Monica's Blog

Smart Meters and us

2010-04-18T06:33:00.000-07:00

We complain why we don't have smart meters to better control our electric use and lower our bills. We wonder whats the hold up...why the utilities don't move fast enough, replace the old meters, see the value in giving us control? After all, lowering our electric use in the middle of a hot summer day would help the utility also. It would ease the stress on the transmission grid, reducing utility's capital expense. Not to mention, there are environmental benefits as well!

As the demand for electricity increases to higher and higher levels, the stack of power plants you fire up goes from the clean, efficient natural gas burning to less efficient, expensive, "dirtier" plants. Lowering demand on those hot summer days would be a win-win-win for all.

Lets tackle the why and why nots that come to mind one at a time. First- are the economics there?

For a lot of us electric bills are about 1%-2% of our monthly income. Moving our electric use from high demand hours (1pm - 6pm) to low demand peak hours will require changing our lifestyle. It will mean running the dishwasher only at nights, raising the temp of the air-conditionerby 4-5 degrees, etc etc. Changing behavior comes at a cost - discomfort. Whether it is allowing your air-conditioner to cycle at higher temperature or waiting for late evening to iron your shirts, unless the savings are significant, I doubt our enthusiasm will sustain beyond the novelty phase. Studies have shown time and again, its the economics that finally drive our behavior rather than soft feelings like eco-guilt. Of course, some of us may still opt for smart meters but its likely to be a small subsection of folks. Rolling out on a mass scale will just adds costs with little payback if we are not ready to change their behavior significantly.

Another consideration - even if we get past the economics, do we really want to monitor energy prices to save a few bucks every month? Electric prices for the most part vary with commodity prices (natural gas in the Massachusetts). Stock market gyrations give us plenty stress. Do we want to take on tracking electric prices as well as part of our daily portfolio? I'm not convinced we do. Think home heating oil.... many of us have locked our heating oil use into some fixed price option and decided not to float with the market. These contracts immune us to the daily price volatility and we like that. We take comfort in the predictability of costs, so we can plan our monthly expenses. This is even more relevant for a business that needs to project its expenses and plan its budget.

Next, Energy Independence.

The media has pulled no stops to link electric use to our addition to foreign oil. Claim: If we use less electricity, we can wean ourselves off foreign oil. Just to clarify -- electricity is sourced mostly from coal, nuclear, natural gas and very very little from oil. So, reducing electric use won't make a dent in our oil use. Its the cars we love to drive everywhere thats guzzling the oil. Why don't we focus on bringing up the fuel efficiency or reducing the miles we drive? We could also buy produce, meat from local producers, cooperatives rather than have it shipped from California or Florida. That would probably do more for the environment than lowering our electric use.

Next: So what does all this mean?
I think smart meters definitely have a place in the future. But we have to evaluate when it makes sense to roll out for the masses. Its the 3000 sqft homes with pool pumps that have the "disposable" energy use to shift and save money. For the low income family, they can't shut off their refrigerator to get the benefit from smart meters.

Moreover, smart meters need to have smart appliances to be truly effective. Changing lifestyle will be more seamless and likely more sustainable. Smart appliances need to be beyond the concept phase and more into the "affordable" space before we roll out and replace all the meters. This will take time, which is OK. In the meantime, I think smart meters should put in for customers that are interested and are willing to pay for it. The cost should not be socialized over all the customers. For most, it doesn't make much sense yet.

getting back on track

2010-04-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

The rain dances have stopped and the sun is finally out, I'm excited to go out and make most of the day....only that i've run out of interestingly new things to do. A bike ride seems nothing out of the ordinary and boston. com provided some OVERLY overwhelming information i need to sift through and see what i'd like to do. I need an online personal guide to help me here.

i think i'll start with a nature walk and end it in boston watching somewhere an entertainingly stimulating performance.

checking out for the day....

