Nuclear industry bribed politicians to kill app electric utility customers love

theregister.com

49 points·taylodl··7 comments

I was impacted by this, and ended up building my own replacement with a Raspberry Pi 4 running Home Assistant, a Honeywell T6 Z-wave thermostat, and rtlamr (https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr) to read the smart meter signal.

Did you consider the Sense power monitor?

https://sense.com

I considered multiple solutions, but found that a simple $20 USB stick would do. I also wanted a solution that didn’t require an always on cloud/internet connection.

Very interesting! What is the conviction rate of corrupt politicians in the US?

Edit: Also I don't follow why the nuclear industry would be opposed to the app.

Appears to be self-preservation. From the article: “According to the FBI, two nuclear power plants that were due to close in 2020 and 2021 were saved by the legislation, and were given millions in redirected funds under the new law.”

I'm all for nuclear power but this is not at all how I want them to behave. It's not often that power companies do good by their customers and this app sounded like it was genuinely a win-win.

Dispicable.

With centralized power options, you are dealing with market forces that give them every incentive to behave this way. Expecting them to behave otherwise would be wishful thinking.

Decentralized power options like locally owned (down to the household level, even) solar and wind, augmented with batteries, give freedom and control to individual people, so they don’t have this problem.

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