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Power Plants On Rails for California
SoCalChris writes "According to this article on Wired.com, the Sierra Railroad is planning to use diesel train locomotives to produce power for California. Each of the 48 engines are expected to produce 2.1 megawatts of power for a thousand hours each year. Another key advantage to this plan is that since the "PowerTrains" are mobile, they can be taken to the areas that need power the most, so it doesn't have to be routed across the state through our power grid."
on the Reading Railroad. If you pass go, collect $200.
Great Linux Site
California - the shining example of how a modern hippie culture can totally fuck up something as simple and old as electric power.
They need something mobile to counter the rolling blackouts.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Why does Sierra Railroad have such excess capacity that it can provide 48 diesel engines for the power grid?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
These devices were not designed to produce electricity, were they?
Seems to me this is a desperate attempt to look like they are doing something about the problem, but in fact are creating additional inefficiencies in the system, which can only come back to bite them in the ass later.
Reality has a liberal bias
Why does it sound like California's energy plan is some crazed mixture of Sim City and an RTS?
:)
"Quick Bob, move those two engines to San Jose quick."
"No, wait, power outage in Anahiem. Undo, undo!"
"I can't move it fast enough!"
"Lasso all the Amtracks and use your hotkeys!!!!"
Look at all of the valuable life skills computer games teach us!
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Folks, that's nothing. And that's before we even get into the economics of conversion efficiency.
That sounds like quite a novel idea, though I don't really see why they can't just run extra cabling between new static power stations to make up a better-connected grid?
I tried searching for extra details and although I didn't find the answer to my query, more details of the project can be found at the company's website here. Specifically, this document details their proposal to the state of California for movable locomotive power sources.
I live in Montreal, and during the 1999 Ice Storm that knocked out power to almost 300,000 people many communities that had access to the railway used diesel train locomotives to produce electricity for there area.
In recent years there has been a movement in the railroad industry to replace diesel engines with electrical ones. Powerplants produce alot cleaner power then can be produced localy on a diesel engine. I don't know how these dirty diesel engines could possibly pass Califonia's strickt polution policies
That with Oilmen in the whitehouse that this project won't get underway anytime soon.
On another note, if hydrogen fuel cell cars ever get off the ground, they could be plugged into the power grid when not in use and return electricity to it somehow?
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Despite the doom and gloom prophecies of the anti-nuke crowd, nuclear power generation has proved itself the least environmentally impacting electricity generating method time and again. Canada and France (while certainly not governmental systems to model) have come up with a system of genericized nuclear breeder facilities that provide clean, cheap power to their respective countries.
It's sad that Germany has made the decision to kill more birds and disrupt weather patterns with their latest misguided policies. And it's sad that the radical left in California has blocked nuclear power plant construction in their state.
A diesel train to generate electricity? Why not just legalize tobacco again and ruin everyone's lungs?
I have been pwned because my
This is infuriating! This is inefficent and unreliable compared to other power solutions, such as solar energy. Less expensive, renewable energy, free except for the initial hardware costs (which is not that much). Californians would be much better off cutting off corporate control of energy production and distribution.
Diesel locomotives are essentially big generators. They generate a large current which drives an electric motor. If I remember correctly they can go in either direction with equal power simply by reversing polarity.
Don't know if this is a great solution but locomotives definitely can produce lots of electric power.
It's only about 100 MW total. A fullblown power station produces at least 10 times that much. The capacity could help in some emergencies but mainly it's an uneconomical way of making electricity turned suddenly profitable by Enron-spawned manipulated price increases.
These trains were built to produce electricity. In fact, all modern locomotives are. the engines are designed to do one thing and one thing only: generate electricity. there are electric motors that do the pushing.
My father was an engineer for Burlington Northern before Santa Fe merged with them, and i remember as a child, going to the engine plant, and actually being INSIDE an engine cylinder - they're massive!
When i asked my dad why they were so big, he said "they need to be, they run all the time and it takes a lot of electricity to pull a train." being a smart lad of 8, i asked "don't the engines push the wheels?" through a lengthy discussion that i repeated with him over the years to get more detail, i learned that the engines produce electricity and the wheels are driven by electric motors.
It turns out that this is more efficient, in money, fuel effeciency, and repair time (imagine replacing the drive train if it were not electrically driven). all you do is replace a motor, instead of a drive shaft and/or transmission. (simplified explanation, of course)
It makes perfect sense for them to do this. Resourcefullness demonstrated brilliantly!
Naikrovek
Wow, something good happened *without* massive government intervention/bail-outs? This is definately a baaaad prescendent.
Your mom's good at rails. I railed her good last night.
alternative fuels like biodiesel ... but can also be made from other vegetable oils, animal fat and discarded cooking grease.
Cool, so now McDonald's can now change their signs to:
"Over 6 billion served...
And over 100,000 homes fueled"
BSD is dead, but wideness lives on!
How's this for irony:
California HAS BEEN HERE BEFORE.
