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The whole "smart grid" thing is way too complicated. All you really need are a few bits per minute broadcast from the power company, telling you how their current load status. A few more bits from your local electric meter about your own current load would be helpful. Loads that draw more than about 300 watts and can run unattended needs to be receiving those bits, which in a home mostly means major appliances and HVAC.

During periods of power scarcity, the power company can send out, in increasing order of need, requests to drop excess load, warnings that excess load will push your electric bill into extra high rate territory, and finally an order to drop below a given load or the electric meter will cut your power. Or, at the other end of the scale, "power is really cheap right now, good time to charge electric cars, self-clean ovens, etc."

Businesses would probably sign up for demand pricing, where power during peak periods above some threshold is very expensive, and would have their own local controller devoted to keeping the cost down by making freezer cabinet compressors take turns, cutting off some lighting, and such. You can get that now; data transmission from the power company just means it has more info about the power supply situation.

Very little info needs to flow back from the meter to the utility. A reading once an hour is sufficient, if not overkill.

We do not need something that gives every appliance an IPv6 address.

Unfortunately, there's a pork-laden subsidy program for "smart metering" that encourages meters to talk too much. This is becoming a boondoggle like ethanol.

You can figure it out yourself:

  - Look at a daily power demand curve. Or at the hours your utility considers "peak" and "offpeak" for rates.

  - Look at a daily wind curve at any good R.E. wind site (sorry, none handy right now) - and consider that available power goes up with the CUBE of the wind speed. Or consider the mechanism of "lake effect winds" - because all the exceptionally good wind sites are where there are variants on the lake effect. (For instance: Altamont Pass uses the Pacific Ocean for the "lake", California's Central Valley for the "land".)

The lake effect is a heat engine. Bodies of land heat and cool faster than bodies of water. So in the mid-to-late afternoon there's a strong wind from the water to the land, driven by air sinking over the cool water and rising over the hot land. (In the late night to early morning there's a similar, but smaller, wind the other way.)

An additional effect: Load for heating and air conditioning goes up with heat loss/gain through walls, and that increases with increasing winds. So higher winds drive higher power needs for HVAC. (That, in the form of the the sun driving both the lake effect wind and the need for air conditioning through both direct heating and hot winds, is much of the reason the peak load occurs in the late afternoon/early evening when the lake effect winds are up.)

Give the electric companies 2 choices: Fix your own damn shit with your profits or we fix it and lease it back to you or nationalize you.

Sure there are people that are going to bitch because they're used to their handout. But handouts aren't going to help anyone. Make everyone work.

It's not perfect but it's a hell of a lot better than handing it over to a bunch of people who managed to already lose $700b.

[0].M-F you live in work housing or you work 4 - 10s or 7 on 7 off.

I hate to ruin your rant with what we call "facts", but the grid in the United States is not owned by private companies that you can just boss around from your ivory tower of uninformed tripe. It is an amalgamation of state-run and multi-state entities called ISOs (Independent System Operators) that both contract and coordinate with the transmission agencies in concert with privately-owned and state-owned generation assets to produce consistent and reliable power. A grid, in the strictest sense of the word, is a series of transmission lines, owned by multiple companies, that are interlinked and under the complete autonomy of the ISO. Nothing happens without the permission and direction of the ISO or FERC (and NERC as its enforcement arm). The grid is aging, but since the ultimate authority to direct replacement lies with both federal, state, and multi-state agencies, who precisely in your little world bears the fiscal burden?

May I suggest for your education:
http://www.ferc.gov/
http://www.nerc.com/

And for ISOs:
http://www.ercot.com/
http://www.caiso.com/
http://www.nyiso.com/public/index.jsp
http://www.pjm.com/index.jsp
http://www.midwestiso.org/home

Find the one that serves your area, and berate them with your uninformed bile since you obviously understand all of this better than anyone else.

Or do you?

Got any numbers to back that up?

