Slashdot Mirror
Dark City, San Francisco?
tavern writes: "San Francisco is going to start rolling blackouts today! I can see the headlines for the Onion tomorrow, 'United States Declared a 3rd World Nation'" The article reads like something out of Atlas Shrugged -- parts shortages and clogged intakes for power plants' cooling water are contributing to the energy strain. However, from this piece, it seems like the (intentional) blackouts remain potential rather than actual. Can anyone out thataway comment on the power situation as it affects you? (I'd be out buying a UPS right now ...)
um - if you don't like that absolute Gem of a city, why don't you move someplace else, like Orlando?
In Orlando, the strippers can't even strip.
(they tried to skirt that law by exploiting the "artistic performance" loophole, so at all the strip joints, for a while last year, every Thursday was "Shakespeare night". I shit you not.)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
What about a Fiero? They only made em from 84-88.
Or the incredibly fast Buick Regal T-type and Buick Grand National. Those were made from 197x to 1987. Those are arguably the last true musclecars.
3.8L SFI Turbo V6. Very clean burning, and some of them get 25-30 MPG. Not bad for the size of them, or how fast they are.
Many consider them a collector's item. They're also a great body to build replica's of other cars onto. (e.g., there are "lamborghini" conversion kits for Fieros).Highly. The Fiero is an insanely cool car. But, you know, most people think that they're front wheel drive, or that they're cheap plastic, or that they're dangerous, or that they're poorly built. Or they get scared of the fact that the gas tank sits between the driver and passenger.
In fact, Fieros are groundbreaking in many respects. They're the first mass-produced plastic-bodied car, a role model for the Saturn and the Pontiac TransSport/Montana/Lumina APV. They've got amazing brakes, rear wheel drive, four wheel independent suspension with double A-arms up front, a weight ratio of 49/51 rear, and they were the most crash-safe vehicle when they came out (35 MPH front impact).
And the gas tank couldn't be in a safer place: by the time the gas tank ruptures, you'd be dead from the impact anyway.
While they had design problems - mostly due to the fact that they're really an economy car, not a sports car, and they don't stand up well to the hard driving most of them experience - they're a great little car. And a milestone in American automobiles.
BTW, how do new cars get to survive long enough to be someday considered "vintage" if they all go into the crusher in 10 years?Well, the guy to whom you're replying said it himself. He's painted a broad stroke (with the exception of RX-7s and Porsches, of course) that there were no cars worth saving since 1980.
Of course, that's absolute bullcrap.
How about a Dodge Omni GLH, which is a 4-door Dodge Omni hatchback with a 2.2L or 2.5L turbocharged motor built by Shelby? How about the Mustang 5.0 of the '80s? How about the Cordoba and Mirada personal luxury cars? How about the first K-cars as (slow-moving and mundane) museum pieces? Hell, in 20 years, people will be collecting the very first minivans and SUVs. I guarantee it.
And does the cot off date for "vintage" and for "smog test exemptions" advance each year?No, actually, it seems to go *back* every year. It starts in 1966 now, though *everything* must pass a basic standard (ie. no blue smoke, no obvious problems) before that. It's gonna be really interesting if they try to hook a Ford Model T or something like that up to a tailpipe sniffer - those had driver-operated ignition timing, so it will depend on the skill of the guy testing the car.
It's completely ridiculous, since these things don't account for any percentage of the total miles travelled in any given year.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
This is a LIE. There is no good reason for California to need to import electricity at all, since we have a lot of oil, gas, and hydro resources here in state, and plenty of places to put power plants. The problem is that environmental rules have made it impossible to build nuclear power plants at all since Diablo Canyon, and almost impossible to build power plants at all, because there's always some pseudo-environmental group of NIMBYs who can clog up the approval process enough to make any project uneconomic.
Meanwhile, it's a bunch of stupid liberal (but I'm being redundant) economic regulations built into something the liberals called deregulation that have caused the immediate crisis.
California's environmental regulations provide much more benefit to lawyers than to the environment. Most other western states have much simpler systems, where taking a shit doesn't require permits from 5 different agencies with mutually incompatible requirements, and manage to obtain virtually the same results, except for the increase in legal fees that California has "enjoyed".
oh yeah, and rust is mainly a problem in the snow belt because of the unnecessary practice of salting roads. Sand? Cinders?
I agree. I hate salt, it's nasty. Sand would be great, except that it doesn't dissolve like salt does, so when it gets washed into sewers, it clogs them. That's the primary reason why sand isn't used.
Salt kills plants and trees,And the sand that makes it out of sewers gets into streams and collects on the streambed, which kills all the aquatic plants.
it's non-renewable, it essentially DOUBLES the cost of car ownership for people living in areas where roads are salted (cars last on average half to a third as long as they would otherwise for a given climate). There are alternatives that are safer, cheaper, and more environmentally sound, but the politicians are too wrapped up. It was actually an argument FOR salt to say that it increased economic activity by dissolving people's cars, and giving detroit auto workers jobs.I've never heard of an ice melter that's as good as salt for less money. It sucks, I agree, but unless someone wants to open up the budgets a bit, we're stuck with it.
The Province of Ontario was looking to ditch salt because of its hidden costs: damage to pavement and cement. It causes millions of dollars of damage to bridges and stuff every year. Until the purse strings are opened a bit more, we're stuck with it.
Until then, I keep the welder handy so that I can weld in new patch panels on my daily driver, and I powerwash then Tremclad the underside every autumn.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Or how about nuclear power, the French way? The plant costs a bit more to make because of all the stuff you need to contain the liquid sodium, but despite that, it's much easier to maintain than a water-cooled plant because the sodium doesn't corrode the pipes. I don't exactly know the full details, but apparently, despite the chemical reactivity, liquid sodium is a much safer coolant than water. Besides, you need very little of it, since it's a metal, so you can dump water on it in an emergency and not worry about a catastrophic hydrogen explosion. The French also use a particular kind of breeder reactor, which uses up almost all of its fuel, instead of 5% or so, nearly eliminating waste. Yeah, it costs a lot up front, but it's clean and safe and it lasts. Nuclear power has come a long way since the Chernobyl reactor was designed. Sure, fusion will be the paradise, but that's a long way off. Fission the French way is arguably cleaner than even hydroelectric, (missing from your list, though many may not know why) because of the effect the dam has on the ecosystem.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
The building that I am in now can opperate normaly off a back up diesel generator for 5 days with out refuleing. That also goes for some of the casinos here in Vegas. The only way you can tell if the power on the strip is out is if the street lights are off. Travis
Uh, well we have. Technology hasn't advanced enough to make solar practical (like destroying desert eco systems by covering them with solar collectors is anymore friendly), California has hundreds of motionless windmills in the altamonts, (we tried, we really did!). Let's see. Geothermal. I'm willing to give it a try. Ship us a volcano and we'll hook it up. Tidal power. Now this hasn't been tried on a large scale, true, but whether it's successful or not, the marine life is going to want to have a word with you.
I'm not a nuclear avocate (yet) but I get tired of people assuming those in favor of nuclear power are not ecologically conscious or informed.
J
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
There is a lot of good detail, background and opinion on this whole debacle in the discussion over on kuro5hin.org about this issue. I'm still not sure who started it all though.
Who calls this a free market? It's not a free market, it's a "differently regulated" market.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The politicians are trying to blame the free market to cover for their own problems.
Free market and de-regulation are in no way synonymous. Deregulation was an attempt to replace the government monopolized power production in CA with a free market system. An attempt that failed thanks to the machinations of several powerful energy companies which hijacked the plan and replaced the government monopoly with their own. They then went on to schedule "scheduled matinence" at peak months of consumption to drive up the wholesale price and pad their profits. Thankfully the CA Attorney General is currently investigating these alleged acts of collusion.
The private sector only constitutes a free market when there are multiple players in the industry. An industry dominated by one or two entities (as the CA wholesale electricity market is) can not operate as a free market. In those situations a deregulated market is simply less free than a regulated market. A fact that right wing ideolouges (such as the CA GOP that created this fiasco) who don't understand the term "free market" choose to ignore.
We also know that Americans continue to grow obese at an alarming rate, and that sedentary individuals such as computer operators and programmers are particularly prone to gaining unwanted weight.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can solve BOTH of these crippling problems with one fantastic new product from Preposterous Corporation!
The Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) is a specially modified stationary bicycle with an attached generator that produces electrical power as you pedal! Just hook the Power-Cycle(TM) to your desktop computer and voila -- not only can you burn calories and keep fit while working, you can help to reduce California's energy crisis by becoming an environmentally-friendly "human power plant"!
The Power-Cycle(TM) features a real-time display that shows how much power you are delivering to your system. Like a mountain bike, it offers 24 gears, so you can optimize your pedaling rate to your computer's energy needs. Planning to start a floating-point intensive calculation that you will make your Pentium III consume an extra 20 watts? Just upshift to a higher gear so you get more current with each turn of the crank!
The Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) even includes a built-in 100 kVA uninterruptible power supply that charges as you pedal, so that your computer won't run out of power and crash if you need to step away for a moment to use the restroom. Trust us, the Preposterous Corporation has thought of everything!
Order your Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) now, and lose weight while you save the environment! Operators are standing by!
And, if you order now, we'll even include a Preposterous Potato Battery absolutely free!
Don't wait -- CALL NOW!
*--Potato Not Included
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
I was not stating that Nuclear power was the answer, just that it was AN answer, and probably better than any of those you listed. Did you know, that using conventional wind power arrays, over 1/2 OF THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES would have to be covered to produce enough power?
The word Nuclear brings up too many negative feelings in most people. These feelings HAVE KILLED VIRTUALLY ALL WORTH-WHILE RESEARCH IN FUSION IN THE UNITED STATES. There are some researchers in Canada, and France working on stuff that may make a fully functional fusion power plant possible in the next 20 years(there are some US researchers working on this also, but not as many as Canada and France have looking at it). I doubt there will ever be one constructed in CA.
Enviromentalists are generally so full of it, that they can't see their left shoe from their right. Take Hydro-Electric power. Yes, this was once praised by enviromentalists, till it caused the NEAR EXTINCTION OF SEVERAL TYPES OF FISH. Do you favor the complete distruction of an ecosystem for a few KW of power? There are several promising avenues of power research going on right now, including Orbiting solar arrays, and nuclear fusion. But DESTROYING THE LAND is not the way to go.
Admittanly, there are a few good places where geothermal, wind, and solar power could work. But the true keys here are: superconducter research, nuclear research, orbital research, and conservation research.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
This law will never pass in California without a loophole for historical or vintage cars. There are WAY too many vintage car nuts out here. My home town has 3 car shows every summer.