Believe it or not, last year the energy budget crunch in California was blamed for delays in California's proposed bullet train system (LA-SF)
So this time the politicians want trains to solve the energy deficit?!?
Crapdot
News from birds. Stuff that splatters.
Power is lost through line transmission, and one imagines they hope to mitigate the relative inefficency of diesel by moving generation closer to point of use. BTW, using a diesel to get power, while certainly not an ideal source, isn't quite as horrid in efficiency terms as many here imagine. The true cost will be in pollution, which (fittingly) will be proximal to those using the most energy. Perhaps the good here will be in a very visible pollution impact.
If a train leaves San Fagcisco at 6:30 travelling at 40 miles per hour and another train leaves LA at...
What time will Gray Davis have a brain?
Back in 98, we had a good ice storm that blacked out the whole city for a while. CP brought in some locomotives to provide power for the neediest (ie frozen).
Locomotives are big.
Wow, people still believe in solar power. Amazing. Calculate how much solar cells cost. Then calculate how much energy they would produce in 15 years (typical lifetime). At the current rate, it is less than what they cost initially. You have to also factor in the cost of the batteries, inverters, land, and maintenance. Solar power is extremely inefficient. Solar cells are expensive for a reason - it takes a lot of energy to produce them. Given how much land they occupy, the fact that they don't work unless you have direct sunlight, and the fact that a field of solar cells produces 10x less power than one of those locomotives, I seriously don't see how they are more efficient than nuclear power.
unlike the Taliban...and I want it Global!
That being said, the "under God" in the pledge reeks due to its nonspecificity.
From Relena Peacecraft's speech on changes in Romefeller:
Why is there always confrontation? It's natural that when more than one person is involved, the second will be a potential source of conflict. In order to eliminate this, we must become unified as one...
+1, Insightful!
that somewhere a big-ass diesel is creating the energy to run my HO gauge layout. It's got a freaky symmetry to it.
Sounds exactly like what a 13 year old geek would say after using their bot to railgun their Quake opponent.
GO FOR THE GOLD JEFFK!
Wait did I read this right?
"Sierra Railroad...perhaps best known to steampunk aficionados for providing the time traveling 19th century locomotive to the movie, Back to the Future III."
They have a time traveling train and all they brought back from the future was another train that produces electricity! I expected more...I mean at least the thing could fly.
The problem is that these locomotives will likely be put in areas where "public resistance" is weakest. Industrial areas? Cool. Out in the boonies? Even better.
But someday, I'm going to need power to my local grid and some big ass (yet cool looking) locomotive is going to park by my house running at full steam (heh) for a few days.
That might suck. I frankly won't care (gotta keep my UPS battery charged) but the cranky neighborhood association will.
This whole scheme smells of an "I can therefore I ought" sort of deal. It has got to be one of the worst ways of generating and transporting electricity that I can imagine.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Add a flux capacitor and we can do some time travel! "2.1 megawatts?!?!??!" "no no doc that was 1.21 gigawatts."
keanmarine.com
Don't underestimate the usefulness of being able to move the move the trains around the power grid. There is significant work going on right now with minimising lossed on the power grid from transformer inefficiencies, line resistance, power thieves, metering errors, etc. These losses are hard to quantify in the real world but someone has to pay for them.
Often the power company will figure out the overall losses for the system and then divide that cost up equally among the users of the grid. The problem is that people close to the power plant get hosed because the pay for losses that happen further into the system then they are, so essentially they are paying for power they do not use. Being able to do this will help appease those customers who are close to the power plants because the trains can be moved to the other end of the grid to minimise losses.
On a related note, the only countries that I know of where there are real government-legislated economic incentives to minimise such losses are Australia, Spain, and one of Finland or Norway, I can't remember which. (As a silly north american, I tend to confuse the two.) These places are where much the real work in reducing losses is coming from.
When CA "deregulated" energy, they only partially did it. And they added new regulations that were worse than before.
Here's how it played out. The companies like pg were barred from producing any of their own electricity as part of the deal. (More regulation)
They also were forced to pay day rates on electricity. How's that? You see someone thinking they were very smart decided that these evil companies would rip people off if they didn't go to the market and get price fluctuations so they could save money on price drops. No wasteful long term contracts. That would save money for the company and thus the people they thought.
The reality was that PG used to be able to buy electricity 6 months in advance. This allowed them to have a fixed cost on some electricity that was shipped in. They were able to negotiate a rate... not just buy on the spur of the minute. Once the "deregulation" went into effect, they had to buy the electricity daily. They were forbidden by law from negotiating advance long term contracts. (Once again regulation) That meant that enron or whoever had them at the table every day. There was no choice. PG had to buy in at high daily rates because they were forced totally out of the energy production business and couldn't buy long term. Also, this is the most expensive way to buy because there is always someone carrying that transaction that is doing it daily instead of a few times a year. It's brokerage fees over and over again. Remember buying can be ok. But if you're getting a daily gouge, it hurts.
