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Power Shortages And Tech Industry
TheGeneration writes: "Power shortages in San Francisco, and Silicon Valley have caused power providers to demand that Intel and other tech industry biggies to use less power. Things may get bad enough that rolling blackouts have been warned. The story is reported by the AP. "
Actually the ones responsible for the bird holocaust aren't the beasts with 4 tires, they are the beasts with 4 legs. Kitty Cats that are let outside without a leash are responsible for a huge number of bird deaths.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Cisco wanted to build a new power plant in the Coyote valley area but keep running into "green" opposition. Look at THIS for more info.
__ Fast - Cheap - Good Pick any two
My take on this is that CA massively fucked up deregulation, by establishing perverse incentives to reduce capacity and/or manipulate pricing, combined with strong disincentives to establish new capacity. The ISO is trying mightily to keep the network running, but customers are getting crappy service.
I'm a pretty serious capitalist, but I must say that the LA Dept. of Water and Power is looking pretty good right now (their role in Tank Girl notwithstanding!)
sulli
RTFJ.
We're going to burn up resources very soon at an accelerating pace... Everyone's arguement is good for more SUV's... Everyone's arguement is good for big bad machines that run 24/7 and bigger facilities with AC that cool them 24/7. Whoever uses the most resource that person wins!
why do they want their customers to use less power? I'd think they would want to increase the amount of energy they harvest and instead encourage the industries to buy as much electricity from them as they want... am I missing something?
The marginal cost of the next kilowatt of electricity can be huge, depending on the amount of spare capacity the generating company has on hand.
Here's why: Most power plant designs have susbtantial economies of scale; the larger the plant (up to a point, of course), the more electricity generated per dollar of capital investment. Therefore it is advantageous to build fairly large plants.
So, if the company is out of generating capacity, and they are facing additional demand, they either need to lay out many billions for a large new plant, money that they won't see back for decades, or they need to build a smaller, less efficient plant that is a poorer investment.
So in many cases, the company is better off with demand staying as is. With some cleverness, they can buy power from other companies and re-sell it, waiting until demand grows to the point that they can justify construction of new capacity. But this depends on the willingness of neighbors to sell them power at a rate that they can afford.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Have you ever been to California? There aren't as many areas that get winds consistantly strong enough to power wind generators. There are areas that have wind turbines (such as Techapie (sp?--it's at the southern tip of the Sierra Nevada Mountains by Mojave)), but the wind we get off the ocean isn't as strong or consistant as the wind the Pacific Northwest gets (note, I'm saying this as a San Diegan who lived in Tacoma for a few years)
heh, first off, its 'tehachapi', but there's also the banning pass region between banning and palm springs (east of la about 80 miles) that also has wind powered generators.
The other thing is - get rid of those WinNT and Win2K boxen! Switch to some decent boxen with good cycle usage like *nix.
Good point
Christ, I hate zealots like you. Does anyone really think that this has ANYTHING to do with powerusage by computers? Try considering the fact that there's a housing boom going on, with tens of thousands of new houses being built all over the state. Then consider the fact that about 10,000 Mwh is unavailable due to previously scheduled maintenance of one of So. Cal. Edison's plants.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Dang silicon valley millionaires using up all the electricity for their fancy house gadgets.
Maybe after reading the article on /., every silly-con valley dot-comer decided it's time to keep up with the Ellisons and go on a mad buying spree to have multiple party mode buttons.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
This is pretty typical.
Governments of any level from local to national typically do not understand (or won't acknowledge) any but the most obvious (or tittilating) cause-and-effect relationships.
Witness the recycling efforts of the Suburban US during the eighties: Many local governments implemented mandatory glass/aluminum/paper recycling programs, with the idea that the revenues collected from the recycled materials would offset the cost of the program. Practically all of them failed to foresee the Invisible Hand driving the revenues down from the hugely-increased supply.
Many governments and private interests have tried to conserve energy and save money by making buildings more weather-proof. Not a bad idea, but these invariably led to a lack of ventilation which assists in turning the building into playground for bacteria and the exposing of occupants to higher levels of interior pollutants. The costs of "Sick Building Syndrome" often more than offset the money & energy saved.
Governments often try to smooth the flow of automobile traffic and increase safety by creating freeways, autobahns, bypasses, etc. These newer routes end up encouraging people to just drive faster, nullifying any safety gains. The inlets & outlets from the new route invariably bog down the traffic on it, anyway.
Polical and social endeavors are filled with examples such as the above. All of these have/had fine intent, but all of them backfired, creating new problems.
What's my point? I'm not sure I really have one. But so it goes.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
I strongly suggest you do some research about the disasterous history of Nuke plant construction in California. (Fault lines, backwards plans, rate pass-thrus for plants that never opened.) And then come back and blame it on the "greens".
As Churchill might have said, nuclear power is the absolute worst way to generate electricty... except for all the others.
1. You don't understand, the current crop of politicians count the protesters as one of their core constituencies. Seriously enforcing the law would deprive them of votes and lead to a weakened political position in the next election.
2. The engineering problems with that are tremendous and the permits necessary to do such heavy modifications are mind-boggling. It isn't going to happen.
3. You are offering a false choice. The true choice in your situation is sporadic v. sporadic and history is on the side of local positioning of the company's servers being more reliable.
DB
that I don't like the idea of practical fusion for generating electricity because we'd soon empty the ocean to generate electricity... the "base-line" demands keep rising...in the old days, only telephones need to be on 24/7 so you can make/receive calls...nowadays the computers need to be on 24/7 so you have HA... Power demand is not about what you need for a purpose but what you need to just keep things running...
Oooh!
Maybe you should try this!
There is however truth in the fact that only a small decrease in power consumption of widely used ICs would greatly reduce our cumulative power consumption.
Monitors left on- big pet peeve. I agree! ;). So no way computers are getting shut off.
;)
I work for a small company, so fortunately I can take it upon myself to do the monitor power-downs.
If I'm the last one here, I walk around to all the local cubes and turn every monitor left on...off.
I'm sure some folks get annoyed, but it's not been brought up yet. I let them know I'm doing it (and thankfully, the number of monitors I turn off is decreasing- persistence!).
Most of us leave our computers on all night too, but that's necessary- our backup jobs run overnight (client to server), as well as maintenance (ScanDisk, SpeedDisk, AV scans/updates, SETI
But monitors, even in sleep mode, are still using power- feel the tops of the monitors when you get into work and think of the power used and the lifetime reduction.
Turn off your monitors each night- collectively, I bet that woudld save a large percentage of power out there on the wrong coast
Kinda like Moe, but just a little more Kool
Cisco wants to build a huge campus south of San Jose but doesn't want to be neighbors with a proposed power plant in the same area. Cisco and San Jose would much rather export the pollution to places like Moss Landing on the Monterey Bay than deal with the fact that electricity requires power plants.
The really ironic part about Cisco fighting the proposed power plant is Cisco produces products that raise the baseline power requirements - Cisco's products are almost *always* on.
With neighbors like Cisco who needs Betty and Goober?
Home small scale generation is ineffecient. If you don't believe me, try it sometime. The demand swings for a typical house with electric heat, water heater, cooking, air condidtioning, laundry, etc are so big, a typical home would need at least a 20KW plant even though most evenings watching the late show only need less than 2KW. To get by with a smaller plant, you would need to provide your own rolling blackouts. EG heat and water heater would shut off when the stove is used etc. Many off griders have to curtail the peak consumption a lot to get by with a reasonable size electric plant. This means; no electric water heater, electric heat, electric stove, air conditioning, security lighting, etc. Everything except TV, Radio, Lights. fridge, and such are non electric. Chip manufacture uses lots of power and it needs to be cheap. Otherwise other manufactures with lower cost will take the market. Quadrupling or more the cost of power for on site generation is not an option.
The truth shall set you free!
The fun thing is that a lot of high tech companies don't use UPSes or tape backups for a _lot_ of their systems. Especially lab/R&D type stuff. Rolling blackouts could cause some ugliness for a lot of companies if data gets lost because of this.
Then consider the fact that about 10,000 Mwh is unavailable due to previously scheduled maintenance of one of So. Cal. Edison's plants.
... and they got rid of that cool "power-plug" logo), is one of the primary suppliers for the LA area) I don't know if Edison International sells their excess electricity to other areas, but it doesn't sound like they are having a problem supplying their customers.
IIRC, the article mentioned that the Los Angeles area isn't being affected by the threats of the rolling blackouts (So. Cal Edison (recently renamed "Edison International"
Doh!
just put a few of those linux companies out of business. oh, and fp.
---- Just another spud server.
Heh. Sure, blame one small organization for ruining it for the rest of us. No, we're all to blame...
We want all the conveniences of life (which now days requires even more power every year) but we don't want the side effects. Basically as individuals we're promoting a selfish version of what the greens want: less pollution, but only in Our Back Yard. Some other guy's Back Yard? Might as well be glowing green for all I care, right?
Who seems to be using more common sense here?
Apparently you live in a hole. Southern california is WORSE than northern california, we've been having these blackouts since the 115 degree heat of July ( http://www.scebiz.com/servlet/scc_adm?template=/so lutionscc/rates/i-6/history.tmpl - yes, that is 'sce' meaning SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON)... and what's worse, if you study that 'blocking history', you'll notice that its becoming more and more frequent. I can also tell you from personal experience its lasting longer and longer each time, meaning its losing its effectiveness. Soon, I'd be willing to bet that the general population will be experiencing rolling blackouts instead of only those on the I-6 plan.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
did they back up their work?
GONE FISHING
I think that God hates George W. Bush and his whole family. That's why He chose Florida as the center of controversy. Take Georgie's presidency away from him in a legal battle in the state that is run by Georgie's brother Jebb. It makes the whole family look bad.
As far as California is concerned... God loves it. We're not sinking into the ocean, as most people think. The Earth's plates are moving in such a fashion that CA is actually movie up the coastline.
Pretty soon, we'll be next door neighbors to Oregon and Washington, which is a hell of a lot better than being neighbors with Nevada. God's doing Clifornia a favor.
SirPoopsalot
To send me an email, remove the SPAM's and replace the -at- with @.
That was a nice allusion to Swift's A modest Proposal, but I don't think comparing Santa Clara Californians to Ireland's poverty class is exactly a clear analogy.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
but maybe you could use geothermal energy to fix that, eh? in another vein, what about tidal power? i hear a tidal power plant went online recently... i forget where, England was it?
the problem isn't big companies, they aren't using more power than they usually do, and they are the ones who carry the brunt of the cost of running power plants.
penalize people who are wasting all the electricity on decorations before shutting down industry. People can find other less-wasteful ways to be creative for the holidays.
________
You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of how the power system works here. That's ok, I just got a crash-education myself.
;-)
First of all, this is not 'the government' doing this, it is the power companies.
Second, due to massive de-regulation (see the irony?) a few years ago, the responsibility for forecasting power consumption was de-centralized, and took on a slightly more 'customer-oriented' approach. For example, instead of Big Monopoly Power Co deciding how much power the state needed, BMPC ow only decides how much it's customers need, as do all the other LPCs (little power companies). During this re-adjustment, there was a lull in new power plant starts - perfectly understandable, as BMPC had no idea how LPC would affect it's customer base. Taken by itself, this lull wouldn't have caused our current (no pun intended) problem. (see #4)
Third, plants take about 2-3 years from start to finish, and believe me, they are working on them!
Fourth, due to the good economy, people are using more electricity - plain and simple. California has traditionally bought about 20% of it's power from Washington and Oregon, who have recently stopped selling us the power due to their own needs.
And finally, we are only being asked not to run our Christmas lights between 5pm and 7pm, which is peak useage time. Due to the physics of A/C power delivery, all we have to do is cut down on the power we use during peak times, and we'll be fine. Since the elctricity is generated as it's used, that's the only time we're in real danger...
You know, it's amazing how quick people can be to criticize California, must be a jealousy thing
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
It just goes to show that if you partially deregulate, things can get worse instead of better. They have politically slowed down the construction of new electrical generation capacity so much that blackouts became an inevitability.
They need to make it easier to add capacity to the system so higher prices will generate new entrants to the market.
Maybe those powerplug (GE labelled) generators are going to save the day but first they have to get through this year without stupid legislation rolling California fully back to a command and control system
DB
True, but power plants dont just pop up over night. They have to be built and that takes time. This wont solve the immediate problem of low power reserves. As the article mentions, much of the loss in power is due to breakdowns, maintenance and pollution limits. Yes, they need to build more power plants, but they should have started doing it long ago.
Southern california definately IS being affective. I live in claremont (30 miles east of LA), and we've been asked to shut down power 17 times already this summer ( http://www.scebiz.com/servlet/scc_adm?template=/so lutionscc/rates/i-6/history.tmpl )
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
People are afraid of what they don't understand. Most people do not understand nuclear power and the first thing they associate with the word "nuclear" is a mushroom cloud. Hence the fear that a reactor can somehow explode like an A-bomb, which is in practice impossible.
In fact a coal power plant releases more radioactive stuff than a nuclear plant, because there is a lot of uranium in coal, that gets released as soot after burning the coal. During normal operation a nuclear plant releases only heat that escapes from the heat exchangers and may be some water vapor. Of course there is spent fuel that has to be taken care of after it's been used, but this is much better than carbon dioxide that is released by coal and petroleum and causes greenhouse effect.
You greedy schmuck! How many states are sending you (CA) water? Should "we" all cut off the water we're shipping you? What gives? Get your nationalistic head out of the sand and look at the bigger picture.
Industrial-scale distributed power generation by fuel cell, commercially available NOW.
This technology would make so much sense for a server farm: produce the power locally, and you don't have to depend on the grid or on massive and expensive battery backup systems. Maybe the answer is simply to require power users over a certain density to generate their own power.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
The solution to California's power problems?
Electricity Over IP.
All the state needs to do is hack into some of New Jersey's many Nuclear or trash burning power plants and everyone can have lights on their house for Christmas and Intel can continue to make faulty chips.
-gerbik
Yes! Mod up the above post, it's not a troll, it's the truth.
In the early 1990's more than 20% of the electricity in the US was generated by nuclear power. However, because of the no-nukes crowd, no new nuclear power plants have been commisioned since the mid-80's. Currently, many of the older plants have reached the end of their intended lifetimes and are scheduled to shut down in the near future.