Pretty much any car made after 1980 shouldn't be included in the loophole though. Anyone who wants to restore a car made after 1980 ought to have their head examined, because they're all crap (not IMO - it's just a fact). (except maybe Mazda RX-7, or any Porsche).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
oh yeah, and rust is mainly a problem in the snow belt because of the unnecessary practice of salting roads.
Sand? Cinders?
Salt kills plants and trees, it's non-renewable, it essentially DOUBLES the cost of car ownership for people living in areas where roads are salted (cars last on average half to a third as long as they would otherwise for a given climate). There are alternatives that are safer, cheaper, and more environmentally sound, but the politicians are too wrapped up. It was actually an argument FOR salt to say that it increased economic activity by dissolving people's cars, and giving detroit auto workers jobs.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I said not a large explosion. Because liquid sodium is such a great conductor, so very little of it is needed. Since liquid sodium is much less corrosive to metal, you can have more complicated valve structures to automatically cut off flow under whatever conditions you like, and you can make them smaller so they can be closer to the reactor, allowing them to cut off flow very quickly. Sure, there would be a small sodium explosion, but just as an M-80 will not set off a nuclear bomb (though possibly destroy a toilet) the explosion will not have a significant effect on the ability to rapidly cool the reaction with water.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
You can check out the current CA system load here. Oops, sorry about that, try here.
(yet another response) -
It's also a PROVEN FACT (wish I had a link) that a person who owns a car that is 30 years old is saving energy; instead of buying a new car every 2 to 5 years, keeping the old car running keeps the auto industry from building a new car, and all the energy consumption and pollution that entails.
nuff said - crushing the old cars would be a STUPID law. I know a person (www.kgcna.org) who owns a 1958 VW Karmann Ghia, that, though the car is exempt from emissions, has no catalytic converter, no fuel injection, mechanical ignition system, STILL passes modern California emissions.
It's not OLD cars that cause pollution, it's OLD cars that are not properly maintained (-er, and the huge oversized monster fucking gas guzzling drag racing muscle cars from the 1970's).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That's why we have tort law. If I trash your back yard, you can sue me. Simple as that. So stop complaining, and (if folks are really f*cking up your land) start suing.
"Can anyone out thattaway comment on the power situation as it affects you? " - No. My power will be out when it affects me.
In the linked article:
UPDATE: The California Independent System Operator has downgraded Thursday's Stage Three power emergency to a Stage Two emergency, ending the threat of rolling blackouts across the Bay Area.
Cal ISO spokesman Patrick Dorinson said that the combination of conservation and added power buys during the day has enabled the ISO, which oversees California's power grid, to avoid proceeding from a Stage Three Electrical Emergency issued at 9:30 a.m. today to the more drastic step of a rolling blackout order.
--
As quoted from the site: UPDATE: The California Independent System Operator has downgraded Thursday's Stage Three power emergency to a Stage Two emergency, ending the threat of rolling blackouts across the Bay Area.
The politicians are trying to blame the free market to cover for their own problems. They forcibly separated generation from distribution, de-regulated pricing on the supply side, enacted regulation that made it virtually impossible to build new capacity, and maintained strict control over retail rates. A recipe for disaster.
Look at what has happened to natural gas in the Midwest. My gas bill was over $400 this month because the price has quadrupled. But I don't have to worry about running out of gas. Supply and demand balances everything out. If gas rates were frozen at old low levels, no one would conserve - voluntarily - and we'd have rolling service interruptions too.
Put the blame 100% on the California legislature for passing this botchwork law.
The "situation" was fixed by an emergency purchase of some large number of megawatts from out of state.
Here's an article from the local rag. It'll be interesting to see what happens next time. I'd love the city to go dark, even if it meant a spendy cab ride (I normally take the local LRT home.)
Nice bonus: paranoia at work lead to all of the development servers being shut down. Counter-Strike all afternoon!
jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
nope - still stand by what I said. Those cars are all crap.
Except the 5.0 Mustang, whose memory is now totally tainted by the turd they stamp the Mustang badge on today.
You said it best, the Fiero is an economy car. It WOULD have been cool if it wasn't a cheap piece of plastic junk. How does one restore a Fiero anyway? You can pound out dents and weld in replacement panels in sheet metal. Fieros will just dust away once all the OEM plastic panels dry up.
And as far as the grand national goes, that 3.8l Buick engine was one of the least reliable engines GM ever produced. Also one of the most used. Wonder why GM (Chevy/Buick/Olds) is no longer #1? I blame that engine.
In 30 years, when I see someone park a fully-restored Aztec at a classic car show, I will laugh my ass off - it's a worthless piece of crap now, and 30 years does not make a car a classic.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
don't you mean "thanks to their shiny new decentralized freemarket system"
Let's see...
- Government mandates that PG&E sell off their generating capacaty.
- Government creates a bureau that buys and sells electricity.
- Government mandates that they sell electricity at a fixed price.
- Government mandates that they buy electricity at whatever the generating companies ask.
- Government puts the cut-off switch in the hands of said bureau.
Sounds like central planning to me.
"A free market is a great idea. We should try it some time."
Sounds like central planning to me.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I lvive in Silicon Valley and we've been at stage 3 alert for months.
All the dire conclusions as to why though are by and large nonsense. The priamry reasons are two fold:
(1) Its been a cold winter and northern california uses a LOT of electric heat (very inefficient).
(2) Our winter month power needs are met in a large part by power bought from Washington. Its been hellishly cold in Washington this year and they haven't had much to sell us.
The whole "we're goign broke" thing is a seperate issue raised by the power utilities (as much as they'd like to tie them together) and its not 100% clear its even true.
Yes the prodcuers have raised prices way up BUT many of the smot major producers are owned by the same holding companies as the utilities. So while their utilities are losing money, their power plants are raking it in. The ACTUAL amount of money being made or lost is pretty much hidden.
He didn't get impeached because he got a blowjob in the Oval Office. He got impeached because he lied under oath, encouraged subordinates do the same thing, and obstructed justice among other things. Go re-read Starr's report and this time skip to the last section where he outlined the laws broken. Thank you for reinforcing my opinion that all leftists are sex-obsessed idiots.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Contrary to what those in other sections of the world may think (what? you don't keep up with everything that happens in California? why not?), this is not exactly a new topic.
It comes down to, essentially, a truly awful economic decision and a great deal of FUD spread by (who else?) the power companies and the media.
Deregulation started in 1995, when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco started studying the possibility. Other states (most notably New Jersey/Delaware/Pennsylvania/Maryland, which forms one power region) had managed to successfully deregulate power, so California figured it was a Good Thing (TM).
The bad economics come in when you realize that it was only the wholesale market that was deregulated, but that Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) were under a CPUC-imposed rate freeze, which meant they could not raise their rates.
Added to this was a requirement that Edison, at least (I'm not sure about PG&E), was forced to divest itself of its power plants. These power plants were bought up by companies that were essentially startups. The new generators of electricity raised the price of electricity, and SCE and PG&E were stuck.
It amounts to a larger version of the rent control in my hometown of Santa Monica - costs may rise but the end-users pay a fixed rate set by the government.
An interesting side note for those who care to research further - San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) was under no such rate freeze, and prices, predictably, tripled this summer. SDG&E, you notice, is not facing bankruptcy, because they are free to raise their rates.
As for the environmental "cartel" whining about nuclear power, it was my last knowledge that both Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant north of San Luis Obispo and San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS, aka "the iron tits" due to their unfortunate shape) were both running (with some exceptions due to kelp in the intake at DCNPP).
The cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Glendale, Riverside, and San Bernadino (among others) are NOT affected, no matter what FUD you may see in the national media, because they have municipal utilities which have long-term contracts and were never regulated (the CPUC has no authority over municipal utilities).
You can check the status of the grid at the California Independent System Operator's website, but it may be down (slashdotted without ever being posted on slashdot, imagine!) We have had no rotating outages yet. Let's hope the broken system gets fixed soon.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
we never shot uranium core bulletts.
You've got to be kidding. It's been widely known that the US and other countries use depleted uranium rounds for years. Their extra mass helps make them good anti-tank rounds for the A-10, for example.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Diablo Canyon is in "my backyard".
I have taken the tour. The building is most impressive. Nothing is going to break or collapse, even in a very strong quake. Then my wife took a geology course at the local community college. The one fault that caused the controversey isn't the only local fault. There are several others. Most of them minor. We're a fairly geolocially stable region here, (compared to the rest of California).
Anyway, the plant is going to be shut down in something like 2012. That's a buttload of money to spend on a plant that only operates for like 20 years. Couldn't they have found someplace else?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
that sounds like the libertarian arugment. Which is funny, because if everyone else was driving a polluting car, and it was causing me problems, I think I could set aside something like a few thousand dollars to pay a lawyer to sue everyone(?!) and then what - I'd have to PROVE in a court of law (without the aid of government-funded studies) that my air supply is damaged - that my health is endangered. . . yeah, right.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The flaw in this analogy is obvious. Electrical energy is a resource that can be produced in practically limitless amounts, given the right technology.
No, it isn't. If it's practically limitless, why are the rolling blackouts in California an issue?
However you make electricity, you still make noxious waste, whether it be spent radioactive fuel rods, or dead fish from the hydroelectric dam, or greenhouse gases from a fossil fuel plant.
A photovoltaic cell (solar) requires more energy to manufacture than it will produce over its entire life.
The silver bullet that will eradicate all of the problems with electrical consumption (harnessed fusion) is even further off than zero emissions cars.
So, your thinking and your understanding of the world is flawed. You don't think about where the electricity comes from.
Therefore, if you can have such luxuries as you >17" monitor, I'll have my 1974 model car.
Clean air isn't something we can create (at least, not yet) - it is by definition a lack of pollutants. Therefore, the best way to make more energy is to generate more, the best way to make more clean air is to pollute less.Of course! It's so easy to do! I'm a good person, I can run my big and inefficient 17" monitor because they can always generate more power, even though that power is derived from [insert ecological threat here]!
You make no sense.
What you're basically telling me is that *you* can have *your* inefficient big monitor, and *I* can't have my allegedly inefficient old car?
Of course, energy conservation is important, too; a ban on old refrigerators might be a good idea, it's just not practical to enforce.Sure! I have a 1956 QuikFrez. Nice fridge, though it can't keep ice cream worth a damn.
Where'd I get it? When I first moved out on my own, I was driving past an appliance shop and I spotted it sitting by the scrap metal bins. I managed to get it into the back of my old Chevette and tied it into place. Bringing it home, I found that the compressor was bad.
I shrugged my shoulders, drained the freon (a friend of mine bought it off me), and pulled the fridge to pieces. New insulation. New magnetic door seal gasket, custom made for me. New paint job, Honda's white paint. New thermostat. New compressor, with R134a (ozone safe) freon.
