Hacker News Reader

Comment by antipax | Hacker News Reader

Hope that when the "smart grid" or whatever you want to call it does come around, it comes with the electricity equivalent of net neutrality.

View on HN

Well, ZigBee is what most governments are pushing for smart girds, and isn't totally free it is an open standard that anyone can join. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee

</shameless plug>

2.4GHz doesn't sound like a great frequency for smart grids if the nodes are spaced far apart.

Yes, if I were appointed dictator of the world I would certainly arrange things so that another frequency could be used.

At least in Europe it appears 868MHz is gaining ground and now 169MHz is being considered.

Yeah, there are lots of frequencies that are good locally, but not many that are good globally. If there were frequencies that were even just good in three of the US, Europe, India, and China that would probably be good enough.

Wow. Let's have government bureaucrats control not only how we use the Net, but also when we can use our appliances!

Why not just use nuclear to produce abundant energy?

Because it's expensive.

The idea behind a smart grid is usually some form of the local utility company taking money off your electric bill if your appliances are smart about not using energy at times of peak load. Nothing about the concept means the government has to be involved.

Hope that when the "smart grid" or whatever you want to call it does come around, it comes with the electricity equivalent of net neutrality.

The post I was responding to was specifically calling for it to be government controlled.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com