The only viable alternatives for replacing these nuclear power plants are fossil fuel based plants. At the present time renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power are not sufficient to meet the nation's (or even California's) energy needs. Furthermore they are unreliable (no solar on cloudy days or at night). Hydrogen fuel cells are not a viable solution because it requires more energy to produce the Hydrogen than can be produced from the hydrogen.
The problem with replacing nuclear power plants with fossil fuel based power plants is that the fossil fuel based plants are killing the environment. All contribute to global warming. Coal based plants produce acid rain, NOx, SOx and particulates. Even the cleanest natural gas based plants contribute to global warming.
Also, natural gas is relatively expensive compared to other fossil fuels and natural gas reserves are limitted. In fact California's current electricity supply problems are partially due to the limitted supply of natural gas.
Basically, by replacing nuclear power plants with fossil fuel based plants we are exchanging a safe source of power for a dangerous source of power. That's right! Fossil fuel based power is destroying the world. Nuclear power is relatively safe by comparison. In the US there have been no significant nuclear accidents that have threatened the lives and health of the surrounding population even after 40 years of nuclear power generation. By contrast thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of people living near coal-fired power plants have suffered from asthma and other lung-diseases due to the pollution.
Of course there have been accidents at nuclear facilities, including severe accidents in some foreign countries. However, in all cases the nuclear accidents resulted from inherently flawed reactor designs and negligence. Nuclear reactors can be operated safely and the wastes, which are relatively small can be disposed of safely. Over 40 years of safe production of nuclear power in the US proves that we should not allow the scare-tactics of a vocal minority to scare us away from nuclear power.
When will people get over their media-bred knee-jerk denial of the practicality of nuclear power? I believe that France has the cheapest power in the world, and 70% of it is nuclear. France has never had a major nuclear incident. I was speaking with a career nuke-tech in the Navy the other day, and he was stating how the Navy has never had a significant incident, despite the prevalence of nuclear power in its ships. Why? Because they build a just a handful of configurations, 5 different types or so, and stick to those. Over the years, they have mastered those standard configs, and have no problems, with insignificant waste. But, the arm of the petroleum interests is very long, and they can continue to monopolize power and spread paranoia and misinformation about alternatives, while polluting the earth with petro-combustion waste. Meanwhile, the Not In My Backyard mentality immediately kills any nuke proposal. Nuclear is cheap, clean (yes, actually, it is), and provides abundant power. However, it's hard to make money on power surpluses, so it won't happen for a long time(i.e. big money in Prohibition).
The motor & inverter in my 1999 Gen II NiMH GM EV1 is something more like 90+% efficient. Transmission from power plant to my home is more like 95% efficient. The actual measurements I've conducted on my EV1 show an AC energy consumption of about 400 Wh/mile, with hilly (San Diego) driving and frequent use of the electric windshield defogger.
To the extent that the electricity shortages are caused by emissions limits on power plants, the greater use of EVs could significantly increase available electric power in the state. That's because the emissions of a power plant attributable to charging an EV are about 97% lower per mile than even late model gasoline cars.
The problem is inconsistent regulation. While power plants account for only a small fraction of emissions in the state, their total emissions are limited by regulation while those of cars (which produce far more of the total) are not. Sure, cars have to met per mile emissions limits, but there is no limit on how many cars can be in the state or how many miles/year people can drive them.
What we need is a way for individuals to get emission credits by driving EVs (or, more specifically, by not driving gasoline cars) and to sell them to the power plants.
These sorts of austerity measures aren't anything new to California, as anyone who's visited during drought years can attest.
That said, is it really that important that Las Vegas uses so many damn lights during the power crunch?
Bah Humbug....
Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Low power consumption has not been a goal in recent years, especially in regard to the computer industry. A few years ago, a power supply for a top of the line machine was 200W. Now we're seeing 450W. The Voodoo 5 from 3dfx even comes with an external power supply, because it draws too much power for an AGP slot.
Yes, the article is talking about industrial power usage, but it sure would be nice for low power consumption to filter down thoughout the PC world. The big speed increases we've been seeing lately aren't coming for free. We just jack up the transistor count and die size and get performance in return. That's on par with putting a 16 cylinder engine in a car. Of *course* it will be faster, but there's more to cars than raw horsepower, you know?
Personally, I think low power and reliability should be the two goals for the computing industry. Does a secretary really need an 800MHz Athlon? Do students? Heck, I've done commercial game development with much, much less than that.
The big draw tho, is multiply the following by about 500,000 or more:
Get home, open door turn on lights
Turn on TV (presumably to watch the talking heads discuss looming power crisis)
Turn on PC, dial up ISP, start downloading email
Go to the bathroom, turn on light, drain the vein or pinch a loaf, wash up
Turn on kitchen light, fire up the range or nuke oven, cook dinner
Turn on dining room light, eat dinner (or in front of TV or computer or whever the hell the nuclear family eats dinner now)
It does add up, particularly if you're one of the civic minded types with an animatronic Santa or 500 watts of lights around your abode.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
More rub is distance costs money. Not only in cost of distribution equipment, but also the per mile loss. It is not effecient to have the plant a long way away from the user. The only thing that makes it worth while, is if cheap power is available at a river etc. then the losses are made up in the lower cost of generation.
The truth shall set you free!
Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
As a former resident of "Silicon Valley" (what *is* the zipcode of this mythical city?), and current resident of Seattle, I'm baffled as to what this admittedly colder-than-usual winter we're having in the Northwest has to do with the survival of PG&E half-assed infrastructure. Most of the major cities up here (including Seattle) have their own independent power supplied by the various salmon-chewing dams on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. Since when is PG&E using hydro from the PNW? I can see NoCal folks getting uppity about the power drain that is El Lay, but give me a break in pointing your fingers northward.
Why not create some government/large business/whatever funded programs to help these large companies come up with power sources of their own? Solar power, wind power, whatever. This would have the added benefit that even if the power grid were flakey, they would still have some sort of power flow into their buildings. Of course I guess you could say all the data centers are powered by 'sun' then. =)
ALG
The demand spike alone is enough. The real problem is that there is no market in electricity at the consumer level. In general, people pay one rate per KWH regardless of time-of-day or state of the grid, and anyone can tell you that a KWH at 4 PM on a scorcher is worth a lot more than a KWH at 3 AM on any day of the year. But people pay no more for the 4 PM KWH, and they have no incentive to shift their demand to 3 AM.
There's a huge problem with lack of infrastructure, and I don't mean turbines and wires and transformers. The infrastructure that's lacking is the market at the consumer level, and the information technology required to support it. People can and do drive around until they see gasoline at an acceptably low price, but they have no way to put the dishwasher on standby until the price of electricity is reasonable. You could make a huge dent in your peak-hour electic consumption if you had an air-conditioner that froze water overnight and cooled your house with the ice during the day, but if your electric meter can't distinguish (or just as badly, can't tell you) the difference between a 4 PM and 3 AM kilowatt-hour, you have no way to benefit from this. The consumer could make a big cut in the capital costs of the grid, but the consumer has no way to reap the benefits even if they'd pay for the hardware. This is a failure of the market: the pricing information is not getting where it needs to go.
The power companies probably don't want this to happen. If people could actually be full participants in the market, they could sell power as well as buying it. They could stuff KWH into batteries overnight and try to make a profit by selling back to the grid during the day, and you'd see lots of guerilla solar installations (except they wouldn't be guerillas any more). You'd see lots of people running co-generators, and the real sophisticates would be doing things like burning natural gas to re-heat their water tanks between 3 PM and 8 PM while selling the electricity, and running off the grid for electricity the rest of the day. If electricity was a quarter a KWH, you could make a rather tidy profit off your hot water heater. But none of this can happen unless and until there is a real, minute-by-minute market in electric power where everyone can participate, and you know who's not going to let that happen.
"
/ \ ASCII ribbon against e-mail
\ / in HTML and M$ proprietary formats.
X
/ \
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Power is not free - especially in the environmental sense. And you know what? Those pollutants that are the byproduct of your precious power go everywhere. And you don't have the right to pollute MY backyard.
But instead of being snippy and berating your skewed viewpoint, I'll offer some constructive suggestions:
Mr. Ska
The power companies have taken a page from the oil companies.
Step 1. Find an excuse to create a shortage.
Step 2. Claim the excuse as a reason to raise prices.
Step 3. When the shortage is over, don't lower the prices, pretend they have always been that high.
Could't Intel argue they will be using 50% less power in 18 months or so?
Only in the sense that they'll be producing twice as many transistors per kilowatt-hour.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Yer right, the incident 'means' neither. But we're talking people, politics and money here and the 'meaning' of the thing is not necessarily one derived from 'objective facts.' And the solution we probably end up with (more traditional power plants) may not be the best solution ('alternative' power plants).
I say get out there and take advantage of the incident to advocate for the better solution.
Just don't bet that the other side's advocacy won't swamp yours (under Nuke waste sludge and bilious coal-fired clouds...)
EC
Is the power grids, not just power production capacity. I can't believe no one has brought that up. The power grid is so old and so near broken down, that even if more power plants were built, very soon the power grid would break down completely.
Listen to the power engineers. The power grid can only handle so much power. if more is put through then it can handle, well then obviously...
And CA is very close to this limit even if they don't build more power production capacity.
The problem is that there is no economic incentive for the power companies to invest in the power grid. They don't get any revenue from it so they don't do it. Now CA is screwed because it will take years to upgrade the power grid even if they started now. Add that to the fact that the power production capacity is too low and voila you have a terrible situation that will get MUCH worse before it gets better.
I'm going to give you credit for being convincing at first but then you started bashing the democrats, the environmentalists, the "green" people...that's bonehead. You need to address the demand. Nuclear reactors ain't safe...Chernobyl! How soon you forgot? And just cuz some years invested and improvement in technology doesn't mean all nuclear power plants are going to be safe!!! Just because America is technologically superior doesn't mean they all build safe cars and better cars...all you need is one slimey run power nuclear company boss to screw it up. I don't know...I know someone else will be more convincing and contradict me point by point...but someone else will argue for me.
According to the DOE, in 1998 California had a maximum electricity production capacity of 44,492 MW. In 1999 it had dropped to 30,952 MW. Peak demand this summer was in the neighborhood of 45,000 MW.
As a condition of deregulation, the California legislature placed a price cap on electricity producers at about $250 per megawatt. If, due to the high price of natural gas for instance, it costs $300 per megawatt to produce electricity at a particular plant, that plant will be shut down.
Hydrogen fuel cells are not a viable solution because it requires more energy to produce the Hydrogen than can be produced from the hydrogen.
While I agree that the anti-nuclear sentiment is excessive and poorly reasoned (and the idea that fussion will be a clean alternative to fission is half-baked at best - most of the energy escapes from the reactor via the free neutron flux, after all), I don't think you're really thinking all that clearly. Of course Hydrogen fuel cells produce less energy than it costs to produce the hydrogen (third? law of thermodynamics) So what? They can be used as a cheap storage system to suck up excess electricity during low demand periods and release it during peak demands. The biggest problem that electricity suppliers face is the lack of efficient, low-loss, cheap storage that would allow them to run their generators continuously at peak efficiency. Plus, they could be used to capture alternate energy (wind, solar, whatever) and release it when the sun don't shine. The problem with hydrogen fuel cells is basically that there's no good way to store the hydrogen, but that's being worked on.
The day when rooftop solar pannels provide all the electricity you need (with fuel cells as the buffer for night-time and cloudy days) may not be all that far off. But then again, it might...
I don't know if it'd be efficient, but it would be potentially funny.
"And in the news today, the temperature is expected to top 110F tomorrow, and power demand will be at an all time high, so please eat lots of fiber to keep our power plants going!"
A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
You should remember that Chernobyl happened because a group of researchers manually shut off the safety precautions built into the reactor and then ran it at levels above what was considered safe. All things considered, it's no surprise at all what happened. Similarly, the recent nuclear accident in Japan was caused when a couple nuclear workers did things they had been explicitly told not to do.
That having been said, historically it is clear that people will do stupid things like override safety precautions on nuclear reactors. Any future designs for such things will need to account for such actions as much as possible. The really bad part of this is that when things go wrong with a nuclear reactor, they can go really wrong. The big difference between the problems caused by nuclear reactors versus fossil fuel power plants is that the nuclear accidents are so much more visible and obvious. Fossil fuel plants cause a great deal of environmental damage, but a lot of it relatively subtle, and it certainly doesn't make the headlines like a nuclear accident does.
"Bite me, it's fun!" - Crowe T. Robot
PG&E was prohibited by the PUC from signing long term contracts because there was a period where spot prices tended to be lower than long-term prices. The PUC never took into account that they were looking at an aberation in pricing and that the situation might change.
Another factor taking plants offline is they've reached their pollution allowance for the year.
The Christmas lights aren't blameless. The State Christmas Tree in Sacramento eats 25KW. I live in a neighborhood where a lot of my neighbor's electricity bill jumps between 20-100% The homeowner's association sponsors an annual christmas competition and more than a few of my neighbors go all out in an attempt to win a dinner for two. Just suggesting that maybe they hold off till 7 before they light up is considered Grinchiness.
"We're between the dog and the fire hydrant." - Florida Senator King
> Similarly, there's a town on the central > coast whose name completely escapes me who is
> vigorously fighting a plan by the local PP
> owner to remove the existing (BIG) plant, and
> replace it with a smaller,lower-profile plant.
> The locals have decided they want it replaced
> with a bare lot. Another 500MW of capacity lost.
The city is Morro Bay and the local PP owner is Duke Electricity. Yes the town is opposing the plan. The current plant has caused a measurable deterioration of the air quality of the town.
The new plant has shorter stacks which will concentrate the pollutants in the town even further. That is combined with the stacks disrupting the scenic coast (Morro Bay is on the Pacific Ocean) which hurts tourism.
Loss of tourism $ + Cost of public health + Cost of environmental cleanup > Income from new plant
Simple equation, NIMBY my ass.
My comment about a socialist dystopia wasn't about Arthur Scargill's strike. The strike endangered electrical production and you aren't even attempting to deny that. BTW: the strike isn't why I think the UK of the 70's was a dystopia, that came from Scargill's proposal at the time to legally limit emigration from the UK, which was and always will be the hallmark of a dystopia. But your claim that the UK's political system (which you term socialist) hasn't produced situations where power was endangered has been sufficiently punctured.
