid will be two-way, meaning it will send back information to the power plant (and government regulators) on how the electricity is being used, in what types of machines, by whom, and for how long. It’s this “two-way” bidness that makes Big Brother smile and should make you cringe.

Who Likes It?

  • Government
  • Utilities
  • Environmental Groups

Government

Government, especially the Ameedican gubmint, has a long history of using technology to spy on its citizens, especially in recent years (e.g., Patriot Act, Project ECHELON, Total Information Awareness initiative, etc.).

Government likes Smart Grid because it gives them what governments always want: control; specifically, more control over the sheeple. Smart Grid gives them this through its two-way technology, which allows them to monitor not only how much electricity you’re using but how you’re using it and for what types of appliances.

For example, they can look at your total power usage and, say, 60% of it is accounted for from Smart Grid-enabled appliances. That leaves 40% of your usage unaccounted for. So, gubmint, which embodies the unfortunate combination of Rambo and the Keystone Cops, automatically assumes you must be doing something illegal, like running an indoor pot garden using high-energy grow lights. Next thing you know, DEA is raiding your house at 2am, shoots your dog and ransacks your home only to find that all you have is a tanning bed.

This power monitoring is effectively a form of surveillance over you for gubmint bureaucrats. You think gubmint will use this information wisely? Well, you must absolutely love the way they handled New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina, the bankster bailouts, the Patriot Act (which was only supposed to be used for terrorists) being used against pot smokers, standing in long lines at airports while waiting to be fondled and groped by TSA thugs, and having 3-D, full-detailed pornographic electronic images taken of your wife and daughter.

When will the sheeple finally wake up and realize this is just another scam, another power-grab by a perverted gang of criminals calling themselves “your government” to exert more control over your life and keep you enslaved like a good little serf? To the criminal cabal in Washington, Smart Grid is yet another way to exert neo-feudalism, keep you on the plantation, invade your privacy and ration your electricity use. Think I’m exaggerating? It’s stated right inside DOE’s happy talk Smart Grid propaganda brochure on pages 17 and 18. You can download the entire puff-piece here.

Utility Companies

If you haven’t figured it out already, we blew right past socialism and have arrived at full-on fascism in Amerika today. A quick refresher for the Illiterati: “Socialism” is where all the losses and the gains are socialized; everyone, including big corporations, are all floundering in the same sewer together. “Fascism,” on the other hand, is where the losses are socialized but the profits or gains are privatized. The most recent and brazen example of this was the banker bailout– they gambled with huge amounts of money and, as long as it worked out in their favor, they kept all the profits; but when they lost big bucks, we the tax-paying suckers, had to bail them out. So, in a fascist system, when the special corporate interests make money, they keep it and the sheeple get nothing; when they “lose” money, the sheeple pay for it and they don’t really lose at all. It’s a game of “heads they win; tails we lose.”

The utility companies claim that Smart Grid will let them have more “granular” control over power production and have more awareness of power failures. Currently, when power goes out in an area, the only way the power company knows about it is when someone phones it in. The two-way nature of Smart Grid enables them to know automatically when part of their grid goes down. But this comes at a huge price for us. And, besides, is it really such a burden to call in a power outage? Our power goes out regularly and we just call in the outage to the power company’s toll-free automated power outage line and they dispatch a crew to fix it. What’s the big deal?

The real reason power companies like Smart Grid is because it will enable them to create artificial scarcity scenarios and thus increase rates. It doesn’t take much grey matter to foresee a situation where the power company is low on power during a peak demand period and they have a choice: supply power to Joe Sixpack at (relatively) low rates or to a commercial or industrial customer who pays sometimes two or three times the residential rate. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

Smart Grid represents yet another merger of government and corporate interests. They’re in bed together and each stands to benefit in specific ways from Smart Grid which boils down to this: more control and surveillance over we the sheeple, higher electricity costs, and less electricity available when we want it, even if we’re willing to pay for it.

Environmental Groups

The “Warmistas” or Green Nazis, the tools of the global elite, are all ga-ga over Smart Grid because they’ve been conned into thinking that it’s good for the earth, man. These are the same gullible, useful idiots of the global elite who’ve bought into the whole man-made global warming scam, which was proven to be a scam (and a conspiracy) when a decade’s worth of emails and falsified data were leaked by investigators on the inside. But, hey, don’t take my word for it– read the Climategate Files for yourself.

Conclusion

Smart Grid is touted as a way to extend the capabilities of an aging and ailing power grid system, to deliver power to meet ever-growing demand without building additional power generating plants. If that right there doesn’t scream “rationing” to you, then you’re either stone deaf or dumb as a rock.

So what’s the answer to meeting increased power demand? Simple: build more frikkin’ power plants! “Oh, no!” come the shrill cries from the green weenies, “that’ll increase pollution and *gasp* global warming!”

Stop falling for that bovine excrement. Now that global warming has been proven to be a Big Lie we can take that card off the table. As for other types of pollution, such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides which cause smog and acid rain deposition, these are real concerns. But they can effectively be dealt with using modern air pollution control technologies. These are engineering problems, and solutions for them have been around since before I was a graduate student in Environmental Systems Engineering at Clemson University in the mid-1980’s. Engineers solve these kinds of problems every single day.

The biggest impediment to building new power plants is the government red-tape and strangling regulations. No one in their right mind is going to invest capital into building a power plant, whether coal-fired using clean coal technology or nuclear, if they see no possibility of earning a return on that capital. Sorry, folks, that’s the way the real world works, no matter what Karl Marx (or his surrogates in American universities) tells you.

And now, brothers and sisters, let us conclude this screed with a haiku. Fire up a spliff and chant along with me now…

 

Smart Grid’s a-comin’
DOE says it’s great for
controlling us serfs.
the bamboo knows all, grasshoppah