So in my view. It wasn't deregulation that hurt everyone. It was the fact that there was a whole heap of deleterious new regulation that forced the situation. PG found itself bent over when it should have been able to have more freedom to cut costs by buying as needed with a mix of safer long term contracts and some short term.
It's really no different than if you can buy goods from amazon a week in advance, you get a 20-50% break on a book. If you go to that store because you gotta have it today, then you get to pay full price. That's what was missing when people short-sightedly forced that higher state of regulation on the deal. They said you can't make any of your own electricity and you have to buy it retail with no long term contracts.
Also, jacking up the rate for me in Northern California was the fact that no new power lines were allowed to be brought in. In my area, the towns banned any introduction of new large power transmission lines. There were also no new power stations. I don't know if anyone noticed in California, but no new power plants in 20 years or whatever when you have a massive boom in the computer and electronics industry based in California is just crazy. There are factories in CA that I bet use as much electricity as a small city anywhere else in the country. Sure the power companies get the blame, but the people effectively stopped any relief effort from being put into place over the years. They expect to keep California pristine and make the rest of the states build power to keep up with their demand. When everything does finally come to a head, it's the power company's fault.
The FTC gets to make laws, business regulations. They don't have to go through congress. They just decide what's legal or not. And they have the power to fine you. Can I be the only one that finds this stuff scary? There's no true accountability. And there's no true sanity in the law. To me, law should be for things that definitely are wrong and cause harm. Unfortunately, we're in the age when it's considered the thing to do to use regulation to manipulate conditions while being blissfully ignorant of what the end result will be.
In short, there are lots of abuses and potential abuses. To me, the abuse in CA was the adding of some regulations which in this case hurt pg and those of us who had to pay for the energy. I think deregulation if properly handled would have helped everyone, but because of the regulations coupled with Enron greed, we were doomed to fail. Personally, what I thought in California was that the politicians were very anxious to show how deregulation and corporate greed caused the failure. They very much neglect to mention the regulatory laws they put into affect that precipitated the situation. It's a smoke and mirrors game.
Remember, there's a great ability for legal abuse of people or companies from legislature. That's why we broke from England. Think of all the greatest macro events on the planet. Most stem from overregulation by one government or another.
Some people bash California as being a bunch of ignorant liberal fucks. This is only partially true. There's a magical land in this very state where the water runs pure and the electricity comes cheap and the migrant workers, well, they are neither heard nor seen. This magical land is called Sacremento. From this shining beacon of cockjockery shines the shiny light of dumbfuckery. See up in Sac Town where all the tough choices are made they're insulated from the rest of the state's problems.
Using diesel electric locomotive engines to boost a local power station has cool geek factor to it but it is a stupid and short term fix for a very serious long term problem. The descision to deregulate power is a failed experiment yet our plucky leadership in Sac Town don't see it that way, they're rather spend billions dollars bailing out these failed and failing utility companies and their shit management. It is sad watching this all happen. It doesn't matter how you vote locally either, the State Assembly doesn't do anything to curb the jackassery coming from the Governor's office.
What the state needs is regulated and less externally dependant electrical power. The state has been growing temendously in the past 20 years but hasn't seen the construction of a single new power plant, nuclear or otherwise. The population in the bay area has boomed as well as the populations of San Diego and Orange counties. A lot of people are moving into Riverside and San Bernadino counties out towards the deserts where they run their air conditioner 24/7 and water their lawns in the middle of the day because they don't know how to live in a desert. These sort of people are a huge strain on the power grid in Southern California and makes the boards of SoCal Edision cream their pants. Running a couple trains down there during the summer to give some extra go juice to people does not solve the problem. Nevada has its own burgeoning population in and around Las Vegas they've got to provide power and water for, they aren't going to able to export power to California for too much longer.
The state needs more eletrical plants. There are plenty of clean-ish power plant designs in common use around the world that the state could use for a basis for new plants. It is getting ridiculous that these retarded stopgap measures are being suggested and implimented when the real solution is so clear cut. There's plenty of plants that can be upgraded to use cleaner technology while at the same time increasing their output. It'd be a much better use than billion dollar bonds being spent to cover the cost of crooked deregulated utility companies.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
But this was done recently for electric power; in 1998, a disastrous ice storm destroyed a fair portion of the electric distribution system in Québec; in a suburb of Montréal, diesel locomotives were lent to the city to provide emergency power; they even ran the engines on the frozen street without any track at all!!! (other links here and here).
Nuclear waste is as much a problem as air pollution. And with more Nuclear Power Plants in operation it will continue to be a problem. Radioactive byproducts are not something that can be easily overlooked. Ask the people of Nevada about the Yukka Mtn Project.
The key is to conserve energy and to invest in NEW technologies. Learn to use our sources of energy more efficiently with less pollution. The dangers inherent in nuclear energy plus the radiocative waste breeder plants produce make Nuclear Power repellent.
info on
nuclear waste and the Yukka Mountain NWD
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
You pigs use more energy per capita than any other nation! And you think Europe sucks!
