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Is the Net The Cause of California's Power Problems?
kenf writes "Salon Magazine has an article about folks from the power companies blaming the internet for their power shortage woes." Well, the net does consume a huge percentage of the nations electricity. The article makes a lot of good points. I'm glad I don't live in CA, but how long before it
affects the rest of us?
You see, my parents both grew up on farms, farms which have since been replaced by trees. Therefore, I feel that our family, and me myself are warranted a eco-credit..
Actually, if you look at the growth of forests nationwide over the last century, on average, everyone in the US is in the black! And throw in all the gains over the last 50 years on top of that.. Whoo-hoo!
Yippee! I've never done a gasholine-fueled bonfire outside before.. I guess it's time to start. Will you join me and use up your credits so we can have a bonfire twice as big?
If the price is depressed, like the residential rates that PG&E are forced to pay because of rate-limits, who is paying the price?
In the case of electricity in california, it's obvious that PG&E is currently paying the price for the rate limits. And what a price tag, 10 billion!
So, if the price we're paying for power/natural gass/gasholine is depressed, who is paying the difference between the real price and the price we pay. (No, 'our children' is not a correct answer, the energy we use now to bring up our children is an advantage to their future, not a harm.)
BZZT, sorry, your power supply does NOT draw 200 watts to operate, rather it can supply that much power to the rest of the system. Although the device is not perfect, it is nowhere near 100% inefficent. YOu can tell this by touching the power supply case of a comptuer you just turned off, it is warm to the touch, but nowhere near what it would be if it needed 200 watts to operate.
I read the internet for the articles.
If you spend 1/2 as much on gasoline, that's more money you can spend on other things. Explain again why this is bad for the economy?
The important thing is to make sure that the price of gasoline is *correct*, so that people can Do the Right Thing, for the economy and the environment, simply by adding up the prices they see themselves. If the price of gasoline is too low, because (for example), insufficiently strict environmental regulations have the effect of undervaluing the use of natural resources, then people make incorrect decisions, like driving to a more distant store when they should have walked to a closer one, when it's the driving that really used more resources.
---J. Bruce Fields
That's true, but not for the reason you are thinking. The reason the Internet uses so much power is because air conditioning large data centers is very expensive. I know one major hosting provider who is actively considering buying a utility company because it will be cheaper than buying power on the open market. They pay more for power than they do for real estate, and they're in Manhattan!
I advised them to relocate to Alaska (seriously!) and staff their sysadmins on the same model that oil companies use for their Engineers. But that's not feasible because the average server isn't nearly so reliable that the customer is willing to give up easy hands-on access. But we'll have to re-evaluate in 2-5 years.
It's simple, really -- the VCs are there, they want their money close to them, the start-ups wind up there (Silicon Valley). This drives up the density, which drives up housing costs, power demands, and all the other drains on local culture and infrastructure... leading to what I like to refer to as the "Hong Kong-ification of the Peninsula". I've railed in the past about this, I've railed about how one nasty earthquake could send the industry into a REAL tailspin, I've railed about the labor costs in the Valley, but now, perhaps, the brownouts are vindicating my earlier observations; couple this with the current capital crisis, and maybe, just MAYBE, somebody may get wise: Milwaukee is a "Great Place by a Great Lake" and AltaVista needs to conserve money by cutting labor costs, so why shouldn't AltaVista up and move to Milwaukee? Similarly, Excite could move to Omaha, VA to Lansing, etc., and all of a sudden both Silicon Valley and the companies that "used to be there" would both be a lot better off.
Of course, all of this is predicated on an even larger assumption: that the VCs would actually be willing to believe that the people running the companies they invested in knew what they were doing!
MOO;IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
Took a tour of the Texas Tech University physial plant/tunnels/central-heating-and-cooling-plant. Kinda cool to see all of the co-generation they have going on to generate electricity from excess steam and other sources of heat.
Amarillo and Midland might be a good deal smaller than Lubbock, but at least they're pretty towns.
Go Red Raiders and get rid of Leach! At least the Band is award-winning.
Power consumption is a factor of many things, not just one juicy target.
First, not all the power that is generated ever gets used. The wastage through heating up the power grid is significant, in itself.
Then, the generators themselves are horribly inefficient devices. The best theoretical conversion is only 50%, but the reality is probably not even close. Often due to poor maintenance, the use of cheap materials, etc. Short-term profits vs Long-term gains.
Once you -get- the power, though, you don't expect house wiring is any better, do you? Poor wiring is painfuly common, throughout the country. You could probably map cities by the RF emissions of the nearby buildings.
Finally, components in computers, etc, generate a very low-grade electronic smog. Below the legal limits, sure, but enough to be measurable and to cause endless problems with sensitive receivers.
By the time you get to the Internet, most of the waste has already happened.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hopefully California's deregulation debacle will help other states that are going to undergo dereg. (such as here in Ohio) how not to do it. Now, if they could only learn from their own lessons...
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
My other
Where 24% of the worlds emissions are generated by 8% of the global population. Don't even start me on the other crap such as pesticides that the rest of the civilised world have banned, but you lot still use to save a few bucks. Other countries manage to be more energy efficient. Why is America always exempt ? Civilisation at the cost of the planet.
For example, if we count the telephone equipment, routers, etc along the way for the communication. But then we should only count the fraction of the performance being used by the Palm. So, if a Palm used 0.001% of the bandwidth of a switch that used 15W of power at peak load, then maybe we should put that .15mW on the Palm's "Power budget". But then, to be fair, we would need to take that off of the alotment for the switch.
It just comes down to where the power is assigned to, and I still don't see how the Palm could use as much as a refrigerator.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
"The electric system in California was not originally designed for a high-tech industry. As the high-tech industry has grown, so has the level of technology that we have to provide, or try to provide," says Scott Blakey, a spokesman for PG&E, one of the state's largest utilities. "You've taken what essentially is a 19th century system
of poles and wires, and using late-20th century technology you've tried to meet the needs of what is going to be a 21st century industry."
I don't get that at all. All the power company has to provide is 120V low Z with a reasonably reliable uptime. Even for short outages we have UPS's and power conditioners are traditionally owned by consumers with mission critical computing gear. WTF? Just because the end use of power is some modern fancy dancy techno-gee-whiz gadgetry doesn't mean the generator or grid has to be also.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Leave the net on. When I'm surfing, the TV is off. When I'm watching TV the computer is off. However the cable box is on 24 X 7. Maybe if everyone shut off the cable box with a power strip when they are not watching TV, that would save more than the aprox 3 hr/day the computer used. Anybody notice cable converters run hot, even when they are "off"? Besides my home theatre uses more power than my computer. The theatre runs with a good size receiver, seprate tuner, VCR, Cable Box, and Laser Disk. Seldom is it just the TV.
The truth shall set you free!
In the old days, ca 1985, if I wanted porn, I had to drive to a newstand or an adult bookstore, burning precious gasoline.
Now I can sit at home and download it, saving energy.
You can apply this to any other kind of shopping you want to, also.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
We could also realize that the price we HAVE been paying is extremely depressed from the real value of the (power|natural gas|gasoline) and stop using quite so much of it.
And in California's case they really screwed the utils hard. Their prices were allowed to fluctuate but they couldn't pass any on to the consumers? And this is DEREGULATION? No, it's deregulation of the power company's outlay without deregulating their income. Say "Goodbye" to profit/profitability.
I can't wait till Ohio follows California's "brilliant" power deregulation scheme. So glad I don't live where I work!
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Disclaimer: What follows is pure speculation because I didn't follow the news very closely.
My hunch is that some kelp got torn loose from the seabed and the waves clogged a warm-water release pipe, or a cold-water intake pipe, limiting the ability of the plant to condense the steam and return it to circulation.
If my supposition is correct, then any gas- or coal-fired generator would have been shut down for the same reason.
Somebody needs to spend a little more time in Econ class.
Waste is bad for an economy.
Efficient use of natural resources is good for an economy.
As a practical example:
Say I conserve gas by driving half as much as before. That leaves more money in my pocket for me to either purchase more useful products, or to invest in my businesses to enable me to more effectively produce goods and services.
Now if hundreds of people do this, that's a serious increase in capital investement, which will produce unparalleled growth.
The fact is that the temporary (until 2002) freeze on prices was mandated by the power producers themselves, because they were afraid that deregulation was going to cause a drop in prices as consumers would be able to choose cheaper providers. They wanted a a window of ensured profitability before margins got razor-thin. The fixed price was, at the time, above predicted market rates. Only in the San Diego area was the retail price unfrozen - it was there that the first signs of the reality of the situation (that deregulation would lead to higher, rather than lower, prices in the energy market) became apparent.
In fact, there are plenty of reasons to believe that deregulation will always lead to higher prices for energy, when it leads to redundancies in infrastructure that don't exist with a regulated monopoly.
> As many posters have noted, the California power problem has far more to do with government regulation of power than of Internet use.