Here you go. Note how the daily demand curve follows the daily meteorological temperature profile. While there are other factors, including business and industrial demand, the activity that drives the overall shape this curve is air conditioning. (Note also the second peak at ~1900 hours, when people are preparing meals and cleaning after.)

I also work in the power industry. Check it out for yourself.

Front page of CAL ISO. Or, if you want to see the largest grid in the world for load, PJM is in Pennsylvania. Go to eTools, Login, and look for the eData Guest Login. See lots of pretty graphs, and look for the button that says Load.

These loads are very well understood, and some extremely clever guys work on some pretty high demand computer systems to predict the exact load on each ISO/RTO grid for every hour of every day of the year, all subject to weather and other inputs.

It's easy to throw up good sounding, but embarrassingly and utterly wrong, arguments against reasonable enviromental ideas that have been well understood and vetted for over three decades (awaiting only a good battery really - the Prius-spawned supply chain has matured the necessary power electronics and motor package nicely). I know there aren't suppose to be any stupid questions, but asking, "But where are we going to get the power to charge them, huh huh?" is similar to arguing that a mission to the moon is impossible not because of the daunting energy requirements and orbital mechanics but rather because "It's obviously impossible for green cheese to support the weight of the lander."

I agree with the parent above

I work in the HVAC/Building Automation/Energy Management field and can tell you that the application of the future is Automated demand response.
One of our customers is now signed up on a program with SCE. On set days during the summer months when energy demand is expected to go higher than normal, we receive a signal over the Internet to a box with an integrated relay. Upon receiving this signal our web-based EMS system initiates a sequence for demand response by shutting off lighting circuits, as well as shifting cooling setpoints up by 3 degrees during a 6 hour period.
The whole idea is to reduce peak demand usage.

I don't see any of this reaching the residential consumer anytime soon.

In CA, check out the energy demand outlook for the day here:
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html

Also check out Tridium's website (developers of the Niagara framework)
http://www.tridium.com/

This is a great industry to be in, specially now with everyone going "Green" and energy prices going up.
However, you need to understand A/C, Electrical, and IT. Control systems have come a long way.

I'm a little confused on your point that regulation could work "just by charging"... Wouldn't that only work if all the EVs were already part of the baseline load? How would charging at 5kW be regulating load down when I was charging at 0kW (not 10kW) before with my trusty non-grid-connected gasoline engine?

I'm not sure how else to explain it. A car capable of 20kW (but charging at 5kW) can provide up to 15kW of regulation down, or 5kW of regulation up. Your gas car is always zero load, and has zero regulation capacity. These are basically the definitions of regulation up and regulation down.

One of the arguments that many EV enthusiasts make is that you can add a huge number of EVs to the road without adding any new baseline load because most charging would occur at off-peak times.

No; the benefit is that you don't need to add additional peaking generation and infrastructure. Look at this graph of the real-time load in California:
www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html

On a hot summer afternoon, the load (red line) will approach the available generation (green line), at which point all available generation is online. Adding more generation would require building more generators, and eventually more infrastructure (transmission lines, etc.). Fortunately, most EV charging fits into the valley on the left of the graph (in the middle of the night) -- we can literally add millions of EVs over there, without any infrastructure upgrades.

My question is which benefit will we see - low up-front infrastructure costs because we won't have to build any new power plants? Or huge savings because we get to use V2G after we build the costly new power plants to bring up baseline load?

Yes on the first; the second isn't really correct. EV charging profiles (i.e. mostly scheduled at night) mean we won't need new infrastructure for a long time, but that has nothing to do with V2G.

For V2G and regulation, let's go back to my car -- it can vary its charge between 0 and 20kW. That means a fleet of 1000 cars can superimpose a 0-20megawatt signal on top of the CalISO load graph above. By doing so, we can avoid having to do the same thing with generators as they balance generation with load -- highly desirable because generators are inefficient and dirty when they're ramping up and down. (We still need to add generation as load increases, of course -- but we can do it in larger, more-optimal steps, leaving the fine-grained balancing act to the vehicle fleet.) This is the basic idea behind "ancillary services" and it's where the money is on the table right now.