Good to be back

2009-11-22T15:51:00.000-08:00

Finally, I get back to blogging. Its hard to justify why I haven't kept it up. After all, its only a couple of clicks and you are in! Anyway, anyhow..

I got a few things done today, went for my daily 3 mile run. I have to kick it up a notch. Its too easy and yet I don't exactly catch myself doing that. Looks like I'll do it sometime next year....procastinate, why not?

Saturday and me...

2006-11-04T19:14:00.000-08:00

7.45am. I heard the alarm.“MOMMY”!!! I heard the familiar sound. 8.15am. A schedule to meet. Soccer games, piano classes and yes Russian Math. 9.00am. Bagel and cheese, whole-wheat bagels only please.

Predictable…? Typical? Yes….Yes. But it wasn’t going to be a typical day. I could tell....I knew. I walked around the house with a bounce of a 15 year old. I didn’t care and still it would be a fabulous day. I was eager. After all, I had given the task of planning out our weekends to my husband. Infact, he was the newly appointed social-life coordinator. I had held this position for years....eons really....and it had run its course. It was his now. All his. The title, the perks, the aggravation. It had been exciting once, very exciting but not anymore. From now on, he would be responsible for planning our weekends so we would meet our goals. Goals? One might wonder. Why do you need goals for the weekend? Don’t u need the weekend to unwind, to decompress, to put your feet up..so to say? No. Nada. We don’t like to relax. Some of us are wired differently. The way it works for us is that weekends have to be heavy on activities that lend itself to fun, exciting experiences, peppered with only some down time. For years, I woke up stressing out about how to make the weekend fun, different and exciting. I spend gigajoules of my energy thinking, wondering and planning. I burned time and my brain cells frustrated why things aren’t going as planned. But as we all know with kids, it never goes as planned. But somehow this wisdom eluded me and so did the fun.

But I digress.

Here is how the day turned out. We divided and conquered all the chores. We even worked out at the gym. For a fun activity, we sat home by the fireplace, listening to crackling sounds and...we wrote. We wrote about whatever we wanted to or felt like writing about this evening.

It was fun, exciting and immensely relaxing.

I should have cracked this one years ago. What was I thinking??? Isn’t outsourcing the way to go these days anyway? Why bother with the mundane when someone else can do that for you. Free up your resources aka your brain cells so you can do things you really want to do.

I did just that and improved the bottomline of my weekend.

Hot Stuff

2006-08-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

So...here's the deal...I'm no nature lover, no tree hugger. I rarely get lost in the beautiful vistas the grand state parks offer. Its the third day in the Yellowstone Park and am dying for a doze of real city life. BUT, inspite of all that longing and desire, I could still extend another day to take another look at the geysers. Admittedly, the west coast landscape is beautiful but the scenic beauty pales in comparison to the tectonic activity that defines yellowstone. The breathtaking vistas...the elk, the wolves and the bison are neat but the geysers and the mudpots...thats one hot stuff and yes smelly too! it feels like u are back in chemistry labs making sulphuric acid in a big way.

Tourism....here we come

2006-08-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

So, we are off to yellowstone and the grand canyon today. The kids packed their essentials...harry potter and the prince of azkeban, crayons, polly pockets, a deck of cards, and a string of beads. Don't ask me why they need that...perhaps to help them medidate when I'm screaming at them from time to time.

On Abortion...lets unite not split.

2005-11-09T19:55:00.000-08:00

The day Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's spot became available, the abortion issue came alive...in its full form...once again. This was President's chance to move the court to the right, I heard on the radio. C'mon, we all knew that! With lightening speed decisions were dug up...analysed. Dissents mulled over...all converted to sound bytes. Nominations got ready to accept the honor..and get armored for a contentious fight in the senate...all on the same day.

But lets pause and think through the real issue at hand...