Actually, it's the "free candy for all" mentality. That statement applies equally to the CA administration and legislature, the power companies, and the voters/consumers of CA.
I researched it a bit last time this came up. You can read my post here. Notice that the quotes and links are to old articles, where people were pointing out how misguided the legislation was back when it was first passed (before signed, even), and again when it was first going into effect.
In short, the utilities convinced the legislature to bail them out to the tune of 30 billion dollars, and the legislature sold it to the public as a sure-fire way to get a 10% reduction in their utility bills. The utilites that are asking for another bail out now were the chief proponents of the bill that got them into the current mess.
Please see my link above -- there are some really interesting quotes there, from back when the deal was first cut. IMO you can't discuss it meaningfully without knowing how we got where we are.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
James Hoecker, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, put it this way:
His sarcasm is merited. You should not expect investment in a market that has arbitrary price rollbacks and an uncertain and hostile regulatory environment.California deregulated electricity in the hope of milking power companies. It cannot work like that. Here in Britain, as in Scandinavia, electricity deregulation has gone smoothly.
___________________________________________
"Ple
AGREED! As to the other reply. Get a clue. You keep your leukemia, and I'll keep my asthma. Nuclear is the cleanest, and thus the safest form of power generation we have.
First, they're NOT operating at maximum capacity. This means that LACK of power is not the issue per se, it's economics. The wacko way in which this so-called deregulation was implimented the retail power companies are forced to deliver power below cost (e.g., fix/regulated retail prices, with higher market prices). Though this may tie back into supply and demand, in the sense that increased demand makes that power more expensive, don't confuse this with lack of power.
Second, most of the power retailers are LOSING money hand over hand because of the current situation. If anyone is a cartel it's the wholesalers--which is a much more complex situation.
Third, the reason why the government can't merely say "build more powerplants or else" (as if that is the real problem right now), is because money doesn't grow on trees. If power costs more for the companies to acquire (or produce) then they can sell it for, then companies will simply not sell. The companies are not some magical entity that can just absorb these costs. In fact, given their relatively low margins, operating at below cost will QUICKLY put them out of business (as is being demonstrated now). This means that shareholders and lenders will not supply money to the power companies. In other words, the power companies either raise their retail prices OR the government itself starts paying. If the government pays this is coming out of tax payer pockets anyways. Either way, you're back at square one.
Deregulation has SUCCESSFULLY circumvented these problems in many markets by allowing the companies to respond economically to demand. For instance, when demand starts to rise relative to supply, prices increase. This increases the incentive for the companies to build powerplants. Whereas in California's poorly deregulated market, they're not allowed to raise prices. Furthermore, they are (rightly) nervous that the government will step in shortly after they've spent billions on new powerplants.
This guy is spot on. As most people in Ireland at least realise, the consumer price of gasoline is a joke in the US. You guys do not pay at all for the cost of polluting our (that includes you whoever you are) environment! The price of petrol in Ireland is roughly 1=$1 / litre. What do you pay? The average car engine in Ireland is probably 1.3 litre. How much gas does your car guzzle? I rest my case.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I have a hard time believing that even in the "suburbs" there aren't some stores worth visiting in walking or riding distance.
I tried to ride my bike to the store once (well within riding distance). I was nearly killed by the monster SUVs and the fact that there is less than 2 inches of dirt before the dropoff into rocky trenches at the side of the road. If there were a bike lane, I would do a lot more riding. It's unfortunate since I really prefer riding to driving most of the time.
I work at Cisco Systems, and am on the architecture team designing the next generation multi-tera bit L3 switch. One of our biggest problems in designing this switch is cooling. The switch will encompass a standard network rack, be about 6 feet tall, and consume around 10-15kW in a typical configuration. That's 10-15kW in a 4 square foot region.
Granted, a networking closet won't have a whole bunch of these beasts (yet), but when you add in a bunch of lower power switches along with the big aggragator, you have some serious power density.
Keep in mind that one of the ways power-people measure power usage is by the power density: kW / square feet. A large data center can consume megawatts in a single building. As speeds and feeds increase, so do the power requirements needed to make it shake and dance.
Todd
I seriously doubt that servers use as much power as desktops. Even a decked out Compaq ES40 with 4 CPUs, 4 GB of RAM, and 12 disk drives has a maximum power consumption of only 1440W, and that machine could probably run thousands of regular web sites, mail for 1 million people, or an entire large internet business.
True, but we don't normally in the US. 220 is reserved for things that use a lot of power (twice the voltage means half the amps), most low power hosehold stuff is 110 volts. If they are using 220, then it means they are using a lot of power.
The posters point is this: for what are they using that power? Enertainment. So you can solve californias power problems easially, just turn off your TV, boycott movies, don't touch amusement park rides. There are plenty of things that can be done cheaply for entertainment that don't involve electrisity.
Fishing is a lot of fun, and catch and release is the norm for most fishermen. Get a sail/row boat/canoe, a cane pole and try some old fashioned fishing with out the electronic gagets.
Your local library has shelves full of free enertainment waiting for you. You can read by the light of a 5 watt bulb (I've done it), and even if everyone did the same the energy use wouldn't amount to anything.
Set up a community dance with old fashioned acustic insterments live. Sure it won't be as loud, but it will be just as much fun. There is a good chance that your community has musicians with more talent then the loud music that most people listen to today. Plenty of socalizing, when your not breathless from dancing. You might accually get to know someone too if once conversation quits drifting to the latest movie/soap opera. (get a life people, what happens on your TV show isn't the most interesting conversation topic, just the easiest)
There are countless other activities you can get into that don't need electrisity, and many of them are fun. I've listed three, trying to cover a broad enough range that nobody will like them all. (Even when your not the only one in the boat fishing is a silent activity, while reading is best a solitary activity, and you can't have a dance as I've suggested alone - but you can do whichever fits your personality)
The problem was caused the way the deregulation was structured by the politicians.
I agree. I should have phrased it a bit differently: "the problem isn't with deregulation, the problem was that it wasn't deregulated enough." But you'll note that there are a whole lot of fruits falling from the trees screaming that this proves that deregulation doesn't work, and the only solution is more government control.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I have to side with the other reply on the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge bit. There is "nothing" up there. Of course, there's no trees in Oklafuckinghoma (I just like saying it that way) or Kansas either, but that is besides the point.
Really, one should check out some of the oil projects that are going on on the Alaskan North Shore. I'm not sure where that is, but I used to work for Parsons, an engineering company that did a lot of the design work for the North Shore drilling project. You'd be surprised at how little impact that the project has on the surroundings. If I'm not mistaken, the oil field covers some 40,000 acres of land. The drilling platforms cover only about 90 of those 40,000 acres.
When people go worrying about turning Alaska into a swiss cheesed wasteland, they really ought to look into exactly what is going on there now.
Everyone should quit shaving.
Men would acquire beards and moustaches. Women would get hairy pits and legs. We'd be warmer, we wouldn't use electricity in shaving, and we'd be more welcome in the EU!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Each of the plants that are offline are nominally offline for an individually valid reason (malfunction, maintenance, etc.) but the aggregate figure is suspiciously high. The P.U.C. here is starting to suspect that there may be some market manipulation going on.
Here is a rebuttal to this story from the Lawrence Berkeley Labs. They contend that nationally, computers use less than 2% of the power.
And why the hell NOT?
Seriously. Does a red light force your vehicle to come to a complete stop with your front bumper behind the white line?
The state is responsible for the laws that mandate the pollution quotas. The state is responsible for enforcing those laws.
If Gov. Davis can talk about using the power of eminent domain to seize generating assets, he's just as capable of invoking emergency powers to rescind the quotas and fire up the plants.
The gas-based ones probably won't be able to produce power at a profit, based on the price of natural gas. But the coal-based ones should be just fine.
What I still don't know (and haven't been able to find out), is (a) how many plants are offlined due to "quota" reasons, and (b) of those, how many can produce power at reasonable cost. The only "polluting" technology that I know of that fits this bill is coal. (Nuclear, hydroelectric, and geothermal are zero-emission.)
The fact is that the temporary (until 2002) freeze on prices was mandated by the power producers themselves
That's actually irrelevant, isn't it? Regardless of whether the industry asked for it, it's still government price controls.
The fixed price was, at the time, above predicted market rates.
Ah, the miracle of central planning.
Just because the companies thought it would work out in their interest, and asked for it specifically, doesn't mean it's a good thing to do.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
With all of the computing peripherals in CA, it's no wonder they're having power drains. For years now the AC power adapters (little black plugs you plug into the wall, and then into your scanner, modem, etc..) are power hungry beasts. At idle, when the peripheral is turned off, they average a power consumption of around 3 watts! This is a relative term of course. I forget if it's per hour, and if there has been progress made in recent years, but it's still absurd for a device that needs no power when it is off to be draining that many watts from the grid. If you add up every single one of those from each desk in CA, you get some large numbers.