Hope this helps at least a little.

Again, I beg to differ.

The California Independent System Operator runs the California interstate transmission grid. Here are some links discribing their peak power demand for 2006:

http://www.caiso.com/183d/183d9c065bc30.pdf and http://www.fypower.org/pdf/CAISO_72506pm.pdf
(both describing peak demand estimated at 4 pm)

If you really want to see peak load for California (and other regions of the country have similar OASIS sites), go to http://oasis.caiso.com/ click on "System Load" on the top bar, check "System Load", and put whatever 30 day period you wish to see. (I did June 1, 2006 - June 30, 2006).

The results for highest hourly peak:

June 1: 2 pm
June 2: 4 pm
June 3: 5 pm
June 4: 5 pm
June 5: 4 pm
June 6: 4 pm
Etc.

You can do this for any day you like.

As you can see, peak demand is usually right between 4 and 5 pm. Don't get me wrong, demand is still high at 6 pm or 7 pm, but that's not "peak". Different systems in geographic areas do behave slightly differently -- but most behave exactly as I specified. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it.

Again, I beg to differ.

The California Independent System Operator runs the California interstate transmission grid. Here are some links discribing their peak power demand for 2006:

http://www.caiso.com/183d/183d9c065bc30.pdf and http://www.fypower.org/pdf/CAISO_72506pm.pdf
(both describing peak demand estimated at 4 pm)

If you really want to see peak load for California (and other regions of the country have similar OASIS sites), go to http://oasis.caiso.com/ click on "System Load" on the top bar, check "System Load", and put whatever 30 day period you wish to see. (I did June 1, 2006 - June 30, 2006).

The results for highest hourly peak:

June 1: 2 pm
June 2: 4 pm
June 3: 5 pm
June 4: 5 pm
June 5: 4 pm
June 6: 4 pm
Etc.

You can do this for any day you like.

As you can see, peak demand is usually right between 4 and 5 pm. Don't get me wrong, demand is still high at 6 pm or 7 pm, but that's not "peak". Different systems in geographic areas do behave slightly differently -- but most behave exactly as I specified. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it.

I was just thinking yesterday of doing a paranoia web page, aggregating warnings from various sources.

• US DHS terrorism threat level. ("Code Yellow, or Elevated." today.)
• DoD InfoCon threat level. ("INFOCON level 4, "Increased Vigilance in Preparation for Operations or Exercises." today.)
• California Office of Emergency Services warnings ("...FLASH FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT FROM TUESDAY MORNING THROUGH LATE TUESDAY NIGHT FOR THE NORTHERN AND CENTRAL PORTIONS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA..." yesterday.)
• California Earthquake Monitor Not much happening today.
• NOAA Tropical Storm Prediction Center. Slow day, not hurricane season.
• California Independent System Operator power grid status. Warns of power shortages and incipient blackouts. No problems today.
• Our local threat monitor, the Palo Alto Creek Level Monitor. Water level low right now.

A web page with a good-looking version of this info, suitable for display on large screen displays, would be useful.

It's a Gridtie Inverter system.

The point of these systems is to be able to provide some of the power that a building needs. NOT ALL OF IT!

More importantly, the peark Solar power is available when the Utility companies need it most -- when it's bright and sunny outside and the air conditioning load is hammering the utility grid. That's when the power companies need to buy 'peak power' from outside of California. And peak power costs butt loads of cash. Sometimes 10 to 15 times more than 'non-peak' power.

Here's a link to the real time power consumption for the state of California. Click on the graph for lots of details,
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html

At the worst, the red line will peak at over 54 Gigawatts.

Here's a real time display of a working solar power system used by a business, http://www.fatspaniel.com/datapage.html

Google's system will be the same, just bigger.

Let's stop all this silliness about 'running the office on Solar' and 'DC Powered Offices'.