As a German, I am somewhat offended by the continual arrogant attitude of Americans toward the rest of the world. It's strange that a country with a higher infant mortality rate than Thailand has such an attitude.
First of all, American arrogance is what caused the 9/11 attacks. You Americans were meddling too much with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally the oppressed Arabs said "Enough!" and bombed you. And then, after the attacks, you had the guts to deploy forces to Afganistan, angering the Arabs even more! When will you ever learn!!
And boy! Your sorry government services! It's hard to believe that an industrialized country doesn't even provide basic healthcare to it's citizens. Here in Europe, everone is assured excellent healthcare, no matter what their income. We Europeans don't have to worry about our HMO's covering necesarry medical treatments such as colonoscopies. And then your welfare system! In America, your glorious land of plenty, if you can't find a job in two years, then your're out on the streets! In Europe, we take care of our needy. Also, may I add that poverty levels in Europe are much lower than in the U.S.
I hate it when you gas-guzzling SUV driving Americans get so patriotic and belittle us. Europe is far superior to America, whether you like it or not.
Who wants to place money some Environmentalist has this shut down, or at the very least stages protests about it for the amount of pollution caused by using diesel engines as a mobile power plant. I mean they protest just about every other time California tries to build a power plant in the state, why else would California depend so much on Washington state and others for their power
In my state (not in the USA) the stop-gap measure was old jet engines burning kerosine (or some similarly expensive fuel). Like California there was no excuse for it to happen, just incredibly stupid and short sighted actions on the part of those in control.
is that energy projects like this don't get more funding.
Table of Contents of above site
Diesel engines (and gas engines) have an optimum RPM, where they are the most efficient.
In something that is fuel/electric hybrid, you can use the fuel section at an optimal way to produce power, and then regulate the electric how you want.
Same thing goes on I think in like an M1 tank.. a gas turbine (jet) engine runs at constant speed producing power.
Nuclear waste is as much a problem as air pollution.
No, it isn't. Nuclear waste sits there and does nothing. Air pollution affect the whole world. The "dangerous for millenia" contingent is spreading pure FUD. After a couple of hundred years the waste is no more radioactive than the ore from which it came.
The dangers inherent in nuclear energy
WHAT dangers? Yes, if you go into the containment vessel of an operating nuclear reactor you will die. The same holds true of going into a natural gas burner or a coal furnace.
Even if you INCLUDE Chernobyl (a shitty, substandard design that was rejected as unsafe in the United States long before the anti-nuclear hysteria) nuclear is safer than hydro, coal, or gas. If you look at the safety record for the U.S. nuclear power industry you'll see that it's been operating for nearly half a century WITHOUT ONE GODDAMNED FATALITY to a member of the general public. How "safe" do you want it to be?
Let's look at an extreme worst case. Suppose a nuclear reactor goes batshit EVERY SINGLE YEAR and kills 50,000 people (Chernobyl killed a few hundred). The technology would still be as safe as the automobile.
I'll bet you get into a car every day, don't you?
God, I hate innumerates.
The State of California in 2001 produced 265059 Gigawatt-hours, or almost 3000 times more electric power than these trains are supposed to produce. Even solar energy contributes more to California; 638 GW-hours!
California Gross System Electricity Production for 2001
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
I think more impressive is the old jet engine they mount on a truck bed and take everywhere power is needed.
They cannot be overlooked, or ignored, certainly. But that's a GOOD thing.
It's easy to ignore the waste from a coal plant, or a diesel plant. We don't even KNOW the full environmental impact of these things.
The point is, with nuclear, at least we can bottle the waste and keep tabs on it.
A number of gas turbine plants scattered about Manhattan. The plants are small (relatively... only a block in size) and produce maybe 100 megawatts (don't quote me on the exact number). Oh... and they're really loud.
Could see purchasing something like that and becoming a small time electricy provider.
That amount of power could do a few small towns and I could possibly offer cheaper rates than some of the companies existing.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
Because everyone has complained about the current, stationary natural gas powerplants polluting the air, they will take them and put them on flatbed cars and drive them up and down the train tracks. This will have the double benefit of bailing out Amtrak and allowing the deisel generators to continue to belch out known harmful chemicals all day and all night, further allowing the government to completely ignore solar power.
I just don't get why the state that has most of the Mojave Desert can't set up a decent solar energy system, at least for the bottom half of the state.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
i h8 california
they steal our jobs, our water (lake erie), and they steal our power. do it urself, u can't take care of urselves but u can go ahead and put so much money into research and development. instead y don't u try being a little more responsible and take care of urselves instead of making us (Ohio) and the rest of Ohio do it for u
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
But then you look at the energy required to give that waste the proper velocity... is it worth it?
You would think that after the rolling black/brownouts they've experienced in the last year or so that Californians would be more conscientious of the need to conserve energy wherever possible.