Don't you actually mean:
Conservatives are bad for an economy
<grub> Reading
The CA power crisis appears to be artificially induced with the aim of forcing the state to construct more capacity. The Internet has little to do with it. Whereas I agree that CA should construct more capacity, I feel that trashing the economy this way is not a good method of achieving the desired results. It will be interesting to see developments over the next month or so...
Excuse me? I missed the part where the monopolies were in control, since CA deregulated the electrical industry a couple of years ago.
As far as I know, they are free to purchase more energy off the grid, but can't because there is currently not enough generating capacity in the state. The wholesalers are pretty much free to charge whatever they want (free market, supply and demand, all that Econ 101 crap.) I don't see any monopoly there.
On an interesting side note, NPR had a report featuring third-party companies profiteering from the situation. There are high-energy-consumption manufacturers who signed purchase contracts for electricity at ~$20-$30/megawatt, and are shutting down to sell their "capacity" for ~$200-$500/megawatt. Due to the nature of their contracts, they make more money by selling their potential usage than they would produce out the other end of the factory. (As a bonus, they get to lay off their workers while the factories are closed.) So don't worry -- some companies are still making money.
John
John
This is so damn typical...
It's typical of the current thinking in B-schools and MBAs. Don't "own" any real assets, outsource everything. Be a middleman selling the products with someone else's technology in them from someone else's factory to customers shopping on the web site written by someone else's programmers hosted on someone else's servers, delivered with someone else's trucks. Calls are handled using someone else's call center.
This way you don't tie up your cash in low-growth assets like factories, buildings, machines or employees. You just skim 10% off the top and can manage the entire thing with a cell phone in one hand and a coke spoon in the other.
From an economic perspective it's hard to argue *against* this kind of strategy -- putting your cash into high-yielding securities makes higher returns than a factory and yeilds greater liquidity. I just think that from a macro perspective it leaves systems vulnerable because everyone hops onto this bandwagon and no one invests infrastructure.
Nuclear waste is just non-fissionable radiocactive material, but, nuclear powerplants don't create -more- radioactives... they take radioactives and accelerate their decay by hitting a critical mass to cause rapid fissioning instead of slow decay one particle at a time.
And where does all that uranium come from? The ground... so... exactly how are we creating more danger by digging it up, using it, and burying it again? (well, aside from the transportation and use phases with their obvious dangers; but as far as I can see, once it's re-buried we're no worse off than before it was mined.)
Also, the salt caves proposal estimates something like a 2% chance that the caves would be ruptured in the next 10,000 years or so, which is probably at least as good of odds as any given uranium deposit remaining buried.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
There were 6 of my computers, and 4 others through the house. Not one of them had heat problems. Computers are more than able to run with outside temperatures above 100F. Show me one that isn't and I'll show you a CPU Fan that is bad.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Do you guys have any IDEA how much electricity Holywood, Universal Studios, and all of the other Studio's/Major Amusment parks use over there? Most of their outlets are 220's!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
More seriously, your ideas are good, but a bit naive. I like dancing, but doing so involves a drive downtown. And the bands that play aren't accoustic, nor are the places lit by candlelight.
Fishing would take a much longer drive.
Unfortunately, most of us don't live in small towns where the dance hall is just around the corner and the lake is a mile hike.
The power shortage in California is a fraud. There is only one entity to blame, the power companies, who wrote the deregulation bill and have been milking consumers and taxpayers since (and before, I might add).
The power shortage is artificially induced. California has not built any power plants in 10 years. The average age of a power plant in CA is 30 years. There is supposed to be built into the rates a surcharge (and this is older than deregulation) which provides these companies with cash to upgrade and invest in new power plants. This money, however, has gone straight to the pocketbook instead of being used for reinvestment. PG&E is now the largest own of power plants in Massachusetts. In 1995, PG&E bought out an independent power producer and proceeded to shut down 5 power plants.
The average number of power plants down at any one time in California has been historically around 10-12%, even in times of crisis like earthquakes and heavy storms. There have been times recently when this percentage has gone as high as 40%. Can anyone say price-fixing? Of course, the politicians have mentioned it a few times, but since they get heavy contributions from the power companies, they are reluctant to follow through on anything. We are told that these plants are down for "routine mainenance." Again, this is something which used to be fairly short-term, sometimes for just a few hours. Now, all these plants are going down for weeks and months. They conveniently come back on-line when the price of electricity has gone up.
Has anyone looked at PG&E or Edison's profits? They have been skyrocketing since deregulation... and, again, this should come as no surprise since they wrote the bills. First off, they made incredible profits by selling OLD power plants at a premium. It should be kept in mind, however, that they didn't sell off all their power plants. These companies made more profits in the first HALF of 2000 than they did in all of 1999. On top of this, they have raked in billions of dollars from deregulation, from tax-payer subsidies for "stranded assets" and sur-charges (on top of their subsidized decrease in rates).
So how are they in crisis? Well, if they were individuals, it would be called schizophrenia. Essentially, they are treating themselves as two individuals, one which takes on all the debt and one which takes in all the profits. If I tried that, I'd land in jail or a psycho ward in no time. They have one unit (retail) which is buys the power (in part from themselves) and then sells it to the consumer. This portion is not making a profit. But these same companies also have another unit which takes in the profits from selling themselves electricity, from the various billion dollar handouts the state of CA has given it, and by acting and brokers for the electricity, driving up the price, their stock, and their profits. There was an article in some papers yesterday about the Federal regulators approving of this scheme, PG&E being allowed to split itself in two to shelter its profits in one half, while taking billions of dollars in "bail-out" money from the state for the other half.
This is the way these companies work. They cook up a scheme to milk us and get their friends the politicians and journalists to help justify it and push it through. And of course, we don't believe them, even, but what are we going to do about it, we aren't organized? A poll printed in the L.A.Times last week revealed that something like 60-65% of us think this whole thing is concocted. They count on us not being able to do anything.
Don't make me laugh! What's the capacity of the power supply unit of your super-powerful computer? 250W? 300W? That's the *maximum*, but never mind that, let's assume you are actually using that much power. That's 3 lamps. 5 of the very weak 60W lamps.
How much does your microwave uses? 500W? 750? What about your toaster? 1000W? 1500W? Electrical heater: 2000W? 2500W? Refrigerator, freezer, electrical boiler, water heater, hair drier, TV... your computer doesn't even make a dent on what you are paying (and consuming).
There are two reasons for the California problem:
1) The power companies put all new power station development on hold until the deregulation was through, to see what kind of playing field they would have. The deregulation was long, and the power consumption skyrocketed all through it.
2) The power companies were incompetent, resulting in very bad deals and power consumption predictions.
(8-DCS)
That is the second most interesting viewpoint on this I have read today...my own being the first of course...
There is one reason, and one reason alone for the power shortages: lack of power. We knew that we needed to build more power plants years ago, but the government totally screwed it up.
And now they blame deregulation! It's just incredible gall, when the problem began way before deregulation.
And no, conservation is not the answer. Not in the past, not now, and never will be. The pie is not limited, and doesn't have to be. More technology is the answer to the problems of technology. We are not going to return to the caves, so I hope people will just deal with the fact that most people like civilization.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
"I'm glad I don't live in CA, but how long before it affects the rest of us?"
This question implies another one: "How long can the rest of us ignore it, and avoid taking action?"
That's right, how long can we avoid taking action? THAT's what everyone really wants to know. How long can we pretend that the problems are someone else's? How long can we run our computers 24 hours/day in our neighborhood, before the power outages come.
I'm hear to tell you friends that the time for action is now. Now, as in RIGHT now. The power grids are connected right across North America, and the power sources are dwindling worldwide. Our rate of power consumption is going up astronomically, and isn't going to change unless YOU do something about it.
Try asking a different question. Instead of asking how long before it affects us (it already is!), ask how we can keep the problem from affecting us at all (any more). In other words, find a solution for the problem before it's too late, instead of running away from it. (If you think that running away is a crazy solution which no one will ever take seriously, think about how many people you've heard say, "Thank God I was smart enough to see this coming and leave CA.")
This holistic approach goes for everything. We really do live in a global community now--let's try to repair and sustain it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Think of all the California potheads that rely on indoor grown marijuana, a decent grow roow consumes hundred of kilowatts/hours a day.
If you could grow marijuana outside, using freely available sunlight, power consumption would drop.
Or the Californian's could jsut stop smoking pot, like that's gonna happen.
Now people with the IQ of a dead lemming, or the president, will blame the 'Net for everything from smut (its the naked people, not the 'Net,) to smut (or other cause of crop failure.)
There's more power used in California by grow-lights for people's pot gardens than by PCs. You KNOW they've been smoking something to come up with that argument.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I estimated (using UPS logs and growth prediction) the power requirements over the next year (assuming we doubled equipment and wanted some overload capacity) around 12-16kVA. A contractor they hired had a different idea. He went from box to box reading and adding up the maximum load specs from each power supply, and came up with a ridiculous figure. We settled on a 36kVA UPS.