Two slogans come to mind...."Woman's Right to Choose" and the "Right of the Unborn Child". The former tossed from the Pro-Choice aisle and the latter heard clearly from the Pro-Life bleachers. I wonder though..isn't it sad that these are two different issues...two different voices...two different rights people seemed to be fighting for? Didn't nature intend them to be intertwined closely to be actually one? Here is what I mean....a mother's natural instinct is to save her child from harm's way. ALWAYS. Right from inception, she guards the well being of the fetus. The child growing inside of her is for her's to protect. So why do we forget all this and question her judgement... shouldn't she naturally choose what is best for the child? Why do we even second guess her?

The answer lies in the reality. We don't live in an ideal world. All women and men do not live in blissful matrimony. There are women who fear bodily harm from their spouses, there are girls who are repeatedly raped by their fathers. Incest..rape...domestic abuse. You name it, we got it. This is the real world and we have to deal with the ugliness. We have to be mindful of this reality when we write laws...when we enforce them. Its our moral obligation to protect these women cuz they need that. They depend on that. Should a woman be allowed to abort such pregnancies or does she need a written consent from the perpetrator?

Its not always the man who is the devil. We all know that. We have all heard of the teenage girl who delivered her baby in the bathroom and dropped it in the trash..discarded it to die or of the suburban mother who drowned her 5 children in the bathtub. You have to be a barbarian to even comtemplate doing this to anyone..much less to your own child. They couldn't be human...I have to conclude. I remind myself we don't live in an ideal world. We all want to protect the children but what could we have done to protect these? Would the ban on abortion have averted these tragic deaths?

I am pro-choice but I understand and agree with the concerns some of the die-hard senators thumping for abortion ban have, even though they reek of religious strictures more than anything else.

The law has to ensure no injustice is done and protect...protect all. It has to protect the women who are the victims AS WELL AS provide an alternative to those women who cause their children to BECOME victims. What can be more important than that? We shouldn't decide such grave issues based on only our strict reading of the Bible. It IS the welfare of the unborn child that is at stake here. It should be about that and only that. It should have nothing to do with religion. It is our moral obligation to strive for that. Laws, rules, regulations don't guarantee protection we owe to children and even to the unborn children.

Women who choose to abort a pregnancy perhaps have no other choice. We have to remember that. Sure, the State can take them and shelter them, feed them. But how many times have we heard about the system failing and children found starved to death in some abandoned apartment? How many times have we heard the horror stories of children suffering emotional and physical abuse while batted around in foster homes. How many times...?? Can you blame the woman for not choosing the state to take care of her young one?

NO, I don't want to pound the table with calls for womens rights or privacy rights. This issue is larger than that. I just want to urge...nudge people to think beyond religion, beyond strictures and just decide based on practical reality and choices we have at hand. If the legislature...the judiciary...the government, the state or all those people screaming anti-abortion slogans cannot guarantee 100% welfare of all such children born, then we have to trust the woman to make the right choice. Afterall, if you can't trust her with a choice, how can you trust her with a baby.....????

got game?

2005-11-02T12:38:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that I love the monotony when it comes to working out. I love the predictability of walking into the gym at 9am each morning, choosing the 3rd locker from the left facing the side mirrors, walking to the same treadmill... 2nd from the left. The predictability of familiar images of britney spears and Goo Goo dolls splashed into my face. I actually look forward to my running steps droning on to the sounds of my treadmill as it reaches 5.6 speed each day. Well..almost....until a small change hit me 4 weeks back.

I was asked to join a game of basketball, to play with a group of women at the gym. I arrived at the court kinda skeptical of whether it was worth giving up my beloved running time on the treadmill, kinda concerned whether I was going to make an utter fool of myself not having touched a basketball seriously in a decade. Afterall, I didn't want to let anyone down, even strangers in this case AND least of all myself. "Oh, whatever...", I told myself. Let me just get a good cardio workout and forget about it. I wasn't going to compromise on that.

I was on the court for a total of 1 hour and 40 min. ALL my doubts were put to rest and my expectation met in those 100 minutes. More than met...