Now, are you going to take that away from me because it's an old fridge? Because it really isn't. It's a new fridge that happens to be in an old cabinet.
Cars, on the other hand, have to be individually licensed, so inspecting them for emissions is more than practical.Electric bills have to be paid individually, so going into peoples' houses to look for energy-wasting old fridges and 17" monitors is more than practical. Maybe they can save us a whole lot of trouble and look for subversive materials while they're there, you know, like the copy of Socialist Worker that you keep on your coffee table?
I find the hatred for environmental legislation that some people exhibit to be profoundly disturbing.I find the willingness to give up your basic rights to privacy, possession and maintenance of those things that you've bought or built to be frightening.
Of course I'm pro-capitalist and pro-industrySure you are.
but people's health and quality of life have to be maintained.Think about it this way:
If my old fridge were so inefficient, how many years would it take for a new fridge to pay for itself with the electrical savings? My electric bill gives me a vested interest in making sure that my appliances are efficient. (Why do you think I spent over $300 for a *good* compressor for that fridge and then hours cutting appliance-grade styrofoam to shape to fit into its curved top? I could have repaired the old one and left the original fiberglass insulation in there.)
If you want to splurge with a 17" monitor, I'll splurge with my old car.
This doesn't mean a ban on industry, just the diversion of some resources into minimizing the impact on the air and water.Too often, these things are unrealistic or just simply stupidly planned.
For example, if you're running a power plant that's been operational for 30 years, because the power plant is old, it doesn't have to meet modern emissions standards. It would be rather unfair to have to make the owner spend $10 million for an unforseen upgrade.
Now, if you're considering replacing that power plant because you want something that's going to give you more power for every ton of coal that you burn, and yet you have to spend $10 million in pollution controls that your old plant didn't have to have, how long will it take you to recoup that $10 million in additional energy efficiency? Probably longer than your shareholders want.
So, if there were no rule, the upgrade would have happened, and the power plant would produce x more kWh of electricity for every ton of coal burned. More electricity produced from each ton of coal means that less coal is required to meet demand, and therefore less emissions occur.
However, because there was a rule, the power plant bumps along as it did, inefficient as before, because the cost of new pollution controls makes it impractical in any business sense, burning more coal than it needs to, and therefore producing more nasty by-products.
Before catalytic converters were added to cars, cars did have more emissions of unburnt gasoline (hydrocarbons) than they have now. But sulphur dioxide was absolutely unheard of in car exhaust.
So, all the tree huggers whined, and the EPA demanded that cataclysmic converters be added to cars. Gas mileage went down, because the engine has to push exhaust gases past this new restriction in the exhaust pipe. And while unpleasant smelling but relatively harmless HC was removed from the exhaust, the small amounts of sulphur in the fuel were catalyzed into sulphur dioxide, which promptly floats up into the clouds to combine with water and form acid rain.
Good job, environmentalists. See what happens when you don't ask a scientist before you start writing your Congressman?
Today, cataclysmic converters are de rigeur, despite their gas mileage (which means more emissions!) penalty and the sulphuric acid which falls from the sky and kills lakes and forests.
Here's what I'm saying: everyone has a vested interest in energy efficiency. Businesses, individuals, environmentalists. Restrictions and laws that are designed to help more often than not end up creating their own problems which impede the normal tendency of the marketplace to improve products and services.
However, anytime any government gets involved in anything, it gets screwed up. It's been proven time and time again. The places where the governments are most intrusive are also the poorest, dirtiest places on earth. Look at India as an example. I understand their parliament debated for months as to whether they should allow Coca-Cola to be sold there - all the while people are starving to death.
Car companies switched to electronic ignition from Kettering points back in the 1970s because the market demanded better drivability and gas mileage, and technology made the price reasonable. Likewise, modern fuel injection systems and overhead cams would have been adopted for market reasons, without government intervention. When gasoline is burned at its stoichiometric optimum of 14.7:1, it produces the most power with the least emissions. Power translates to engine efficiency and therefore gas mileage; emissions reductions go hand in hand with that.
It gets worse. It's arguable that the current SUV craze is based on government-legislated Corporate Average Fuel Economy laws. After all, the Feds told the car companies that all their carlines had to have an average fuel consumption. Over the years, this was increased and increased and increased. Cars like the Caprice Classic, Impala and Crown Victoria are being squeezed out.
And yet, the market shows that some people still want a big and heavy car. Ask an SUV owner why they like their SUV; weight is a recurring theme.
So, because trucks are exempt from CAFE rules, the car companies started to build big land yachts that are technically trucks. The SUV was born. 4x4 isn't even the prime motivator anymore. Look at how many Blazers, Durangos, Explorers - hell, even Jeeps, are 2WD.
The buyer wants a big, heavy car, but can't get one. So, instead, he buys the next best thing. He buys a station wagon with leather seats that has been built onto a truck frame. Sure, because of its huge frontal area and the excess weight of a frame that was designed for carrying around sheets of drywall, it consumes twice the gas of the Caprice Classic that he wanted. But since the Caprice is discontinued, he bought the next best thing.
Neat, huh?
I've heard that CAFE will soon start to be applied to a manufacturer's truck lines, too. I assure you, this will backfire, too. I don't know how, I can't predict it. But mark my words, and remember them ten years from now: I guarantee that somehow the market will again turn environmentalist rules against the environmentalists.
And since when did anyone have a "right" to drive? By democratic legislation, cars have always had to be roadworthy, safe, and operated by a governmentally licensed driver.When on the road, yes. However, your simple right to possession takes over when it's parked in your driveway. Possession is 9/10 of the law.
If you want to say that a car has to be registered as your possession while it's parked in your driveway and not being driven, I'd suggest that my next step is to ask when I have to register my other possessions, like my computer, my kitchen knives, my TV set, my telephone, etc. with the government authorities. After all, all of these devices either consume precious energy or can be used in subversive and dangerous ways.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I'd like to point out that these problems didn't appear when ecological protections were passed, only after deregulation. Can't have conservatives blaming their economic policies or (gasp!) admitting that they screwed up.
The only areas in California that weren't threatened with rolling blackouts or large rate increases were cities with municipal utilities. Strange how they came through unscathed, isn't it...
Aw, we love you too.
Just because our state has all of the hot girls in bikinis (we loan 'em to Hawaii occasionally) is no reason to get snippy.
Seriously, the energy commission that engineered deregulation was bought and paid for by the power companies, so they could sell off their old and decrepit power plants to new companies for cash. However, during all of the buying and selling, none of them really thought about having to provide power. Not that it really hurts them: they get to raise rates without having to generate any more electricity. All income, no expenses--now that's a business model!
The point is kind of moot however, because the rolling blackouts never happened (a massive rate hike is underway however).
---
I'm high on Elf Life!
Oper on the Nightstar
In fact, we voted for the idea (it was a state ballot initiative, sponsored by, you guessed it, the power companies). Well, not we, because I'm a minor, so I can't vote. And even if I could vote, I would have voted against it. But the fact remains, Californians have themselves to blame for the fiasco, and I'm too weak to refrain from pointing out that I called it. Lessee, there's an oligopoly on power. Power is a necessity. Even my retarded Econ teacher would be able to tell you that that's an inelastic market, and that people will more or less pay whatever they have to. That means that the corporations (Hey! Guess what? They're int he business of making money!) will do whatever they feel like if they think it'll make them some bucks. They're not nice guys. They're businessmen. They really couldn't care less if your Linux box was about to break the record for uptime. They want some money, and they wanna do what they wanna do to get it.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
b) Solar is very cost effective if you allow the companies to charge more for it *and* require people to pay for it when the company provides it. You just need to pass a law which requires people to pay the additional costs for solar AND pay the company and extra 1% or 2% profit on top (multiplied by the percentage of the power which is solar).
I'm not sure I understand--let me try to summarize this. You're saying, "solar is very cost-effective, it just costs more". WTF? Have you no economic sense whatsoever? By the same token, generators run by people on hamster wheels are cost-effective.
Stupid Intel chips use too much power.
If all the hot Silicon Valley companies would switch to PowerPC chips, power consumption would go way down. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
[rant] Because of the way natural gas pipelines are (and the location of various bottlenecks), British Columbia is in essentially the same market for natural gas as California. Now, because of all your bullshit anti-nuclear legislation, you're sucking down all the natural gas in sight, and it's caused our natural gas prices to skyrocket. We had nothing to do with your stupid laws, and no control over your ridiculous policies, but we have to pay the price. We have poor old ladies freezing their asses off in our cold Canadian winter because they can't afford to heat their homes any more, and it's your fault. Assholes... [/rant]
When will you figure out that nuclear and hydro are about as good as it gets? Most of our power is hydro, which is cheap and clean... You guys could buy some CanDu nuclear reactors off us--they're quite safe. Worst case accident, the reactor overheats, the heavy water (which is the moderator) boils off, and the reaction stops because it's no longer moderated. No Chernobyls, no Three Mile Islands, no fuss, no muss.
California would be a really great state if you could only get rid of those wackos making the stupid laws...
A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...
Heh. What about the cars that, BY DESIGN, had an oil resevoir on the top of the engine and just let it all slowly drip out the bottom? Hey! The dirt road absorbed that!
For sure! Kept down the dust!
Back when I was a kid at the cottage my parents rented, the highway department used to actually go through and oil the dirt road with used motor oil.
Just up the bank from a lake, at that. (Lac Cameron, Laurentian Mountains, southwestern Quebec, Canada)
That was about 1983-1984. Horrible as it sounds, at the time, this was thought to be a perfectly acceptable practice.
Fortunately, used motor oil is now quite a valuable commodity. It's readily recycled into new motor and machine oil, so it doesn't get dumped very often.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
You forgot the "stealth" factor with respect to photo speed radar guns. The hood reflected incoming radiowaves up, while the radiator coils below the hood were slanted and reflected the radiowaves down into the ground. So almost nothing reflects back to the radar gun!
Yeah, all one would need to do for complete stealth would be to hang a CD from the rear view mirror to deflect a laser speed trap. [sigh]
First off, radar waves are a kind of radio wave, in a band called "Microwave", because the wavelength is so short. They're highly directional, like light; but they pass through, and are reflected by, the same things as ordinary radio waves. Radar speed traps usually run in X-band, which is about 12GHz, and is usually generated with a Gunn diode with a 1/2 wave antenna poking into a piece of waveguide.
In a Fiero, the hood - the *whole* hood - is plastic. Microwave energy will go right through it, hit the firewall behind, and bounce back to the gun. The Doppler effect (the same thing that makes a train whistle appear to change in pitch as it goes past you) is read by a computer which then calculates your speed and puts it on the display (and therefore onto the impending speeding ticket).