Needless to say, we're using just over 10% of its capacity, with absolutely everything online.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
In one way or another. You or your company most likely buys a product from a company in Silicon valley...and if the price of electricity is going up and the outages are costing the companies..the price will slowly be passed on to you or your company as the consumer.
To me, it seems simple: people want to buy power off the companies. Companies want to sell power to make money. Why the heck can't they sort it out properly?
Part of the problem here is that CA was only partially deregulated. The wholesalers can charge pretty much whatever they want. However, the utilities can't pass those costs along to the customers--the price they're allowed to charge is frozen. The utilities would love to buy & sell electricity, provided that they didn't lose money on the deal (even if they just sold it at cost). But you can only buy at 30 cents/unit and sell at 7 cents/unit for so long, even when the state makes you.
---
---
Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
The motley fool had a decent article a few days ago on how the situation is a combination of poorly executed deregulation, NIMBYism (or BANANAism as they call it...Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything), and limits on what fuels can be used. It can be found here.
Note: It's probably advantageous to NOT put your monitor on the UPS unless you really need 24/7 access even during an outage. It gives you more reserve time if the power goes out and you're not near the machine. If you actually need to use the monitor, you can plug it in manually (you have a spare flashlight, right?).
If you're in an office, consider a UPS for the hubs/switches. I've seen an non-UPSed hub cause problems during an outage by cutting a critical (UPSed) machine off from the 'net.
`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
To me, it seems simple: people want to buy power off the companies. Companies want to sell power to make money. Why the heck can't they sort it out properly?
;-)
Anyway, a typical desktop uses, say 350 watts, which is 252 kwh/month.
An A/C, or heater (and let's face it, Californians are going to have those on 24/7/365, too) is going to use 4 kw, which is 2880kwh/month.
Hmm. Why not blame those lazy Californians for wanting a perfect 70 degrees year round, rather than blaming them for wanting deathmatch, year round
No, that's not it. They had no trouble supplying power with the current number of plants until very recently.
It's the way they deregulated. They deregulated the wholesale market, but not the retail market. You don't have to be a Harvard MBA to realize that in that situation, the retailers get caught in a squeeze play. In this case, the power company is the retailer, and they are being pushed towards bankruptcy.
It sticks in my craw when I hear people say "deregulation caused it". That's a half truth, because they only half deregulated.
They should either re-regulate the wholesale market or deregulate the consumer market. The latter is not likely because just the *threat* of higher consumer costs is enough to bring out protestors.
This whole thing reminds me of a joke that was told during California's last recession: "will the last one leaving please turn out the lights".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As for the cause: Aside from the financial problems of California's power plants, much of Oregon and Washington's power comes from hydroelectric and nuclear plants, both of which depend greatly on natural water to generate power (nuclear plants use water for cooling). Recently, we've been getting much less precipitation than usual, so the rivers are lower, which means the hydroelectric plants are generating less power.
Just the other day, Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon and Gary Wu of Washington held a press conference in which they warned that rolling blackouts or possible for much of the northwest if the situation doesn't improve.
Oh, yay.
--
Two points:
To an economy, money is all that matters [one need only look to most Asain economies, where health or illness of economy seems to have little to do with civil rights]
This is about consumer rights, namely the right to not be screwed by folks who all say its not their fault. The average person on Cali uses energy pretty much on par with most others in the US [except maybe gasoline due to horrible traffic] so why should they pay so much more? Someone, somewhere got greedy, plain and simple.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Y'know, the interesting part of your post is that it doesn't really matter if the end user shuts down his or her PC. At least not during winter.
What happens to the 100W that goes into a monitor? It gets turned into heat and dumped into the room. Why do you have a heat sink on your 40W-consuming CPU and 70W Peltier? To dump heat into the PC's case. Why the fans? To dump heat in the case into the room.
If you're a colo, heat sucks. You've got so many boxen that you need a big AC to cool the room.
If you're at home in winter, leaving your computer on 24/7 just means you don't need to heat your room as much from external sources.
And if your home heating is electrical (baseboard heaters, etc.), there's no measurable difference in your power consumption either way. Power off your computer and spend more on your heater, or leave it on and note that the duty cycle of your heater drops a few percent.
So for those of you in CA with electrical heat in winter, feel free to overclock and leave your monitors on 24/7. USE the heat your boxen generate!
(My bedroom's about 2-3F warmer when I leave my PC and monitor on all night. And yes, I did spend a couple of weeks, one night with heat, one night without, comparing delta-T of room versus outdoors, to prove it. As always, YMMV. But for me, my 'puter makes pretty good space heater.)
You are correct, I should have said that nuclear is the cleanest VIABLE energy source. Hydroelectric, wave, and geothermal can't be deployed everywhere. Solar and wind can't produce enough electricity to meet the demands, and natural gas produces CO2, and since natural gas is a fossil fuel there is only a limited supply. See the current natural gas price averages?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
1) Little change in capable output: Over the last twenty or thirty years the U.S. has done very little to increase the technology used in producing electric power, therefore stifling our ability to compete with the growing demands for electric power.
2) The HUGE increase in high amp appliances. From toatsters, microwaves, washers, dryers, things that nearly every household now has. Its a safe guess that in the last twenty years our average household demand for electricity has risen dramatically. Not inlcuding the internet.
I don't think that our little low power computers, even in great numbers, have much, if anything, to do with California's,(or anywhere else for that matter) power failures.
Man, I have never heard such a load of concocted bullshit in all my life. 'The Tech Industry' is responsible for overloading 19th Century era electic lines, as stated in the article.
HELLO? MCFLY? HELLO?!
What the hell were all the SoCal electric companies doing when the rest of the world was busy upgrading their infrastructure over the last 10 years to cope with the technology boom? Here, in Pissant Amarillo, TX, *all* the utilities have slowly been upgrading their infrastructure. Both SWB and Cox Cable have been putting in fibre lines. SPS Electric has been slowly upgrading their capacity, both in terms of generators, lines and high-tension poles.
At *some* point, deregulation or no, the SoCal power companies made the decision that upgrading infrastructure would not look good on the bottom line. Rather than use half a coked-up brain cell to figure out that the industry was growing fast and they needed to keep up with it to stay profitable in the future, some power executive chose profit *now* rather than survival *later*.
This is so damn typical...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Recently I made the move from apartment land to a house and it's amazing the complete change in conservation habits I now keep, especially being reminded of my families utilization every month by way of utility bills. Before I had a 300W halogen blazing away in my living room, along with several table lamps. Now I have two 11W Ikea high efficient lightbulbs (a 92% savings). Before I had it so hot that I'd open windows during the winter to let out heat. Now I have a programmable thermostat that keeps the temperature completely comfortable but while sleeping or at work it drops it down, etc. Before I had my coffee machine going pretty much 24/7. Now I brew a pot and transfer the coffee to a thermos decanter and shut the coffee maker down. Before my three PCs ran 24/7. Now my two workstations go into energy saving mode as soon as possible (without disrupting my work), and they even go to hibernate (a Windows 2000 feature that spools all memory and state to disk allowing for extremely quick restarts with everything exactly as you left) after I haven't used them for an hour. My FreeBSD machine still runs 24/7 though I've removed unnecessary cards and stopped overclocking the processor (Dropping the voltage).
The point is that by following a few simple tips the power consumption of California, and all of North America for that matter, would drop considerably. I've never taken the time to get the metrics and do the math, but I have no doubt that it's considerable. Anyways here's a couple of tips that personally I think are crucially important. Not only will it ease the power crunch, it'll slow the rate of us using using resources and damaging the environment. You don't have to be a "tree hugger" to realize that if coal is being burned for absolutely no reason like old technology lights that isn't too smart.
The point of all of this is that you can save massive amounts of electricity, and this will be reflected on your electric bill, without sacrificing quality of life. I'm not talking about becoming a hermit in a room with a candle, but rather doing simple things that are transparent good practice habits. A lot of people are wasteful out of habit, not because it improves their life in any way.
Any other tips?
"Some analysts, bolstered by a study declaring that the Internet is responsible for fully 8 percent of all national electricity consumption, assert that the Net itself is responsible for spiking demand to unprecedented heights. The new economy, it seems, is an energy hog. Never mind that other researchers have debunked the 8 percent figure as absurdly inflated. President-elect George W. Bush has already touted it in discussing his energy policy. What better reason could there be to allow oil drilling and coal mining in virgin wildernesses than the need to keep the Net running?" So we have at worst 8 percent since when does that count as a huge percentage. I mean come on people we could increase 8 percent with just a couple of reactors. Get with the program.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
We can solve the lack of powerplants issue quickly - any community can veto a power plant in their area - in exchange the community goes to the top of a list - that community will be taken off the grid BEFORE any rolling blackouts occur. They stay at the top of the list until another community NIMBYs a powerplant. After 15 or 20 years, they fall off the list. That should put a stop to NIMBYing most decent projects. A safeguard should be added to prevent rediculous power plant proposals - ie trying to build a small plant in the middle of a highly developed neighborhood...
.02
my
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
This is stupid.
