The government of Ontario -- currently presided over by the Progressive Conservative (a contradiction in terms) premier Doug Ford -- recently announced plans to offer a "$75 prepaid credit card in exchange for giving their smart thermostat manufacturer secure access to the device." You read that right -- for the price of about three-quarters of one evening out with your wife, you too could give some bureaucrat somewhere authority to adjust the temperature in your house to their liking. Such a deal!
The government says the adjustment would typically last for no more than three hours, wouldn’t be on weekends or holidays, and participants can opt out of any temperature change.
Well, of course they say that... now. But once they have the keys to the car, what's gonna stop them from taking it for a joyride? Because their obsession with what goes on in the privacy of our homes isn't going to fade once they have the access and authority to actually control it.
It's for you own good, peasants.
Of course, noted Chuck Farmer, the Independent Electricity System Operator’s vice-president of planning, conservation and resource adequacy, this is an obvious solution to a difficult problem: "demand for electricity is increasing, while nuclear resources are coming offline for retirement or refurbishment." Left unsaid -- Ontario, like other Canadian provinces, has bet big on so-called "renewable energy," which isn't ready for prime time. As the demand for electricity increases -- including to charge those steadily-increasing numbers of Electric Vehicles on the road that Canada is so proud of -- it is becoming increasingly apparent how ill-suited wind and solar are to keep up with demand.
Not that they'll ever acknowledge that reality. For Farmer, the solution lies in the "600,000 smart thermostats installed in Ontario" at the moment. If the government could just turn up the temperature in those 600,000 homes, well... they wouldn't ever have to admit what a huge mistake they've made.
They screw up, we pay the price. Sounds about right.
Article tags: Canada, Doug Ford, electric vehicles, Ontario, renewables, smart thermostats, wind and solar
Canada is lost. You are a WEF province now.
And DAMN you deserve it. I have never seen a more supine lil swarm of bootlickers. Imagine WW2 Canadian soldiers--feared and loathed for their brutality & esprit d'corps--observing you know, Canadian bootlicker. Imagine that. Imagine keeping Pillow Boy Tyrant as your PM. /projectile vomit.
Oh, Canada.
Heat pumps have crappy performance both summer and winter. I spent two years in a semi-insulated tiny house in southwest Louisiana. The first year I had an old-fashioned wall/window HVAC unit. It worked great. It kept the room cool (73F) during 95 degree summers and warm (70F) during 40 degree winters. Then it broke and the landlord couldn't get replacement parts. He got talked into installing a heat-pump mini-split. The darn thing struggled to keep the temperature below 80F in the summer and above 60F in the winter. It couldn't keep the indoor humidity down below 60% in the summer either.
Demand we all must surrender our Air Conditioners over totally made up fake threat. How soon can we send Eco-Freaks to live in the Amazon?
“For Farmer, the solution lies in the "600,000 smart thermostats installed in Ontario"”
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Beware that heat pumps are being pushed onto the unwitting public for essentially the same objective—to automatically decrease system demand when generation potential is low. Recall that there are two types of inefficiencies. In the first case, inefficiency results from a process in which work (energy) is being expended on something other than the objective. Such inefficiencies are almost always in the form of heat waste from friction. The second type of inefficiency results from the inability of a process to perform work (use energy for a designated purpose) because of limitations of design or limitations of circumstances. A windmill, for example, can be inefficient because of friction loss (first type) but it can also be inefficient because it’s not oriented towards the wind (second type). If you follow, this is where heat pumps are so deviously clever for those wishing to remove the burden from the “renewable” grid just when that same grid can’t provide the energy needed to achieve its objective. True, heat pumps are more “efficient” in a limited sense because they transfer heat already in the environment rather than simply add energy (as a conventional system would). However, as temperatures fall, they become progressively less efficient BY LIMITATION OF DESIGN (second type) and thus less capable of performing purposeful work. In other words, less capable of using energy from the grid—regardless of the available amount of grid energy. Importantly, it’s not analogous to a windmill that doesn’t move for lack of wind; it’s analogous to a windmill that loses its ability to extract energy from the wind because the wind changed direction. The bottom line, the policy apparatchiks remove the consumer’s ability to use purposeful energy without the awkward political optics of a smart meter.