The Solar panels make DC. The panels get connected in series until the voltage from the panels adds up to about 600 VDC. These structures are called 'Strings'.

Strings get connected in parallel to Inverters. Inverters convert the DC into AC.

If you want to play with an online system for configuring strings, go here, http://www.sma-america.com/solar-technology/solar- design-tools/index.html

The outputs of the Inverters are connected into the building's electrical system.

The main power for the building comes from the utility company.

The Inverters will try to deliver as much power as they can to the power system in the building. Any 'extra' power is delivered back into the utility grid. Google gets a credit for what get's delivered to the gird. That credit reduces their monthly energy bill.

It would be insanely expensive to try to convert an office to DC.

Also, Solar panels won't be able to provide power during all of their business hours -- and it's simply not economically viable to build a battery system to store the energy and recover it later.

.....There currently isn't enough reserve capacity to handle a massive buildout of electric vehicles ......

Not really true, if the charging is done at off peak times. Take a look at the California electric load curve and you can see how much extra power could be available to charge cars.

http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html

Most cars don't drive more than maybe 50-60 miles in a day and could easily be re-charged over night with a 10-15KW charger. An electric stove outlet would provide enough current for such a charging device. If there are enough such chargers, the curve would be flat or even reverse, shifting the peaks to the night time hours.

Power draw would be more at night....people tend to use lights when its dark =]

Here's a real time graph of California's electricity usage. You can see that the peak is about 4 PM, probably due to air conditioning. A solar system could work out pretty well to provide some extra power at periods of peak demand.

There are many ISO ( Independant System Operators ) that manage the power grids in the US. They are not "power companies". CA ISO, Midwest ISO, ISO New England, PJM, and the Southwest Power Pool. One of the larger ones, CAISO, manages the power grid for California.

There is ISO New England that manages the power for Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, MA, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. I know for a fact this company is a not-for profit. One of their mandates is to maintain the grid in a way that is cost effective to the end customers. They don't allow the power generators to rape the public. They monitor things VERY closely to ensure that no one is manipulating the market to make extra profit at the expense of the general consumers.

The incremental cost of electricity for a computer that is idle verses one running at 100% CPU is actually very, very small.

If we assume that the CPU draws 60W more at 100% use than at 0% (Intel lists maximum heat disipation of 60W for the P4), then 8,000 computers would consume a total of 480kW. Sounds like a lot, right? Now consider that so far today, California has had a maximum power draw of 28,000GW, which is 58 *million* times more than 480kW. And that's just one state.

• switched the commonly used lights to compact fluorescents
• unplugged the TV and stereo when not in use (which is most of the time)
• turned off the hot tub
• got a new, front loading washer (planned, but we moved up our purchase)
• got a folding clothes drying rack for the yard
• got a new refrigerator
• started shutting down my PC when I'm gone for any length of time

Some of the commercials are geared towards getting people to watch when they use electricity. California has plenty of generating capacity...on average. It's when the weather gets really hot (like the last couple of days) and power usage spikes that we run into problems. But even on hot days, we have plenty of power in the morning and at night. It's during they day when all the businesses, schools, and homes are running ACs and everything else that we hit a crunch. I've taken to checking the system conditions on really warm days to know when to power more stuff down if I can.

Somewhat of a side note: A bit of praise for the front-loading washer. Not only does it use less electricty than the old one, but it uses less water, gets the clothes cleaner, and leaves them dryer after the spin cycle, meaning the dryer doesn't work as hard, too. (or the clothes dry faster on the line when we can use that option). Not big news to most Europeans, but Americans should buy front-loaders when getting a new washer.

How severe was the california engergy crisis?

The truth is that in 1998 there was a 1-in-40 year summer heat wave in california that caused a statewide load of over 60gigawatts at peak times. data: pdf page 4-6, ISO serves %75 of state.

Anybody remember rolling blackouts in summer of '98?

What causes a crisis is stuff like natural gas companies blowing up their own pipelines to create shortages, along with companies like enron with their trading games.