/. readers from California reading this who care to offer a first hand perspective? Are you using just as much energy as before the current crisis? Have you taken any measures to cut down on your consumption? What's your local government doing to promote energy efficiency?
But, from what my friends in SF and LA tell me, the average Joe is still getting through as much power as before, if not more, despite the rise in the price of electricity.
Any
Some detailed on the ground information would be appreciated.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
at least diesel is infinetly less polluting than coal and yet coal is the largest source of power in the states (i am not sure about california specificaly).
So it could be worse, they could be making more coal plants.
The main reason they dont hook the drive up to the wheels is not torque.
The main reason can be had in two words: Regenerative Breaking.
Trains are darn heavy. stopping them is a HUGE waste of energy.
Its much better to use all that stopping power to charge the batteries back up.
Hydraulic transmissions, which are variable-displacement pumps driving hydraulic motors, are sometimes used for low-speed switch engines, but there's a vibration problem with hydraulic transmissions that's kept them as slow-speed devices. (I once worked in a hydraulic R&D facility, which built, among other things, prototype locomotive transmissions.)
But electric motors can produce full torque at zero speed. So they're just what you need to start up a freight train. A variable-speed electrical drive in locomotive size was a problem for a long time. Until about 1950, all you could do is switch windings into various combinations of parallel and series. Later, ignitrons (the big mercury-vapor member of the gas-discharge triode tube family) were tried. It took a while for semiconductors to work up to handling megawatts. BART was the first railroad with semiconductor motor drives, and they burned out giant triacs regularly for years.
The latest generation of locomotives finally does it right - the motors are synchronous AC three-phase motors driven by variable-frequency inverters in a closed-loop system. This synchronizes all the motors on all the axles (the motors are down in the trucks, near the wheels), which provides synchronized all-wheel drive. Synching all the wheels nearly doubled drawbar pull (the locomotive spec that matters), and the limits of couplers have now been reached.
Despite this, using spare diesel engines to generate power is a basically dumb idea except in emergencies. The efficiency isn't that good and diesels pollute more than any of the other popular forms of power generation.
Seems kinda ghetto to me..
Wouldn't it be quicker just to build traditional power plants somewhere in the state and transfer power to needy locations as necessary? Doesn't electricity travel faster than a speeding locomotive? This seems comparable to the Postal Service announcing that you can now print out your emails and mail them to recipients using a special stamp.
A real newsworthy breakthrough would be the announcement that they're going to build a giant solar energy collector in the desert along Interstate 10. It's not like there's any shortage of space... there are approximately 2 towns in the couple hundred miles between Palm Springs and the Arizona border.
And here is an interesting article explaining more in depth about how diesel-electric locomotives work, and once you read this you will understand more of why this isn't nearly as innefficient as it sounds.
I don't know they don't use nuclear powered Navy ships to supply shore power, they have huge power sources floating right off thier coast and don't even know it. The Nvy could make money to buy newer boats and the Cifornians would have power.
I'm guessing it's his ham radio call sign.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Is it me or is the simplest long term solution is just to conserve our power? Why don't the people in california set their air conditioners higher? Maybe think about conserving power and shutting doors (I heard during the power crunch before stores were leaving their doors open and air on full blast, saw this is Texas too) Here in Minnesota we learn that early. If you don't shut up everything tight that cold air draft (during winter of course) will send shivers down your spine!
People are still coming down with cancers at incredible rates hundreds of miles from chernobyl.
If you wreck your car, a little smoke is the worst pollution you get.
First of all, it's "Sacramento." If you're going to talk about it, spell it right. Second off, I don't know where you're getting the idea that electricity is cheap in Sacramento. My SMUD bill (yes, I live here. I'm 2 blocks from the Capitol building.) is most certainly not cheap. Have you noticed all of the idiot protesters outside that vote DOWN power plants? How about the Sierra Club? The "NIMBY" folks? Deregulation has ceased to exist. It's over.
Also, there have been quite a few power plants built. In fact, SMUD has one on McClellan Air Force Base that just opened up about a year ago. Where the hell did you get the idea that not a single new power plant has been built?
Insulated from the state problems.. hardly. I walk downtown every single day and see our state problems right in front of me. The politicians walk around and see the same exact problems. Whether they do anything about it is another story.
People are still coming down with cancers at incredible rates hundreds of miles from chernobyl.
The World Health Organization estimates 50,000 cancers TOTAL (and not all of them fatal) from the Chernobyl accident.
Cars kill 50,000 people EVERY GODDAMNED YEAR.
Of course, the Chernobyl reactor was of a design rejected as unsafe in this country back in the 1950s.
this post is not wide. pls fix thx. Slow down cowboy!
My father is retired from the Railroad and I remember him telling me one year that for one reason or another (don't recall those details, but if you like I could make them up), the office building in the yard had to cut back on it's electrical use. So they pulled two engines off of some side tracks, pulled them right up next to the building and had the electricians wire them up to the office. They ran them that way for several months.