... California utilities (including LA's DWP which is *thriving* in this crisis by selling its surplus) have owned out of state power generation capacity since before deregulation.
California's power problems are not a problem with production, but with finances. It is true that California hasn't built in state power plants in over ten years, but that is not the problem
The problem is that the two big utilities companies orchestrated a stupid STUPID deregulation plan, and it has now come back and bitten them in the ass and they can't pay for power they've already used much less power they will need.
They agreed to sell off their power production facilities, buy power from the people they sold their facilities to through a poorly organized exchange. Believing that capitalism was some magic wand, they believed that prices would magically drop, so they agreed to consumer price caps.
Now that the power producers are selling them power from the facilities they built at 10 to 100 (yes one hundred!) times the prices two years ago, they are starting to realize that the whole deregulation and divestment and price caps and 'let the market set the rates' plan was stupid and they are asking the taxpayers of California (not the big-business power consumers) to pay the bills.
Again. There is no power shortage. Few states produce all the power they need. Most buy production from other states. There was a botched deregulation, and poor finaancial planning by two utilities companies who are more willing to default and declare bankrupcy than pass the expense of their decisions on to their parent companies.
California's problems lie with stupid CFOs and corrupt politicians.
Maybe you should unplug those electric chairs of yours?
i had a sig, once..
Having just moved away from California (and thank gawd!), I was able to see a lot of local news shows and newspapers about the power crisis. There's a lot of fingerpointing going on, except all in the wrong direction.
The public is unwilling to realize that they are the problem. I saw a city of San Diego official come on TV last summer and tell her constituents only to "pay what is fair". I don't think I have ever seen such an irresponsible act from any public official ever (in my short and naive 26 years). What does she think? Is the electricity fairy going to come down from heaven and make everything right?
I happened to catch a bit on CNBC (financial television channel) yesterday about the stage three emergency delclared by either the state or Southern California Edison (power company). The reporter said that the emergency was declared for financial reasons and not because there is an actual shortage of supply. SoCalEd also is putting off making an interest payment on a bond they have outstanding (read: that doesn't happen unless the company is in trouble).
Californians think they can just have the power companies bail them out until the current crisis is over. Well, it will never be over, because the power companies can not make any money, because the citizens won't let them make any money. So, thus, SoCalEd cannot afford to increase production, build power plants, etc.
Not only that, no one wants to get into the market there, because they cannot make any money. So then there's not competition.
And now they're all screaming that the power companies are taking advantage of the "high fuel prices" to make a quick buck off of the public.
All I can say to California. You reap what you sow...
less gas expenditure means more pocket money, but if I'm STUCK AT HOME
Even if you don't spend your money by wasting resources, you can do the economical situation a favour by saving or investing it. Thus, the money can be used by somebody who needs it and hopefully you can get it back with some returns.
I think the Japanese boom was built around this.
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
In order to deathmatch year round, one would need a climate controled environment, since modern microprocessors are rather hot little beasts. Even one of the Kryotech boxes [and I've seen one up close and personal] would be very unhappy at a room temp of 90+ degrees Farenheit[sp?].
BTW, I don't support the article's assertion that the net is the cause of Cali's near power collapse, I'm just pointing out the flaw in this one arguement.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
I have a question for you jjlaw: Prices in California may have changed due to deregulation, so how do increased prices create a power shortage?
I don't beleive an increase in prices would lead to greater consumption.
That's because they are making more money on reselling the power they have contracted for than they would make by running the factories and producing their product.
That's a sure sign of a system out of whack.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
According to this Reuters story, California has already triggered blackouts due to excessive energy usage today.
Which causes other adjacent states to suffer rolling brownouts, plant closures, and blackouts.
So, it's not some academic theory, since once those drop, a portion of the World Wide Web drops, which has, of course, effects world-wide.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
SDG&E (distributor) is owned by Sempra Energy(Producer). Sempra Energy sells wholesale power to SDG&E. While SDG&E whines about losing money, Sempra dramatically increases it's profits. As I see it Sempra is raping its subsidary company until SDG&E is allowed to increase prices, at which time Sempra will make even more money.
Funny how back in july when my power bill(for 525KwH) was over $150 they were reporting 34% growth. Now that retail prices have been capped, Sempra is still projecting higher earnings.
Add to all this, last week when CA had a state stage 3 emergency(power reserves drop below 2% of availble power) 1 THIRD of California's production capacity was off line for "routine maintenance or other factors."
It's not about low production, it's about greed.
--Alex
Banned from moderation 01-27-2002. Fuck you too
I agree that there are some definite cons to nuclear power, but I have to take exception to some of the things that you said:
Why do you think nuclear power plants can't be built near populated areas?
Why do you say this? Why can't they? Prarie Island Nuclear plant (Red Wing, MN) is built about 5 miles outside of what is officially the Twin Cities metro area. Of course, it's 30 or so miles from St. Paul, but there are still a couple of towns of 15000 people about 5 or 10 miles from it. That qualifies as "close" to me, so I think that you're imagining this limitation. (btw, there's no evidence of any harmful effects of the nuclear plant in any nearby residents).
Unfortunately there is sufficient evidence for concern that even the redundant backup systems would fail. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island provide very convincing examples of what happens when systems fail at a nuclear power plant.
Yes, but what you failed to mention is that they provide very different examples of what happens when systems fail. Chernobyl shows that when systems (and people - it was mostly people failing, not systems) fail at a poorly-designed plant (positive feedback), disaster can strike. Three Mile Island shows us that when systems fail at a well-designed plant (negative feedback), you have a mess on your hands, but no disaster. Nuclear power done intelligently and carefully does not have to be dangerous.
Better information has allowed warehouse districts to turn into lofts. It used to be that lots of goods would sit around in the delivery pipeline waiting, and waiting. That old-fashioned "carrying cost" toasted a lot of energy keeping things warm, lit, guarded, etc.
As the article points out, there is not a dramatic demand increase. Rather, the cause is modest increases of demand with ZERO increase in supply, and no incentive to build.
I think that the cause of the problem is the old story of politicians creating a state where nobody in their right mind would want to build a power plant. The new economy had nothing to do with that.
...for the Internet these days. Is there a social issue or cause left that hasn't blamed the Internet for something?
Of course, it is a big, easy target for blame. There's no one company behind it, pretty much everyone uses it in some form, so everyone has to share the blame. And most importantly, you can't really consider shutting it down as a solution.
When people start bitching about the Internet causing Problem X, they're not looking for solutions to the problem, they're just looking to shift blame from themselves, to make themselves feel better. Whether it's politicians taking the Stance-O-The-Day, or parents wanting to know why Junior doesn't listen to them, the results are the same.
I agree - but you've still got a pricing issue.
What may posters are failing to recognize is that most of the new generating capacity nationwide is based on natural gas.
Gas futures have gone from $2.00 per contract to $9.00 per contract this winter alone, and I remember only 1-2 years ago when gas trading at $2.00 was record-setting.
Hell, remember $10/barrel oil? Try $25-30 today.
Crude up by 300%. Gas up 500%. That is why non-CA generators are charging "outrageous" prices to CA distributors.
It's not a cartel, it's a market.
And Gov. Davis' "solution" of "protecting" consumers from rate hikes by using the State's credit to keep PGC and EIX afloat is a non-solution; all it does is take the money for the rate hikes out of taxpayers' pockets in the California budget. Today's spending represents tomorrow's taxes.
I'm not dissing the Governor personally for this - it's damn shrewd politicking, as the net cost to the consumer is likely the same, but Davis can proclaim himself the Defender of the People's Interest against Evil Capitalist Swine. If I were the Governor, I'd probably do something just as expedient.
But as a solution, it blows chunks.
Here is a critique of California's "deregulation" of the power industry.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Hey, Easterner, the entire West Coast is on power saving cutbacks - Washington, Oregon, California. That's 25 percent of the population of this country and more than half of the high tech areas. That's half of the broadband service customers.
...
That's like George Bush saying the West supports him, when he lost in all three Western states. Nobody lives in the rest of that area you call the West - I know, I grew up back east in the Rockies.
That aside, the problem is not so much deregulation as a combination of rate wheeling (the stupidist idea since unsliced bread) and forced divestiture of power plants from power companies. This was a train wreck waiting to happen, paid for by idiots who've never had to switch a high voltage circuit in their lives. I used to be a Power Engineer, and did my best to keep Washington State from going down the drain with those turkeys, and just barely managed to pull it off. But now we get to provide power for those Californians in the middle of our low power generation capacity period, when it gets a bit cold up here and we can't run the dams flat out.
If it weren't for the fact that Washington and Oregon have put online many megajoules in wind energy over the last couple of years, California would be freezing in the dark right now. That plus the natural gas turbines we bought in anticipation of shortages
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
More than anything, I feel that California's power problem is caused by one main thing (and several smaller things).
this one main thing is; oil prices rising.
The #1 factor in America's booming economy for the past decade has been cheap oil. Nothing else regulates our economy faster.