Industrialized nations power consumption does indeed change significantly at night. It doesn't go to zero obviously, but it does change according to a known cycle. If you would like to see what a real load cycle looks like you can go to the CalISO page and look at the current grid load graph for most of the State of California, or click here.

Industrialized nations share a different trait - our power consumption does not decrease much or at all during the overnight hours. Yes it does. See for example, the current status (and forecast demand) of the California ISO (California Independent System Operator, which controls the distribution of power and produces warnings about potential rolling blackouts here in California). Notice that the power demand drops significantly after 9PM PST, reaching almost 50% of the day time peak at around 4AM PST. Which isn't to say that power demand drops to zero over night; we still some source of power, but hydroelectric, wind and wave power all work day and night. And coal and gas-fired plants aren't going to go away over night (no pun intended), but they will go away eventually when the fuel runs out.

On a larger scale, this could solve the current energy problems. The problem isn't one of energy presources so much as energy delivery. If flywheels could be charged (like batteries, but with much less loss in the charging process) during off-peak hours, they could be used to cover overextensions at peak hours.

I read an article on /. around the beginning of the year about power companies burying large flywheels underground to cover brownouts and short-duration blackouts. This could be a great growth industry.

Kevin Fox
--

Ummm...I don't understand. Are they not allowed to make a profit? I can't understand how it is ok for them to pay $.35 for a kilowatt hour of electricty, while being able to sell it for $.07 .

PG&E is scamming everyone and outright threatening blackouts if they don't get their way (and they have had rolling blackouts here).

PG&E has very little control over the blackouts. The Cal Iso calls them up and says, "You need to free x Megawatts of power, now." PG&E has no choice, but to free that much electricty, or the whole system crashes. Look on you PG&E (or SCE or SDGE or whatever your utility is) bill and it will tell you a number. When (insert your favorite/least favorite utility here) is given the blackout notice, they just go in order, from 1 to however many blocks there are. That's required by the Public Utilities commission!

Yeah. Here's a link to a press release. Note that this is a PDF file.


...phil

From what I have seen about the Cal ISO (http://www.caiso.com/) is that the cheaper generators are NOT generating. This causes the ISO to use emergency quickly on power (Jet Engines) that have the highest cost. This drives the $ amount for power up quickly.

Contrary to what those in other sections of the world may think (what? you don't keep up with everything that happens in California? why not?), this is not exactly a new topic.

It comes down to, essentially, a truly awful economic decision and a great deal of FUD spread by (who else?) the power companies and the media.

Deregulation started in 1995, when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco started studying the possibility. Other states (most notably New Jersey/Delaware/Pennsylvania/Maryland, which forms one power region) had managed to successfully deregulate power, so California figured it was a Good Thing (TM).

The bad economics come in when you realize that it was only the wholesale market that was deregulated, but that Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) were under a CPUC-imposed rate freeze, which meant they could not raise their rates.

Added to this was a requirement that Edison, at least (I'm not sure about PG&E), was forced to divest itself of its power plants. These power plants were bought up by companies that were essentially startups. The new generators of electricity raised the price of electricity, and SCE and PG&E were stuck.

It amounts to a larger version of the rent control in my hometown of Santa Monica - costs may rise but the end-users pay a fixed rate set by the government.

An interesting side note for those who care to research further - San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was under no such rate freeze, and prices, predictably, tripled this summer. SDG&E, you notice, is not facing bankruptcy, because they are free to raise their rates.

As for the environmental "cartel" whining about nuclear power, it was my last knowledge that both Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant north of San Luis Obispo and San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS, aka "the iron tits" due to their unfortunate shape) were both running (with some exceptions due to kelp in the intake at DCNPP).

The cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Glendale, Riverside, and San Bernadino (among others) are NOT affected, no matter what FUD you may see in the national media, because they have municipal utilities which have long-term contracts and were never regulated (the CPUC has no authority over municipal utilities).