Yes, the radiator - which is aluminum, and is angled at about 35-40 degrees forward - will reflect some of the energy toward the ground. But there'll be more than enough coming off the car's steel unibody for the cop to get a good read off you.
And, no, the CD hanging from the rear view mirror doesn't stealth you from laser speed guns, despite the urban legend that every Home Boyzzz in a chainsaw-mufflered Integra seems to believe.
Here's what you do if you want to avoid police radar: don't drive like an idiot. Speed limits are in place because many people aren't capable of driving faster than the speed limit on a given stretch of road. Actually, most people around here are probably marginally capable of a given speed limit at best.
And if you must drive like an idiot, use brains. Look around the electronics surplus places for an old X-band magnetron. You don't need precision, you need one that fires. That's all. Probably your best bet for finding one is scrapped marine radar equipment.
Then, you need a slotted antenna, and a right angled waveguide bend. Make sure that you put choke to flat as you're assembling it, and make sure all the surfaces are clean. You want the magnetron behind your radiator support and the antenna's slots facing the road in front of you. Put a big piece of heatshrink tubing over the slotted antenna to keep crap out of it. Relax, the heatshrink is transparent to microwave energy.
Now, you need a radar detector (hide it but install it carefully) and a 12 volt strobe light. And a DC regulator that suits the filament voltage of your magnetron.
Hook the voltage regulator up so that the magnetron's filament on whenever the ignition is on. Hook the strobe light's high voltage output across the magnetron's pulse leads (usually both the filament leads referenced to ground). Hook the strobe light up so that it starts firing when the radar detector detects something. Hide the whole arrangement so that it's invisible. The radar detector is legal, the rest of this is a big FCC fine if the cop wants to push it.
What happens?
The magnetron is a tube. Most marine magnetrons are rated between 2.5kW and 25kW of output power at 12GHz. Note that this is for a very short duty cycle pulsetrain. (In radar terms, this is the "trigger" pulse.) Now, like most tubes, the filament takes a few seconds to heat up, so you want this warm whenever the ignition is on.
In driving, with the magnetron already nice and warm, the radar detector working, if a cop points a radar gun at you, the radar detector will turn on the strobe light circuit. However, instead of the strobe light, the strobe circuit pulses the magnetron and makes it fire. Net power output? Can't tell you, but you can calculate it from the strobe circuit's output voltage, capacitor ratings and the magnetron type you scored. Basically, though, it's gonna be short pulses of a *hell* of a lot more than the 100mW or so that the radar gun is firing at you. Peak power at the top of the pulses would probably be in the range of a kilowatt. RMS power probably under 5 watts. Way more than enough.
You will foul the gun's receiver section. In fact, you could theoretically damage it.
As for risks involved, you're running an unlicensed transmitter. You can be fined by the FCC for that. Health and safety? Don't stand in front of it when it's firing. No, it won't give you cancer, it's not ionizing radiation, but, like a microwave oven, the burn hurts *a lot*. Be careful of the high voltages you're using to pulse the magnetron.
Credentials for telling you this? Take a look at my User Info here. Yeah, I work for Litton Marine Systems. Yeah, I do all sorts of really weird things for them, from computers to designing radar equipment. And yeah, I built one of these, and while I've tested it with a police radar gun, I've never had the balls to install it in a car. Oh, and yeah, I had a 1985 Fiero 2M4 SE, 5-speed transmission; bought it for $350 bucks and rebuilt the motor, replaced the clutch and changed all 6 balljoints in the suspension myself. I know those cars quite intimately.
As for thwarting a laser speed trap? Get out the sandblaster and frost your windshield. Then paint the whole car, windows included, with flat black paint. I think this system may have adverse side effects, but it would work.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Rolling blackouts do not happen in all major metropolitan areas.
They don't happen in London.
They don't happen in Birmingham.
They don't happen in Manchester.
Oh, you mean all AMERICAN metropolitan areas?
Personally I find it bewildering that the US is unable to produce enough power to keep going. Even though the UK is not always able to meet peak demands, when we do have a shortfall we can cover the extra by using spare capacity from France. Who in turn can call on half of Europe.
If that can be done in Europe, where we don't even speak the same language, and have a history of hatred, xenophobia and kicking the French, I'm stunned that the US can't do the same.
~Cederic
In Japan, they also are running out of power. To compensate, they literally are throwing solar panels on everyone's roof they can. These installations are done by the power company for free with the understanding that any excess electricity goes to their grid for free. Blocks upon blocks of houses have been equipped like this.
I wish I had a link to give out, but unfortunately I only know about this through seminars. Granted, solar panels are usually ugly (there are roof shingle versions, but they are expensive and output less power than the big ones), but would you rather be ugly with power, or beautiful without it?
The new Sun campus in Santa Clara has huge Onan diesel generators outside each building. We got to test them during an outage last summer. The grid dropped, and the gen sets kicked in about 30 seconds later. UPS protected systems were fine, everything else died and had to be rebooted. When the grid came back, there was no noticeable cutover brown-out. All in all, it worked well. All our critical systems are protected by UPS's. I was working on a docked laptop at the time, and just had to wait for my monitor to power back up. The laptop ran off it's battery while the gen set started. :-)
Temkin
There are no rolling power outages. Shell Beach is across the bridge. And you, you will sleeeeeeeeeep... (smiles and extends hand across face as you close your eyes and fall to the ground)...
Now would be a prime time for GE and other companies to release their home power generation systems. They all work a bit differently, but the basic concept is that you slap this air-conditioner sized box in your garage, hook it up to some supply (hydrogen, propane, natural gas, etc...). The box runs the supply through the fuel cells and produces power for your home.
Definitely the wave of the future.
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Georgia has a democratic governor and the Mayor of Atlanta has sued gun manufacturers for liability in the death of children shot by the weapons they made. Atlanta and the State of Georgia, are hardly some kind of liberal-free zone. CNN is a liberal news agency. Its creator, Ted Turner, is a liberal.
It's up to you to decide if the word liberal has negative connotations.
When the topics are technical, Slashdot has a really good signal/noise ratio. Smart things get modded up; stupid things get modded down and/or stomped on.
Here, though, we see what happens when it's a topic where people don't know much about. The volume is just as high, the opinions are just firm. But most people are just talking out their asses, and moderators are giving big points to Limbaugh-like rants without a scrap of fact in 'em.
Since this article already has enough opinion, I'll just stick to a few facts and some interesting links.
I live in San Francisco, so I've been following this closely. A very interesting site for the curious is the California Independent System Operator, an organization responsible for the long-distance high-voltage lines and the power that flows over them. They have a FAQ, a diagram that shows how the power flows, and an up-to-the-minute graph showing projected and actual power load. (I say we all pick a time tomorrow to turn off everything and see if we can make the graph drop.)
Personally, I use 100% renewable power from utility.com. (I actually pay less than others, but I'd happily pay more for my green preferences.) They are certified by Green-e, a non-profit that verifies the power content. (The typical mix for California uses only 12% renewables, with 20% coal, 20% large hydroelectric, 31% natural gas, and 16% nuclear. (Yes, large hydroelectric is counted separately; it's not considered very environmentally friendly these days.)
There are several good articles in the New York Times about all this, including one on following the money. There is also one on how Texas plans to do it differently. And as subscribers to The Economist know, California's deregulation was a pretty shoddy job compared to other utility deregulations around the world.
So those of you who lay the blame entirely on environmental regs from California's own special blend of fruits, nuts, and flakes should research a little further. You'll find a picture that's much more interesting and complex: political dithering, a lack of foresight, corporate greed, and plenty of plain old stupidity are involved.
Couldn't be all the idiots that have thousands of computers running 24/7. Nor could it be all the fancy electric appliances, dishwashers, dryers, refrigerators, garage door openers. Nor could it be the fault of the consumers of not changing energy hogging ways, could it? Nope, its those darned environmentalists. Yep, them green sap suckin eco freaks that live in the woods with no electricity, plumbing, etc. Yep.. its all there fault.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
I would like to know where all those whining enviornmentalists agaist nuclear power are now... IN THE DARK!! I guess they just love the luxury of having power now do they? ----- "There comes a time in life when you must take a piss in the sink." -Peter Ovalsky, Second Poem
> Thoroughly, California made its own mess and ought to be forced to wallow in it. You're all screwed and it's your own fault.
So, the utilities vigorously opposed the 1996 legislation, and the governer only signed it because his hand was forced by anti-business interests?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The head of L.A. Power saw this crisis coming. He did not join the bandwagon to deregulate. Now, L.A. customers don't have to worry about the blackouts. Also, L.A. is producing power for the rest of the grid at super inflated prices. This is one time deregulation turned into a massive failure.
The core of the problem is basic business stupidity. All the new electricity resellers are bound by price controls. The high cost of of fuel means that they now have to sell for less than it costs to produce.
Hence, blackouts. What a clusterf%!k!
San Francisco is going to start rolling blackouts today!
So? Several years ago, when I lived in the Baltimore area, I remember having rolling blackouts during the hottest parts of the summer because people were using all the available energy on air conditioning.
Well, some of the environmentalist literature that I've read suggest that european equipment tends to be about twice as efficient as the amazingly wasteful american stuff. No I can't support that claim, other than perhaps americans just tend to waste too much by living in big houses, driving big cars, and just generally using stuff larger than they need.
(1) no nuclear reactors (waste/safety issues)
(2) no coal fired power plants (air emissions issues)
(3) no diesel fired power plants (air emmissions again)
(4) no hydroelectric plants (harms [cuddly species of the day]'s habitat)
(5) in fact, no new power plants at all ("not in *my* backyard!")
(6) you shut down existing plants from (1), (2), (3), and (4)
(7) Solar and geothermal don't seem to work like you think... or at all (i.e., operate at a loss).
Well, congrats... your air and water still suck. Species are still going extinct. You put all your eggs on natural gas which is now drying up and prices skyrocketing, you're freezing your asses off and whining about power shortages, high prices, and rolling bloackouts.
And now you:
(1) want continued legislation to FORCE other states to sell power to CA companies headed into bankruptcy? (Who wants to sell to deadbeats?)
(2) Blame deregulation for the energy shortage! Can't have liberals blaming their eco legislation or (gasp!) call for repealing some of it.
(3) Don't give a flying fuck that other states have to pollute more to keep CA on electrical welfare?
Thoroughly, California made its own mess and ought to be forced to wallow in it. You're all screwed and it's your own fault.
What will you do? Here's my prediction: Democrats will do ***NOTHING***. They'll sit and endure the rolling blackouts and come up with bullshit to justify them to the people. They will wait for republicans to propose building more power plants, and repealing the legislation preventing their construction. They will quietly vote to approve these measures amid much muttering and while speaking against it or more likely, will simply abstain on eco-law repealing bills to give republicans a majority (among remaining legislators who actually vote) to let the bills pass. Then when anyone, ANYONE complains about air quality or water pollution or nuclear waste in California they will "blame republicans for rolling back all our hard work to protect your environment." Saying they never voted to support that legislation. Yeah right.