Instead of having the trains stand still and just make electricty when needed, add an electromagnetic clutch for brakes!
Like the new cars that repower themselves when breaking via electomagnetic clutch resistance...
You could get a ton of energy from trains this way.
God spoke to me
befor the gen sets appear as an add-on in MS Train Sim..
YOUR MISSION: Supply 2.5 MW to the neigbouring state.....
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Burma?
Power Plants On Rails for California
This sort of reminds me of the plans to put missle launchers on hundreds of miles of track circling the midwest during the cold war so the Soviets couldn't take out our defense systems.
Maybe these plants will miss the rolling blackouts.
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
There are two ways to look at cost. The first one, which I think is the one you refer to, is the $$$ cost to produce a solar panel. When you compare this to how much you end up being able to sell the electricity produced by this panel you end up loosing money.
The second would be to total the amount of energy needed to produce a solar panel and compare that to the amount of energy it can produce. I doubt that this number would be negative.
What is needed is to take into account the impact on the environment that a particular energy source has and charge the producer for the clean up. i.e. scrubers for coal plants, etc... If you do this, you'll quickly notice how comparatively cheap solar panel are.
What is not okay is to keep ignoring the fact that we are mismanaging our planet. There are better ways to produce electricity and more importantly there are very good ways to use less of it, we just need to take the issue out of the hands of short sighted (4 year plans...) politicians...
Just my $0.02 worth of a rant...
That's the funniest part about the article. On the second page it says there is an energy glut in California because the idiots in the White House convinced everyone there was a huge energy shortage and built all these new gas turbine plants which quickly resulted in overcapacity because . . . wait for it --there was no real electricity shortage to begin with. Electricity technology is ancient, prices change every day especially with hucksters in positions of power.
The fundamentals of physics and 19th century engineering didn't suddenly get upended two years ago in California. No, it seems a certain set of individuals in Texas that had so much cash they put one of their boys in the Oval Office were fucking with energy prices. Duh.
This locomotive outfit is missing the point. They never will be called into action because the game has been played out. See, you got to keep your eye on the ball son. Now tell me, which shell is the nut under? Oh, lookie there, it's the big white dome in DC. Well, thanks for all ya'lls IRAs and 401ks we gots to go now.
Because energy efficieny is an important concept.
diesel engines have terrible power bands -- whilst a average automobile engine can produce useable torque between 500-6000 RPM; big diesel engines only do so between ~100 - 600? (the numbers escape me -- but the spirit is the same) -- hence to be able to produce reasonable torque between rest and cruising speed, you need something like around 80 different gear ratios. for everyone who does not drive stick and have NO idea what gear ratios are... erm... cars usually have ~3-6 different ratios. the transmission would be HUGE! and the loss phemomenal
m
furthermore -- when the train is at rest -- remember that the engine only produce torque around 100 rpm -- this means you need some serious clutch plate to be able to handle that much torque. in the end motors are much better because they have a flat (pretty much) torque band (until drop off at high RPMs -- but that's above cruising speed anyhow).
the other great they they can do easily with a motor is braking -- when you applies the brakes the electricity flows from the motor(s) and through a large resistor mesh (generally a couple ohms), this mesh will heat up and there is a fan on top of the train spcifically used to cool this mesh. realld neat stuff.
for a lot more info check out here: sorry it's late and i don't want to deal with tags -- so copy and paste: http://www.howstuffworks.com/diesel-locomotive.ht
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I am not authoratative on this -- but if i still remember the EE theories -- usually inverters are not that efficient -- so you are dropping some efficiency right there that you may not have accounted for. also to transmit power, they need to bump up the voltage to ~100-150K volts -- so the transformers will drain some more juice (granted transformers usually do near-ideal coupling). but i suspect it will be hard to haul around a transformer -- more importantly it's hard to tap into the high voltage lines -- so it will probabbly transmit at lower voltages -- lower voltage transmission loses much more power in the lines, so again not efficient. hence, while an interesting plan, i see it as a *very* temporary solution... not something you would want to keep around for too long.
i mean... i know it's expensive -- but build a f** nuke plant... nevada dump site is a couple hours away now ANYHOW... sigh...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
or dou you just go about calling everything you don't understand fake?
I am really surprised that no-one has mentioned this so I'll do it. The Californian deregulation was based almost directly on the UK model. A lot of politicians and civil servants were sent here to study the way we broke down the old monopolies. Problem was, almost immediately after deregulation in the UK, the major flaws were noticed and so a second round of legislation was pushed through (with pretty much everyone's approval as the energy companies really didn't want things to get out of hand - Britain still has a habit of nationalising and destroying anything that gets in the electorate's way).
What surprised me and The Economist (I can't find the article on economist.com) was that California didn't follow suit - but tried to stick with the original scheme. Adding all kinds of silly schemes won't fix the structural problems California has - only legislative changes can restore a "level playing field" for producers, distributors and consumers.