I'll just ignore the attempt to change the subject to the merits of the Thatcher crackdown on unions and let you wimper and whine your way back to the government teat from which you seem to have no desire to be weaned.
DB
I have lived in California for 37 years,I find this power issue just another reason to leave . My parents house in Sunnyvale cost 17,000$ in 1967 ,when we moved from San Jose,now it worth atleast Half a million.The roads are congested and get worse at a exponential rate ,The price of gas is almost 2$,and there is power problems and its going to get cold this week end .
This situation is caused by the fact that enviro-wackos have prevented any new power plants from being constructed in California in over 20 years, while at the same time population has more than doubled. The fact that this crisis has been reached only NOW says a lot for how much more efficient power use is now than it was then.
There is no economic reason for this, power companies lose money when people use less power. It's sad, this is the UNITED STATES, and our whole technology industry needs power, not to mention modern civilization.
Perhaps the voters in California will become less friendly towards the Sierra Club this summer when they have no air conditioning in 100 degree heat. As bad as it is in winter, this is NOTHING compared to summer power demand.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I bet you probably snitch on your co-workers if they are playing games or reading email jokes, just to boost that 0.0000013 % improvement in the economy.
Or read Slashdot?
I knew this article was important, but it was so wordy that I got bored and just went on to the next article.
We've got more power than we know what to do with up here. Hell, we sell most of it to the USA. Why not relocate some of the plants up here, and then the local governments can lament the NIMBY phenonomon when they don't have the growth in the local economy and the corresponding tax revenue that these companies provide?
That said.. people need to accept that if they're not going to look at techniques for affordable power generation other than coal and oil - specifically, nuclear technologies, solar power, and the best and baddest, hydroelectric and the corresponding impact on whatever you're damming up - there's going to be (real) economic impacts. I never understood why more people didn't look at geothermal power.. Lots of heat in the earth's core to tap. Although, people will probably whine about that, too.
Or, you can just pay more. Heh. Help out that Canadian trade defict!
..don't panic
Not a good idea. The power companies wouldn't have any problem with producing pollution and just passing the cost on to the buyer.
Free market might prevent that sort of thing, but I wouldn't rely on it.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Just remember that the power companies here are just large corporations, in existence to make money for the shareholders. Social duty? The board of directors of any of these corporations would laugh you out of the room for even suggesting they should care about anything other than the almighty dollar. The only reason they go along with anything vaguely resembling social duty is the potential losses which might occur if they pissed of some legislature somewhere.
"Bite me, it's fun!" - Crowe T. Robot
Most home users of Win Boxen shut them off after checking the email. Unix Boxen tend to be left on 24 X 7. Someting to think about. I am serious. This is not intended as flaimbait but as a statement of how they are used. Win users either Suspend or shutdown when done. Nix users just logoff and do not Shutdown or Halt.
The truth shall set you free!
It's the employees who go home and collectively use 100 times the electricy that the company uses. It's a simple matter of economies of scale.
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
I think you meant to say "Last time I checked, California WAS next door to Oregon."
Wait! Was that comment from George W. Bush himself?! It looks exactly like his grammar style!
"Rarely is the question asked, are our children learning?" - George Bush
SirPoopsalot
To send me an email, remove the SPAM's and replace the -at- with @.
I think that's a false dichotomy - birds can go around windmills, but salmon can't go around dams. How many birds are really killed by windmills every year? I bet more are killed by hunters, pollution, or even getting hit by cars while enjoying some choice roadkill.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Actually, in a way it does. A socialist country is economically protected from the kind of efficient, highly productive industrial capacity of a capitalist system. Without attempting to estimate the difference in power supply capacity, an economic system with a higher output will necessarily require higher inputs. The lack of productivity in a socialist system effectively limits its demand for power and other manufacturing resources.
-- ShadyG
Nerd Rock In Progress
'Pretty Soon', huh? That's in geologic time... or do I have to worry about buying a sweater for my friend in S.D. sometime next year?
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
California already imports energy from its neighbors. Unfortunately, California's neighbors dont have enough to cover all of its requests for energy.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The new plant has shorter stacks which will concentrate the pollutants in the town even further.
What do you want, a purpose built power plant or lots of people running diesel fired peaking generators to satisfy curtailment policies that are a requirement of industrial surplus pricing? When you run a small manufacturing plant that requires 3 megawatts for continuous operations, shutting down during peak times is not an option as this causes lots of scrap for landfills. Peaking generators that keep plants running during blackout conditions are a magnitude more expensive and create local pollution right next to your back yard. They are used or many people wouldn't have a job.
The cost of electricity is a major cost in manufacturing plants. Expect jobs to move where electricity is cheap. Two power plants are under construction 20 miles from where I live. Property values have doubled each year for the least three years. If California does not open up new plants soon, expect a return to farming and desert life.
I love the sound of 2800 horsepower twin turbocharged CAT generators hammering the pistons away, but let's leave the job of power generation to the power companies.
I think the fundamental problem is that so many factories have been built in California in the last twent years, much more than was anticipated by the short-sighted elctricity companies.
Not just in California, but in the neighboring states (Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington). These states have grown like crazy in the last decade and so are using the excess capacity, which they used to sell to California.
Why can't the US government step in and force importation of electricity to California from elsewhere in the US or Canada?
Just where do you propose they get it from? It's winter, so the northern states are using most of their power to heat their homes. Nevada and Arizona are already selling power to California. Maybe we should have intel shut down their fabs in Oregon, so they can keep their fabs running in northern California?
I just don't understand, as a Brit, how they can let their economic gem be threatened in this way.
Obviously, being a socialist country prevented any disruptions in the UK a few months ago when worldwide petroleum supplies were low.
This power shortage thing just sounds like SimCity :)
Put a Microwave power plant!
This completely blows off the by-no-means-minor point that the _new_ stacks will be shorter and have less impact than the _existing_ stacks, which already have had as much impact as they're going to. IOW, the new plant + shorter stacks will have _less_ impact on tourism than the existing plant already does.
So, you need to factor in the following to your equation:
$increased tourist utility from new design + $lower pollution impact + $lower health impact
Or would the good people of Morro Bay like to poney up 2-3x, and get a nice, clean, fuel cell power plant instead with no stacks? No? they're not willing to pay for a clean solution, prefering to export the power-generation issue somewhere else? Please note that one stated preference was to have the town buy the plant, run it for ~20 years to pay for the purchase, then shut it down and bulldoze the site. Exporting the pollution problem to some other locale.
Yeah, NIMBY.
A mushroom cloud is not the first thing most people think about. The first thing most people think about is Hanford.
/.-ers would agree with me, we should take the US Govt. budget surplus, and probably all of NASA's budget, and probably half of other government programs, and sink it into serious Fusion power research. We can explore space later, but if we don't fix our power problems now, there won't BE a later. Think how much we could invest in NASA programs (and other programs) later, if we didn't have to go fight a war every time OPEC got uppity, or didn't have to clean up oil spills, or didn't have to watch the stock market and the economy spin into recession every time oil speculators got anxious. I know this is oversimplification, and there would be more ramifications than simply putting some "nice projects" on hold. But frankly, when you think about it, if Fusion is possible, that's about the only thing that will ensure mankind's survival 100 years henceforth. Any other scenario is pretty grim.
http://www.whistleblower.org/www/hanford.htm
Coal-burning, is also majorly unacceptable to most environmentalists. And they may release clouds of radioactive stuff into the atmosphere, but they don't make entire regions unlivable for millions of years. It's not the plants mostly, it's the fuel production, transportation, and waste storage that is so terrifyingly vexing. If you're not afraid of that, then why don't you go buy a house in Richland, WA? Take a swim in the Columbia river? Got Strontium-90?
Personally, and I think that a lot of
Of course that will never happen if we keep electing oil barons into the presidency (both Gore AND Bush).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Shayne
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
It will never work, because people are trained from birth to understand the economics of enforced scarcity rather than the truth, that wealth is infinite.
Scarcity is at the heart of capitalism; in the tradeoff between supply and demand, since demand will always increase over time, (barring a disaster which reverses the growth of population) the owners have a vested interest in controlling supply to maximize profit. This explains why energy efficiency and use of renewable resources is achieved only after an uphill battle of regulation or public protest.
Regardless of the asking price, no power company will voluntarily rely on another party to meet the demand in its area. To rely on a competitor is tantamount to admitting defeat, and to rely on a non-competitor in another country is to undermine the foundation of the cathedral of capitalism, enforced scarcity.
The company will complain just long enough to get the public finger of blame pointed at a certain party (Silicon Valley, Intel, etc.) and then hike rates on everyone, citing the costs of adding capacity to existing plants and building new ones. Powers keep on lyin', people keep on dyin', world keep on turnin'.
So what's the answer? Change human nature, or at least several thousand years worth of learned behaviour. Might as well try to kick a hole in the sky.
Thank you...
...cunt.
Love,
Slashfucker
Gee, looks like somebody doesn't want
One thing has bugged me in the past few years. The US had energy shortages, high energy prices for years back in the 70's. We learned to make autos and homes more energy efficient. Ironically, people seem to have adopted the belief that everything is so much more efficient that you can now have more of it. Fuel efficient cars became SUV's, 65F became 65F in bigger houses (more volume), energy efficient ovens and ranges became & a microwave & an espresso machine, all putting us back where we were, using the same amount of power and now there's more of us. We're our own best enemies. NIMBY, indeed.
BTW, I paid $28.00 for my gas and electric for a townhouse apartment for the last month, half the nights running the furnace for a few degrees of warmth. I'm not the most concientious, I leave lights on in other rooms, the TV blathering away while I surf the web upstairs. I could reduce my consumption down to about $20.00 a month if I push it. That's with using the range twice a day, too. Consider that that's for November and I read about all the whiners pissing and moaning about how their energy bills doubled in southern California (I'm Central Coast.) S'cuse me while I get out some tweezers and the world's tiniest violin. I used to live in the Great White North (eh!) of Michigan, where you weren't getting things down if you didn't spend at least $100 a month on gas and electric for a house. More likely well over that, my parents spend close to $200 a month back in Michigan. So, southern California, just shut up, ok?
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One easy step. Get batteries to follow Moore's Law. Double the capacity/half the size every 18 months.
On a serious note, if someone were able to develop batteries without all the drawbacks currently in batteries they would be very, very wealthy. A lot of the problem, from what I've read, is not capacity but dealing with the fluctuation of demand. If you could store the excess power generated at 3 AM and add it to what is needed at 10 AM I think a lot of the problem would be alieviated. Batteries are currently too heavy, bulky, expensive, inefficent, etc. There is some research into flywheels, maybe this will be the solution. Unfortunatly, it doesn't look like flywheels are going to be the solution that allows me to run my laptop for more that 3 hours.
Unfortunatly, if a super-battery were developed the power and oil companies would just kill the inventer and hide the research just like they did with the car that ran on water ;)
Anyone remember the Shipstones from Friday by Heinlein (i think). That is what the world needs...
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
If normally, Cheyenne is feeding a factory 300 miles to the east and that factory is fed from the Montreal electricity instead, you have saved 600 miles of wire resistance, the 300 miles that the Montreal electricity would have had to cover to get to the Cheyenne plant on the way to Los Angeles and the 300 miles that the Cheyenne plant didn't have to push their electricity to the east.
DB
Not sure the figure given in the second point (US$250/MW) is accurate: The LA Times reported this morning that CAL-ISO (California Independent System Operator, the wholesaler or market-maker) was trying to purchase juice from a BC hydro-plant at US$1000/MW, 4x normal price. The BC plant refused to sell to Cal-ISO because CAL-ISO had reached it's credit limit with the company(!!). San Diego Edison (?) stepped in and made the purchase (at US$1000/MW) for the system as a whole, thus averting rolling blackouts.
BTW: Edison (and PG&E, et al) have been eating the difference between what they pay to buy power from Cal-ISO and what consumers are willing to pay, enforced by governmental authorities in the form rate-caps. These rate-caps are basically those instituted as part of the transition to a de-regulated market. Edison claims US$3 Billion is owed it as result of the difference (and only since last summer!).
As I ranted to my pair-bond last night (as we walked the (still) well-lit sidewalks of Long Beach, CA -- part of the de-regulated market)): How's it possible that here in the richest region, of the richest state, of the wealthiest nation in the history of the fscking world we're ducking our heads and waiting for a Rolling Blackout? This may be SOP for the Third & Second world, esp those places that haven't fully tossed off the chains of Socialism, but this ain't fscking Havana! If the Free-market can't deliver the goods, what's it good for?
Face it: Cali De-regulation hasn't worked thus far. However, Socialist power up in Los Angeles (via a municipal utility, the DWP) has been awfully successful: Their rates are due to go down 10% next year, and they've made a killing selling excess juice to CAL-ISO, so much in fact they'll be able to replace a real dirty coal-fired plant in Nevada with alternatives (NG) much sooner than planned.
Of course, we all know the free-market is not doing well in this case because it isn't free-market enough...
EC
How about just regular power sources?
You've had your granola, CA enviromentalists, now eat it.
RE GE and making "stuff" - The spun most of that off last year, back into a company called Westinghouse
Sigh
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Next time instead of going on a tirade about something you know little about, try educating yourself a bit more before you post. This story is relevant to many Slashdot readers since we are have a great deal of influence in the creation, analyzation, and solution for these types of problems. There are quite a few of us who are interested in stories other than yet-another-kernel-patch or device hacked to run Linux.
I haven't read the essay by Mr. Hogan. I will say that most claims that I've seen about the cost of nuclear power plants does not take into consideration decomissioning. They're hideously expensive to decomission as the highly radioactive areas cannot be dismantled in an ordinary manner. Transportation of these parts is troublesome, and so is storage and disposal.
I don't know about y'all, but I have a nuclear plant AND a gas plant with big ugly smokestacks within 20 miles of my house
I hate oil/coal/etc power plants as much as the next guy, but I have no problem with nuclear power plants. What's the big deal with them? Do I not understand because I'm young enough not to remember nuclear power's connection to the cold war? Is that why people hate nuclear so much?
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Wind turbines environmentally friendly? ROTFL! Assuming you like to eat ground eagle and ground buzzard meat for dinner. Windmills kill birds.
Skyscrapers kill birds.
Airplanes kill birds.
Hunters kill birds.
But you know what kills the most birds of all? The car sitting in your driveway, and millions of others just like it.