OPEC learned the hard way back in the 70's that when they cut production and raise oil prices, that they dump the whole world into an economic downturn, and consumption drops.
Unfortunately, they have short memories, and it looks like we're headed the same way.
Remember - it wasn't Reagan's economic policies, it wasn't Clinton's economic policies, it wasn't Alan Greenspan's genius, and it wasn't the end of the cold war, and it wasn't the "new economy". It was Cheap Oil.
Now that Cheap Oil seems to be going away, natural gas prices skyrocketed, and we're seeing power companies in an unfavorable legal environment getting raped (better them than us - well, since they're fucking us, we catch the diseases from them anyway). That is the cause of the power problem in California. GW Bush will do the pennywise/pound foolish thing and tap the arctic wildlife preserve for oil (won't his oil-buddies be happy?) - face it, it was going to happen sooner or later anyway. . . and it's not going to happen soon enough to save our economy.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
California is headed for something big, they just dont see it yet. They know they have to build more plants, and there are plans to do so, but those take years to build.
Expect CA to go into a mild to moderate recession of its own over the next 3-5 years, as businesses move out to get more power.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
Ever hear of contracts? If someone has a longterm contract to provide a resource, they remain locked into that contract even if the price of that resource increases. A contract - such as a lease - can act as a negotiated window of protection from market rates. Essentially, the power distributors in California negotiated what they thought was a good contract for them with the California energy consumers. Additionally, it should be noted that the power distributors actually own much of the power production within the state; they began buying facilities when dergulation impended.
California's been getting a free lunch at the expense of the rest of the country and now they're getting the bill. And they could drag us all into a depression because of it. Somehow I can't feel pity.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The problem THIS WINTER isn't a shortage of power -- but the problem LAST SUMMER was. Right now the problem is the price of power, because of the inefficiencies of the market. No one has an incentive to turn off a friggin' lightbulb!
The comment about not enough deregulation may be annoying, but it is true. Either end of the spectrum would be preferable to the situation that California is in now.
The problem is that the distribution plants made a stupid deal: in an effort to be allowed to pay off their debt for bad investments over time, they agreed to fixed rates for consumers. Stupid, stupid (well, as it turned out).
Now, in Massachusetts, we have deregulated electricity, and bills have gone up 50%+ since summer (for those of us who have moved since 1998), and 20%+ since December alone. Gee, what to do? Now I turn off my computer when I leave for the day and make sure more lights are off!
Amazingly, even in the midst of this crisis, they are blocking the proposed power generation center south of San Jose (right where it is neede most) because of environmental concerns. Yup, thats right kids, even as we speak it is as impossible as ever to build new generators in California. Out-of-state suppliers are licking their chops - they've got at least three or four more years of gouging to do before the citizens of California become incensed and turn their wrath on environmental groups. Its too bad - I generally consider myself an environmentalist, but in this case they're building up some negative karma with the general public that will take a decade or more to repair.
Sounds like regulation to me.
So is the government telling power companies what to do with their assets (IIRC, the "de"regulation required the power companies to sell off their generators to small companies [who then turned around and gouged the power companies for the power]).
So is the government telling the power companies from which agencies or organizations they must buy their power from.
In short, I don't think there was any deregulation at all - the problem seems to have been the "REregulation" that the California state government did [which they called "de"regulation to make it sound harmless.]
A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
That kinda bullshit hyperbole is what makes me want to bitch-slap environmentalists these days.
Where the hell did environmentalists come from? Maybe you didn't read the article, but did you even read the slashdot story submission? The power companies are blaming the net; it's hard to get farther away ideologically from an environmentalist than a power company.
--
...not to mention people overclock, causing cpu power to rise exponentially. This is so they can watch porn faster.
Yes in this case blaming deregulation is probably correct because it was done in a brain dead fashion that means that the power companies have to sell electricity for a fixed price while buying it on an open market.
You're right. I'm just annoyed that people call this "deregulation". In a deregulation, all or at least most of the regulations would disappear. here they just replaced the old regulations with even stupider new ones.
The PC term should be "reregulation".
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'm sorry to say you can't lay it all at the feet of the politicians this time!
The utility companies in Cali helped craft the terms of their own deregulation themselves. Because they wanted to be able to recover "stranded costs" (i.e. uneconomical white-elephant projects) over time rather than writing them down immediately, they opted for fixed, regulated consumer pricing. Bad bet -- when demand and the market went up, they got squeezed.
This is why some areas like San Diego are in relatively better shape. They had nothing to write off, so they could let the rates float with price and demand. Although consumers there are paying multi-hundred dollar electric bills, they aren't at risk to blackouts.
Or this:
Or even this:
Don't be fooled by the politicians, the electric companies, or their lackeys. Competition is the solution; they are terrified.
Duron = Athlon - 192K L2 cache. Same chip otherwise, same heat, same die specs.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
What you're leaving out is that throughout the early 90s, the California Power companies went on an outrageous binge of buying up power suppliers and other companies ... OUTSIDE of California (primarily Central/South America). Now we consumers get to finance their purchases, without having had an opportunity to prevent the errors in the first place.
bukra fil mish mish
-
Monitor the Web, or Track your site!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Because in California there are too many damn fool environmentalists who don't want any more pollution.
Yes, we should all embrace the pollution and strive to create more whenever possible.
Perhaps the problem is that we don't invest enough in creating non-polluting or at least less polluting ways of generating energy. Mainly because those damn power companies and others who make their living by polluting the environment fight any attempts to create an alternative to their services.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
They've already begun. A cow orker came in today and said they'd taken down his neighborhood in Palo Alto two minutes before his coffee was ready.
.za and .il and .tw who share your pain.
D'oh!
They'll take down my office any minute.
So I type with haste.
The rolling blackouts last 60-90 minutes. Just long enough to deplete many large-scale UPS systems that are "protecting" many large-, medium-, and small-scale network service providers in the Silicon Valley.
Like the ones involved in bringing Slashdot to your face.
Notice higher latencies today? Stuck-at URLs? Think you're the only one in the world who visits your favorite gerbil-stuffing site? Yes, there are pervs in
Next time someone asks you to sign a NIMBY petition on a generator for your grid, power them down.
--Blair
"The depression has begun. Oops. It's over. That's what the 1GHz economy will do for you."
Deregulation has SUCCESSFULLY circumvented these problems in many markets by allowing the companies to respond economically to demand.
Just curious, but where exactly are these markets that have successfully deregulated electricity? Here in Alberta, Canada, we are into our first month of electrical deregulation and are already having problems with doubling and tripling of prices. The government has stepped in with subsidies on power bills and rate freezes (they have to call an election this spring). It looks like we may be starting down a path similar to California's.
If there are markets out there that have successfully deregulated their electrical production/distribution industries, I would like to look at how they did it so perhaps we can follow their methods and avoid the fate that California is experiencing.
Please follow up your previous post with some specific examples.
Thank you.
Trickster Coyote
Illusions are real. Reality is an illusion.
Ideology is for ideots.
I heard a blurb on the radio this morning that I thought was kind of funny....
Someone was commenting that they had just managed to get keep enough power flowing yesterday by temporarily shutting off the water pumps that suck water from northern california to feed southern california. (It wasn't a comedic comment, incidentally...)
<joking>So, first L.A. sucks away all of our water, and then they suck away all of our electricity to suck away all of our water?</joking>
A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Jeez.. talk about far-fetched...
I have a theory too: if we didn't have closed-source operating systems dominating the market (read: Micros~1 Windows) we wouldn't be so dependent on the x86 CPU architecture.
If could just recompile and go on a new CPU, all the stupidity from the past could be cleaned up.
And if CPU's wouldn't need all that bloat they'd use a LOT less power. And run faster, too.
So you see, if you think hard enough everything can be blamed on Micros~1.
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
The companies that are reselling their discount electricity are aluminum smelters in Oregon. Making aluminium is a hugely electricity-intensive process, so these guys either buy vast quantities of elec or make it themselves.
But it's interesting to note -- they have given their employees vacation WITH PAY. Not a bad deal if you ask me.
Some basic economics at work in California right now, and no one wants to come clean and admit that they fudged royally by not bringing excess capactiy online before deregulating prices.
Forget all this "cartel" shit being tossed about - power companies are just following the price up the supply curve, just as the regulators allowed them to do.
Okay, about six years ago the Clinton administration came up with this irie Energy Star rating that is given to products with low-power mode capabilities. It seems that computers everywhere, especially in California, would switch their monitors (which consume 200 - 500 watts) into low power mode after a reasonable period of idleness. Take a few hundred watts per household, plus many thousands of watts per office, and there's a large amount of power wasted on keeping picture tubes warm.
However, the makers of the most popular consumer operating system in the world (and that's not an endorsement) do not have the low-power mode enabled by default; therefore, only true nerds and relatives/friends/s.o.'s of said nerds have their low-power monitor setting enabled!
Think about it--no one (but nerds, etc...) explores MS's non-default options. Look at the proliferation of j03 5cr1p7 k17713 who takes advantage of the enabled-by-default Windows Scripting Host and wreaks havoc across the internet.