You can check the status of the grid at the California Independent System Operator's website, but it may be down (slashdotted without ever being posted on slashdot, imagine!) We have had no rotating outages yet. Let's hope the broken system gets fixed soon.

It seems that, 30 minutes ago (a little after midnight pacific time, early Friday morning), the Stage 3 emergency has been reinstated. At least, so it would appear according to the California ISO's up-to-the-minute Status Page.

When the topics are technical, Slashdot has a really good signal/noise ratio. Smart things get modded up; stupid things get modded down and/or stomped on.

Here, though, we see what happens when it's a topic where people don't know much about. The volume is just as high, the opinions are just firm. But most people are just talking out their asses, and moderators are giving big points to Limbaugh-like rants without a scrap of fact in 'em.

Since this article already has enough opinion, I'll just stick to a few facts and some interesting links.

I live in San Francisco, so I've been following this closely. A very interesting site for the curious is the California Independent System Operator, an organization responsible for the long-distance high-voltage lines and the power that flows over them. They have a FAQ, a diagram that shows how the power flows, and an up-to-the-minute graph showing projected and actual power load. (I say we all pick a time tomorrow to turn off everything and see if we can make the graph drop.)

Personally, I use 100% renewable power from utility.com. (I actually pay less than others, but I'd happily pay more for my green preferences.) They are certified by Green-e, a non-profit that verifies the power content. (The typical mix for California uses only 12% renewables, with 20% coal, 20% large hydroelectric, 31% natural gas, and 16% nuclear. (Yes, large hydroelectric is counted separately; it's not considered very environmentally friendly these days.)

There are several good articles in the New York Times about all this, including one on following the money. There is also one on how Texas plans to do it differently. And as subscribers to The Economist know, California's deregulation was a pretty shoddy job compared to other utility deregulations around the world.

So those of you who lay the blame entirely on environmental regs from California's own special blend of fruits, nuts, and flakes should research a little further. You'll find a picture that's much more interesting and complex: political dithering, a lack of foresight, corporate greed, and plenty of plain old stupidity are involved.

When the topics are technical, Slashdot has a really good signal/noise ratio. Smart things get modded up; stupid things get modded down and/or stomped on.

Here, though, we see what happens when it's a topic where people don't know much about. The volume is just as high, the opinions are just firm. But most people are just talking out their asses, and moderators are giving big points to Limbaugh-like rants without a scrap of fact in 'em.

Since this article already has enough opinion, I'll just stick to a few facts and some interesting links.

I live in San Francisco, so I've been following this closely. A very interesting site for the curious is the California Independent System Operator, an organization responsible for the long-distance high-voltage lines and the power that flows over them. They have a FAQ, a diagram that shows how the power flows, and an up-to-the-minute graph showing projected and actual power load. (I say we all pick a time tomorrow to turn off everything and see if we can make the graph drop.)

Personally, I use 100% renewable power from utility.com. (I actually pay less than others, but I'd happily pay more for my green preferences.) They are certified by Green-e, a non-profit that verifies the power content. (The typical mix for California uses only 12% renewables, with 20% coal, 20% large hydroelectric, 31% natural gas, and 16% nuclear. (Yes, large hydroelectric is counted separately; it's not considered very environmentally friendly these days.)

There are several good articles in the New York Times about all this, including one on following the money. There is also one on how Texas plans to do it differently. And as subscribers to The Economist know, California's deregulation was a pretty shoddy job compared to other utility deregulations around the world.

So those of you who lay the blame entirely on environmental regs from California's own special blend of fruits, nuts, and flakes should research a little further. You'll find a picture that's much more interesting and complex: political dithering, a lack of foresight, corporate greed, and plenty of plain old stupidity are involved.

When the topics are technical, Slashdot has a really good signal/noise ratio. Smart things get modded up; stupid things get modded down and/or stomped on.

Here, though, we see what happens when it's a topic where people don't know much about. The volume is just as high, the opinions are just firm. But most people are just talking out their asses, and moderators are giving big points to Limbaugh-like rants without a scrap of fact in 'em.