You want power? Then you have to get dirty *just* *like* *everyone* *else*. TANSTAAFL, you know?
IMO, Republicans ought to continue the staredown with democrats until they start repealing their own legislation. Make the basterds squirm and swallow their own bullshit pride. As for the populations without power? Well, at least they'll learn what voting for liberals results in (stone age living) and will know better and teach their kids better in the future.
Um, did I miss anything here?
Free tip for CA denizens: The Plan to steal your cars from you via smog regs is already well underway. Start fighting it now. Basically it combines (1) smog check rules DESIGNED TO FAIL A PERCENTAGE of cars (with an eventual goal of 97% of all cars over 10 years old) with (2) rules that make it ILLEGAL to keep an unregistered vechicle on your property. (1) + (2) = State power to STEAL YOUR CARS and crush them into cubes. See http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1223/sb42/smo gflyer_5.html for more details.
Recall the HomeGen 7000 system GE was said to have available sometime in 2001?. The Slashdot link can be found here. It looks very promising, all you need is a gas line and then you got instant electricity. If GE got these things out now in California, I'm sure alot of people would pay anything to get one..
It appears that GE removed the product description off of their page however. If anyone is able to find a mirror or more info on GE's site, just reply to this comment and attach it. It's a pretty neat system.
--Kumba
"And all this vegetable world appeared on my left foot, as a bright sandal formed immortal of precious stones and gold: I stooped down and bound it on to walk forward through eternity." --Milton 21:4-14 (Bruce Dickinson's The Chemical Wedding: The Alchemist)
Not to mention the fact that with all their air-cond, huge fridge, big lighting, etc... the average american use twice as much energy as the average west-european, whose level of comfort is not so much different.
Oh I forgot, everyone pointing those facts is an anti-american green comie propagating false rumors. Everyone NEEDS a big SUV.
Actually, bad weather leads to more electricity being produced, in our parts of the world. But then 55-60% from our power stems from hydro :>
Thanks for the interesting elaboration
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Well... my obvious thought was that cars do it...
And, well, this kind of resource wasn't available for 'decades', ultra efficient flywheels.
IIRC, it was Roseman Motors, or someone similar, doing research on ultra high speed ultra efficient flywheels?
You are a dork. Oh well.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Rolling blackouts happen. They've happened in Silicon Valley before, they happen in all major metropolitan areas.
I used to be the senior Unix admin for the largest nuclear power company in the US. Here's the abridged version of how these things happen:
1) There's a huge stock-market-like brokerage for energy across the USA.
2) Power companies are basically market players, betting on energy futures. They use data to predict the energy usage for a given day, and buy any they can't produce to cover the overage.
3) Power companies, like any other entity trying to predict a nonlinear chaotic system, fail miserably from time to time, and they end up eating into their reserves.
4) The power companies, in coordination with state and local governments, have contingency plans in place that ensure there's enough energy left in the reserves to maintain critical and emergency services, even though it may mean halting delivery to all other customers.
5) In the meantime, the brokers at the power companies frantically try to buy extra energy from the brokerages. But it's a free market, and last-minute ergs cost much, much more than those bought with foresight. Further, it's a finite resource...if there's bad weather regionally or nationwide, there might not _be_ any excess to buy. So you're stuck depleting your reserves, and hoping the hospitals, police, and other infrastructure components don't go dark longer than their backup systems can cover.
It's common. And it's going to get worse in all major metropolitan areas over the next 10-20 years. Get used to it.
.@.
I'd recommend wiring one of these to your UPS when expecting long blackouts. Its a 12V, 125Ah marine battery and each one added should provide several hours of entertainment and lighting when the grid's out.
For sure, that's a great idea.
However, you don't need to specify marine batteries: Around here, Wal*Mart sells deep cycle batteries primarily meant for electric trolling (fishing) motors. They're off the shelf, relatively cheap (<$100) and will happily power an appropriate UPS.
If you can't find that, you can use a car battery, if need be. But a car battery doesn't like to be completely discharged; the plates are designed for short-duty high current use (starting the engine).
Deep cycle = best bet. Car battery = in a pinch.
If your UPS's existing battery has 6 cells (12V), this will work. If your UPS battery has 12 cells (24V), you'll need to put two batteries in series. If you want more battery time, put two (or more) batteries in parallel. Any good auto parts store will sell the cables and battery terminal posts. If you're mixing batteries, it's a very good idea to make sure that the batteries you connect together are identical and charged to the same level. Otherwise, you get into situations where one battery charges another.
Generators optional.Your car is a great way of replenishing the batteries if you've got a long blackout. Just remember that your alternator is not designed for use as a battery charger: if the battery is really dead, it's best to wait until the power is back on and use the real charger. And if you've got a bunch of batteries in parallel and they're all low, charge them one at a time: Alternators can be expensive to replace.
Another suggestion, which I built for my parents who were affected by the Great Ottawa Ice Storm a few years ago. A car battery, a 1970s GM internal regulator alternator, a Briggs and Stratton gas engine and one of those Statpower AC inverters (500 watt rated) - all screwed to a board - were able to provide enough power for them to use lights (sparingly) and be able to watch TV and stuff.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
If it's extremely expensive to heat your home by gas, those who can no longer afford to use gas will switch to electricity or other sources. This is a Good Thing, because (if the market is untampered with) the relative prices of different means of heating accurately reflects their costs. That is to say, at such time as it becomes cheaper to heat a home with electricity, either:
- The cost of generating or using electricity has gone down. This may be due to the creation of a new reactor, increased equipment efficiency, etc.
- The cost of gas has gone up -- likely due to scarcity. It may be that increased population has raised demand, that natural sources are running dry, or for
many other reasons. In short, though, a major increase in the price of gas reflects a Good Reason why people should use less gas.
Note that I said "use less gas", not "continue to take current measures like turning off the heat when out of the house" (which is apparently what you think is justified when your gas bills are at $98, but likely less than what you'd think appropriate at $400). At the higher prices, it may seem more appropriate to pay the costs involved in alternate energy sources or other, more serious ways of reducing your gas production. You may turn off your heat in any event. You won't change your home's heating system unless it saves you more than it costs. Here's the thing: If it saves you more than it costs, then it's worthwhile -- not just for you, but for society as a whole.Which is to say: If natural gas is so scarce or electricity so plentiful and efficient that natural gas is not the most cost-effective way to heat your home, then using natural gas to heat homes is either wasteful of an increasingly rare resource, or outdated in comparison to newer and more efficient methods. Making natural gas's prices artificially low encourages people to use this method, even if it's outdated or draining on limited resources.
And btw, I'm fully aware of the whole cold fusion research situation. I don't see what it has to do with this discussion.
I wouldn't sit a car battery right on my carpet. At least get one of those plastic battery cases to contain any acit that might leak out (esp while charging the battery).
A fast food tray is enough. I occasionally bring a cold battery in from outside to charge it. Theoretically, acid shouldn't leak out while you're charging - if it does, you're charging it too hard and the escaping hydrogen is pushing the acid out of the cells where it spills to the floor.
Having said that, batteries aren't always perfectly sealed, even with the caps on the cells...
If you hear your battery making noises like a frothy bubbling sound, stop charging: you're overcharging it. Be careful that the switch on the charger is *below* the battery, because the frothy bubbling is lighter-than-air and extremely flammable hydrogen. Do not smoke near the battery.
Make sure that wherever it is that you're charging the battery, you've got it well ventilated. I always wear a pair of safety glasses and keep a box of baking soda around just in case the battery blows up. And it does happen. It looks like the Hindenburg, only smaller, and shooting hot sulphuric acid around.
When you're using the battery, you can worry a little less about ventilation: they only give it off when they're being charged.
Remember that a lead-acid battery, however inelegant and unrefined they may be, packs a hell of a lot of energy in a small space. You don't want to release that energy without being careful how it's controlled. A good car battery can make a 1/4" diameter screwdriver shank glow bright cherry red in under 5 seconds. And I've seen an engineer lose a finger because the iron pinky ring that engineers wear got shorted across a car battery. Red hot iron ring around a finger = amputated finger.
Be careful and respectful of the power of a battery.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I'm already doing that, thank you very much!
No halogens, half my house is 25W flourescent, I don't do Christmas lights, my computers are off at night when I'm not home, etc.
So, what's my next step? I still have to face the stupid power problems. What else can I do? I'm planning on replacing my windows with double paned low E versions, upgrading my ventilation with a HRV unit sometime. I can go as low as I want, but if that means everyone else starts to use it instead, I want a solution that helps to loosely couple me from the rest of the problems. A 24 hour energy cache would be marvelous, but I'm not sure that can even be accomplished!
So, what other suggestions do you have?
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
I work in San Mateo (20 minutes south of SF), and we've been watching these all day. Our major systems are all ups'd, but it would still suck to be without power.....
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
I'd recommend wiring one of these to your UPS when expecting long blackouts. Its a 12V, 125Ah marine battery and each one added should provide several hours of entertainment and lighting when the grid's out. Generators optional.
the relative prices of different means of heating accurately reflects their costs
No it doesn't... it reflects the cost of production/extraction, not the cost to mankind as a whole when the environment is destroyed. That's were regulation and the governement come into play, as only them can fix the price of environement degradation (but it seems it doesn't do so in many country unfortunately).
If environmental cost was reflected into petrol prices, we would all use hydrogen/air presure/whatever-energy cars instead of relying on gas to go around. And all power plant would run on nuclear too (because let's face it, it's much easier to dispose of a few radioactive waste than of billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere)
Yes, but not yet.
If we can mass-produce high-temperature superconducting wire, we can build your idealized energy storage device.
For large enough tanks of liquid nitrogen, I think we may actually be at that point - there are a couple of superconductor firms that are building prototypes of "generators" that are basically trailer-truck-sized tanks of superconducting coils. Load 'em up with power when it's cheap. Sit 'em in the yard, bleeding a small amount of current out of 'em to run the motors that keep the LN3 cool until a $DISASTER strikes. Drive 'em to the disaster site and plug 'em in.
(Of course, if there's ever a coolant leak while the things are fully-charged, get the hell outa dodge...)
This is EXACTLY what America does, just think of each state as an individual country. America, as a whole, has plenty of power. California, by itself, does not. Stupid, dumbass regulators imposed a price freeze on how much power companies can sell electricity for, which is significantly below what they would have to pay to buy out of state electricity. As a result, California is out of power. The COUNTRY is not, just as Europe will probably never run out of power, but California is, because precisely as you said, from time to time we have to buy electricity from neighboring states.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Auto makers will be heavily fined if they don't meet the minimum percentage; however, I find it hard to believe that people are going to run out to buy electric cars if they won't be able to charge them whenever they need to(which will be quite often due to the limited range).