The Energy Star thing is an example of a great idea that suffered from poor implementation. I see that the solution is to integrate the setting into the monitor and leave it on by default.
I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
Ewige Blumenkraft!
One of the best bits of the article talks about how building a new power plant in California is about as easy as getting venture capital for an e-business in 2001. This is true. And it's a large part of the problem.
Everybody complains that power is too expensive, yet nobody ever wants a power plant "in their back yard". This goes ten-fold for nuclear plants, which, really, would be a lot better solution than the current natural gas ones that are generating most of the power out west.
The government put the utilities in an impossible position as part of their "deregulation." They fixed the price they could sell at, while allowing the price they buy at to float. Then they shut down SIX power plants. Then demand went up. Hmmm... decreasing supply and increasing demand; let me check ny Econ 101 book. Says here that price will go up. And it did, for the utilities! So they were put into a position of losing money, since they were mandated by law to sell power to anyone who wants it at a fixed price below the market price.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
What's the average power consumption of a computer on a network? Assuming that it's always on and that it is configured to use its power saving features one can probably assume that it consumes on average about 166W (back of the envelope calculation for 8 hours of usage per day - 500W * 8/24 = 166W). That's well below 1000W. I don't claim that these figures are anything more than guestimates but I think my figures are less than conservative.
What's the power consumption of a 48 port cisco network switch? I have some cisco 3548 XL switches that consume about 150W (AFAIR) so that means we add 3W per workstation to the power cost.
If we assume that the per workstation power consumption cost decreases the further we get from the workstation, on the network, then we can probably more safely arrive at an average networked power consumption of 350 to 400 Watts.
These guys Mills and Huber (Hubris?) are suits. Their only agenda is finding a scapegoat so that the politicians will agree to build more power plants. Either that or they're just lackwits.
:wq
Near the end of the article, it makes clear that the rise of the internet and the information economy has actually reduced power consumption:
"between 1987 and 1990, electricity consumption grew 3.3 percent a year ... from 1992 to 1996 total energy demand grew at about 2.4
percent a year in the U.S., during a period when the gross domestic
product was growing at a rate of 3.2 percent a year. But from 1996 to
2000, when the Net boom was really taking off, the gross domestic
product grew at an average of 4 percent a year while energy demand
grew at a rate of only 1 percent."
Years GDP Growth Energy Growth
1987-1990 ? 3.3%
1992-1996 3.2% 2.4%
1996-2000 4.0% 1.0%
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
But anyway, considering that for about a week straight the coolest it got next to my athlon was about 105F and I didn't have any problems with it, I'd say you may want to look at ventilation a bit better if you have ran into any problems.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
No, the damn environmentalist hippies are the problem. Complaining about building power plants for the past twenty years just because it would encroach on some critter's natural habitat.
They should go back to san francisco with all the other hippies. Or get back in the kitchen and make me some pie.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Nuclear power is NOT clean, safe, or cheap. These illusions are carefully crafted and maintained by the nuclear power industry and the Department of Energy.
Nuclear power plants seem clean because there aren't any smokestacks billowing pollution into the air, but the polution they produce is invisible to the human eye. Why do you think nuclear power plants can't be built near populated areas? Additionally, the process of mining the fuel is exremely poluting, and there is no way to dispose of the spent fuel rods, which are still extremely radioactive. Currently they are generally stored in on-site storage tanks awaiting the day that the government sets up a central storage area and takes over the responsibility. This brings us to safety.
Nuclear power plants could be safe if they were properly maintained, but of course they aren't. Why? Because maintainance costs money, and power generation costs money. The corporations that own these power plants would rather buy DOE officials than properly maintain the deisel generators which provide backup power for the cooling system. In fact, the lack of mainainance at nuclear power plants was one of the few valid y2k fears. Nuclear power plants are required to power their cooling systems (which are the only thing preventing meltdown) from the grid. In the event of grid failure there are the afor mentioned backup generators. Unfortunately there is sufficient evidence for concern that even the redundant backup systems would fail. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island provide very convincing examples of what happens when systems fail at a nuclear power plant. So much for safety, what about how cheap it is?
Guess what? It isn't! Nuclear power plants are subsidized by the Departments of Energy and Defence. Since this cost is hidden from the consumer, nuclear power appears cheap. Our tax dollars at work!
Of course, I don't expect you to take my word for it. Feel free to verify anything I've said hear. This link should get you started.
I don't want it to seem like I have something against nuclear scientists, I know a few and they are very smart people. I would feel a lot more comfortable with nuclear power if the engineers and physicists were actually in control of it. As it is, politicians lie for a living and any confidence I may have had in business folks was squelched in my days as a math tutor. I've seen the kind of people that major in business, and I wouldn't trust most of them to run my coffee machine.
It would be awfully inflamatory of me to shoot down your solution without presenting one of my own, so here you go. I won't argue that deregulation has caused a lot of problems, but it also encompasses the solution. Thanks to deregulation anyone can produce power and feed it back into the grid. For a few thousand dollars you can buy a few solar panels and a phase matching inverter. Wind generators and micro-hydroelectric generators can also be had fairly cheap. Last time I went to San Jose I saw lots of sun and wind not being used. If all these companies that are suffering under the yolk of rolling blackouts put up roughly one of thier CEOs weekly salaries for equipment and installation, the problem would be solved. If Reagan hadn't done away with the tax credits for doing so, they probably would.
Again, I encourage you to check it out for yourself. Try this link for starters.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Well, the Athlon uses twice as much power as the Pentium III (60 Watts vs. 30 Watts). If AMD ever achieves 33% marketshare, they will be more to blame than Intel.
A relative of mine works for a muni power company up in the Northwest. Since I live in California, I was talking to him about the whole "power crisis" thing.
It turns out that most power generation facilities must be shut down periodically for maintenance. This is a necessary thing -- if you don't do it, the plant blows up, melts down, starts polluting (more than usual, that is ;-), etc.
Last summer (2000), there was a huge surge in the power consumption in California. Since the generators here couldn't provide the necessary power, the utilities went looking elsewhere. The high demand of power led several major generators, both in California and other states, to delay the regularly scheduled maintenance until the winter (now). The rationale was that winter power consumption tends to be much lower than summer consumption.
Unfortunately, there was a bit of poor planning involved: these days, both delayed and regularly scheduled plant closures are in effect. I'm not sure why no one thought of this at the time (last summer) -- perhaps the assumption was that more power plants would be brought online by now? I know there are several in California that are scheduled to begin operations this summer (2001)... not that that helps us now. Compounding the problem are the recent storms along the California coastline: the increased surf has interfered with water intakes of several coastal generating facilities, hampering their ability to produce power.
My recommendation is to get yourself an Uninteruptible Power Supply. I like the APC Back-UPS Pro 500. You can only "interact" with it if you have Windows 98 or MacOS and free (non-hub) USB port... but if you don't mind it being "dumb," it makes a great deal at less than $150 for 500 VA. Plus, it has four powered outlets, plus three surge. It provides me (PII/400, external zip, 17" monitor, cable modem) with 18 minutes of power...
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
If you took the time to read the article you'd see that the people who need bitch-slapping are the anti-environmentalists. They are the ones who are implying a huge increase in energy demand (that isn't there) and a need for a drastic rollback of environmental regulations to cope with said increase.
Quoth c_monster:
;-)
"nuclear waste, which even Tower would probably balk at storing in his backyard for a few hundred thousand years."
Gee, my backyard is pretty small - the garage takes up a lot of it... it'd be tough. That and I'm planning on selling the house in few years - don't know if the potential buyer(s) would take as kindly to it as I... (balk - you win)
The processing is a nasty step, and as I've mentioned in another post somewhere, fission power isn't the greatest solution, it just happens to be a good one for right now. Cost somewhat aside, we can take further steps to use up more the fuel and reduce the danger of the waste, and we certainly could do a better job of storing it. I'd love to see more renewable sources in wide use, but I think for now, we have the ability to safely (...) use fission power until we convert over to other methods.
Remember that processing costs for solar power are high, and the chemicals and costs of the storage baterries aren't the greatest either. Great gains are being made, but it's not a full time solution yet. I like the PC/mainframe analogy - the power situation we're in corresponds more to the early days of personal computing, when we still had a long way to go... though I doubt we'll fit the same exponential curve to home power generation that we did to home processing power
I'd also list aircraft carriers on the list with subs and starships...
I had said "They should realize that despite their good intentions, they are eventually making things worse... " and you remarked (unsurprisingly): "In a word, bullshit."
That last line was a little bit (or more) of a troll - guess it worked. Didn't mean to (seriously) offend anyone with the adjectives - just painting a picture of a 'typical' CA Green activist (non-CA activists don't eat nearly as much tofu, from what I'm told)... My post did come off a little more pro-nuclear than I even wanted to sound. Given the choice of a nuclear plant or a coal plant 15 miles from my house, I'd choose the nuclear plant. I agree that the system at the moment is not optimal, but there is still a lot of potential in fission power that can provide for a relatively long time before we can sustain our power needs with other sources.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Well, Google is powered by something like 5,000 Celeron's.