If you want to go to the site of the bloodiest bird holocaust in the country, go check out your local expressway. When you're ready to give up motorized transportation, then maybe I'll be ready to listen to your "wind turbines are bad for the birds" rallying cry without doubling over in laughter.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"Thatcher used this 'unions are bad' bull to trash the trade unions, many of which were not militant but merely trying to protect their members"
Trying to protect their members without any respect to other tax payers who were subsidising an inefficient, uncompetitive and unchanging waste of money. The unions spout lots of idealistic garbage... these days they're just interested in lining their own pockets in the name of better conditions for their members. If the miners hadn't gone on strike for so long, the power companies wouldn't have been forced to go elsewhere, and just maybe, there might still be more pits open. The same thing happened with the rail strikes... freight moved to the roads and stayed there. The actions of the unions put their members out of work. I'm sorry, but I don't see the point of government subsidies to hold off inevitable change. Thatcher was right. Instead of sucking our money, the union should have been helping the members to retrain for other careers. Then they would have been truly helping. It would have helped the economy in general.
Regardless of "big business" the reality is 8 years of environmentally obsessed democrats have depleted the natural gas supply to a point where there isn't enough to run the generators. Then of course, there's the "2 power plants taken off line for repairs" line handed to the politicians to lobby for rate hikes but the same problem is occurring in many other states right now who have fully functional power plants. They just don't have the fuel to run them.
As an employee of one of California's electric utilities, let me fill you in on a few facts:
1) The government has little or nothing to do with providing the citizens of CA with electricity. Yes, the industry was recently deregulated, but even before that the electric utilities were publicly owned companies. The government simply regulated the prices that the utilities were allowed to charge, due to the implicit monopoly power that a utility normally has.
2) There are many reasons for the current power shortage, among them: a cold snap in the Midwest has limited the amount of power that can be imported from that region; many power plants are undergoing maintenance, since we beat the hell out of them this summer; still other power plants are out of service because they have exceeded their allowed amount of noxious emmissions.
3) Have you ever filed to build a power plant? This process takes years. CA's population growth in recent years has exceeded all estimates, and is growing at a much faster rate than the power supply.
4) Deregulation took place just a couple of years ago. During the transition period, companies were reluctant to commit to building power plants due to market uncertainty. There are several plants in various stages of development, but most won't come on line until 2002 at the earliest.
5) A previous poster noted that the large customers that have been asked to shut down did indeed sign up for this, although nobody expected them to have to do this almost 30 times this year. However, they do receive reduced rates throughout the year as compensation.
6) The utilities own a very small fraction of the power production. As part of deregulation, the utilities were required by state law to divest themselves of their production capability (with a few exceptions, such as nuclear generation). CA has little control over the actions of the companies that are currently responsible for running the plants, and we are in the midst of discovering that this is a bad thing. Your precious capitalists are screwing over the rest of CA by withholding generation in order to drive up prices.
I'm disappointed in the /. moderators for moding up the parent post. I hope I've shed some light on what's really happening here.
---
---
Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
California doesn't need population control..... it needs border control.
So what? They can be used as a cheap storage system to suck up excess electricity during low demand periods and release it during peak demands.
You have a good point and I don't disagree. I've just seen to many to many blockheaded media reports alleging that fuel cells are the answer to all of the world's energy needs, since our oceans are filled with hydrogen. The truth is that fuel cells are only part of the solution. Furthermore, it may be a while before fuel cell efficiencies (including the efficiency of generating and storing hydrogen) are sufficient to justify their use as a storage system.
They do in SimCity 2000... ;)
The eco-whackos who don't want new power plants are at fault. As people aquire and deploy more technological devices their electrical power requirements go up. The technophobes who fight tooth and nail against any type of new power plant are the ones at fault when they output of the powerplants doesn't meet the demand of the customers.
I'm no big Intel fan. However it's not fair to threaten them with blackouts if they don't lower their power consumption. Intel is a big employer. If you hurt Intel you hurt the families of it's employees and indirectly many of the tech companies that have publicly traded stock.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
a booming market in UPS for CA companies.
DB
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
What? A hospital doesn't try to run every television in the building off of their emergency generators, do they? (Maybe they do, but it doesn't seem very bright) In other words, stay on the grid, put your essentials on a home system, (maybe your essentials are a TV, fridge, and electric blanket, each person has the freedom to define essential)
We need to think about electricity differently. Let the big power plants do what they do best; generate lots of power, cheaply. Let the home system do what it does best: give you piece of mind and an assured minimum service in the event of a blackout, brownout, or, even, super high electric rates.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Unfortunately, power is significantly cheaper now and we're stuck paying rediculous rates.
The other districts cut back on plans to build more plants because they no longer had a guaranteed customer base. The feeling was that competing power companies would take up the slack, but that never happened. Derugulation was supposed to make it possible to buy power from competing companies and cause prices to drop. Originnaly I had hoped to buy my power from a greener power company, but I was lazy and never switched.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
The point I was trying to make is that not all of the problems come from green-earth groups, sometimes it is other cities, and the residents of the city where the plat will end up. I went to some of the open debates and the thing that I heard most often from people against the plant was along the lines of "Well we want the power, but I just don't want the power plant in my backyard." That was the reason I used green in ""'s, so no you did not read it wrong.
__ Fast - Cheap - Good Pick any two
That's what you get when you tear out all your clean-energy dams, while at the same time refusing to build more nuclear/petroleum based power generators. Governer Davis is an idealist, not a leader.
I can sell you some oceanfront property in Nevada. You seem like a good honest suck^H^H^H^Hcustomer.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The problem is, absolutely and 100%, the influx of tech companies. It takes years to bring new power plants online, and the demand for electricity has increased much faster than they expected a few years ago when they were deciding how many plants they'd need to have running by the end of 2000.
They've even brought in portable plants via ship, and it still hasn't been enough. When you've got several years of lead time before you can really bring more power to the grid, and a sudden, unexpected influx of tech companies, no one on earth could prevent the shortages that have occured.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Could't Intel argue they will be using 50% less power in 18 months or so?
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Just out of curiosity, What happens to the big colocation facilities, like Exodus and Above.net? The power drain for these buildings must be immense, acres of Racks Jammed full of servers.. How much power do they draw compared to others businesses?
------------------------------------------
If God Dropped Acid, Would he see People???
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Not Macs.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
This is one of the few reasons I can be glad I live in a socialist country, I suppose. No one is going to cut off my electricity.
But every system has its drawbacks, I suppose.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
You can probably do a lot better using co-generation (use the waste heat from the fuel cell to heat your domestic hot water and your house, and get any remaining heat requirements using a heat pump driven by the fuel cell), but we're still several years away from seeing this kind of package offered to the general public.
"
/ \ ASCII ribbon against e-mail
\ / in HTML and M$ proprietary formats.
X
/ \
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Well if they do rolling blackouts when the power comes back on the UPS's will just soak up the power that they would have used when the power is off.
>Oh, and those air conditioners? Lose them. Buy a fan and deal with it. Ceiling fans are probably the best.
Heh. You wanna come spend a week at my place here in Austin or my parents' places in Houston next summer? I think a good 5-7 days of the Texas summertime will change your tune. The fastest land animal is not the cheetah, its a no-ac-cuz-it-harms-the-poor-widdle-animals eco-friend running to turn the AC back on..
Actually, I was born in San Antonio, and spent a year when I was 10 in Arlington, back when it wasn't overgrown by Dallas and Fort Worth. I still remember the nosebleeds and headaches from how cold they cranked those air conditioners in Dallas, like they still do, in the buildings. You don't need it to be 65, just 74. If you want to live in the south, adapt.
And when we lived there we had ceiling fans and open layout - it works well if you go with adobe or mason block construction, like all the old buildings from when it was all Mexican.
I'm serious. Up here in Seattle, we get into the 90s before we use the air conditioners to drop down to 78 to 82 - in the south you all chill down to 65 and freeze to death. Learn to deal with it - I spent a week at Burning Man with no air conditioning - most of the world takes siestas in the hot hours, look at Spain for what you should be doing - sleep from 1 to 4, have long lunches under verandas with ceiling fans, then stay up till 11 at night (kids too).
It's all in your head - in the military I operated at temps from 112 F to -40 F with no heat or air conditioning.
The main point is you don't have to use as much power - you can just set the air conditioner to cool to 72 instead and cut power consumption in half. And build buildings in the south to work with the climate you live in, not some fantasy climate of the north. A glass skyscraper is totally insane in places that spend half the year above 90 F.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Interesting point. I know I've never had a light bulb burn out on me while it was operating, it always happens when I try to turn it on...
Hmmm, and there was an article just yesterday about how the rich guys in CA have put more computer equipment in there homes than medium sized companies have.
Anyways, what's the general ideas about Linux boxes vs. NT boxes on power consumption / performance ratios? Linux can obviously be run on lower end systems.
Out of curiousity, where are these record numbers of wind turbines located?
Near Portland, mostly. Along Rattlsnake Ridge.
This is California we're talking about. Environmental concerns aren't exactly a high priority.
You mean, weren't. When people get electric bills that are 5 times higher than last year, that will change fast.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
California hasn't built any new power plants for years. Their air is cleaner and greenhouse gases have been lessened. This is a win-win for California. So what if people have to do without some heat and light? Let 'em eat cake.
I guess these geniuses never thought to possibly THINK AHEAD and build some solar plants to supplement their power at these companies. No, that would require too much foresight.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Maybe Ellison and Gates should shut down their houses for a while to help out.
Ideology breeds Hypocrisy. Just how much is up to you.
Ok, I'll bite. This is a statement that would be a whole lot more convincing if you provided some factual support. Please provide one example of a power plant project being shot down because of "green" opposition.
Thanks.
The problems in California are solvable and solvable in a renewable way. The technology exists, but people have to downsize their power requirements or move to localised power generation.
To release more power for industry, houses could reduce their power requirements to less than 5% present values as illustrated by Huf Haus and Dr Susan Roaf
Taking this theme further, why not get rid of the bureacracy required to put power into the grid. Solar Guerillas are acting illegally in contributing green power back into the grid.
In England, forward thinking Dot Com companies are using Solar power to powerer their buildings and how many hours of sunlight do we get compared to California?
And when there is not enough sun (in California??) there are certainly waves
There is an online magazine that charts all renewable power sources, from hydro to solar to biomass. Check it out at http://www.FutureEnergies.com/.Gordon Foat
As a fellow Californian (Oh, 'scuze me, I mean "a fellow Californian, Dude"), I've been wondering the same things you are. I know MY power consumption in winter goes down to about 1/3 of what it was in the summer (and that's just to keep the apartment down to around 80F!)
I concur, this sounds "manufactured" to me, as well.
A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
But lights are pretty. And my lights have to be better than the neighbors.
I don't want to hear any damn corps whining because they signed contracts saying that they'd reduce consumption when requested in order to get discount rates. -- An option not offered, may I point out, to Joe fsck'n Sixpack -- he pays retail no matter what.
Part of the problem is not enough deregulation in the one segment that can actually make a difference: i.e. distributed power generation.
Fuel cells are being developed (some are already in service, I think), there was a great Wired article about the potential for flywheels in energy storage, solar and wind have drawbacks but they can be appropriate for many people in the right climate/terrain, even micro-hydro can be an answer for some people.
How does local government look at this; large companies get tax breaks, zoning variances, and a garunteed market; micro generation gets buried in red tape and can't sell the excess that they generate.
Obviously, not everyone is capable/willing to run thier own powerplant. But many of us would like the opportunity... if for no other reason than gloating rights the next time a brown-out hits.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
For a picture of the plant in Morro Bay that is causing all the problems click here.
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
During the evening hours yesterday, residential was their single largest chunk, accounting for nearly half of their total load.
It is that same in CA but there is am minimum charge for the connection that is far more expancive then any one house can hope to put back into the system. I know of at least two houses in Central CA who have to run an outside heater most of the time to bleed off the extra power their solar pannels create. Neither are on the grid because it costs too much to get connected.
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Personally, I think you're better off taking the premium you'd spend on Green Mountain and investing it in your own PV or wind system. Then you don't have to subsidize their annoying ad campaign.
You say that's not nearly enough money to buy a meaningful PV system? Well, that should tell you something.
I like your post the best, so I'll reply to this one.
Either that or I'm more paranoid about government than most. Or both :)
The government is always involved, however. The government and private interests make deals with each other constantly. The Silicon Valley, for example, is interested in maintaining its position as a technology leader, and it has serious competition from both Austin, TX and Raleigh, NC. Why this is so important, I have no idea; Maybe they want to preserve the high property values.
Yeah, I'm of the mind that certain things should always be seriously regulated. While I support people making money off of things like running power plants (because I do believe in capitalism) I also think that that can be taken too far. But of course, it's "deregulated" now, so who can say where that will go.
My problem with this is that everyone knew that buisness was growing; Maybe no one knew at what rate, but it was obvious that drastically more power was going to be required. As you probably know, the more energy you have to throw at a problem (just like money) the easier it becomes to solve it, at least in high-power applications. The state government should have somehow motivated the power companies to get a jump on power plant construction much earlier.
Yeah, well, that's totally valid. People can afford bigger TV sets :)
I agree that it's a reasonable (and possible) thing. I just think that with proper planning, it would never have been an issue.
I was born at Community Hospital in Santa Cruz, California, on March 30, 1977. I currently reside in an unincorporated area between the cities of Santa Cruz and Soquel. My area code is 95065.
So there :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The power companies are not "demading" that Intel uses less power. Intel and a lot of other companies (some in the tech industry, some not) voluntarily signed deals with the power companies that they would curb electricity use whenever asked, in return for huge rebates on costs. That's the only reason Intel is cooperating. Were you expecting something else?
but then you started bashing the democrats, the environmentalists, the "green" people...that's bonehead.
Funny I don't recall mentioning democrats, environmentalists, or "green" people.
Nuclear reactors ain't safe...Chernobyl!
Let's see, your only example is a 40 year old reactor design that was rejected in the US because it was considered unsafe and that didn't include many of the safety features that are mandatory in the US. Using your logic, we should ban all automobiles, since Ford Pintos have a tendency to explode when rear-ended due to a poor design.
Furthermore, the safety mechanisms that did exist at Chernobyl were bypassed. The accident that happened at Chernobyl could have been avoided. Also, modern reactors are not capable of having the same type of accident as occured at Chernobyl because of their design.
all you need is one slimey run power nuclear company boss to screw it up.