Since this article already has enough opinion, I'll just stick to a few facts and some interesting links.

I live in San Francisco, so I've been following this closely. A very interesting site for the curious is the California Independent System Operator, an organization responsible for the long-distance high-voltage lines and the power that flows over them. They have a FAQ, a diagram that shows how the power flows, and an up-to-the-minute graph showing projected and actual power load. (I say we all pick a time tomorrow to turn off everything and see if we can make the graph drop.)

Personally, I use 100% renewable power from utility.com. (I actually pay less than others, but I'd happily pay more for my green preferences.) They are certified by Green-e, a non-profit that verifies the power content. (The typical mix for California uses only 12% renewables, with 20% coal, 20% large hydroelectric, 31% natural gas, and 16% nuclear. (Yes, large hydroelectric is counted separately; it's not considered very environmentally friendly these days.)

There are several good articles in the New York Times about all this, including one on following the money. There is also one on how Texas plans to do it differently. And as subscribers to The Economist know, California's deregulation was a pretty shoddy job compared to other utility deregulations around the world.

So those of you who lay the blame entirely on environmental regs from California's own special blend of fruits, nuts, and flakes should research a little further. You'll find a picture that's much more interesting and complex: political dithering, a lack of foresight, corporate greed, and plenty of plain old stupidity are involved.

When the topics are technical, Slashdot has a really good signal/noise ratio. Smart things get modded up; stupid things get modded down and/or stomped on.

Here, though, we see what happens when it's a topic where people don't know much about. The volume is just as high, the opinions are just firm. But most people are just talking out their asses, and moderators are giving big points to Limbaugh-like rants without a scrap of fact in 'em.

Since this article already has enough opinion, I'll just stick to a few facts and some interesting links.

I live in San Francisco, so I've been following this closely. A very interesting site for the curious is the California Independent System Operator, an organization responsible for the long-distance high-voltage lines and the power that flows over them. They have a FAQ, a diagram that shows how the power flows, and an up-to-the-minute graph showing projected and actual power load. (I say we all pick a time tomorrow to turn off everything and see if we can make the graph drop.)

Personally, I use 100% renewable power from utility.com. (I actually pay less than others, but I'd happily pay more for my green preferences.) They are certified by Green-e, a non-profit that verifies the power content. (The typical mix for California uses only 12% renewables, with 20% coal, 20% large hydroelectric, 31% natural gas, and 16% nuclear. (Yes, large hydroelectric is counted separately; it's not considered very environmentally friendly these days.)

There are several good articles in the New York Times about all this, including one on following the money. There is also one on how Texas plans to do it differently. And as subscribers to The Economist know, California's deregulation was a pretty shoddy job compared to other utility deregulations around the world.

So those of you who lay the blame entirely on environmental regs from California's own special blend of fruits, nuts, and flakes should research a little further. You'll find a picture that's much more interesting and complex: political dithering, a lack of foresight, corporate greed, and plenty of plain old stupidity are involved.

Effective 01/12/2001 at 00:17 (PST of course)

1. System Conditions: Current System Load, Today's Peak Demand, Today's Forecast Peak, and Tomorrow's Forecast Peak.

2. Current Active Notice(s): Will tell you any stage emergencies (it went to stage alert 3 today!) and other technical information.

Have fun! :)

1. System Conditions: Current System Load, Today's Peak Demand, Today's Forecast Peak, and Tomorrow's Forecast Peak.

2. Current Active Notice(s): Will tell you any stage emergencies (it went to stage alert 3 today!) and other technical information.

Have fun! :)

I work in San Mateo (20 minutes south of SF), and we've been watching these all day. Our major systems are all ups'd, but it would still suck to be without power.....

Yesterday evening, the grid was under Level 3 emerngency which required manditory rolling blackouts.

Just so no one is mislead, there were no rolling blackouts last night. There's a white paper linked at the bottom of the other system status page at http://www2.caiso.com/awe/systemstatus.html that describes what really happens at each stage.