In my country (The Netherlands) several utility companies now offer two kinds of power: 'conventionally' generated and 'environmentally clean' power. The former is generated mostly by natural-gas fired plants, the latter is generated by wind/sun/tidal/etc. generators. The environmentally 'clean' power is a little more expensive, but that does not keep people from choosing this option. Why, you ask? Well, probably because people know that there are more ways to calculate the cost of energy besides tallying the electric bills. If you add up the EXTRA costs from environmental damage caused by traditional power plants (even natural-gas fired, relatively clean as they may be), you'll probably end up with higher costs than the 'environmentally friendly' generated power.
If you sign a contract with the utility company for 'natuurstroom' ('natural power'), they do not rewire your house so that the power actually comes from windmills etc. Instead, they guarantee that they will add to the amount of your power consumption in environmentally friendly power generation capacity in one form or another. Where I live (in the 'polder' (reclaimed land)) this probably means wind generators. Elsewhere, it might means a tidal power plant, etc.
Of course, you have to trust the utility to actually make good on their promises. The contract you sign is co-signed by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), who are supposed to be a 'trusted third party' to alleviate any doubts you may have about the utility company (which is, after all, a purely commercial entity in The Netherlands...).
Maybe a system like this would work for environmentally-conscious California as well?
--frank[at]unternet.org
Most of the *really* smart geeks live in parts of the Valley that don't charge $2k-$3k for 800 sq. ft. apartments with 3-year waiting lists.
/. See http://www.caiso.com/SystemStatus.html for details. NANOG-L held that the first would occur in RWC, home of MAPS, @Home, and others. But then, they were scheduled for 4-8pm PST, and it's 9 minutes after that deadline, with no outages.
They live in other areas of the valley, where that much money will get you a 1,000 sq. ft. apartment, with only a 1-2 year waiting list.
SF's nothing but web hacks and other New Media types. The engineers, admins, architects, and designers are on the Peninsula and in East and South Bay.
...and when the media says "SF", they mean "SF Bay Area". That includes
.@.
(Yeah yeah, actually I think electric and hybrid vehicles are pretty cool... it's just that we'd be completely hozed, as opposed to just somewhat screwed, if the "targets" for ZEVs had actually been met...)
You are correct that Diablo Canyon exists and is nuclear and provides power. You missed the part about it being the reason why there are no more nuclear plants being built in the US. It was designed in the 60s to cost a few hundred million USD. Somewhere around the beginning of construction my father (a geologist) pointed out the existence of a nearby offshore fault to a PG&E engineer over dinner (or something like that). Combine that and the resulting litigation with some not so minor construction issues and you have a state of the art power plant that cost almost $10,000,000 in 1970's era dollars instead of. That killed nuclear power in California. It's never had a problem but the industry is never going to take that kind of financial risk again.
Ah, the mandatory Slashdot liberal-bashing, anti-environmenal rant.
Well, congrats... your air and water still suck. Species are still going extinct. You put all your eggs on natural gas which is now drying up and prices skyrocketing,
Typical anti-environmentalist propaganda. Because a few environmental regulations that managed to squeeze by intense corporate lobbying and Republican opposition don't suddenly solve all the environmental problems in the world they should be repealed? Here's a question; what would the air quality be like without these emissions laws? Of course, the typical right-wing reaction to environmental problems has always been to a) spread FUD and personal attacks, and b) ignore the problem (what pollution?). They ignore the science, they ignore quality of life issues, all in an insane attempt to squeeze out a little bit more money for the corporations. The right has no environmental policy other than to pretend it doesn't exist. And natural gas is drying up? How come I haven't seen headlines to that effect? It would be a news item a lot more significant than California's energy shortages.
you're freezing your asses off and whining about power shortages, high prices, and rolling bloackouts.
Freezing? Yes, we all know what a tundra California is. And anyone "whining" about high prices has been doing it for a while, since the end-user pricing is set by the government.
(2) Blame deregulation for the energy shortage! Can't have liberals blaming their eco legislation or (gasp!) call for repealing some of it.
The "deregulation" involved freeing up the price utility companies pay the power generators; the cost to the end user is fixed by the government. Something which the utility companies fought for so they wouldn't have to risk actually seeing their prices go down to competition. Kind of backfired on them; they figured they'd make out better in the end if they didn't have to lower prices, and gambled that they wouldn't have the price they pay for the energy themselves shoot up. Of course the ultimate origin of the energy shortage is simply the fact that too many people are using it; logical thing would be to (gasp!) limit use, and since nobody seems to be too interested in doing that it has to be forced (i.e. blackouts). The bizarre thing is that companies who will obsess over every little expense their business runs up see nothing wrong in leaving the lights, air conditioning, and computers on all night when nobody's there.
Free tip for CA denizens: The Plan to steal your cars from you via smog regs is already well underway. Start fighting it now. Basically it combines (1) smog check rules DESIGNED TO FAIL A PERCENTAGE of cars (with an eventual goal of 97% of all cars over 10 years old) with (2) rules that make it ILLEGAL to keep an unregistered vechicle on your property. (1) + (2) = State power to STEAL YOUR CARS and crush them into cubes.
Are those capitalized words supposed to inspire shock and a surge of emotion? There is a terrible air pollution problem in California; the emissions standards are designed to alleviate this. Very few older cars may be able to pass these inspections. Whether your car's driving on your property or on the highways, it's still polluting a common resource; the air we breathe. Or would you accept it if someone moves next door to you and starts burning huge piles of tires 24 hours a day (why not? it's on his property!)
In the end, as much as the right tries to make it all sound like some secret conspiracy, auto emissions standards in California didn't just appear out of nowhere; they've been a topic of conversation for years, and the voters of California chose their representatives. This isn't some shadowy liberal plan; the majority of people there decided they wanted a cleaner environment, so they voted that way.
--
> I get slight brownouts all the time that (without a UPS) are just enough to reset my computer... It really pisses me off, but a small UPS fixes it right up!
I never realized how unstable my neighborhood power was until I bought a UPS. I bought it due to frequent thunderstorm blackouts, and it's only good for about 5 minutes. But it beeps whenever it cuts in, and tips me off to micro-brownouts that don't even make the lights flicker.
I get them like clockwork on summer mornings, a little earlier each day as it gets hotter, presumably indicating when enough air conditioners are on to make the reserve capacity have to kick in. But I get them lots of other random times, too.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
. In our zeal to keep America free of radioactivity,
really, damn frivolous people, wanting to avoid radiation... and toxic waste...
your look at this is way oversimplified -- your only mention of safety issues is during construction, it doesn't take into account any sort of accidents, any sort of long-term effects on the surrounding area, or the people that live in it.
there is far more at stake here than financial issues.
Can a energy cache be built and maintained?
Say, a ultra efficient flywheel that charges up at night(anytime, really, but at night when power is supposedly cheapest) and store energy for the household for the coming day?
Say, store X kWh.
Then, if X+b kWh is used, the next day start storing X+ b/2 at night.
And so on, iteratively.
If only X-d kWh is used, then only store X-d the next night. (This actually does decrease!)
X
X(we only charge X-d, but d is already in the system)
X-d(we only used X-d, so X-2d is charged...)
Anyway, gives us 1 day protection, and as the systems get more efficient, we can lengthen the charge period to, say a week, or a month, or whatever.
And if we want to, we can connect this to banks of solar cells, etc?
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
DANGER: DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING.
But if you're comfortable and know the basic safety precautions associated with line power, (and you've got nothing else to do that day) measure the voltage coming out of your socket every once in a while, and plot it on a graph.
Your "120VAC" isn't 120V all the time. The power companies know they can drop voltage to within the tolerances of most line-powered equipment, and will periodically do so in order to get the most bang for the buck. Better to take it to 115V and have 4% in reserve than to give the full 120V and have things fall apart when a steel mill goes online.
Judging from your report and the report of that student elsewhere in this article, they're having to push pretty hard. Betcha you're running somewhere around 110V. Maybe even a bit lower.
(Again, unless you know what you're doing, do not attempt to measure the voltage at your line socket. People who do stupid things with line voltage tend to get killed.)
ObGeekToy: It'd be cool if some company manufactured a device that plugs into an outlet and displays the outlet's voltage on an LCD display. Probably wouldn't cost more than $10 to build in quantity, and that's with UL approval. Target audience: Geeks ("Look and watch the voltage fluctuate during the day!") and people with generators ("So that's why my light bulbs keep burning out!").
Here in San Diego, we have the privilege of both exhorbitant rates and the prospect of blackouts. The manner in which energy was 'deregulated' (it wasn't, but that's a topic left for another time) meant that when a utility paid off its old debt, it could then pass thru its true costs to the customer. San Diego Gas and Electric was the first to effect a payoff, and we now pay the full freight. Where we were before paying around 3 cents per KWH, the price on the spot market has gone to as high as $2.50 at times. My last bill averaged out at 21 cents per KWH, about 7 times the rate of before, and I expect the next one to be a multiple of that. The real cost is masked by an emergency bill that was rushed thru the legislature capping the rate charged to me at around 6 cents. However, each bill shows an 'adjustment' (an accumulating debt that somebody, i.e. probably me, is going to end up paying eventually). Businesses are closing, people are getting laid off, and most everyone is shutting off every power consuming device they can. The entire state is facing an economic crisis. And today in the Los Angeles Times, there's a story about how the new budget just passed assumes continuing economic prosperity. The state budget has increased 43% in 3 years. The governor in his state-of-the-state speech seemed to favor CA condemning power plants under eminent domain and then running them itself. That plus apparently sending invading armies to border states to force them to sell us power (or at least that's how it sounded). If you're holding any California bonds in your portfolio, I'd be dumping them now.
Here's an article with some actual analysis and facts around the issue.
F S= California+Screaming+under+Gov%27t+Blows
"The so-called free market in electric power in California consists of the fact that, last summer, price controls were removed from the power supplies of San Diego County and the southern portion of adjacent Orange County, while remaining in force throughout the rest of the state. "
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=575&
Fuck yer mover..... in her raas.... (Mr. Wong)
I live in a very old and very beautiful third world city. Maybe you've heard of it, San Francisco?
Thanks to our Mayor and District Attorney, drugs and prostitution are de facto legal. The only thing that sells better in this city than Mary J. Wanna is computer stuff. I know what you are thinking... "What a heaven on earth."
We have 40,000 homeless. I saw one man pulling five carts full of junk around strung alone two ropes. I expect to see a camel caravan soon. At sunset, when the light is just right, it actually looks like Tatooine.