That is why you have government regulation. Is there still risk? Of course. Is the risk greater than that posed by other industries (i.e. chemical companies producing toxic chemicals, shipping of petroleum and subsequent oil spills, the leaking gasoline tank at your neighborhood service stations that contaminates your water supply exposing you to high levels of carcinogens)? I don't think so.
It's true that the little 40-watt strings aren't a big deal. But drive around and check out all the overdone displays with icicle lights, trees wrapped in lights, every window outlined, Santa on the roof, etc. Many of those people are pulling an extra kilowatt; some are drawing 10K! Even considering those who are pulling only 300 watts, that's 300 over their normal consumption. Aggregate it, and it's enough to push the state over the edge. As another poster pointed out, the shortage was only 500 MW, but if you're an interruptible power "victim", 500 MW is as good as infinity.
If you have been following the demand graphs (as we victims have been doing), you can see the daily increase as more and more people mount their Christmas lights. Drive around a residential neighborhood to verify that yes, there are more lights today than yesterday.
Then look at the graphs again. Power demand starts rising at 3 PM, when school kids and 7am-3pm shift workers get home and turn on the TV. It keeps rising as more people come home and hits a peak at about 6, when everybody's turning on microwaves, watching the evening news, playing Nintendo and stereos, etc. At about 8 it starts dropping off because kids and early risers are going to bed, and by 8:30 or so we're out of the daily shortage and the interruptible people can come back online.
Since Christmas lights are often on timers, they are set to come on around dusk, which is roughly in the 4:30-5 range depending on where in California you live. The non-timer ones come on as people get home. This all causes the upslope to be steeper and the peak to be higher. Q.E.D.
I reset our timer to keep the few lights we have off until 8:30. My wife called me a grinch, but I want to set an example for the neighborhood. How can I justify wasting power when my students can't turn in their homework or study for finals?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
The electric car I used for comparison is the GM EV1. This is not a "tiny little car crawling along at 5 mph"; it's a sports car that does 0-60 in under 8 seconds, with a top end of 80mph. I use mine for nearly all of my driving.
As for EVs making more power available for other uses, I tried to explain that in my first note. Here's an example. Suppose that by driving an EV1 for 100 miles I cause a generating plant to emit 2.8 grams of nitrogen oxides. If I had driven those 100 miles in an average gasoline car, I would have emitted 249 grams of nitrogen oxides, nearly 100 times as much. Now suppose I could sell that emission "credit" to the power plant operators. That would let them produce nearly 100 times as much energy as it would take to charge my car.
This is not just an abstract idea. There are power plants shut down right now because they have run out of nitrogen oxide emission credits.
Look, up here in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington have built record numbers of wind generation systems, and natural gas turbines are being put in place. We can't make up for the idiotic rate-wheeling experiment that California decided to enter in - the California legislature has to take action yesterday and build environmentally-friendly power plants yesterday.
Don't ask, just do it. Buy up all the wind turbines you can and put them online - modern turbines run about 4.5 to 6.5 cents, only gas turbines are cheaper.
The other thing is - get rid of those WinNT and Win2K boxen! Switch to some decent boxen with good cycle usage like *nix.
Oh, and those air conditioners? Lose them. Buy a fan and deal with it. Ceiling fans are probably the best.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Of course, it won't be much longer and we'll be able to tell the power companies to piss off. Remember this story from a while back? I'll be the first on my block to live "off the grid".
-This sig intentionally left blank
But monitors, even in sleep mode, are still using power- feel the tops of the monitors when you get into work and think of the power used and the lifetime reduction.
It's the thermal cycling from powering up and down which kills the lifetime of electronic equipment due to thermal expansion and contraction.... NOT leaving them on.
An aside: Which lasts longer? A light bulb left on 24/7 or one which is turned on and off once a day? I realize that light bulbs have an incredible inrush current but it's also the thermal expansion and contracting which weakens the fillament in the first place. Same with semiconductors, discretes and CRTs.
(eom)
Blar.
So will Intel, et al set up their own power plants now or what? Generally though, I am expecting these companies (the bigger ones at least) to have their own Diesel generators or whatever on standby for just in case. Or am I mistaken here?
see a Text Widget
Simply put, there are limiting factors on the amount of charge that can be drawn. We might be running up against that wall. But until I get a hold of some solid science, I'm reserving my judgement. It's usually difficult to judge how much bad reporting, bad science, and hyperbole get into AP blurbs. In this case, however, I'm quite sure it's not built on a solid foundation.
That is, of course, a real shame and a problem in-and-of itself. There are clearly failings and issues that need to be addressed. There are going to be widespread energy shortages down the road as a matter of sheer resource limitations. We need some solid science, good reporting, and real initiative to resolve these things soon. I would prefer the infrastructure to be in-place and well-tested before we're forced to kluge a solution to our increasing energy needs.
Barring any sweeping remedies, maybe we could just drop the bomb on Los Angeles?
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
Where's the ads touting Macs power consumption advantages over comparable Intel boxes?
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
If they were to threaten to move the very deep-pocketed tax-revenue out of the area then the local governments would do something about the power companies demands.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if one of Intel's factories or development offices moved into Massachusetts, but I think some of their employees in the effected areas may.
That would be like the Pittsburg steel factories asking Detroit to stop using so much steel. Detroit would find a source that won't complain.
Or they'll move to mexico.
Hah.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
Intel pays a lower rate, and in turn they agree to be among the first to cut power during an alert.
Why don't they ask the soccer moms to stop going on eBay and the moronic males to stop the fantasy football and JPEG downloads? Santa Clara needs its power to give us the products we need/want/lust after!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Though, I think the football players will convince the geeks that they should perform power duty so the football players can dance with the cheerleaders.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Exactly. Inspectors swooped into the power plants and questions are raised as to why they don't coordinate these scheduled outages. That's the big deal. The pollution thing won't carry any salt in the Bay area, but they could probably get away with it in LA, what's a little more smog.
California is selling power throughout the west, and some of that is being frowned upon, too, as Washington state has seen much growth and increased draw on CA.
Used to be 'water rights' was the history of the west, seems like it's power, now. Too bad they haven't worked out a viable way to store excess capacity, say, pump some water up into a resevoir during the night.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Half of our problem is the fucking greenies and the other half of the problem is deregulation. We haven't had a new power plant built in the past ten years or so yet our population has grown enormously. The plants that DO exist are owned for the most part by companies that want to jam you up the ass for electricity. Why is it an issue with people in the Bay Area with computers and not with all the fuckers who turned their Christmas lights on at the same time last night.
As an aside, why do people who run server farms and the like rely heavily on utilities? Get creative with your electricity needs. You can save alot of money if you supply a portion of your power. I know a manager for P&G (Protor and Gamble) who was running one of their factories in Texas IIRC. They bought a pair of jet engines and attached them to the factory for heating and power generation. It saved them a ton of money in the long run because they ended up producing more energy than they used. Invest some of your startup capital into making your building(s) more efficient (creative server farm cooling) so you're less of a hassle on everyone else.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Here's a brief summary of anti-nuclear activism in California. The abandonment of plans to build a nuclear power plant in Bodega Bay in 1964 is one example of greens (and others leftists) shooting down a plant. The author who's work is summarized believes environmentalist sentiment was key in fomenting opposition to nuclear power in California (though he is sympathetic w/ the activists).
From what little I know, it seems like nuclear power is unjustly hampered by the stigma which is attached to nuclear weapons. Also, while there are real environmental and logistical concerns, nuclear power seems to be one of the most efficient energy choices available today. I think a lot of environmentalists (and a portion of the public) just like to jump on the bandwagon against anything which represents industrial progress -- they have no qualms about slowing human progress down to a standstill.
Here's a random debate I found on google, with some seemingly informed opinions.
We haven't been building enough power plants. Look at capacity versus demand charts from whatever sources you want. The Bureau of the Census also has the info, but it's not as pretty.
If it weren't for all the left wing lawyers who get rich on challenging nuclear plant permits, we would have so much cheap nuclear generated electricity that you wouldn't have to meter it. You would pay a flat monthly rate, no matter how much you used.
I think your exagerating just a bit. Nuclear plants cost $billions to build, so the cost must be recovered somehow. Furthermore, Uranium reserves are not unlimited. Last I heard the US reserves would only last about 25 years if they were our only source of electricity. Switching to breeder reactors and reprocessing spent fuel could extend this significantly, but good luck getting that to happen.
However, if you tax it, then you are punishing someone for a crime (pollution) without due process.
Make it a crime to polute a certain amount, and then take them to court. Do it right. I realize that the greens may have come up with some way to make these bizarre vice-taxes legal, but I still think it's morally reprehensible.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Alerts are usually called before 5:15 pm. They try to predict whether they will have to interrupt power as early as possible, and they even have a page lists the forecasted peak throughout the day. (Another student at my school uses gnuplot to turn the on that page into a nice-looking graph.) So just because the alert was called before people started turning on Christmas lights doesn't mean the lights didn't affect the electricity use at the peak time (which is usually around 6 pm).
Also, some of the shortages are due to annual pollution credits for individual plants running out, so it's possible that using electricity even late at night could contribute to additional plants running out by the end of the year.
--
The shareholder is always right.
I must disagree. You can't compare a CRT to a light bulb. The electron-emitting cathode from a CRT doesn't really care how many times it's been on and off, it cares how many hours it's on, and that's what causes monitors to become dim and fuzzy after long use - the cathode wears out. A CRT does have a filament which can burn out, but it operates at much lower temperatures than a light bulbs', so this almost never happens. Turning off the monitor, or at least using DPMS sleep mode to shut it down mostly after some period of inactivity, can increase its life quite significantly.
1. here's the rub, building more powerplants is easy, when you don't have chanting demonstrators chaining themselves to your construction equipment.
2. adding generators to existing plants is possible up to a point, but I would guess that this has already been taken about as far as present technology can push it.
3. This is possible, but moving to a co-lo facility outside of CA is going to introduce network vulnerabilities that hit more often than power vulnerabilities have (to date at least).
DB
Chernobyl has no containment building. Western reactors all have massive steel/concrete containments.
The Chernobyl design uses graphite moderation because the Soviets' plants were used to produce plutonium-239 for weapons as well as to generate electricity. This particular design has a "positive void coefficient" that causes it to be highly unstable at low power levels. When steam voids form, the reactor power goes up, making the problem worse. This is exactly how the accident happened.
This behavior was well known to the reactor designers, who understood it and wrote rules to avoid these unstable operating regimes. Unfortunately, it was a surprise to the reactor operators who were conducting an unauthorized test at the time.
Western power reactors don't breed weapons-grade plutonium. (They do produce plutonium, but it's not weapons-grade. It's contaminated with heavier isotopes -- above 239 -- that make it useless for weapons.) So they can use water moderators, and this completely avoids the positive void coefficient problem. If a void does form, moderation is lost and reactor power decreases automatically.
The analogy to the Ford Pinto is an apt one, but it's not nearly strong enough. Not only did the "Chernobyl Pinto" have an unprotected gas tank, it lacked seat belts. And the brakes didn't work at low speeds. Hitting the brake pedal instead gunned the engine to several hundred times its normal full-power rating and caused the steering wheel to fall off.
http://www.forbes.com/global/2000/1030/0322084a.ht ml
This article talks about how the power density of chips have increased exponentially... as speeds and numbers of transistors crammed on a chip have increased.
I found this article to be very informative about this whole energy crisis piece.
~ADAM
I know it's out of fashion, but it doesn't make it any less true.
Nuclear power is by far the cleanest, safest and among the cheapest of all large scale power generation schemes.
Nuclear power is usually compared to other technologies by comparing the nuclear worst case with others normal case, and by counting 1 nuclear death as 1000 other deaths. If you do an honest comparision nuclear comes out clearly ahead, even though it is forced by regulators to have a 1000 times higher security than the competition.
"Of course, we all know the free-market is not doing well in this case because it isn't free-market enough..."
Well it certainly wouldn't hurt if the state didnt force plants down because they were over their pollution limit. Of course CA gave them permission to start back up, and pay fines of course. If I owned a juice plant, Id tell California to stick it and enjoy the dark.
Derek
Fun thing is that that huge energy sucking sh*thole called LA won't have to face any such rolling blackouts, only the folks in the north.
;)
Same thing with water. Even though LA area, which is a desert, takes most of it's water from northern CA, it doesn't have to face any rationing of it's water until long after the folks up north already have been rationed for a long while.
As if Hollywood wasn't incentive enough to let the whole area dry up and blow away...
It's the thermal cycling from powering up and down which kills the lifetime of electronic equipment due to thermal expansion and contraction.... NOT leaving them on.
Assuming the power switch dosn't give up the ghost before then.
Uh, oh....
Does this mean we'll be seeing a "Universal Lifeline Power" surcharge on our electric bills now?
A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
>And if we didn't spend so much money destroying the environment,
The environment has been known to often destroy itself. The ice age, meteors, floods, forest fires, volcanoes, tides, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, ice storms, etc...
While we don't need to help it, a significant amount of money is spent on fixing what mother nature herself destroys. How many Billions of dollars did it cost to fix up the destruction caused by the floods and ice storms of last year? I think the Exxon Valdese [sp] oil spill cost less to clean up (I'd have to look up the figures).
Just my 2 cents... (please don't take it personally)
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
One: It's The Silicon Valley. It's not a city.
Two: This is a story submission, please fix your grammar. "...to demand that Intel and other tech industry biggies to..." has one too many to's in it; That is, it has two. *cough*
Three: This is just ridiculous. This is just another example of government screwing over the capitalists that it claims to love. A city and/or state invites these companies in, happy about the jobs it will provide, and the money it will bring to the region. Then, they fail to provide power infrastructure. This is patently unfair. Also, I've been hearing that people are actually being asked to minimize the number of christmas lights that they put up this holiday season. California's inability to even provide a reasonable Christmas Holiday experience (American-Style) is simply pathetic. Is this what we call caring for the emotional welfare of our citizens?
Now, I'm of the mind that Christmas is a Hallmark holiday at this point anyway, and I don't mean that in a metaphorical sense. Christmas is more about spending money and keeping up with the Joneses than it is about Jesus, or even a reasonable family value like getting together and getting along. (Note: Jesus is just all right with me, as I don't care what they may say, and I don't care what they may do -- And the holiday was snatched from older "religions" anyway.)
