Don't Touch That Dial!

Governments only like energy control devices if they are the ones controlling them. Now this article comes with the proviso that this is the French we're talking about, but the idiocy and convoluted logic is still mind boggling and is a prime characteristic of large government bureaucracies everywhere.

A decision by France’s energy regulator that seems to defy both logic and Europe’s green consciousness has set off a political storm here.

At the center is a tiny company that seeks to save consumers money.

Two weeks ago, the French Energy Regulatory Commission, the C.R.E., decided that Voltalis, a company that installs electricity management devices in homes and businesses and then manages their use, would have to, in effect, pay power producers for the power that it saves.

Voltalis’s Bluepod boxes, free to consumers, plug into the home electrical panel and communicate back to the company’s computers by Internet. When, for example, summer demand on the electrical grid nears a peak, the system would automatically turn off air-conditioners for hundreds or thousands of consumers willing to give up the coolers for a short time to avoid the need for additional electrical production to come on line.

The company says its “distributive load shedding” technology can save users as much as 10 percent on their electricity bills and save power producers billions in investments in new plants used only to meet peak demand. Voltalis’s business model assumes the grid operator pays Voltalis for help in maintaining supply and demand equilibrium.

But the regulatory commission ruled that Voltalis should pay the power company because “its service would not be possible without the producer maintaining production.”

The ruling immediately led to charges of too much coziness among entrenched interests in the electrical power sector.

Challenges, a French business magazine, suggested that the country’s electricity producers, including Électricité de France, which is 85 percent owned by the government, wielded too much influence over regulators.

Voltalis’s chief executive, Pierre Bivas, took his case to the public last weekend, where the reaction has been scathing.

“At this rate, it will soon be obligatory in France to consume large quantities of electricity, or face taxes and fines, and maybe imprisonment, too,” the antinuclear group Sortir du Nucléaire said in criticizing the decision.

At peak periods, producers must bring more costly capacity on line or demand must be limited. Voltalis’s technology, which is also in use in the United States, changes that.

“From the consumer’s side, it’s exactly symmetrical,” Mr. Bivas said on Tuesday. “In both cases, the energy produced is used by consumers and paid for by consumers. They’re saying consumers should pay for the energy that was never produced and never used.”

He said the company had already installed about 5,000 boxes, but was aiming for “tens of thousands and ultimately millions.”

Cécile George, a technical expert for the regulator, said the decision hinged on how the company would be paid. “Voltalis can’t be a free rider,” she said.