Kim Georgeton Joins In HB 427 Opposition
BY NICK ROGERS
STATEWIDE - Lieutenant Governor candidate Kim Georgeton (R) – among other Ohio politicians – has strong feelings about House Bill 427, the “voluntary demand response program for certain customers” which – with PUCO approval – would give utilities greater control over when and how much energy is used by residents during peak demand times. Georgeton has been active on social media, alerting Ohio voters of not only the insidious nature of the bill, but of related dangers of Smart meters being forced on the population and data centers gobbling up the grid’s limited power output. Is HB 427 really something to fear, or is it a red herring cover for a type of mass utility control over our lives long-since begun?
HB 427 – currently sitting in House Committee – was sponsored by Roy Klopfenstein (R) of Ohio’s 82nd district, and Georgeton is not the only one speaking out against it. In September of last year, the Libertarian party condemned the bill as an “attack on consumer rights and personal freedom.”
Libertarian candidate Zach Hall said, “HB 427 lets utilities throttle your energy use in the name of ‘demand response.’ Opt-in or not, no company should have control over your thermostat or water heater. The grid needs upgrades, not more corporate overreach into our homes.”
In November of last year, Mayor John Marra of the Village of Timberlake, Ohio issued formal opposition to the bill to the Ohio House Energy Committee.
What HB 427 really does, Marra said, is “[give] utilities legal authority to: • Remotely control air conditioners, water heaters, or other appliances during grid events; • Bid aggregated household load reductions into PJM’s capacity market for profit; and • Collect performance incentives from the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO).”
“Customers can override an event—but too many overrides mean being barred from participation. When participation determines whether a family gets a $25-$50 rebate, ‘voluntary’ quickly becomes coerced compliance.”
“Demand-response programs already exist for industrial users who can shift loads safely without affecting household comfort,” Marra said. “HB 427 flips that model upside-down, using private homes as grid-stabilizing equipment while data centers and crypto-mines consume electricity without any curtailment obligation.”
“The irony,” Marra said, “is that demand response itself is essential for grid protection. During the 2022 Winter Storm Elliott, demand-response actions kept PJM from cascading outages across the Midwest and Appalachia. That system worked because industrial users bore the burden, not families in their homes. But under HB 427, as hyperscale data centers ramp up to consume thousands of megawatts, utilities will instead reach into our living rooms to reduce load – because there will be nothing left to shed from the industrial side.”
Data centers are at, well, the center of the growing problem of a maxed-out electrical grid in Ohio. It seems to be no coincidence that a bill to allow utilities to choose how much power consumers are allowed to use at “peak” times would be introduced at this time.
According to datacentermap.com, Ohio now boast 200 facilities; something Georgeton mentioned in a recent Facebook post and, according to her, also in her own recent Ohio House Energy Committee opposition submission (this author was unable to find the transcript).
“Pay attention to this because this is an example of how your data gets used in the data centers and then imagine applying this to every piece of data connecting your health, banking, shopping, dining, entertainment, social media, texts, emails, and then profiling you – because it’s all coming,” Georgeton said.
“Data centers are consuming power at a scale that is breaking regional electric grids…The grid wasn’t built for this. So utilities need somewhere to find flexibility. They found it: your house.”
“Ohio House Bill 427 would let utilities remotely control devices in your home during peak demand,” she said. “But the demand response program is only half the story. The other half is the data. Connected home devices generate a continuous stream of behavioral information, when you’re awake, when you’re home, your daily patterns, your household composition. Under HB 427, there is nothing to stop utilities from treating the data as a commercial asset.”
As a recent TOR interview with Vince Welage plainly showed, it appears utilities don’t need something like HB 427 to pass to take full advantage of improperly obtaining and selling/utilizing customer data obtained via Smart devices; even to the point of targeting customers with planned “test events” which can result in debilitating health issues. The Smart grid is already in full effect, and customer energy usage data is already ending up in the hands of shady third parties with devastating results.
Georgeton – who describes herself as a conservative Republican – has spread her blunt opinions around on other topics as well; namely the “fraud and abuse” of the HB-1 program; one of many opinions shared by “alternative” Gubernatorial candidate Casey Putsch who is running alongside her. Their alignment continues with their support of the amendment to abolish property tax in Ohio.
Parenthetically, The Geauga School District has sounded the alarm bells about the latter issue, but Putsch and his team have offered a viable solution should the amendment pass. As reported by TOR, it doesn’t seem that any other candidate has thought beyond the “inevitability” of Geauga Schools being without funds and forced to shut down if the amendment goes through.
It is this type of outside-the-box thinking that are setting Putsch and Georgeton apart; and it seems that people are listening (at least on social media).
As far as HB 427 goes, it appears that the utilities are seeking our formal permission to control energy usage. As mentioned above, this very well could be a token gesture. Either way, the bill is creating a talking buzz around the data center topic, the over-stressed Ohio grid, and Smart technology as a track-and-control mechanism. Candidates like Georgeton and Putsch are helping get the word out.