The answer? More goddamn power plants. Solar, nuclear, tidal, I don't care, but put them in, put them in service. California, you must provide for the needs of industry in California, or it will go to Mexico. Jobs here will be lost, people there will be exploited, and it will all be for the simple want of Kilowatt-Hours.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have the pleasure of living within 10 miles of 3 powerplants. One is coal powered, the other gas, and the last one nuclear (yes that worries me). Anyhow, from what I understand, the powergrid in the US allows most any generating station to sell electricity to most parts of the US. However, I pass the gas powered generating station everyday on my way home, and it's only generating electricity 15% of the time (the turbines release lots of steam when it's generating). Funny thing, is that they are currently in the process of doing a $90 Million dollar upgrade to that plant, even though it seems to be rarely used.
Would you like to pet my Penguin? The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
my friend goes to Harvey Mudd College... He tells me that because of a contract the school has with the power company, the campus is brown-outed from 5-6pm to 7-9pm every night. talk about suckage...
btw, in global history course, i was taught that water usage is something like 10% residential, 20% agricultural, and 70% industrial. is that similar to electrical usage?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Electricity is not as monoplized as it once was. That is why this whole thing is so curious...
NY has some power "alternitives" and they cost about the same (little cheaper). California has the most open power market and the prices are going up fast.
"The phased-in deregulation of California's $20 billion electrical power industry was supposed to lower prices by creating greater competition. But demand for electricity has outstripped supply because of a growing population, a booming high-tech economy, and less power available from neighboring states that haven't deregulated. "
The new big lie of the 00's.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When a CD-ROM door needs to be open you use one of the cherished 'Macintools'. A Macintool is basically a paper clip bent out to be straight. It earned that name out of it's heritage as the tool of choice for extracting a floppy diskette from a crashed (frequently!) Macintosh that refused to give up the diskette.
The tiny hole to poke your Macintool into is still present on most (all?) modern CD-ROM drives.
Trust me, a room full of say, 30 computers does need some form of cooling, even if they are iMacs..
Not here in Wisconsin :0)
Still, I'm suprised Apple marketing isn't pushing their relative efficiency.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Actually, a reactor with a "positive void coefficient" (a "positive temperature coefficient of reactivity" if you are in the Navy) is unstable at any power levels, not just at low powers. In fact, it is more unstable as power increases. The way the "Chernobyl Pinto" works is if you tap the gas pedal, the car will accelerate at an increasing rate! until you tap the brake to restore a constant speed. This is obviously very tricky to control. To compound the problem, usinging the "brakes" required momentarily pushing the "gas pedal". So if you needed to stop all of a sudden, you first had to speed up more before you could start slowing down...
I have been reading about these problums in CA for a few days and one thing strikes me - This is a new problum? I live in central New Jersey and every single summer we go through a series of brownout and blackouts becuase the Power utilites can't keep up with demand for cool air. (AC) It gets annoying, the local news runs a few stories, but overall it is just something everyone has come to live with. I understand this might come as a surprise to people used to having full power all the time, but they shouldn't forget that it is a common occurence on the other coast. And even in the state that invented Unix and the light bulb, it is not thaught of as a huge problum. I am surprised no one else in this forum is talking about simalar issues on the other side of the map.
It seems that the "power issue" has been in the news quite a bit lately. Lots of "infrastructure" work needs to be done, etc. So who will be doing this? Who are the major industrial players in the US that will have (hopefully) lots of money pumped into their coffers to fix these problems? Or better yet, who will be the "new generation" players, such as power cell manufacturers, energy efficient device manufacturers, etc.?
The poor may not freeze (altho what about those at higher elevations?) but in the summer you can bet that they will bake, esp. if they are down south, more than 5 miles off the water. Many older people here in east San Diego County DID have to choose this summer between perscription drugs and air conditioning.
ooky
Yes its bad that poor intel is losing power, but remember, they AGREED to this. The places losing power pay less for power in exchange for being the first people shut off in case of "emergency" I keept waking up to a freshly rebooted computer before I found out about the power problems, so now I get to turn off my computer (and everything it serves) every night. cry for ME not intel! :)
Don't know if this has been mentioned, but Intel actually had previously agreed to cut down power consumption when necessary - this is part of their contract with the power co., and by promising this, they get cut-rate prices.
-lx
I voted NOT to deregulate!
*ROFL* over "we all know the free-market is not doing well in this case because it isn't free-market enough..." you'd think people would get a clue...
Actually this is already taking place in California. Customers in California can get their power from a company called Green Mountain which generates all of it's power from solar energy.
Wait a minute. This implies that the new plant will emit the same amount of pollutants as the old. Given the current environmental regulatory climate in CA, I'm going to say that that's a flat-out impossibility. And no doubt dirt would be less visually blighting than shorter stacks, but power doesn't get generated by magic, so the plants have to go somewhere. What you're saying is 'elsewhere', the very definition of NIMBYism.
because you all know what happens when the power falls.. tesla coils stop working and you have no radar view anymore !!! those damn russians ...
There are some issues, which are being addressed, but it boils down to deregulation hasn't fully kicked in. When people stop wasting cheap electicity because the rates have gone up there will be plenty to go around. This is one of the warmer states, so they can't really use the argument 'the poor will freeze.' The poor will just have to watch less TV.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You guys actually warn people about the chance of rolling blackouts? In Tel Aviv, no warnings unless it was known that there was going to be a rolling blackout. And even then, not much notice, and only in the form of a few notices pasted on light poles.
Not to mention the rolling blackouts that happened without any warning at all...
Yes, NG, or even LP is expensive today, but we also have alternative fuel vehicles emerging. This *should* help to bring the cost of NG down, due to supply and demand and all that.
O.K. let me see if I've got this straight. Increase the supply of alternative fuel vehicles, which in turn increases the demand for LP and NG. The increased demand causes an increase in price...Now how was this supposed to help?
Joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
In theory, the power companies don't have a monopoly any more. The idea was that by deregulating and opening up the lines, you'd be able to buy power from your favorite provider, instead of having to use the state-sanctioned monopoly. This (once again, in theory) would lead to more efficient providers, lower prices, better service, etc., etc.
The question is, if the providers don't have the capacity to supply the power for everybody that wants it, who would you rather have not enough power for: the companies or people in their homes?
Personally, I'd rather have companies have to reduce their power slightly, and have people in their homes still be able to cook, depend on a refrigerator, etc.
As for a socialist country not running out of power, are you serious? Just because you belong to a certain type of society doesn't mean that your country won't exceed it's power supply.
Just my $.02 or 2-pence, or what-have-you
There is no power shortage. California doesn't have power shortages in winter. Most homes are heated by natural gas. We have power shortages in summer when the air conditioners run all day long.
The problem is that the power companies are trying to increase rates and the government doesn't want them to. A number of plants "mysteriously" shut down over the last few weeks and are still down.
The main problem "is" due to the semi-privatization but only because of the way it was handled. They broke the production and delivery into three parts instead of having a vertical structure within the process (e.g., Edison produced and distributed the product). Now one entity produces the product, one entity arbitrages the supply and a third entity distributes the product. BTW all three parts might be the same company, but it is 3 different arms handling each segment. It is the inclusion of the middle arm (arbitrage) which is causing all the problems.
The arbitrageurs will sell the product to the highest bidder after tacking on some profit for themselves. Therefore, competing distributors are driving the price up in order to get their needed supply. They are also bringing in higher priced power from outside California, adding to the problem.
An interesting side note is that the California Public Utilities Commision is investigating why approx. 25 percent of the power generation capacity in California is off-line. There is speculation that Pacific Gas and Electric is attempting to justify their request for a significant rate increase on the basis that power capacity in the state is inadequate and they need to increase rates to afford buying power on the wholesale market.
At the same time though there is significant Not-In-My-Backyard going on. A proposal to build a new plant just south of San Jose has been bogged down and may not get off the ground.
When will everyone figure out that in order to keep having affordable power new generation facilities need to be built?
James P. Hogan wrote an essay a few years ago called "Know Nukes" where he discusses why well-built nuclear generation is not only more efficient but in fact far safer than building any other form of generator. I just hope we figure it out before we discover that we can't maintain the current status quo. Of course whether the US nuclear power industry can build a "safe, well-built" generation plant is a whole 'nother question. (CANDU! CANDU!)
FYI: For the record, I'm not affiliated in any way shape or form with anyone in the power generation business.
Who, me?
The aggravating thing about this is that even if they did approve building another power plant, it may not even help because technically the power plants we already have in California are sufficient for OUR purposes. The problem is that the power companies are exporting what used to be excess power to other states because it's MORE PROFITABLE.
Now that we need that excess power, we have to pay a lot more money so the power company doesn't LOSE money diverting that power to us instead of more desperate people outside CA. Needless to say, a lot of people think the power companies are "creating" this crisis to squeeze more money out of Californians. No evidence yet, but I wouldn't doubt it...
The NIMBY solution is, to me, obvious. Nobody wants to get stuck with a power station in their back yard and not get anything out of it.
But what if you went into a community and said "If we can build a 500MW plant, we'll give the community up to 50MW of power $0.01/kWh." I know I'd let 'em build a power plant in my town if it meant cutting my electric bill by 85%. It could be a big incentive to power-thirsty industries as well -- move to an area and get nearly free electricity.
The reason NIMBY has been such a problem with power is that everyone sees it as lots of bad being imposed on them with only dubious "community good", often at the state or national level.
Notice that many communities *beg* to have prisons or other eco-neutral facilities built near them because they provide good-paying jobs and a tax base. The power industry just needs to start seeing incentives as way to get themselves welcomed into backyards instead of chased out.
You can't compare a CRT to a light bulb. The electron-emitting cathode from a CRT doesn't really care how many times it's been on and off, it cares how many hours it's on, and that's what causes monitors to become dim and fuzzy after long use - the cathode wears out.
Which dies first -- the cathode or the heater fillament which is almost identical in construction to a light bulb fillament? The answer: Depends on whether the monitor is cycled or not. :-) Yes it is much lower voltage (6V I think?) but it can and does happen.
An aside -- I have seen many more monitors and TV die from thermal cycling (usually with the HOT or other high-stress component) than I have seen an actual cathode wear out.
Turning off the monitor, or at least using DPMS sleep mode to shut it down mostly after some period of inactivity, can increase its life quite significantly.
I agree with DPMS since in most cases and with most newer (<5 years) monitors, they don't actually completely power down the unit which helps battle thermal fatigue in a big way. Even running at 1/100 capacity keeps things running just enough to keep it healthy.
If I owned a juice plant, Id tell California to stick it and enjoy the dark.
Which is why Utilities were originally setup as publicly regulated, privately held monopolies. I woulda skipped this De-Reg nonsense (cause it guarantees service providers will have an attitude like that exhibited above), reformed the old PUC way of doing things, and I'd tell the juice plant owner: If you want access to the nation's (and the world's) most lucrative market, you gotta learn some ground rules (and some manners) first.
EC
I don't get why people think the web needs to look like a sheet of paper. Monitors work more efficiently with dark backgrounds and light text.
You can force IE to do this for you. Set your preferred colors under Internet Options/General/Colors and then "Ignore colors specified by web page" under Internet Options/General/Accessibility. I'm not sure about how to do this for Netscape.
While I don't think this is a practical solution for the real problem, it would be good if people (especially large websites like ebay) started considering using darker backgrounds just to save energy and make it easier on their eyes.
--
EFF Member #11254
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Fine it's not NIMBY. Now, when the old powerplant goes offline and the bare lot takes it's place Morro Bay can go back to living without electricity except for what it can generate within the town limits. I hope you like it.
You want power? Put up a plant of whatever type and design you like, BUT be willing to pay a FAIR price for the juice from it. Probably double to quadruple what you are paying from the Duke power plant now. And yes, I know Morro Bay.
Don't like either solution? Then it is NIMBY because you are trying to foist your problem onto somebody else, somewhere else, without any regard for finding or PAYING for a solution.
Who we should be pestering is the stupid nannie state that disowned the problem of looming power shortages for the last few years. They also have based regulation after regulation that make it nearly impossible for power companies to form useful emergency power agreements with other power companies out of the area. But as usual the government blames the consumers of power and its producers rather than admit that it has created and is exacerbating the problem. Even now it asks for more regulations including de facto state takeover of the power industry. Do not let them get away with this. They are robbing us all!
We had this issue in Las Vegas too. Except Nevada Power told Mirage Inc. they were going to hike power rates 20% to which Mirage determined that their own on-site natural gas fired power generation would be cheaper. Nevada power relented on their price hike.
:)
Otherwise they might have ended up buying electricity from Mirage
Ok...well maybe in California it is illegal, but here in Chatttnooga TN, where we have TVA, you can sell electricity _back_ to the power board. If you have a small hydro plant (or any other method to produce electricity), and you are not using it, the powerboard/TVA will pay you what you would pay to buy it. They actually encourage this!! The University I attend (www.southern.edu) has considered supplementing its usage by installing natural gas generators. During the night/other off-peak hours, TVA will purchase the power that is produced!!!!
So there!
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Sig Return: 204 No Content
I don't think of pollution as a crime; I think of it as part of the cost of making a product that is paid by society instead of by the company making the product. Taxing pollution just moves the cost back where it belongs. It also gives the government money, some of which will be used to clean up pollution, and some of which will be used to do other things that the government feels are more worthwhile to society that cleaning up all of the pollution.
If a company comes up with a great product that requires some pollution to manufacture, I would much rather that they have to pay a tax than that the company be blocked from making the product.
--
The shareholder is always right.
What someone wanting to build a new power plant in Califonia would have to do:
1. I want to generate power using coal.
Reply: Coal's too dirty, you can't use that.
2. I want to generatr power using natural gas
Reply: Natural gas ia a fossil fuel and we can't use that.
3. I want to create a nuclear plant
Reply: NO WAY!
4. I want to generate power using hydroelectric power.
Reply: No, you will hurt the fishes
5. I want to use wind (or solar) power
Reply: You will destroy the beautiful view
6. I want to use geothermal power
Reply: That's too expensive, hurts the earth
7. I want to use hamsters on treadmills
Reply: Oh, the poor hamsters!
An interesting footnote is that some of the capacity is lacking beacuse they have exceeded the pollution limit. Seems like it might be time to throw the switch and power up those (assumption) viable plants that are just sitting there, not doing a thing.