If not? Well, enjoy those brownouts (and being the laughing stock of the entire planet...). You'll find it's just playing with the deckchairs while the Titanic carries on slurping in the water...
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
Multi-use urban areas. Cool! Uh.. as long as it's only in new, "planned communities". I paid too much for my house with a white picket fence. Don't want my property value to go down.
Desegregation. Uh... except when our school's SAT scores plummet the first few years after bussing starts.
It's the way of things. We all want freedom, independence, and somehow we also want social cohesion, all without any sacrifice. There's always more in the horn of plenty, just keep diggin' around and you'll find it somehow. ;-)
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is the state that the world (as in "outside of America") applauds for its crackdown on car emissions and its harsh CO2 regulations?
:-/
And the same state is now using DIESEL TRAINS to produce ELECTRICITY?
Jeez. You'd think the place was run by politicians or something.
way to go america. add some more polution. damn kyoto.
What the state needs is regulated and less externally dependant electrical power. It also needs honest utilities that don't ship all of their profits to out of state branches o their web and then try to claim they are going bankrupt unless you give them a lot of money to keep them from making the whole state go dark.
At last, a solution that may make the AMTRAK bailout economically viable. And don't worry folks, you won't notice any difference in service since the people at AMTRAK never knew what that was anyway. ;)
WindMills produces 1.5Mw with a moderate wind while producing no pollution at all? But US govt is too close to the oil industry to understand that
No, it isn't. Nuclear waste sits there and does nothing. Air pollution affect the whole world. The "dangerous for millenia" contingent is spreading pure FUD. After a couple of hundred years the waste is no more radioactive than the ore from which it came.
Uranium mine waste is rather nasty stuff. Whilst it was rock it was not especially dangerous, but mine tailings tend to be dust, slurry, etc.
What physical form in the waste from a reactor in? Especially if fuel is reprocessed. Some of it make not be left alone for a couple of hundred years. e.g depleated uranium munitions which contain U236...
some nuclear power plant could give enough power to California for sure... in europe there is a lot of nuclear power plant, especially in France which has too much
until we can have a surface-to-orbit transport safe/effective/cheap enough to lift the waste to orbit, then, presto, send the whole kit and kaboodle into the Sun.
The problem is that if *any* of your waste rockets explodes, you get a fallout plume worse than just about any conceivable nuclear reactor accident.
Encasing nuclear waste to survive a train wreck is one thing. Encasing it to survive a thousand tonnes of rocket fuel exploding, or re-entry if your rocket fails just the wrong way, is quite another.
While the chance of any given rocket failing is quite low, you're not going to get it below about 1% or so. If you're dealing with *all* waste by launching it into space, you're going to have accidents.
I say bury it in the continental shield, which has been geologically stable for the past 3 billion years or so.
someone pls mod the parent up...
in the universe. In some sense, God, as can all beings, can be reduced to a set of rules for conduct. He happens to be the set that leads to ultimate success. God 'helps' those who take him into theirselves. That seems to be the only way that God can help. Such a limitation should not strip him of the title of God, though.
Trains are another way to do this and frankly is not the most efficent method of transportation. Companies such as Cummins, Catapillar, and Show Power have been doing large megawatt portable generation for years and are already in California.
Basically, you get a huge diesel engine, strap it to a generator and slam that in the back of a semi truck. These setups can generate over 1mW and can be moved to where the "real" power needs are. Rail just doesn't go all the places you need it to.
And I know what you are thinking, "that's only 1mW!" Well, you can parallel these trucks together for whatever need you have 5mW? 20mW?.
So each of these locomotives generates 2M watts -- That is just 1/1000th of the 2G watts that a plant like the Navajo Generating Station produces (in Page, Arizona). Reference:n avajo.asp
http://www.srpnet.com/power/stations/
Nuclear Power Clean? Ask Nevada
I tried to ask Nevada. It seemed from what I could tell that the local townspeople were all for the economic boom.
But then this bus of hippies showed up, and now they're claiming that they're Nevadans too....
This station generates 2.25G watts and is near the Glen Canyon Dam which produces another 1G watts:j o.asp
http://www.srpnet.com/power/stations/nava
So during the Power Crisis the local utility tows a barge-mounted power plant to San Francisco. The locals throw a fit and the barge is later towed away having never been used.
PG bought it used in Costa Rica. Not sure where it went.
Back in 1998, we had here in the province of Quebec (in Canada) a winter storm that took down a lot of the electric company infrastructure, resulting in the biggest power outage in Quebec's history (about 1,300,000 persons without electricity). In 6 days we received 80mm of freezing rain.
Like I said, this was in winter and the outside temperature was about -30 (Celsius). The temperature inside the house dropped to below freezing in about 24 hours.
In the town that I lived at the time, Boucherville, the mayor decided to do something quick to bring back power. They took a crane, lifted the locomotive from the track, put it down on the road, on it rolled on it's power on the asphalt. Then it was connected and it gave power for a couple of weeks.