The women I played with showed me what Basketball was all about. Yes, we are talking "team sport" here. What Basketball as a sport was supposed to be, meant to be. They reminded me that we can play competively while preserving the fundamental spirit of the game. NBA single-handedly transformed basketball from a team sport to a individual sport, a celebrity sport. Watching Kobe, Shaq and the likes, its easy to forget what a good game is all about. Its not the fade away shots of Jordon or Duncan's pivot turn shots, its the play the ENTIRE team makes to get the ball into the basket. The genius lies in that pass, the screens, the steals...that often go unnoticed or unrewarded.

These are no girly girls I play with. They understand the game, they are tough and they show it on the court. They are the moms driving kids to piano recitals and ice-skating during the day and sweating it off on the court in the evening. They've taught me to run harder, to reach further and to jump higher for the ball and yes..to choose to play full-court ALWAYS, even if there are only 5 of us! You bring your A game to the court but don't bother showing up without your top class sportsman spirit, cuz the fun is in playing the game and not winning it. The fun is in pushing yourself harder, further, higher and better. Why? Because you can. Because you need to and sometimes just because...

So girlfriends, I will be there each time because you got the game!

will london suck?

2005-10-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

So, it is decided.... I will be going to London for Christmas. "London sucks"...remarked one of my friends, "London is miserable, bone chilling cold"... said another. I am wondering how bad can it be...its October and its snowing in Boston, Red Sox lost, Boston traffic is bad as ever. London's gotta be better than this. Besides... as I see it, its always the company that makes the trip. Rajeev (my husband) is a real traveller so I bet it'll be great. Oh...and if he's not the best travel companion on this trip... hell, he'll just have to buy me a motorcycle for my next birthday!!

So, lets not waste any more time and get to business. Here it is-- we leave on the 21st (yep, we are talking December). We explore the city on the 22nd and 23rd. From the Rosetta stone to the Amitabha buddha, from the West End shows to the Wren Churches, we'll see it all.. and then head out to the countryside with a old high school friend of mine for a couple of days. On the 26th, we(our dear friend and us) plan to end the gala with an English breakfast early morning at 7am at Heathrow before we fly back to Boston and he flies to India to be reunited with his family. The trip is 5 days..hmm...too long or too short, I will know in December for sure!

TV Show

2005-10-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

So...I'm FINALLY done producing my first TV Show. It took about 200 bucks, over 500 emails and a mega dollop of patience. Here goes ..

Definitely, not my craziest moment!

2004-08-29T20:59:00.000-07:00

To my parents dismay, I decided to finally do it. I would go skydiving. Yep, there was no turning back now. No emotional banter was going to dissuade me from feeling the rush of jumping out of a plane. Crazy...no, not at all. Thrill seeking..yes.
As it turned out, mother nature had decided to whole-heartedly endorse my plan. It was a BEAUTIFUL clear, sunny day. The jump would be nothing less than spectacular, I told myself. A total adrenaline rush...is what I was looking for. I was going to get that. I was certain of it. My mom kept calling every half hour to check on me, perhaps her way of dissuading me to jump from a plane from 13,000 feet.

I did jump.

Adrenaline rush?...no, not at first. DISBELIEF. That's all I remember. As I took the first step from the edge of the plane into thin air, I recall thinking...yes, for a change I was thinking...that I must be crazy to actually jump out. The feeling didn't last long. What I did feel for the remaining 3 minutes of my jump was what I had hoped for, I had paid for. I felt the rush, every bit of it. It was COMPLETE EXHILARATION and more. Much more. Falling freely at terminal velocity was nothing short of AWESOME. It was surreal and ofcourse, the feeling when the parachute opens up was just as great. I think that's the closest one can come to actually flying. You just glide through space. It's beautiful up there... very peaceful and calm.

We glided through peacefully and efforlessly, landing softly and safely back on Earth, on a beautiful sunny August afternoon.