Of course, there can always be ways to save power (I power off the monitor at night, turn off lights when I leave the room, wear a sweater at home instead of turning up the heat, walk or ride a bike when possible, drive a fuel-efficient car, buy items with less packaging, etc), but it seems that if the power supply is so finite then there needs to be some new capacity built.
Does a secretary really need an 800MHz Athlon? Do students? Heck, I've done commercial game development with much, much less than that.
Most of the energy usage is still the monitor, usually 50 percent. Until we see better power conservation there, the CPU is just a small part of the power usage.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Check the idle current of a 20 KW inverter VS a 300 watt inverter. Big inverters also are not effecient at light loads. I know which one I would use to watch TV.
The truth shall set you free!
That solution is a subsidy, which is politically unattractive. It makes it look like the government is giving some people power for free. As soon as power rates spike, it will be legislated away, and the NIMBY people will have their cake and eat it too. OTOH, penalties are more psychologically acceptable.
I think the solution is to district the community based on the major substations of the power distribution infrastructure, and let each district vote either IMBY or NIMBY. The new plant gets built in one of the IMBY districts, and only the IMBY districts can make law or policy regarding the new plant. For example, the NIMBY districts would have to buy power at whatever rates the IMBY districts chose, and only if the plant has spare capacity the IMBY districts is willing to sell.
This is more fair:
- People can choose not to have something they don't like (democracy), and
- They have to pay for that choice at market prices (capitalism).
If they whine about their choice later, they'll have to argue against the twins Gods of Democracy and Capitalism.It's also fair on another level. The people who hate power plants and other so-called eyesores the most are whiny yuppie types in upscale neighborhoods, and they won't notice if power is 15% more expensive. The industrial and lower-income neighborhoods don't care as much about power plants, and would be glad to have cheaper power.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
It's SF and the bay, if you take the time to read it. How come Las Vegas can handle it's power needs, yet Silicon Valley can't?
=-=-=-=-=
"Do you hear the Slashdotters sing,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Insert obligatory "Oregon doesn't like California" remark here.
Look, up here in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon and Washington have built record numbers of wind generation systems, and natural gas turbines are being put in place.
Out of curiousity, where are these record numbers of wind turbines located?
the California legislature has to take action yesterday and build environmentally-friendly power plants yesterday.
This is California we're talking about. Environmental concerns aren't exactly a high priority.
The reason is not primarily environmental protests, but economics. Nuclear power plants have not been profitable to operate. The extreme complexity of the systems makes them difficult and expensive to maintain, and they are often offline as a result. Also, the cost of constantly upgrading safety systems to the latest standards was economically ruinous.
While it is true that nuclear power generation in the US is currently not very economical, this is largely due to high regulatory costs. Basically, some of the environmentalists figured out that the easiest way to prevent construction of more nuclear power plants was to increase the cost of building and operating such a plant.
They accomplished this by lobbying government agencies to increase the regulatory requirements. They also lobbied the government to place some unreasonable demands on the requirements for selecting new sites for nuclear power plants. Finally, they had their lawyers sue companies to prevent them from building new plants. This effectively drove up costs.
If you don't believe me, then how come nuclear power is economical in France where 70% of the electricity generation is from nuclear power?
In a large Dutch paper the same problem was mentioned for Amsterdam too.
The problem there seemed to be the excessive growth of server storage parks. (Amsterdam is where most Dutch international internet connectivity is located)
Anyone got a map of Sim City for Silicon Valley? Maybe they can solve the problem through a simulation.
Yes. But what if they disagree about the nature of their polution. What if they feel that they have not polluted. It is up to the government to prove that they have done something wrong. Then, they may take money from the company. There is no other safe way to do things.
How about speeding. You might need to speed home 'cause you're late, but that costs society some risk. So. Tax speeding. It would then be up to *you* to appeal.
I feel that this is a very dangerous way of chipping away at personal freedoms. It was one of the few reasons why I disagreed with Nader. I'm fantastically liberal, but I cannot see how increasing the scope of vice taxes could be done safely.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The most basic of tenets in physics is, "energy can be neither created nor destroyed, merely transformed from one form to another". The wave power effect of reducing the amplitude of waves is not odd. The amplitude of the wave is proportional to the potential energy it has. If you remove some of that potential energy by transforming it to electricity then you will reduce the amplitude of the wave. I wondered myself whether there would be any environmental impact but I haven't seen any evidence to date.
:->
We think of solar as free energy, but if we covered the surface of the planet in solar panels, these would absorb the solar radiation and release very little. This will cool the planet and we'd have alarmists warning of another ice age
Solar can heat medium sized buildings, like this 4,600m three storey building here, but for high-rise buildings in close proximity you will need to feed the buildings from the grid where power can be taken from solar farms feeding in from more open areas.
There is no such thing as 'free' energy, and even the green alternatives will have an impact in some way on the checks and balances that make this world run. As a species that demands vast energy from an ecosystem not geared to provide it, we have to assess the risks and benefits of each source we decide to ramp up to the scale required to provide the energy we demand.
You say nuclear isn't done any more, but from what I remember (correct me if I'm wrong), over 90% of all power generated in France is nuclear. Tell people that using xxx power would make half the species of wildlife in the world extinct and people would shrug and carry on using it regardless. Suggest to people that through global warming subsequent natural disasters could lose them their homes, and they will suddently becomes "environmentally conscious". People have a perceived risk to themselves, fostered by the US media, hence nuclear does not happen for you.
Personally I'm in favour of localised power generation through appropriate green technologies (appropriate means balancing environmental impact with power levels required), coupled with reducing consumption.
We are all techies on here, and claim to be environmentally conscious, but then explain why a TV on stand-by takes randomly between 2W and 40W. Take it to your companies, make them think about working smarter to save power.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Side bar: Just be sure to bring any talented people you need with you.
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
1. These generators are very hot (they double as water heaters)
2. They are reasonably big (refrigerator sized, put on a concrete pad outside your home).
I predict that stealing these generators will be about as popular as stealing central AC.
DB
Wave power has the odd effect of reducing the amplitude of waves, which has been said to be an environmental problem in itself. It is also important to note that tide power has the same effect on tides, causing damage to tidal colonies through shrinkage.
Solar power simply doesn't have the energy density to power a high-rise office building. It works when there is a lot of land and people who are willing to use natural light, heating, and cooling, but in an office building, the square footage the sun hits isn't sufficient to make any major inroads on the power usage of the building for artificial lights, elevators, heat, cooling, business machines, etc.
Of course, I favor nuclear, but that just isn't done anymore...
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
Now if you could set up a nuclear reactor in your garage or something...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You're implying that most companies don't waste huge amounts of energy too, that all corporations conserve lots of energy. How many companies leave all of their monitors on, all night, regardless of the fact that no one is using them. I'm one of the only ones at my company of 200+ people who shuts off his monitor at night. How many companies leave their computers on all the time just because it takes too long to boot them up in the morning (a couple minutes)? Many companies waste tonnes of energy, and all year 'round, too, not just at Christmas.
If the only thing I had at home was windows, and I only had one system, I'd leave it on 24/7. As it is, I have three boxes; An Athlon 700 workstation, which gets shut off at night, A Celeron 366 Win2k server, which stays on constantly, and a PPro 180 OpenBSD webserver (mostly) which stays on at all times as well.
There are certain things you cannot do with a machine which is turned off, like browse webpages, or download my MP3s to other locations.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
most large companies have back-end servers and many of them are NON-intel.
all computing equipment needs good A/C. this is non-intel.
monitors take quite a bit of current to run. all monitors are non-intel.
most of my co-workers use cdplayers and stereos in their cubes. these are also non-intel.
(so what's the deal with power grid weaknesses and intel? NOTHING!. this is just another lame-assed slashdot story that has no place being here.)
the computer industry is on a race for higher and higher MHz. more mhz almost always means more BTUs (heat). more A/C to cool it, more fans spinning, more heat in the CPU core. this is reality - and intel trying to grab some headlines won't change ONE BIT of the current market trend.
you want to fix the broken power grid in the silicon valley? intel has NOTHING to do with this - our power grid is way under what it should be and the only solution is to build more and make what we currently have more efficient.
("intel" ... sigh.)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Where is the pleantiful cheap power that we should have, that we deserve to have? There are several solutions to fix our power problems ranging from the state telling those idiots wearing ties to turn their power plants back on to building inexpensive power plants. There are companies that build tidal power plants, the plants are inexpensive and generate a good ammount of power. There are plants that use the water to turn turbines and others that use air preasure created by the tide to turn the turbines. Both types can be used right off the coast and are non poluting... Then there is the matter of power storage. Why do we not just store some power for later user? Leave non-poluting power plants running at full power all the time and only use poluting plants when we exceed both the stored power capacity and the capacity of the non-poluting plants? How do you store that much power? Use GIANT friggin flywheels for all I care, just store excess energy... And if we could store excess energy in a flywheel what's stopping us from going a step further and making a flywheel with magnets around the outside, around this flywheel and in the housing build a VERY LARGE and VERY POWERFUL electromagnet, use a laser lightning rod(there was an article talking about UV lasers to ionize air and provide an electrical patha day or two ago) and use that to fire the electro magnet and spin up the flywheel to store energy from lightning(not efficient I know, but you get the point). Am I just crazy or is the industry holding back on even trying stuff like this?
By the way, futures contracts for power delivered in California are going as high as 25 cents per kilowatthour. Last May we were getting it for around 4. If you think power is expensive now, just wait till next summer. And you in the rest of the nation, your turn is coming. California-style 'deregulation' is being pushed in many states. If they succeed, get ready to see your rates quadruple.
For electricity, the problem lies in the way that generating plants run: you can't just turn them on or off.
Depends on the type of plant, with coal and nuclear plants which rely on creating steam starting them up is very time consuming. Other systems such as internal combustion engines or hydroelectric can start up in seconds.
yes, yes, I know that such a venture would be huge, in terms of capital and time, but might it be worth it? perhaps the con's of having your own power station overwhelm the benefits?
Just a crazy idea from some crazy people...
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
Talk about energy-sucking holes, have you driven through San Jose's endless miles of concrete parking lots lately? Or the East Bay, which makes rush hour in L.A. look like summer on Sunnybrook Farm? There were SEVENTEEN "interruptions" in SCE's service territory because of Stage 2 emergencies this summer -- that's after a grand total of 4 interruptions during the entire 1990's. So take your b.s. about how Northern California is so superior and so much more environmentally aware and tell it to the bums lying on the sidewalks on every block in Frisco. The only thing green they ever see is mold.
A while ago, the US Navy backed an aircraft carrier up to Seattle, I believe it was, and connected into the power grid to boost power supply when a critical plant went down.
Question: any carriers laid up in San Diego right now? Those things have mammoth power generators.
I can just see it, though: US Navy funds an increase in basic pay by selling electricity to southern California...
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
Is to follow the example of this UK ISP/DR company who are building their own 24MW generator for one of their facilities. Nifty.
This actually isn't a problem with the high tech companies in silicon valley, although the ever increasing cpu ranches at companies like www.exodus.com don't help. The problem is that PG&E has shutdown 17 power plants in california because they have reached their air polution limits for the year. This is a completely artificial "shortage". I almost laugh when they tell the customers to not turn on their christmas lights until 7:30pm. My house has 2 strands of little lights. That works out to 2 normal 40 watt light bulbs. *sigh*
Seems like God hates California almost as much as He hates Florida. And rightfully so. Hopefully both states will sink into the ocean any day now...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They produce enough extra juice they actually sell it back to the local utility. Note the bill/resource usage for February, 2000 posted on the main page. If this can be done in a latitude as far north as Maine, it should be viable for most of north America. The only real factor involved would be cost of building and upkeep.
-Pastey
Don't blame deregulation. Deregulation can't work if there isn't enough power to distribute.
The issue in California is that they can't build powerplants to provide for the growing use of the state.
why? Because every damn one of them gets shot down by some green organization.
Sorry, if your state's growth stagnates because lack of resources they ain't going to have the cash to help the environment either.
Someone please explain how applying regulation is going to fix it? It won't, because you cannot regulate what DOESN'T EXIST.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Have you seen the number of new FABS Intel has built in the last 5 years? Sure an existing fab can't grow and use more power, but when chip demand is high, the production ramps up and new fabs are built. New Mexico, Oregon, Colorado and other places all have new fabs. I know of only one fab that was shut down due to age.
The truth shall set you free!
heating there buildings by giving employees those ultra power efficient pentium 4 space heaters.... I mean computers..
here
sorry
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
All those who colocate, in various datacenters (globalcenter here), be wary, of what your contracts say. If you have interruptable power supplies, you may get pulled. GlobalCenter is currently pulling all those who don't have massive power supply contracts... Buyer beware! :)
Google is fucked. They have 2000+ 1U boxes in their cage across from us. GlobalCenter keeps yelling at them to redistribute some of their boxes.. They haven't fast enough. If google slows down today.. thats why :) (PS.. their heat planning was so spectacular, that in a fit of panic, they stuck 15 giant home depot style, flood drying fans on top of their cages, to help disipate the heat (disipate it INTO our cage mind you..) *grumble grumble grumble*
-- "I feel a strong disturbance in the for.."\*Segmentation Fault*\ (core dumped)
First off, the article is a little misleading:
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Caught in a power crunch even before winter has begun, California ordered some major commercial users to cut back on electricity Thursday...
California doesn't have power crunches in the winter - most of the state is mild enough. Summer is when we typically have our "power crunch"; everyone and their mother using their AC.
Second, this just seems created to me. Local news going crazy (as they typically do) about the crisis, and how we all better turn off our Christmas displays... it's making old ladies think thier one string of blinking lights is going to take out the state's power grid. Yet we aren't being asked to not cook, iron, or use hot water - all things that will use considerably more electricity than even a large display of holiday lights. There's news in this, but I don't know if there's an actual story in there anywhere.
The Good Reverend
But seriously, not all areas are suitable for wind power. What about Solar Power Satellites ????
Yes, it would require a significant upfront investment, but as the Slashdot thread on Asteroid Mining from a week or two ago showed, the long-term payback is huge. . .
I work in Campbell, CA (just a tad south of San Jose), and the power grid here sucks a big one anyway. In the summer, all of the AC units in the valley get turned on and...
BANG!
SirPoopsalot
To send me an email, remove the SPAM's and replace the -at- with @.
How many of these silicon valley people go out jogging at lunch? Or hit the stationary bikes in the exercise room? LOTS!