Now I will go jump on my electric power scooter, zig zag around people dressed in tarps, covered with tatoos, and adorned facially in steel. I will cruise to the Starbuck's Coffee, Tully's Coffee, Modern Thai, Thai Navy, and Thai Spice. My people will be there.
Incidently, there are far more Thai restaurants in San Francisco than fast food restaurants combined. In reality, there are more Thai restaurants in San Francisco than any other city on the planet. I will bet big money, that Thailand does not have as many Thai resaurants per capita. I think a recent scientific study from the University of California at San Francisco asserted that it's to feed all the Asian sex slaves at the Oriental Massage parlours.
Between you and me. The Thai restaurants are really good. Viva Than Franthithcowoo!
Well, congrats... your air and water still suck.
:)
:)
I was watching the Daily Show (font of news that it is
and they had a segment. Apparently Huston has finally passed L.A. as the city with the worst air polution. Thank you George W.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Measuring line voltage doesn't take an engineering degree. Take a multimeter from radio shack, turn it to the proper AC voltage range, stick the probes in. It really is that simple.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I, for one, work in a place where we study electricity deregulation as enivronmental policy. Basically, the california power shortage is attributable to a number of factors, NONE OF WHICH ARE ENVIRONMENTAL LEGISLATION.
The state decided to "de-regulate" the power industry. Unfortunately, they forgot to de-regulate the prices. That's right, they were forcing companies to supply electricity at a fixed price, whether it be too high or too low. Now, a couple of plants went down for boiler maintainance. This is a big, big deal and takes a while. So, as the demand for electricity was rising, the price was set at a constant level, thus, companies had no incentive to start planning ahead for the days (now) in which they would not have enough power (They could have contracted to buy from out-of-state).
THE LESSON: Don't "de-regulate" like California did (duh!). Other states, like Pennsylvania, have done it without problems. What did they do? They gradually removed regulation, step-by-step, rather than taking it away all at once. You can't expect an industry which has previously existed only under a regulated environment to adapt instantly.
AS FOR YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL ASSERTIONS, they are generally incorrect. Check out the DOE energy information agency website. (http://www.eia.doe.gov). They have done some really, really interesting research, including studies which have shown, when including the cost of pollution, that natural gas power plants, the type all over Cali, are THE LOWEST COST TYPE. Yeah, coal looks like its cheaper, but coal plants spew rediculous amounts of No2 into the environment.
The natural gas supply is not "drying up"; the distribution system is simply stretched. The same thing happened to gasoline production (and thus prices) this summer.
As for your political views, they are obviously uninformed, much like your general knowledge of the power industry or of environmental issues. How could the legislature in California vote to build more power plants if the industry has been privatized? Sounds to me like you just wanted to complain about democrats.
However, thank you for reinforcing my closely-held assertion that all conservatives are stupid, selfish, or both. Someday I will have to study that scientifically....until then...
EAT A DICK
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
Therefore, because CA is taking their power from other states (to charge their "green cars", etc), they are just dumping their pollution problem onto other states to deal with. And now that they have the Feds invovled, the other states power plants MUST give them power.
The problem with nuclear power isn't that it's unsafe, in fact it seems to be quite a bit safer than burning coal, but that when an accident happens it has the potential to cause a very large number of problems all at once. The problem is therefore mainly one of perception, in a way it's quite similar to airline travel. Many people are nervous about traveling on an airline despite the fact that air travel is quite a bit safer than travel by private vehicle. This is because people are used to traveling along the ground but they are not used to traveling in the air. In addition, airliners tend to put a few hundred people in the same place at the same time so that when there is an accident (as will happen with any human endevor) it does a lot more damage (and therefore is reported on the news) than an accident in a private vehicle which probably only involves 5 people at the most. In a similar way, people are used to setting things on fire for energy, we've been doing that for thousands of years and it's just not all that scary to us anymore, on the other hand fission is a new and kind of scary thing. In addition, fission accidents tend to be disasters and put thousands of people at risk all at once while the by products of coal burning kill people very slowly and over a very long period of time.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Computers and severs are now major appliances
in many houses and offices. In total they
consume 15% of the US energy supply and account
for most of the US energy usage increase since
the 1980s. Some server farms are measured in
megawatt consumption according to a recent
Newsweek article.
Doesn't need to be that way. Laptop technology
knows how to keep computing energy to a few watts
per workstation.
You have no idea what your talking about.
Dude, he's right on all counts, unfortunately. I detest the Republicans because while I'm a fiscal conservative, I'm also a social liberal. And a lot of the Democrats environmental platform is just simply dangerous, in that it causes problems like rolling blackouts and erodes one's freedom to drive (or even possess!) the vehicle of his/her choice.
Having said that, they're not completely to blame, Cash for Clunkers and other misguided concepts were pioneered by Republicans as ways for their big oil friends to appear to be doing something for the environment.
BTW, it's "you're", as in a contraction of "you are". "Your" is possessive.
First, you should not confuse the "not in my backyard" folks with the enviromentalists. These are two almost totally unrelated groups who want almost totally diffrent things, i.e. the "not in my backyard" people will be quit happy to see the power plant to go in the ecologically importent swamp in the next county..Effectively, though, environmentalists *are* all too often the same thing, simply by virtue of their shortsightedness.
For example, Western European environmentalists scored a big win: they managed to basically kill the nuclear power projects in Western Europe. Western Europe's electricity is now mostly made from natural gas.
One of the world's biggest suppliers of natural gas is Russia. So, Russia sells as much of their natural gas as they can to Western Europe. In order to ensure that the natural gas is available for sale, Russia shuts down their gas power plants and fires up a couple of mothballed RBMK reactors to produce their own power.
Now, which would you rather have, the running Western European reactor three miles from your house, or a running Russian RBMK flammable-moderator reactor in the Ukraine?
Chernobyl was an accident with profound world-wide environmental consequences. While operator error was at fault, Russian reactor design contributed hugely to the severity of the accident. In a French reactor, for example, it would have been a note in the operating log and a fired employee, nothing more.
a) I think breaderbreEder
reactersreactOrs
make very clean nukes and no enviromentalists are objecting to these things (they have a small problem that the millitarymiLitary
must monitor them since they produce high grade plutonium).Breeder reactors are a great idea. Like solar power. Like tidal power. Like wind power. However, these aren't computers. Things change at an incremental pace; nuclear power (and power plants in general, which are primarily about mechanical engineering) is a relatively mature technology. Don't expect quantum leaps.
As it is, breeders are inefficient. Perhaps that's the wrong term since they actually *create* fuel while they consume it, but for the dollar investment and for the quantity of fuel in the core, they really can't be harnessed to produce a hell of a lot of heat. Heat, of course, boils water which spins turbines and therefore generators.
b) Solar is very cost effective if you allow the companies to charge more for it *and* require people to pay for it when the company provides it.So you want to undermine the free market economy and force people to buy something that is more expensive when there's a cheaper alternative? I thought you'd just said solar was cost effective?
For the record, it's not. It requires vast quantities of land where you *will* kill the ecosystem, large investments in solar cells, storage batteries (solar doesn't produce power off moonlight, you know) and inverters (solar cells put out DC, the electric grid requires AC to function).
You just need to pass a law which requires people to pay the additional costs for solar AND pay the company and extra 1% or 2% profit on top (multiplied by the percentage of the power which is solar).Sure!
I propose a law that we force everyone who has ever been a member of any environmentalist group to have to buy electricity *exclusively* from power sources that they have pushed into existance.
Don't get used to cold beer, it ain't gonna happen too often in your fridge.
Finally, it was deregulation and not enviromental regulations which prevented plants from being built. The companies felt they could delay building new plants to save money.Yes, and no. Unfortunately, the environmental regulations make it so expensive that the energy companies didn't feel building new plants was a worthwhile investment.
Admittedly, the fault was on both sides.
Also, who cares that CA is forcing people to replace their cars?I care.
I love old cars. I want to be able to drive the car of my choice. And I want to be able to get parts for my old car.
How can you ask "who cares"? It's an erosion of personal freedom. Of liberty. Even if you're not interested in cars, even with your apparently mediocre intelligence, you should see this as a first step down a dangerous path.
The bigger the monitor, the more energy it consumes. I propose that we not allow anyone Internet access if their monitor is bigger than 15". Further, I suggest that if we see a 17" monitor on someone's property, even though they can't get on the Internet with it anymore, we confiscate it and destroy it.
Concerned yet? This is exactly what is being done with cars and old car fans.
That is a great idea and very few of the current cars will live for 10 years anyway.Yeah, maybe the fact that cars aren't built the way they used to be is part of the reason why I like old cars.
If I'm shelling out $20,000+ for *anything*, you'd better bet your ass that I expect it to last.
Hell, all the eco-friendly cars are cheaper to run (those saturn electric cars cost like 1/4th as much as a good gas car),Until you have to replace the batteries.
Sadly, they also have about 1/4 of the drivability. And 1/4 of the range. And if you think a gas engine is hard to start when it's cold, just you wait until you're wanting to go to work and all your batteries are frozen.
And what about California's power problems? I can't wait to see the rolling blackouts when millions of commuters are plugging in battery-powered cars to recharge them.
Environmentally, too, you have to remember that a battery, by its very definition, is full of nasty, caustic and toxic chemicals. The more efficient the battery, the more nasty its ingredients are. And an electric car will be packed full of them. Every fender-bender on the freeway will result in a Haz-Mat team being called out to clean up the electrolyte before it trickles down storm sewers. Chemical burns will be a routine part of every car accident. And when these cars start to wear out and get scrapped, you're not going to get all the batteries back. Some will end up in lakes, and streams, and hiding in the pile of crap in my neighbor's back yard, etc.
so making everyone buy one will mean that the price must drop.Okay. I'm the government. Your computer is taking too much energy. So, we're going to force you to spend $6,000 on this energy-efficient 486SLC-33.
Man, I hope you're never allowed to vote anywhere. You're as fascist as Hitler.
Who knows maybe I will be able to buy a cheap eco-friendly car on the east cost in a few years.Maybe, yes. And I hope you can. But I also think that the free market economy will provide it, not government regulation.
Anyway, no one will sit arround for rolling blackouts. The government will pay for new plants and (hopefully) the power company officials will go to jail.For being intelligent businessmen and doing the best they could with the situation created by the laws that had been passed?
Wow, the mass exodus of businesses from your little piece of the world would be staggering.
Wanna pay the taxes to build those new plants? That'll be a neat trick once you've used the threat of jail time to drive the economy away.
Who knows maybe they will just export the socialist power from LA to the rest of the state.Ah, yes. Socialism works *so* well, as has been proven time after time in countries as diverse as Russia, Cuba, Bulgaria, East Germany, China... And *all* those countries, wonderful socialist goverments that they have/had, are *so* well known for their *excellent* treatment of the environment.