Went I moved last year, you could still see the trails that the locomotive's wheels made in the asphalt...
Try it! Library of Babel
While I am pro-nuclear, I don't think comparing the safety of power plants with that of cars is a valid comparison. They are in totally different categories and used for different things. It would be better to compare the problems caused by coal power versus the problems caused by nuclear power for example. I think in this case nuclear would still win because of all the health risks coal miners have and the environmental devistation coal mines cause.
One summer I camped out for 5 weeks (winter rental expired and it was a while before I could find another place.) Being a person who likes quiet, I went all the way to the back of the campground. (Stay with me ... this is relavant.) About 2am, I thought a 747 was landing next to my tent. The ground was shaking and I could hardly think straight. 100 yards away was a switching track where trains waited to pass another. Idling wasn't bad, but when they kicked that diesel into gear.......
NIMBY is right. I would never allow one of these things to be running 24x7 within a mile from where I live.
But I do love trains......no.....really.....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Cause of all the birds that fly into the windmills and get chopped up! Especially the protected/endangered species! It's a environmental disaster!
Seriously, the bird problem may not be that bad, I don't know. Do a search on Google for "wind power birds" to research it. But I do distinctly recall the Audubon Society and/or Sierra Club opposing a new wind farm that was to be built in California, I think in the southern San Joaquin Valley/Southern CA area.
Now they may only have been objecting to the site, but my thinking is this: where ever there is wind strong enough to power windmills, there are going to be birds. (Of course, I Am Not a Wind Power Engineer.)
I think this is an interesting idea. Candidates for mayor and city councils should be forced to compete on Sim City 3000 (on the hardest levels), and then voters can see how well they do managing a city and use this information to help them decide how to vote. After all, if a potential mayor can't run a pretend city, what chance does he have with the real thing?
We could use trains when we are in a crunch, or the Federal Government could actually do their job and look into Enron types that cause false scarcity.
I would suggest you lead us in your idea of conservation and turn your computer off, and never turn it back on again.
I'm sick of paying for Amtracks poor management...maybe this will take a little of the pressure off the taxpayers.
-bitter traveler
I still maintain that it was a _huge_ mistake for us to write off the funds from the "Marshall Plan"
C|N>K
Uranium mine waste is rather nasty stuff
So is coal mine waste, and burning coal puts FAR more radiation into the environment than nuclear power.
If we were sensible enough to reprocess spent fuel and burn up the plutonium, the waste issue would be even less important.
The huge 3(?) story dump trucks used in major quarry operations also use electric motors with diesel generators to supply the electric power. It's actually more efficient to run the generator at a set level, and use the motor to vary the drive level needed.
This is the principle behind consumer-level hybrid electric vehicles (sorta). The main difference is that diesel locos and those dump trucks use a serial system (diesel motor->generator->electric motor) while consumer hybrids use a more complex parallel system (gas motor->drivetrain, electric motor->drivetrain, motor->electric motor as generator->batteries. Costs for hybrids could be cut if auto companies were willing to sacrifice gas engines and embrace the electric motor, rather than keeping gas engines and coupling an oversized starter motor to it...
Launch it with an electromagnetic rail gun. Extreme high speeds, no rockets.
"ran the engines on the frozen street without any track at all!!!"
OK, I'm scared now. this sort of thing features in my nightmares. Trains running where they outghtn't be like in The Fugitive.
1. It's "AMTRAK".
2. Do you whine about "mismanagement" when it comes to the interstate highway system, airports, or seaports? Hint: Those are taxpayer funded too, and they don't even PRETEND to show a "profit".
ALL forms of transportation are heavily subsidized.
Without Smoke Stacks these trains are going to create a lot of ground level Ozone. Diesel is not a clean source of fuel. Anyone ever been to Europe, or live there. They have many diesel cars and all of their buildings are covered with soot.
So is coal mine waste, and burning coal puts FAR more radiation into the environment than nuclear power.
Thus radioactive pollution appears to be an argument against both nuclear and coal.
If we were sensible enough to reprocess spent fuel and burn up the plutonium, the waste issue would be even less important.
You'd first need to build reprocessing facilities which don't leak badly.
I am from Quebec, Canada, home of the cheapest electricity in NA. My father spent many years in the sawmill business, and I remember one day driving down to New Hampshire with him to a sawmill he did business with. Sawmills use an enormous amount of electricity. Because electricity was so expensive in New England (about 30 times what it is in Quebec), they had driven a diesel locomotive into the middle of one of their buildings and were using it to generate electricity to power the entire mill. It was actually cheaper for them to keep it fueled with diesel than to buy electricity from the local utility. Imagine. A locomotive. Indoors.
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
In the former USSR, the government has had many of its nuclear powered Ice-breaking ships tied up to shore, to use the onboard nuclear reactors to assist already overburdened power grids. So the idea is not really new.