Maybe we should blame Linux for this crisis. If it weren't for Linux, Google would have used a smaller number of more expensive, more powerful servers - NorthernLight, for example, is a larger search engine than Google, but has sixteen machines (powered by Alpha/VMS)
Older PCs perhaps, I know my Duron would not be happy... the thing already runs between 50 and 60 degrees celsius [approx 106 to 127 degree farenheit]. If the room temp were already over 100 degree farenheit, it might not die outright, but it would not be happy [the Duron chip is only rated, by AMDs specs, to about 190 degree farenheit before it will croak. Also, AMD has already stated, and it has been demonstrated, that an improperly cooled CPU will be toast very quickly] So, yeah, YOUR boxen may have been fine, but LOTS of new ones wouldn't be.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Go read this guy's write-up and you'll know what is causing California's power woes.
That's pretty funny, given that Dubya has jumped on the numbers given to help justify suggesting more drilling and mining in supposedly protected areas.
In any case, it wouldn't take a huge percentage increase over forecasts to cause problems, especially during peak use periods.
With those bazillion Pentiums out there, sucking as much watts as they do, it's no wonder CA is running out...
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
The Electricity Blame Game
The Deregulation of the Electricity Industry: A Primer
Congress and Electricity
The last article, written in 1998, suggested that as Congress look at electricity de-regulation, that it NOT follow the Californian model, for these reasons:
The short answer is that politicians rather than market forces designed the restructured California electricity system. Politicians, while paying lip service to deregulation and the magic of the market, could not bring themselves to simply let go of the industry. Reflecting the fear of both consumer activists and electric utilities that real markets would prove disastrous, the California legislature placed constraints on the restructured industry whose net effect was to stifle the very forces necessary to drive down California's utility rates. Consumer choice thus became a meaningless exercise.
I have 5 computers at home, and I used to turn off all but the server and the ip_masq firewall when I wasn't using them. But now I'm in competition with friends to have the most seti@home units completed (2761 so far) so I leave them all on.
Oh well, at least I turn off the monitors.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
If the general idea of deregulation is to lower costs to consumers, why deregulate when it doesn't seem to have the desired effect? What was wrong with the regulated market that we have had for so long. It seemed to provide the power at a pretty good price to consumers. Why change?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
How come even a small part of the USA can't last for five years on the kind of regulations most European countries have been subject to for the last 20 years?
Us Europeans don't get blackouts or brownouts. Pull yourself together! Sort it out!
It doesn't need a load of discussion. Somebody in California just needs a damn good slap round the head. Stop pissing about!
And why are these regulations only applicable to California? Sure the whole of the USA should be subject to environmental controls? Environmental controls only work if they are worldwide.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
And would you want the reactors built before solutions for decomissioning them safely are in place, especially as the solutions might impact how you'd want the reactors built in the first place?
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yeah. Here's a link to a press release. Note that this is a PDF file.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Hm, maybe not a Duron.. but I'm thinking my Athlons didn't have a problem. That's what you get for buying second rate hardware I suppose.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
From what I heard on NPR last night on the way home the issue is not about lack of power. There are actually more than enough power generators to supply the power that is needed. This problem is cuased by the fact there was an enrgy exchange that was developed during the deregulation of power. How is works is that the Power companies by power form the energy exchange, and then sell it to the consumer. Part of the legislation that affects the deregulation says that the power companies can only charge the consumer x dollars for the power. However, the energy exchange does not have this cap. As a result, the energy exchanged created an artificial shortage. This caused the price to skyrocket, and is driving the power companies out of business. So, the bottom line is that the deregulation is the cause of the problem, and that computers are just a scapegoat. Nobody wants to assume responsibility for their actions anymore. That is the key.
However, here in San Diego we have San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) who owns the distribution network and Sempra Energy who owns the generating plants. Oddly enough, Sempra also owns SDG&E! So SDG&E is claiming that they are going bankrupt buying electricity at high wholesale prices. But of course, they are buying that energy from Sempra WHO OWNS THEM! They are buying energy from themselves and they are claiming that THEY are the victim.
Meanwhile, Sempra has generating plants that they shut down during the day to artificially drive up the prices with an artificial shortage. In the late afternoon when the rate per killowatt hour is higher they start up the generators to produce energy at the new, now higher rate. They even sell 20% of their power out of state at lower prices, thereby also creating an artificial shortage in California.
This practice is so rampent that it was the primary topic of our Governor's State of the State address last week.
Meanwhile, Sempra energy showed a $100 million profit the quarter before deregulation. How are we suppose to believe that there's a legit reason for our energy bills to quadruple when they made $100 million dollars of profit back when their prices were fixed? Did the cost of coal quadruple in June? Did the cost of oil quadruple in June? Did the cost of gravity to pull water through turbines in a hydroelectric dams quadruple in June? Of course not.
The cause of the high prices of energy is simple. GREEDY BASTARDS! The entire time that they were screwing us with $200, $300, even $400 electric bills that were $75 the month before they didn't release one press release to explain why. You would see city council members, senators, members of UCAAN, and reporters on TV talking about how they're going to try to help San Diegans. But you didn't see a single member of Sempra Energy explaining their point of view. Why? Because their position was completely indefensible.
We did hear how the state would help California's poor pay these outrageous bills. But if my electric bill goes up $325 per month that's $3900 per year of after tax money. To make that $3900 I have to actually make roughly $5500 pre tax. Sempra Energy just reduced my yearly pay by $5500 dollars! That's certainly enough to hurt a middle class family. So it's not just the poor who are financially strapped. Imagine how your life would change if you just had a $5500 cut in pay.
It's greed ladies and gentlemen, pure and simple greed. That's what's driving up the prices, not scarcity.
The eco-whackos in California have opposed the construction of new power plants in CA despite the fact that it's long been known that the current power generation capacity wouldn't be enough.
Coal power plants do cause quite a great deal of air pollution, and the cleanest power that we have, nuclear, has become such a political hot potato in the land of fruits and nuts that nobody with half a brain is going to be involved with the creation of one.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Do Californians use electrical devices that are not computers OR use their computers for non-net activities? Of course not. Then the answer is no, the net is not the cause of their "energy shortage".
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MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Given the president elect is an oil man, and the VP is an oil man, the views of the people in charge are NOT going to go out of their way and move to convince people to use LESS energy.
The last president who was 'into renewables' was Jimmy Carter. It will take a major spike (ala 1970 gas price hikes) in energy costs before the US will shift toward using renewables or even the concept of co-generation/micropower.
The rolling backouts are comming for you where you live. Give it time.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Here's and article from this week's Newsweek that explains how CA failed (both due to planning and implementation) and what it might mean for other states on the brink (like my home state, TX.)
an interesting read...summerized, they say CA failed due to 2 things:
1. But then the economy jumped into high gear and demand spiked, thanks in part to power-hungry dot-coms.
2. Because of a thicket of state regulations, it takes up to seven years to plan and build a power plant. Finding a place to build one is even tougher in California....
the article seems to feel that TX will be a better implementation b/c it doesn't suffer from as much of either of these problems...Austin is our only Dot-Com city and we'll let ya' build almost anything anywhere b/c we have so much space!
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Reposted from my post above - Ive got Karma to burn, so I am going to repost this comment. People dont like the idea so its marked as a Troll - Its not - Im not kidding. Not one bit.
Here is my winner solution to the problem:
Population Control:
One Couple - One Child. Reduce population to a reasonable level (reasonable as determined by environmentalists/economists/politicians/$other- just something much lower than now). Do this World Wide.
Factor the Environment and 'the commons' into the economic equation. Force business to pay for the resources they use. Force customers to pay for their own garbage when they take it from a store. Tax the fuck out of useless shit like Plastic McHappyDolls and other non-essential trash. Etc. Etc.
Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Result:
A world where we can sustain ourselves 'forever' with a very comfortable life (ever increasing via technology).
No TreeHugger (like myself) will ever ask you to 'give something up' because your consumption of said thing will be calculated into the 'sustainable population' equation.
Alternative?
Population Increase continues. Pollution becomes threatening for all life. We all return to the caves... basically we remain on our present course.
$your_suggestion$
Unless of course we are willing to bet the future of humanity on our ability to exercise self control (not pollute/have dozens of children) and/or discoveries of technology to save our a$$e$.
Im am a betting man - but given: Available Options vs. Risk vs. The 'Hard Choice' - it becomes pretty clear. We need to find a mechanism for control - to achieve a balance. Nature has that mechanism; its starvation/disease/war etc - if we use our heads we may be able to avoid this. Otherwise its back to the caves for us all...
If we can manage to find another planet and actually get there.. I guess the choice becomes a more philisophical one. Would we choose to not become the planet/universe equivelant of a virus? or could we control ourselves... another interesting idea.