Your short-sightness and flagrant disregard for reality - neigh, common sense! - simultanously upsets, distresses, scares and even amuses me.
You, sir, are an idiot.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
There is a terrible air pollution problem in California; the emissions standards are designed to alleviate this.
There is a terrible energy crisis in California. What I propose is designed to alleviate this. Read on.
Very few older cars may be able to pass these inspections.Very few 17" or greater monitors use as little energy as a 15" monitor.
Whether your car's driving on your property or on the highways, it's still polluting a common resource; the air we breathe.Whether your monitor is being used to surf the web or for kernel-bashing, it's still using excess energy on a common resource, the electrical grid.
Therefore, I propose that we have a law that bans people from being able to connect to the Internet if they have a monitor bigger than 15".
Further, as the next phase of the program, I propose that if we *see* a 17" or bigger monitor in someone's home, we remove it from their property because destroying these energy wasting and inefficient big monitors will serve the greater good.
Scared yet? This is *exactly* what is done to those of us who love and cherish old cars. Even if you have no interest in old cars, you've got to realize what a profound and dangerous reduction in personal freedoms this is.
I'm all for clean air. That's why I maintain my vehicles well. Old vehicles don't count for a huge percentage of the miles travelled. Old age, wear and accidents control the quantities of old vehicles on the road quite effectively as it is, and without an erosion of your freedom or mine.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Of course, the plan backfired because I bought from a different vendor.
Flamebait???
:)
This is straightforward, mainstream economics. I'm sorry if the laws of supply and demand offend you, but they cannot be suspended, notwistanding the semi-regular attempts of the california legislature.
Then again, maybe a CA legislature picked up some moderation points
It was rolling brownouts, not blackouts, at least in DC. [And that was the same summer that the DC water treatment system kept going ass-up, and my university was giving everyone rations of bottled water.]
Of course, our area never got hit by the brownouts, which made me even more pissed that I had shut everything off and wasn't mudding. [I think that was the last time that I painted any of my WH40k models]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I don't think Canada has this problem. Reactors are built by the government, so the only financial risk is to the taxpayaers. Government investors don't mind losing money, they can always print more.
Even though the blackouts have been called off for now, it's pretty tough to look at all the facts and not realize that energy corporations in Texas and Oklahoma have set this whole thing up to rape California.
Granted, California's idiot policies opened the door for them, but just cuz your neighbor is bending over doesn't mean it's an invitation for the humpty dance.
Wholesale energy costs up 25%, California's cost to buy electricity (from the plants it built and once owned) up 700%, and the corporations in Oklahoma and Texas have skyrocketing stock prices and profits.
Well, piss on them. When my state of california gets on top of this, your gonna pay, bastards.
Public infrastructure cannot be properly served by this ridiculous sham of a "free market".
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I don't think British Columbia is polluting the entire planet. Even if everyone in BC owned their own smog factory, it wouldn't amount to much.
Uhm, gee sparky, lets do the math. Is anyone suprised that there might be a problem with atitudes like those above? Lets try to be a LITTLE bit sensible. AND by the way, the CA power situation was PARTIALLY deregualted. So saying that the free market is the problem is not entirely correct, saying that deregualtion is the problem is not entirely correct. Sayint that stupidity and ingnorance is the problem would be correct.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Stripping is not why SF strippers are famous. Think manually.... -Nate
Totally true. In fact, that's how I do it all the time. I just didn't wanna get sued if someone's fingers happened to be holding onto the wrong part of the lead when they tested it... especially if they had one lead in each hand!
Are there any reasons to put a UPS on a simple personal Linux server if it's running a journalling file system (e.g. ReiserFS)?
Several! For one, not losing unsaved work. For another, a journaling file system will not loose consistancy, but can lose data that was buffered and waiting in the queue for write. Also, dirty blackouts (where the lights flicker and flash) are really hard on a power supply.
Wouldn't most internet companies/backbone sites/universities have uninterruptable power anyway? If the net shut down everytime the power in CA did, we'd be in bad shape.
Communications equipment usually runs off of 48 volts DC. The fiber terminators and other telco equipment (LIUs, concentrators, etc.) usually run off of a few lead-acid batteries which are continuously float-charged. Interruptions in the grid don't even phase them.
As for generators: many facilities have them as well to cover critical equipment. Every hospital with an OR has one. Hell even we have one, but it's for testing our starters with transfer switches and the like. :-)
I picked up a surplus honker of UPS. It cost me $600 to replace the crapped out batteries. Now I can stay up for three days with all my gear running! Woo Hoo!
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
Yes, you read that right. California did *not* deregulate, at least not in any sense that I recognize as an economist or lawyer.
California no more deregulated than NAFTA introduced free trade: it doesn't take 400 words, let alone 400 pages, to describe free trade, and it California's electrical marget is still bizarrely regulated.
Commodities are generall purchased under a wide varieties of contract types--including the ability to produce for oneself. In particular, there are contracts of varying length, the shortest of which is the "spot market" for immediate purchase. NOt surprisingly, the prices tend to be highest in the spot maret. Particularly, the wildest price swings happen in that market.
What California did was to mandate that the utilities sell their own power plants--the ones with the most predictable costs. They then further required that all the electricity be purchased on the spot market.
I'm sure that they *could* have come up with a more idiotic system, but it would take some serious work. This one is spectacular, even by California standards . . .
The obvious solution: deregulation. Let the utilities or middlemen enter long-term contracts for power when they make sense. It will take time to adjust (noone wants to sell power they can sell on the spot market at a lower rate), but it will.
Also note that some parts of california, particularly san diego, were paying heavily subsidized electrical rates in teh past. SDG&E had unusually low production costs, which under they old system, led to unusually low rates.
hawk, economics professor and lawyer
ok, I also fled california when Wilson and Feinstein were the choices for governor . . .
1. System Conditions: Current System Load, Today's Peak Demand, Today's Forecast Peak, and Tomorrow's Forecast Peak.
:)
2. Current Active Notice(s): Will tell you any stage emergencies (it went to stage alert 3 today!) and other technical information.
Have fun!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
the pge and sce (http://www.pge.com http://www.sce.com) both have tips and pamphlets on how you can save engery in your home, as well as rebate programs for energy efficient appliances.
It's the geeky thing to do -- follow the tips and lower california's energy needs.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I was working from home that day and discovered that my ISDN line didn't work (used that at the time for telecommuting); but this happened frequently on my block (unreliable power) so I figured I'd just go to the office. I went out to the car, and when I discovered that the electric buses didn't work, and the streetlights were out, it became obvious that nobody was going anywhere. My neighborhood coffee shop ran out of hot coffee very quickly, as EVERYONE needed some, and so I distinctly remember carrying home pre-ground french roast to make with my stovetop espresso maker.
It turned out that PG&E (that poor, suffering company in the news these days) had massively fucked up a maintenance job:
The problem, utility officials said, originated with a PG&E construction crew error during the installation of a new transformer at the San Mateo substation. The crew violated procedures and neglected to remove a safety ground wire before re-energizing that portion of the substation.
When the switch was thrown, electricity bypassed four 115,000-volt lines that supply power to the Peninsula and San Francisco and instead plowed into the ground.
Fortunately the circuit breakers did their thing and prevented all sorts of chaos (other than power loss) on the power grid. But PG&E certainly did not make a good impression that day!
sulli
RTFJ.
There are many who believe this is just a symptom of a much greater problem due to deregulation of the power industry. Its been said that our power grid is inherently unstable today as it was before the US began to regulate it in the late 40's. I would like to know from the people in the power industry if they believe this.
No, it's not due to privatization. It's due to half-assed privatization. There is a big difference. The media bandies about the word "deregulation" when in fact the power industry is anything but deregulated. Power companies can only buy and sell power one day ahead of time. All power is sold through a common exchange where every transaction occurs at the price of the last and highest bid. The energy exchange is rigged because the price of power generation is free to float up ro down but the price to the end user is fixed by law. (Okay, the power compaines agreed to that one, but government nerver should have proposed it. Never. Now the two biggest power companies here are bleeding cash faster than a dotcom could ever hope to.) Power companies have sever restrictions on how much generation capacity they can own. Power plants built to serve specific industries cannot sell any significant amount of their excess power to the general grid.
I don't know what planet you live on, but here on earth that is not deregulation or privatization.
The Republican-controlled state legislature AND governor's mansion have since been replaced with Democrat-controlled legislature and governor. When the legislation to deregulate passed, the GOP knew the writing was on the wall.
I hate to tell you this, but we knew not to trust the bastards, and they got us in the end. Blame that CA state GOP, not the voters.
Actually, 4 servers, 2 personal boxes plus assorted sundry equipment to tie it all together.
I'd agree, though, that if the 'net connection goes with the power that I wouldn't be able to do much but invite the neighbors for a lan party.
satire, n: 1) witty language used to convey insults or scorn; 2) a form of humor lost on most slashdot moderators.
LA decreased their pollution (but apparently back on the rise). Houston stayed the same. Considering the increased truck traffic due to NAFTA, that's ok. Just imagine what it will be like in a couple of years when Mexican trucks will be able to drive all across the US & Canada instead of only within a few miles of the border. And they don't have to follow our safety or pollution standards at all. fun, fun, fun.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
While we haven't had blackouts yet, my electric bill is up about 300% since start of deregulation
To compare the cost of a solar power system (or wind or water power) to grid power:
- Design a system adequate for your needs.
- Compute its lifetime.
- Compute its cost, including purchase price, consumables, and maintainence costs over its lifetime.
- Compute the monthly payment if you took out a loan for that amount, running the lifetime of the system. (Don't forget tax credits and mortgage tax breaks if you finance it as part of your house.)
- Compute your average monthly number of kilowatt-hours generated.
- Divide the monthly payment by the monthly kilowatt-hours. This is your cost per kilowatt-hour.
The cost per kilowatt-hour of solar photovoltaic systems has been getting close to the crossover with respect to grid power. For some applications (like country houses or small-loads like illuminated billboards and traffic signs) where the instalation and fixed-costs of grid power are high it's already crossed over - which is why you see so many panels these days. It also beats diesel generators for portable power now.
A big enough jump in the grid's generation cost (such as the one in California, thanks to their shiny new centrally-planned socialized electric system) might push it over even for urban residences.
And California is a good spot for solar. At the latitude of the SF Bay area, for instance, insolation is about 5 solar hours per day. Once you're east of the coastal range (unless you're just downwind of a gap in it or on the west side of a still higher mountain) there's little daytime fog or cloud cover.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Cisco's got it's own substation on Tasman in San Jose, just past Zanker Rd.
But then, Cisco pretty much singlehandedly funded the SJ/Santa Clara/Mt. View lightrail, too.
.@.