Stage three is when the CAISO predicts that operating reserves will drop below 1.5%, and unless resolved quickly will probably result in rolling blackouts of the various blocks around the state. But that did not happen last night, thank goodness. I've got a UPS for my two systems (bought a couple of weeks ago, before all the craziness), but it won't last through all of the blackout...

Walt

Here is a website where you can watch the power usage for the California Power Grid and also follow what steps are being taken to allevaite the problem...

http://www.caiso.com/SystemStatus.html

In this context, ISO stands for Independant System Operator, California has a competitve environment for power production. The ISO oversees the grid that holds all the companies together and, in turn, posts warnings when the grid is about to fail.

If you click on the "Market Notice" button, you can see the current (and archived) warnings. Yesterday evening, the grid was under Level 3 emerngency which required manditory rolling blackouts.

William

--

California ISO System Conditions Page:
http://www.caiso.com/SystemStatus.html

--

1. Visit the state's graphics heavy behemoth of a web site. Clicking on 'Emergency Services' on the front page sends you to earthquake information. Sorry. No electricity warnings easily found.
2. Turn to newspapers to learn that the person in charge of this issue is the 'Independent System Operator.' (And no, the ISO is probably not a computer geek.)
3. Return to the web site and search for the job title. Aha, the first search result takes you to the California ISO web site. Of course the ISO's front page doesn't describe what the ISO does or even explain what 'ISO' stands for.
4. Surely for a stage three alert the ISO would put a big alert message on its front page. Well, you thought wrong.
5. Muddling through its murky interface you find news releases. Ahh, but of course they're all posted as PDF files. The logic must be that only people with PDF readers are energy hogs and they of course enjoy using plug-ins to read plain text documents.

Who wins in all of this? The news media wins by our continued reliance on them. State governments do not understand that they now control their own broadcast medium.

1. Visit the state's graphics heavy behemoth of a web site. Clicking on 'Emergency Services' on the front page sends you to earthquake information. Sorry. No electricity warnings easily found.
2. Turn to newspapers to learn that the person in charge of this issue is the 'Independent System Operator.' (And no, the ISO is probably not a computer geek.)
3. Return to the web site and search for the job title. Aha, the first search result takes you to the California ISO web site. Of course the ISO's front page doesn't describe what the ISO does or even explain what 'ISO' stands for.
4. Surely for a stage three alert the ISO would put a big alert message on its front page. Well, you thought wrong.
5. Muddling through its murky interface you find news releases. Ahh, but of course they're all posted as PDF files. The logic must be that only people with PDF readers are energy hogs and they of course enjoy using plug-ins to read plain text documents.

Who wins in all of this? The news media wins by our continued reliance on them. State governments do not understand that they now control their own broadcast medium.

There is always concern because of the growth in home electronics over the past few years; I'm definitely guilty of adding to the demand... Last summer caught us by surprise, not because of lack of generation, but because of reactive power modeling errors, but that event, not to mention Y2K, made us take a hard look, and all of our models are correct to the best of our knowledge.

As to the NIMBY phenomena, I point you to our Queue A map as to where new (planned) generation is scheduled to be built in our zone. Its a double-edged sword; everyone wants the electricity, but noone wants the plant in their county.. But if you put the plant too far away, then you have the added problems with transmission...

Other ISO's:

California

New England

New York

Keep in mind that the CNET article was entirely about CalISO (which is only a few years old and not as developed yet as the east coast) which is only one piece of the entire puzzle. And I'm sure "HomePower" thanks you for the free advertisement, but I hope next time you at Slashdot try to cover the other angles in the story first, other than the pop-answer. Rememeber, one Nuclear plant generates over 1100 MW of power, thats 1,100,000,000 Watts, or about 167,000 times the output of the lead article on HomePower, and those people are the exception, not the rule.

-- Scott

Oh, btw, if it gets back to me, I'm not an official representative of PJM LLC. Thats what Customer Relations is for.