Why not set them up on some power generating treadmills and bikes and let their exercise do something useful... like a bunch of little high-tech gerbils.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
- A large number of generators have been running flat out since this summer, and need maintenance. Most of the generators in CA have pretty much been running non-stop since early this summer, and need necessary maintenance work. The result is that ~11,000 MW of capacity was offline yesterday. Given that the (potential) shortfall was ~500 MW, that's a big hit.
- Prices in CA aren't competitive, driving a lot of power out of state. Most CA power distributors (remember, generators and distributors are generally separated now) buy their power under short-term agreements (nobody had the foresight to sign long-term deals, locking in prices). The CA rate top-end is around $250/MW, which is significantly below the rates available out of state. The result? A lot of power gets exported at the same time there's a shortage in CA.
- Older generators and rampant NIMBYism. Most generators in CA are older plants (20+ years). There's been a widespread attack of NIMBYism since then, preventing construction of new plants. San Jose, for example, just gave the finger to a new ~650MW plant next to the new Cisco campus. Similarly, there's a town on the central coast whose name completely escapes me who is vigorously fighting a plan by the local PP owner to remove the existing (BIG) plant, and replace it with a smaller,lower-profile plant. The locals have decided they want it replaced with a bare lot. Another 500MW of capacity lost.
- Server farms are bigger power consumers. A given office space converted to server farm space will consume ~4x as much power.
Now, if you think this is bad, wait until next week. There's a cold front due in.OBTW-- For those who think the Christmas lights are the big villain - think again. The alert was called at 5:15PM, before the lights went on.
Arizona Bay, baby!
A large portion of the population with their own power generation capabilities might be a good way to offset the ever-increasing load on the public utilities, as well.
I agree, you could set it up so that this "power sharing" was linked to small geographic areas like subdivisions or cities. That way if your genset can't cope with an instantaneous load (AC kicking on, for example) you could take up some slack from the neighbors gennie.
-This sig intentionally left blank
Um, actually "cold" is considered to be quite good for computer equipment. At the company where I work, we have an additional air conditioning unit on the roof *just* for the server closet.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Simcity! If they had played with Simcity then they would have known far more about making sure that they provide enough power for there City. Also, they could learn about the importance of keeping the city clean so it does not smell like an Urinal, like SF does in a lot of parts...
This really is a Transmeta plug, again.
/. is shamelessly pluging TM and the subliminal message in this article is the pinnacle of them all!
Sure if Intel CPUs would use 1 Watt less, the SF bay-area alone would need about a GigaWatt less power, but think about how great global warming is for people in Iceland!
Yeah, right. Just try to get a new power plant approved in the Worker's Paradise of California. Or a power transmission line. The enviros kick up such a fuss that no politician or judge will allow it. The only thing that's going to fix this is when the public starts getting inconvenienced, or industry departs the state, threatening to decrease the flow of tax dollars to our free-spending legislature.
Let's not forget that GE controls a huge chunk of media companies. let's not forget that GE makes things like: jet engines, electronic components in nuclear warheads, toasters, electric power generation components.
So it's no wonder that the stories we read in the media point the finger in any direction but at the ones responsible. Is it the California legislation's fault? Is it Intel's fault? Is it Santa Claus' fault? Is it a severe case of NIMBY? (I don't know about y'all, but I have a nuclear plant AND a gas plant with big ugly smokestacks within 20 miles of my house).
California's supply of power is low, because the industry has been fighting tooth and nail with lobbyists to become privatized and deregulated (so they can bill whatever the fuck they want). The people have been fighting it. (through the California legistlature). And though it would be illegal to bill more for power, it's not illegal for them to drag their feet on construction of new plants, and upkeep of old plants. So, as it has been said, old plants have mysteriously dropped off the grid for maintenance reasons, new plants are not coming on line to meet demand. This is in a PARTIALLY deregulated system.
In other words, the power companies are trying to build their case for rate-raising, by artificially constraining supply, in an attempt to increase demand (gee, where have we seen THAT movie before? Oh yeah, that old TV series, "RIAA's Angels".)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Southern california Edison employs the same plan, I believe, as their Northern california counterpart, where they allow large companies and schools to pay lower rates if they agree to shut down power IF the reserves ever run low. The fact that this is the first time for Intel surprises me, since its the 17th time for those of us in southern california.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
--glen
011001110110110001100101011011100110001001101111
The sales of UPS's have shot up 200% in response to the blackouts. Stocks APC and Tripplite were each up ~25% on this news.
this isn't really new, its been going on since summer in southern california. ( Shutoff history for southern california ) My school is on the same plan (it was not forced on intel, companies are given the option to save money by going on the plan in case of emergencies), and we've been blacked out about 15 times since school started in August. Lately its gotten so bad that the school has choosen to pay the $7.50/kwh fee to keep power ON so students can prepare for finals.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
In a stage two emergency, they tell one or more blocks to shut off power during some part of the evening. (The evening is when power consumption is highest.) If we don't shut off our power, we get charged about 90 times as we normally do (from our lowered rate). This has happened about 10 times this semester (which is much higher than any other semester during the last 10 years).
Since finals are next week, the school decided to leave power on for the dorms during the outages, but only leave emergency lights on in academics. This is costing a lot of money, so most students try to turn off their computers when they find out that our block is supposed to be interrupted.
Btw, CA was at stage 3 for a while yesterday (pdf link), but I don't know if they actually started involuntary rolling blackouts.
--
The shareholder is always right.
The reason is not primarily environmental protests, but economics. Nuclear power plants have not been profitable to operate. The extreme complexity of the systems makes them difficult and expensive to maintain, and they are often offline as a result. Also, the cost of constantly upgrading safety systems to the latest standards was economically ruinous.
Many existing nuclear plants are being shut down before their life span is out. In fact, one of the main reasons why electrical companies are pushing so hard for deregulation is that they're losing big time on their nuclear plants but aren't allowed to pass those costs on to consumers or shut down the plants, they have to keep operating them at a loss.
Also, the federal government has been, for decades, refusing to honor their promise made to the nuclear power industry to provide a national long term nuclear waste storage facility, so most plants are keeping all their wastes on-site. This is another expense and most plants are running out of space. They can't operate without somewhere to put spent fuel.
Effectively, there isn't a US nuclear power industry anymore, and nobody in the power generation business wants one.
The degregulation of the power industry is part of the problem. One of the things that offset NIMBY and environmental regulation was that generally once you built a power plant you were a monopoly provider and could cost your power to make money.
Deregulation made everyone move into the middle-man position. Nobody wanted to get stuck owning a 20 year old nuclear power plant or an even older coal plant. Plants are considered a liability, they just want a few computers and the ability to "broker" power. Since everyone moved into this position and nobody wanted to own a plant, no new plants are being built.
It's somewhat similar to the deregulation of the telecomms industry. Nobody wants to get stuck running fiber to each and every house, but they'll sue the asses off the exiting LEC to get into their wire centers to use the existing last mile. Why invest in expensive infrastructure when you can just buy access in bulk and resell it at a premium?
You keep falling for this guys trolls. Yeesh.
A large portion of the population with their own power generation capabilities might be a good way to offset the ever-increasing load on the public utilities, as well. There are already provisions for people with their own power generation equipment to sell the power they generate back to the public utilities. It'd probably make grid maintenance a little more tricky, though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Thanks, Mr. Hicks. :)
For people who don't know:
http://www.billhicks.com/
the price of any kind of device able to product electricity is going to reach the stars
if you ever manage to afford one of these, you'd better sleep on it and shoot at first sight : because stealing them will become a national sport.
For those who can burn it, wood is suddenly going to be very, very hard to fine, and of course, expensive.
The worse : you'll notice that when a cd-rom drive is shut and there is no power to open it, an hammer is the next solution.
[Pruneau
...but the people who have been promoting electricity deregulation have been treating it as such.
Some background here: I am A.B.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and worked for several years as a consulting economist as a part of a team providing expert witness testimony on a variety of cases. One of the things that I researched was the market for electricity in Texas.
We eventually wrote a large simulation model to handle how the market would clear in Texas, to determine if there would be times when a single utility company or power marketer might be able to corner the market and behave as a monopolist. Although there are excellent engineering models of how generating plants should be allocated to produce the lowest-cost combination that will supply a set of reginal demands, these are not necessarily applicable in a deregulated environment.
There is a fundamental theorem in economics that states that if you can find an efficient allocation of resources in a system through a command-style solution (such as an engineering model), you can de-centralize the system and still achieve the same result by choosing an appropriate set of initial allocations and initial prices. In other words, any efficient solution can be achieved by a free market. But, this is all subject to several technical conditions; if one of the conditions is violated, then the theorem can no longer be applied. In the U.S. economy today, those conditions are satisfied by most industries, which is why the free market works in general.
However, the electric industry is not one of them. The particular violation is in the requirement for smooth, continuous supply curves. If there are gaps in the supply curve or there are places where the supply curve has a sharp kink in it, the theorem does not apply, and there is a real danger that the market may not achieve a stable equilibrium. For electricity, the problem lies in the way that generating plants run: you can't just turn them on or off. Many plants have a narrow range of outputs -- e.g. a particular plant may be able to function between 40% and 100% of capacity or it can operate at 0% of capacity, but it physically cannot operate between 1% and 39% of capacity. Thus, a 500 MW plant might be able to supply between 200 MW and 500 MW of power, but it cannot supply only 100 MW of power.
This leads to kinks (and non-convexities) in the supply curve, which create opportunities for electric utility companies to act as monopolists and jack up prices -- and the usual constraining effects of the market may not apply. For example, suppose one company has a large 500 MW generator as described above which can supply electricity cheaply, and another company has a smaller generator that can supply between 0 MW and 300 MW of electricity, but at a more expensive price. If there is a demand for an additional 100 MW of electricity, the market will not be able to steer the demand to the low-cost generator, but must instead send the demand to the more expensive second utility, which can jack up the price as high as it wants without fear of competition. In contrast, an engineering model would allow the system operator to tell some other generating plant to cut back its output by 100 MW, so that the cheaper plant could run at its 200 MW minimum capacity and reduce the cost overall.
I have read some of the testimony concerning electric power deregulation, including that which was presented in California, and this key point has been ignored, as it is an inconvenience to the utility companies who paid for most of the testimony. While I have attempted to keep my explanation here simple, the above is in fact based on solid, academic-level theoretical economic research, and I will happily send out my working paper on this on request. It's still pretty rough, but I hopes of sending it in to a peer-reviewed journal some day. Anyway, back to doing WebObjects.
--Paul
definition
NIMBY= Not In My BackYard
If you get into local politics, you'll hear a lot about NIMBY.
DB
Here is a short guide on how to turn computers off at night.
Method one: Advanced Power Management computer
Restart your computer. Right now. Press or whatever to enter the BIOS setup utility. Now look around for an option called 'Wake on Real-time clock' or suchlike. Set this to 10 minutes before you normally arrive. Now get your choice programming language and write a program to shut down your computer. I use Visual DialogScript. Here is the program:
:Start
Exitwin force
Stop
Compile to an executable, then use the task scheduler to run it at an appropriate time. 6:00 PM would be a good example, running every day.
This will turn your computer off, and turn it on again.
Method two: Old computer
Go to your local radio shack (You've got questions. We've got batteries.) and get a security timeswitch. Plug the computer into it (Or just the monitor, if you like) and set the times. If you want, you can write a power-off utility above to turn off your computer.
You too can try this at home!
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
And of course, the state is making it worse by forcing auto manufacturers to get to some %age of ZEV's soon. "Zero-emmision" being an oxymoron. Your nice GM electric needs to be charged, and those Watts come from somewhere. Figure 60% effecient motor in the car, 75% efficient charging, 65% efficient transmission from generator to your home, 60% efficient generation -- let's see 0.6*0.75*0.65*0.6 = 17% or so percent of the power generated goes into moving your car -- with "zero emmissions" -- so.... that power plant doesn't have emmissions???
If you were a soviet citizen, you'd be enthusiastically crying for the deporation to labor camps of the stupid people who bought *icing* on their *cakes* when they could be using their resources to build more powerful hydroelectric plants, or better tractors. Just think of all the stupid people in california who waste energy using electricity to play silly 3D games, or watch stupid sitcoms on TV (non-productive use of electricity), or huge movie theaters showing silly moving images that don't produce anything.
:)
Yeah, have sympathy for a company that can afford to shell out a few million dollars to the local congressmen (of course, they are not expecting anything in return), and can afford to hire PR reps who whine about turning off the lights so their employees can make chips in the dark.
Guys like you need your heads rattled to see if they make a hollow sound. Sheesh. Check your temperature and see if you're alive.
I bet you probably snitch on your co-workers if they are playing games or reading email jokes, just to boost that 0.0000013 % improvement in the economy.
Andy Grove himself would send you a personal generic christmas greeting card.
I bet you're a bundle of fun at Christmas.
w/m
... of what not to do. By pandering to power broker industry special interests and caving in to shrill tree huggers, California has created a powerful disincentive for any investment in power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. So, now everyone will have to get little generators. There are not as efficient as coal, gas or nuclear plants. They are loud. You have to keep them maintained and they pollute more. The environmentalists and NIMBYs have shot themselves in the foot. Only the electric power broker companies have done well and everyone else is paying dearly for this corporate welfare.
Even in places where "deregulation" hasn't been adopted, the reliability of the power grid ain't what it used to be. We experience power events regularly now. 10 years ago this was very unusual. The grid is far more fragile than it once was because of the virtual moratorium on new infrastructure and the growing demand. Well, people aren't going back to kerosene lanterns. They'll set up their own generators as the grid gets worse.
It makes my blood boil to watch this happen. Our power grid was once the envy of the world.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
So this hobgoblin was planned, not imaginary. Just what the watermelon Greens ordered. Now the government has to step in and "solve" the problem.
I left CA in 1975 and vowed I'd never go back. This is a perfect illustration of the pain that CA government dumps on CAlifornians.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Ok, deregulation this, deregulation that, but anybody with a little electrical engineering practice knows that any electrical network need power regulation to work. Deregulation it on purpose is just commiting suicide : down with to fsking bureaucrates !
[Pruneau
So what is the government to do? Allow the power companies charge whatever they need to to make a profit and lose big business (we're talking steel mills, etc) or keep a cap on electricity prices and have the power companies suffer (which will undoubtedly lead to higher taxes for government subsidized energy programs)?
What does the
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey