One Worldwide Power Grid

randomned writes "A little ironic that this article on a world wide power grid was published in the September issue of Wired. With the recent outage on in the northeast, think of what could've happened if the entire world was on one grid." As someone who spent 23 and a half hours without power, I'm thinking this is a brilliant plan!

Comments

The Internet model

[Empiric]

I'd imagine that the market forces in play here are a lot like the ones in play in the 80's for phone service. If given a monopoly, a company will fight to maintain exclusive control over its geographical domain, to the detriment of consumers.

The evolution of the internet is in stark contrast to this, where bandwidth can be bought from any one of many vendors (despite efforts of existing local telco's and cable providers to restrict the market by controlling the wiring).

The (U.S., at least) government needs to take the same steps as they took with AT open up the market for energy distribution. Let the market decide where and when it's economically feasible to lay new power lines, and this will grow much like WiFi is, starting in the most-demanded areas and spreading out from there. Along with this will come the kind of redundancies that the northeast U.S. and Canada should have had; with market forces in play a company is going to be very careful about making sure their customers don't lose power--the damage to a competing company's reputation from something like the recent blackout would be terrible for them to contemplate.

I'll look forward to the day I can have a box on the side of my house into which I can plug whatever sources of electricity I choose, and I expect that the costs of this commodity will then drop dramatically, much like telephone service did.

Re:The Internet model

[Empiric]

Really? How so? I'd enjoy reading counterarguments.

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

his/her name is SuperLiquidSex, what more counterargument do you want?

Re:The Internet model

[jdhutchins]

Telephone companies basically still have a monopoly. But the bottom line is that there's only one twisted-pair wire going to your house. Someone has to maintain it. Other phone companies can sell phone service over the teleco's wires, but that hasn't caught on. If you have different companies trying to serve the same people in the same area, you're going to have mass confusion. The system wasn't set up to work that way, and getting it to work that way will take lots of money. The government has to do a decent job of regulating the monopolies.

Electricity is only slightly different. You only have one source of electricity going to your house. It would cost A LOT of money to run new wires to your house so you could use someone else's electricity. And no one wants two ugly wires in their backyard instead of one. It's not really worth it to set up a new grid, the money would be better spent upgrading the current one. And as far as blackouts go, things like that happen, but not very often. Let's see, their power was out for 24 (maybe a little more) hours. That's 24 hours out of roughly how many hours per year? It's good reliability, and I doubt you could really get much better. Weird things can happen, and the equipment is designed to shut off rather than risk getting fried. Sometimes things don't work quite the way they're supposed to, but it's not like they could test the stuff (oh, sorry about that last blackout, we were just testing stuff. It didn't really have to happen, but we needed to see what would happen if you got a real blackout.)

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

That's been in the works for a long time in many states, and it sounds great on paper. But deregulation in the power industry was a significant factor in the huge power crunch/pricing fiasco out in California. That in turn has dampened enthusiasm and slowed the pace of deregulation in other places.

Re:The Internet model

[grug0]

I'll look forward to the day I can have a box on the side of my house into which I can plug whatever sources of electricity I choose.

Um..nobody's stopping you from doing this now.

Re:The Internet model

[Empiric]

Yes, the RBOC's still have something of a monopoly, but given there's at least competition now in the long-distance space. I'd say MCI, Sprint, and all the 10-10 players would constitute "catching on".

But in the case of phone wiring or electrical wiring, I would argue that whether it gets deployed should depend on market forces, not because the local utility doesn't want it. I'd take the second set of wires if it meant my bill was going to be quite a bit lower.

Blackouts are rare, as you said, but a huge problem when they do occur. Redundant systems are just common-sense to implement nowadays, as the internet has shown. And for the testing issue, redundancy would allow exactly that testing that may be a problem now.

Re:The Internet model

[Empiric]

Well... where I'm located, there's only one vendor, by regulation.

Re:The Internet model

[ZPO]

I don't think having a single "grid" covering a larger area is itself a problem. The problem arises when you don't have an appropriate set of safeguards in place to protect that grid from itself and an effective SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) network in place to monitor it all.

The technology is there to do it safely and reliably. It just costs money. Right now the major utilities have no profit motive to deploy technologies to harden and protect the power distribution and transmission systems.

In most states you can now sell power back to the utilities. A local generation plant (solar, hydro, wind, etc) can be connected to the power system via a utility intertie rated device.

This can as simple as a utility intertie rated inverter as part of you home solar system. Unfortunately for everyone else on your block, as soon as commercial input fails your system will stop providing power out to the utility side. This is to protect power company personnel during line repairs.

Re:The Internet model

[Empiric]

Okay, well, if the sole source of safeguards is government regulation, that's improvable. Even when things do fail, the utility company has no real worries, they'll still be there protected by their government mandate. Market forces changes this.

"No profit motive to deploy". Exactly.

You can sell back power to your utility (singular), yes, but this doesn't create any competition for the utility.

The fact that I can invest major dollars in my own power source is a different thing; many people would not find this affordable or practical. Corporations, on the other hand, can afford to do this and make it up on profits spread across a large number of customers.

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the market decide where and when it's economically feasible to lay new power lines

And leave most of the rural areas of the coutry to what? Where one can set-up some kind of home-grown solution to the networking, you just can not expect every community that wants and needs electricity to build its own nuclear/coal/gas power plant just because they dont have rivers, wind, coal, gas, or sun in the amounts needed to produce electricity. If you will leave this area to completely free market, you will essentialy widen the gap between metropolis areas and rural areas, producing something to the effect of true Mad Max style civilization. Thank you, but count me out.

and this will grow much like WiFi is

You mean like Wi-Fi hot-spots that you can find around most frequented areas in cities (airports, hotels, cafees, ...) If you find economic viability in setting up those everywhere where there is electricity available at this instance, please do call me. I want to move to your country.

starting in the most-demanded areas and spreading out from there

I'm listening about the broadband for everybody, Wi-Fi for everybody, spreading the connectivity to everybody, ... Well, I just don't see this happening. I just don't like to have American Dream include power generator in the basement. Governments can be good for some things that are not economicaly sane in the short run, but bear fruits in range of 20-50 years down the road. I'm sorry, but electricity is not about competition and free market, it's about common good that has to be provided to everybody for a fair price. This ideally means that country takes more taxes from the richer and builds infrastructure that can be used by all equaly. I guess the next thing you will probably suggest is to dissolve the coutries all together and let the corporations run everything. Including printing the money. Why don't we liberalize priting the money? Why don't we have, say, 4 or 5 money printing companies that are fighting each other for the market share of the paper notes. I don't think so. Either go anarcyh, or leave the democracy alone, please.

Along with this will come the kind of redundancies that the northeast U.S. and Canada should have had

You must not be serious? I guess California has those redundancies? The only thing that California gained is some spare power in the production part of distribution grid due to people moving out businesses to more 'regulated' areas of USA, where they were fairly shure there will be no regular rolling blackouts happening and prices set on more manageable level. This and tech bubble bursting. Since it is a fact, that accidents do happen (and it's not like they are happening on year, by year basis) what do you think what happens when some bean counter disconnects your part of the grid since it is not economicaly viable any more. Haven't you listened for past few days? Redundancies are basicaly wasted resource. If you host some small web server with couple of pages, do you plan it for ./ effect? If you do, you are wasting enormeous resources (bandwith lease, CPU power to cope with serving, memory, storage requirements for logs, ...), but if you don't you're living with a threat that one sole link will kill (not premanenlty we hope) your connection and server. Redundancies don't make much of economic sense if you are profit oriented. On the other hand, if your paycheck depends on people voting you in or out of office, you want to be service oriented. I do not want to debate current political situation in USA (I don't care sh**t about it actually), but the idea is that you want to please the people. In this instance you please them with balancing their mandatory part (governement taxes) against their infrastructure expectations (no blackouts) against their participatory part (electricity bills). Do you really want to risk having this balance to be taken by some unscrouplus corporate entity going

Re:The Internet model

[Empiric]

Hmm... it looks like this could become a monster thread, but a few further comments:

I'm not sure how we get from "applying market forces" to "leaving the rural areas to build their own power plants". Other technology infrastructure types have shown that market forces result in greater availability, not less. Rural areas would not compelled to switch to a local power generation source, but if that was more efficient, the market is the only thing that's going to make it happen, and would result in cheaper prices for its residents.

Redundancy is not a waste of resources, and the only thing determining what is or is not a waste is... the market. The Slashdot example is contrived; what I would want is enough server capacity to handle the full demands *and* have a failover.

We can go with the "fair price" as defined by the utility companies, or the "fair price" as determined by competition. Option 2 is lower.

Money is a *very* special case, and I'd be happy to liberalize the printing of money if that meant the dollars would have to be backed by something, rather than paper fiat-money. I wouldn't care who stamped my coin of actual gold, I know it's of value (but that's a whole other thread...).

Illegal activity of people in a free market isn't really an argument against the concept. I think even with the Enron's of the world, it's pretty clear that government management leads to more corruption, rather than less. Government-controlled methods usually don't have effective checks or balances, as the collapse of the Soviet Union on all levels helps demonstrate.

The final paragraph seems to be arguing my case, so I'll leave that one alone...

And with that, I'm out!

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello California! We used your brilliant strategy and let the market decide. And the result was sky-high prices, and an energy deficiency because the companies (ENRON) could make more money starving us than giving good service. Your plan is a failure. Unfettered capitalism DOESN'T WORK because the original concept assumed a level of fraternity and loyalty that DOES NOT exist. If you don't beleive me go read history.

Re:The Internet model

[jmccay]

A lot of states are currently doing something like that. What will most likely happen is that the source of the power will change, but you'll get it from the same power lines that you you do now. There will be some form of a usage fee for the wires that gets paid to the maintainers of the wires in the area.
Look at the telephone industry. You don't have multiple telephone lines. This is because the phone companies rent time on each others line cheaper than they charge us. They make a profit off the margin. Incidentally, that is what California tried to do, but the power cost them more what they could charge the customers and the margin of profit changed to a margin of loss.
I would like to point out that a vast majority of New England States (Maine, NH Vermont, Mass, Rhode Island, & Conneticut for those who don't know the states that make up New England) didn't experience a power loss. Some parts of western Massachussets and western Vermont, and some of Conneticut did becuase they are hooked into the Niagra power gird, but the rest of New England has technology in place to prevent the power from going off.
In the US power consumption grew 30% while the power capacity only grew 15%, and the Democrats have been blocking all attempts to increase the power capacity.
This power outage just goes to prove that President Bush was right. He was talking about the need to increase, improve, and modernize out infrastructure.

Re:The Internet model

[SuperLiquidSex]

Sorry about not giving any points I was a little bit slammed, still am sorta. But here it goes I'd imagine that the market forces in play here are a lot like the ones in play in the 80's for phone service. If given a monopoly, a company will fight to maintain exclusive control over its geographical domain, to the detriment of consumers. They're not. The 80's had ATT and later the bells abusing the monopoly powers, and not paying their congress man. Currently the Power companys arn't abusing the monopoly powers because there isn't a monopoly. I can choose between a few diffrent power companies The evolution of the internet is in stark contrast to this, where bandwidth can be bought from any one of many vendors (despite efforts of existing local telco's and cable providers to restrict the market by controlling the wiring). Abuses of power in one industry do not make it the same in others. The power industry is more than willing to help people with trying new things on their wires, the power bandwith projects and the slinging of fiber through the center of power lines. Let the market decide where and when it's economically feasible to lay new power lines, and this will grow much like WiFi is, starting in the most-demanded areas and spreading out from there. Along with this will come the kind of redundancies that the northeast U.S. and Canada should have had; with market forces in play a company is going to be very careful about making sure their customers don't lose power--the damage to a competing company's reputation from something like the recent blackout would be terrible for them to contemplate. First WiFi started from scratch so it could grow. However letting power companies decide where it's cost effective to put power is a bad idea. They will shy away from slinging it out to the boonies. Just like the cable and telco's do right now. Even with a grid like the article talked about there is only so much power to go along the lines, the power generation is centrilized. So it doens't matter WHO you have you still lose power if somthing close enought to the power plant dies. I'll look forward to the day I can have a box on the side of my house into which I can plug whatever sources of electricity I choose, and I expect that the costs of this commodity will then drop dramatically, much like telephone service did. This is what made me make my comment, a box on the side of your house? No, the companies will lease the use of the power lines and you will have to a pay a line transport fee. The costs will not drop as according to my power bill only bout 30% of my bill is power, the rest is taxes and line lease fees. Telephone service didn't exactly drop in price, long distance has to some extent but thats because of more carrying capacity not dergulation.

Re:The Internet model

[Lershac]

So there is a law against you taking yourself off the grid and generating yur own power? If you are in the US, I really really doubt it.

Re:The Internet model

[autopr0n]

In the US power consumption grew 30% while the power capacity only grew 15%, and the Democrats have been blocking all attempts to increase the power capacity.

What democrats? Dems in california? The whole nation? Can you provide any spesific examples?

This power outage just goes to prove that President Bush was right. He was talking about the need to increase, improve, and modernize out infrastructure.

Now this is ridiculous. Bush may have talked about it, but any monkey can say things. Bush didn't actually try to do anything about it other then push (I guess) for even more deregulation. And whether or not he talked about it he certainly didn't actually do anything about it. Given that the GOP has control of both houses in congress and the presidency, there's nothing really standing in his way if actually did want to do something.

The only thing this proves is that bush didn't do anything to fix problems he actually knew about...

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you make me some magic with your own two hands?
Can you build an endless city with these grains of sand?

You do realize that you're quoting MeatLoaf, right?

Re:The Internet model

[canadian_right]

There is very little chance of being able to pick from multiple power suppliers AND keep costs down. This might be possible if you paid a seperate transmission and generation bill for your electricty, and kept the transmission part as a monopoly that provides transmission services to all generators at the same cost (this is the direction that many utilities are being forced by USA deregulation).

The electric grid cannot in any way be compared to the internet. Within an integrated grid a problem hundreds of miles away can have a direct effect on the operation and stability of the system. An integrated power grid is a tightly connected, monolithic thing. All the generators on a single grid are carefully syncronized.

In my opinion, a better way to compete is ditributed generation which requires much less investment in a large transmission infrastructure. Micro-hydro, fuels cells, small wind, etc...

Re:The Internet model

[lightsaber1]

Other technology infrastructure types have shown that market forces result in greater availability, not less.

you mean like phone service? since they've privatized phone service in Ontario I have yet to see any improvements on rural lines. It costs WAY too much to lay lines over such a large area, and there aren't enough people to provide the necessary returns. The same would be true for electricity.

Electricity generation and distribution has been privatized in Ontario (albeit only one company "owns" the infrastructure: Hydro One) and as I understand it many of the states affected by this blackout have a similar system in place. Hydro One has not increased generation capacity significantly in recent years, and it has several nuclear plants down for maintenance right now...I have no idea what's going on in the US system.

Note that this did not help (though I won't suggest it hurt just yet). I think once the Ohio system went down we basically saw a simple case of overload on the rest of the system, which took things down. The overload was partially due to a lot of use -- it was a HOT day, but also due to a lack of generation.

What *should* have happened is bits of the grid should have been shut off, but instead the plants went down, causing a cascading effect. Note that this is all conjecture on my part as I don't have all the facts I'm sure.

Money is a *very* special case, and I'd be happy to liberalize the printing of money if that meant the dollars would have to be backed by something, rather than paper fiat-money. I wouldn't care who stamped my coin of actual gold, I know it's of value

Is it? What makes gold of value where fiat money has none? Gold is just a mineral, paper money is just paper, most money is nothing but numbers on a computer. Gold hasn't backed anything or had any "value" for a large number of years now (except as a commodity), sorry to burst your bubble my friend.

Also, what about water, etc? Seems to me that like water, electricity has become a basic necessity. Yes, it is possible to live without, but probably over 99% of people use electricity on a daily basis and cannot function without it. Roads, education, and (in Canada) health care all fall into this category too. The role of the government in a democracy is, among other things, to provide the basic necessities so they are available to everyone at a fair price. For a government to not have regulations and some control over the electricity distribution system would simply be negligence imho.

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

Other technology infrastructure types have shown that market forces result in greater availability, not less.

Other technology infrastructure types have jack-squat to do with the electric industry. One of the whole points of energy regulation was to provide cheap, reliable electricity to everyone regardless of locale, which it does. The free market will not do much better.

We can go with the "fair price" as defined by the utility companies, or the "fair price" as determined by competition. Option 2 is lower.

How do you know option 2 is lower? One wrong assumption that you make is that the fair price is defined solely by the utility companies. In fact, part of the US energy regulations includes "rate-making" imposed by the government which allows utilities to charge only enough to cover costs and make a reasonable profit. Electricity costs are already measured in cents per kilowatt-hour. A free market would not improve much on that either.

To give a more specific example; the national average cost for electricity is between 7 and 8 cents/KWh. Predictions I have seen (sorry, forgot the links) call for the national average to fall to 5.5 cents/KWh under deregulation by the year 2020. Sounds great, right? Until I find out that the average cost in my home state (Alabama) is already 5.5 cents/KWh. Free market theory says that this cost should go down due to competition. However, basic economics says that, at least in the short term, this cost will actually go up as the market seeks equilibrium between high cost regions and low cost regions. Obviously I am not benefited by the fact that a free market will provide in 15 years what I already have now.

To add to that, here is a link to the Department of Energy website talking specifically about Alabama's efforts (or lack thereof) at energy deregulation. One quote sums it up; "On the matter of Public Interest, the report stated that it has not been demonstrated that all consumers in Alabama would continue to receive adequate, safe, reliable, and efficient energy services at fair and reasonable prices under a restructured retail market at this time."

Illegal activity of people in a free market isn't really an argument against the concept.

Yes it is, if it can be shown that illegal activity is the natural end result of the free market. Which is why in the United States today the so-called free markets are all regulated to a certain extent, if not so much as the energy industry.

I think even with the Enron's of the world, it's pretty clear that government management leads to more corruption, rather than less. Government-controlled methods usually don't have effective checks or balances, as the collapse of the Soviet Union on all levels helps demonstrate.

I think you are either naive or sadly ignorant of history. I suggest you find some good websites or maybe a book about FDR and the regulation of the energy industry and find out why the current system came about. Everything that you say won't happen in a free market actually has happened before. And to bring Enron back into the picture, many of its actions in California parallel those of the worst energy monopolies at the turn of the 20th century. Better yet, just read up on any of the trusts and monopolies of the United States industrial age. Now I am not suggesting that we will return to the dark days of the past without the government to keep us safe. But I do think that you place too much confidence in the magic of the free market to solve all our problems.

Re:The Internet model

[operagost]

After doing 0 seconds of research, I can tell you that this is possible in at least two states in the USA: Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Due to practicality concerns, your incumbent power company still maintains the lines to your house, but the power can be supplied by many different companies. Some of the options include "green" companies that don't use fossil fuels, for example.

Re:The Internet model

[ScooterBill]

Absolutely, the internet model, with all it's quirks, spammers, abuses and brilliant thinkers has without a doubt proven to be a huge paradigm shift in thinking about the way things can be done. It's also been a big headache for those who would like to control it all.(chuckle)

As I see it, anytime you have power(not just electricity) controlled by a single or few entities, you have the potential for abuse and catastrophy.

Why does everyone think the government should be the source and solution to all our needs. Why not have a government that facilitates our doing these things for ourselves. As we in California saw with energy deregulation, the power companies immediately raised rates, doctored the books and pulled all sorts of tricks to suck money out of the consumer. You can't deregulate a monopoly and not risk a lot of problems.

I would like to see more local energy generating solutions including solar and wind power with backup natural gas turbine generators. Couple this with government tax incentives or rebates for being self-sufficient and you won't have the crisis we just saw.

M

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

>Unfortunately for everyone else on your block, as soon as commercial input fails your system will stop providing power out to the utility side. This is to protect power company personnel during line repairs.

A more practial reason is that your puny generator of a few kilo watts would die a horrible dead trying to deliver the giga watts required to bring voltage and frequency within spec on the grid.

Re:The Internet model

[spurdy]

The electric utility industry is divided generally into three segments: Generation (Production), Transmission (Long-haul transportation), and Distribution (Retail sale). Regulatory, government, and industry bodies have already decided that it's impractical to de-regulate the Transmission & Distribution segments. That leaves the Generation segment.

That's what was attempted by California in the 1990s, and what happened was that due to inadequate planning by the architects of the "market", aggressive and unscrupulous companies entered the market not with the goal of public service, but with the goal of making money, and as much of it as possible. The end result was blackouts and localized shortages along with sky-high prices. >p>After that debacle, legislatures and public service commissions all over the country that were gung-ho in favor of deregulation were terrified that the same would be repeated in their states, and they pulled the plug on deregulation plans.

Re:The Internet model

[owlstead]

Unfortunately for everyone else on your block, as soon as commercial input fails your system will stop providing power out to the utility side. This is to protect power company personnel during line repairs.

I wonder if you would want to provide everyone with power in that event. I would imagine that the number of people you would try to power would be too many (especially when using solar power). And if there was a problem on the utility side next to your house, then providing power to that particular utility side might not be the best idea.

But I'm not an electrical technician, in this case I am just an end user (ugh, having to say that on /. hurts). So don't take my word for it.

Re:The Internet model

[tade]

Well having 6 set of wires don't sound too good, but how about a market where there are only 1 set of lines, but many providers who buy electricity from global electricity markets, pretty much like any other commodity, and then sell shares of that to users. You would have one set of wires and you could choose the company that supplies the energy.

You could have wind-electricity or nuclear-only or whatever, the company would buy that amount of electricity from windmill-company and charge you according to your consumption.

That's how things work in Finland anyways. (as far as i know)

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

Other phone companies can sell phone service over the teleco's wires, but that hasn't caught on.

Really? BellSouth owns my wires, and I'm buying my local phone service from MCI.

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason gold is a more reliable standard than paper is that governments can't print arbitrary quantities of it. A nice toga in the Roman Empire cost about the same, in gold, as a nice suit today. How many paper currencies can boast 2000 years of price stability?

Re:The Internet model

[stonecypher]

Let the market decide where and when it's economically feasible to lay new power lines

I'm guessing you've never needed broadband outside of major metropolitan areas, or perhaps don't realize that nonurban people do in fact need electricity.

Re:The Internet model

[cluckshot]

On my country street in an unicorporated area in Alabama, there are 3 phone companies with 3 different lines. Imagine that?!? If anyone thinks that they are in competition, just price the services. (NOT!)

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly rabbit. Things never get better for the consumer. Regulated situations create really nice perks for the empoyees of the local monopoly (want to retire with full benefits at an early age, work for a utility). On the other hand, privatized things are more efficient in the sense that they cost less to run. However the extra savings become the profits of the people rich enough to buy the thing in the first place. The consumer does not get better rates. In fact, the rates will increase as much as possible since at least local monopolies have boards that keep rate hikes in check (ie water boards, etc). So either the rich get richer or lots of employees get a really good deal. I tend to lean towards employees getting a really good deal if only because the service will generally be better also. Remember, local monopolies tend to be that way for a reason. "Market forces" only work when supply exceeds demand, not for natural monopolies.

Re:The Internet model

[sydbarrett74]

Every attempt at 'deregulation' I have seen has sent quality into the shitter and prices up. It's simply for this reason: providers only maintain their network when it's 'profitable', and they can determine that profit point. They usually let a network go to pot before they're forced to upgrade it. I don't want to see the electrical grid go the way of the airlines or the cable TV market.

Re:The Internet model

[jmccay]

I know I will take a karma hit for this, but so be it! I am tired of people saying Bush hasn't done anything.
The Democrats in Congress specifically. All you have to do is look at the Democrats responce over the blackouts. Before 24 hours was over, Hillary Clinton and others started to blame Bush for this--despite the fact that Bush has been saying we need to update the power grid systems since he started running for election.
The Democrats have been stalling current legislation in congress that would have taken a big step in the right direction. These were the parts the Liberal media didn't tell you about in the bill to drill for oil in Alaska. Apperently, getting more fuel for to increase power in the United States wasn't good for them.
Regarding the Republicans controlling congress, all you need to do is lok at judicial nominations to see that the Democrats can stall anythign they want. At least 2 high qualified candidates have not even been given an up or down vote becuase the Democrats are illegally philabustering (sp?) their nominations. Both candidates have VERY HIGH recogmendations from the ABA (American Bar Association). One of them is being illegally discriminated against because they are Catholic and don't reflect the "liberal" beliefs of Democrats.
So, you are actually wrong Bush has tried to do things, but the media you followed just didn't bother to tell you. They only told you he wanted to drill for oil in Alaska. The only people not doing things is Democrats. The only thing they do is try and point fingers at Bush. Bush tried to do something about it, but the Democrats blocked him. I suggest you actually try paying attention first before you comment. All in all, you are wrong on all accounts.

Re:The Internet model

[Anonymous Coward]

California's 'deregulation' was quite the opposite. PG&E was forbidden from entering in any long term contracts, so producers could conspire and fuck them on the spot market. Hardly a 'free' market.

Re:The Internet model

[rnd()]

It is you, my friend, who is wrong about the Gold Standard. You write:


Is it? What makes gold of value where fiat money has none? Gold is just a mineral, paper money is just paper, most money is nothing but numbers on a computer. Gold hasn't backed anything or had any "value" for a large number of years now (except as a commodity), sorry to burst your bubble my friend.


In fact, any commodity would be suitable as a backing for currency. Gold was used in the past becuase it held high value and so carrying valuable amounts of it was practical: Compare carrying around $1M in Gold to carrying $1M of peanuts, corn, or cotton. Gold's value is precisely its value as a commodity.

Incidentally, in the past when the US used a gold standard that fixed the price of gold (in other words, the price at which the US would buy and sell gold) that harmed legitimate commodity markets for gold significantly.

You also mention what you claim is the legitimate role of Government in a Democracy. You describe a socialistic system. You are right in that if the majority favors socialism, then a Democracy will have socialism as an economic system. Contrary to your point, however, the only thing that has kept the US (and to some extent Canada) competetive over the past 50 years is the ingrained ethos that people deserve to reap rewards in accordance with their productivity, unless they are so unfit as to become wards of the state.

Creating a welfare state is a major break from the ethos described in the last paragraph, and though it may be within the scope of what may be voted into law by a Democracy, it is counter to the ethic of meritocracy that has guided our continent for the past 227 years.

Re:The Internet model

[rnd()]

California did not deregulate. It deregulated power on the wholesale side, but kept it strictly regulated on the consumer side. Thus, there was absolutely no price signal to tell consumers to stop using so much power.

Price signals are a key element of capitalism. When prices rise, demand is likely to fall, and entrepreneurs take notice and create new approaches that lower prices.

Gray Davis' utter failure as a governor is mostly due to his enormous mishandling of the Power crisis.

You may ask yourself why the Internet stayed up when the Grid went down... the answer is because the Internet is not and has never been regulated by politics and politicians to the extent that electricity has.

Re:The Internet model

[lightsaber1]

In fact, any commodity would be suitable as a backing for currency.

Yes, sure, as long as people want gold...what if nobody will accept gold in exchange for anything? Gold would become worthless. The only thing that gives any currency value is the perception that it has value (and thus people will take it). Try to give the pizza boy a bit of gold next time, he probably won't take it.

You also mention what you claim is the legitimate role of Government in a Democracy. You describe a socialistic system.

I'm no political science major here but I believe a democracy needs to find a proper balance between socialist and capitalist. What you describe is strictly capitalist...I do not believe "democracy" really has anything to do with socialist or capitalist...it just happens that most democracies use a primarily capitalist approach.

Re:The Internet model

[rnd()]

Just to clarify on the use of a commodity to back currency. In order for this to work there has to be some demand for the commodity, since exchanging currency notes is equivalent to exchanging quantities of the commodity. The definition of a commodity is that it is a product for which there is a lot of demand, and a variety of different suppliers. Frequently, commodities are important raw materials for industry.

You claim that socialism bears an important role in democracy. Let's dissect that and see if it holds up: Socialism is a system under which individuals give up their individuality in favor of the greater good. Socialism is a system in which no individual has private ownership over anything, and everything is owned by the state.

Democracy, on the other hand, is a system under which each individual has one vote (his/her own). That is the only right specifically guaranteed by Democracy.

Capitalism, is a system designed to maximize the amount of freedom enjoyed by everyone. Capitalism allows people to hold whatever belief they want, and to associate with whoever they want. The nice thing about it is that people are likely to get over any hangups that they have: Muslim and Jew may not like each other, but they may still transact business together if the alternative is paying more for less.

Further, Capitalism is at the core of a productive society. Consider attributes like hard work, trustworthiness, discipline, the respect of one's peers, etc. These attributes have come to exist in our society largely because they represent a recipe for getting ahead in a capitalist society.

The welfare state has created a system under which these attributes are unlikely to be discovered by an individual seeking his/her own success.

Re:The Internet model

[lightsaber1]

What you describe is barter trading, which is something that neither of our societies have engaged in for a long time.

Wow, you can tell which side you are on. To give a less biased descriptions of captialism, it is a system in which everything is owned by individuals and trade occurs based on supply and demand. All those other things are opinions (not to say I disagree or anything, but they are just that).

Democracy, on the other hand, is a system under which each individual has one vote (his/her own). That is the only right specifically guaranteed by Democracy.

That fact may be true, but nonetheless the government needs to have some roles, and a good government in a democracy has the responsibility of providing the basic necessities. This may involve some socialism where a capitalist attitude, i.e. the market forces, would otherwise leave sections of the population with nothing. It is actually in a capitalist economy's best interest to have government spending. And how could government spend money but in a socialist context, being as it's the peoples' money they spend.

You would probably argue that all social programs are bad because they interfere with market forces. Well, picture this: Education is privatized and only left to market forces. Due to the cost, after 2 generations, only about 1/3 of the population of country X is educated. This represents a horrible reduction in the educated work force, so there will be little R&D, and the country will fall behind the markets in the global economy. To make matters worse, these people who are educated will be the richest 1/3 of the population. Incredibly rich people tend to not only stop working, but they also tend to have less babies, so perhaps in 4 or 5 generations, demand for education will lower, reducing the cost, but by then country X has no productive capacity, and all of the aspirations of the bottom 1/3 (the ones that are left), are gone. How does that work for society? or do you expect private industries will subsidize the education of less affluent people?

oh yeah

[freedommatters]

read the bit about the only way there could be a failure is because of greed? and you expect us to link up with the usa? ha ha

Re:oh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you could sell some more T-Shirts and bumper stickers about it if it happened, you greedy bastard!

Re:oh yeah

[freedommatters]

ooh, good idea (greed? wtf?)

Office Space

[gooru]

"This is horrible, this idea." -- Office Space

Re:Office Space

[Mipsalawishus]

"Yea..see..I'm going to have to disagree with you on that..." "You did get the memo about those TPS reports, didn't you?"

Re:Office Space

[cscx]

Sounds better when Samir says it...

Northeast?

[Vic]

From my perspective (Canadian) it's more accurate to say it was in the south-east. :)

Re:Northeast?

[greentree]

no, michigan is definitely not southeast for DTE's 2.1 million customers lost power.

Re:Northeast?

[Xzzy]

As a Canadian, you should have learned by age 2 that America is incapable of reporting on anything from other than it's own perspective. ;)

Re:Northeast?

[Anonymous Coward]

really? southeast is where? florida or someplace like that? florida was uneffected. look at a map you fucking idiot.

Re:Northeast?

[Dannon]

I hear this complaint a lot about American news sources, that they are "incapable of reporting from non-American perspectives". But I would put it to you that no news source can honestly claim to report news from a perspective too far removed from that of the reporters.

For example, if I want to read a straight-up unadulterated Iraqi viewpoint of the war, or the outage, or anything, I'm not going to go to Fox News, I'm going to go to an Iraqi news source. British? I'll go to the BBC, or the Telegraph, or something like that. Canadian? Well, there's a-plenty of Canadian news sources on the web.

Likewise, if I want to read American perspectives on anything, I'm not going to be reading the BBC.

In fact, I'd propose that when a news source goes too far out of their way to show "the other side", they risk covering up important truths altogether. Look at how CNN deliberately squelched stories that might make the Hussein regime look bad, all to keep their "access" to Baghdad.

It is as it is. Reporting facts is one thing, reporting "perspectives" is another. It ain't an American thing, it's a human thing.

Re:Northeast?

[grug0]

Likewise, if I want to read American perspectives on anything, I'm not going to be reading the BBC.

Personally, I think the best strategy is the opposite. The less involved and close to an issue a reporter is, the less likely they are to be influenced by bias.

Re:Northeast?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Canadian, you should have learned by age 2 that America is incapable of reporting on anything from other than it's own perspective. ;)


And you should have learned by age 12 that it's is short for it is and its is the possessive form.

Re:Northeast?

[freeweed]

if I want to read a straight-up unadulterated Iraqi viewpoint of the war, or the outage, or anything, I'm not going to go to Fox News, I'm going to go to an Iraqi news source.

Yeah, because we all know just how well informed the Iraqi Information Minister is. I'm still pretty sure the Americans haven't been into Baghdad yet.

Re:Northeast?

[Dannon]

Every reporter's going to have some sort of bias, whether they admit it to themselves or not. They're only human. And the counterpoint is, the less involved they are, the less accurate their facts may be.

I'd personally rather know what a reporter's bias is up front, so I can decide for myself how many grains of salt I should take with any particular claim.

Re:Northeast?

[grug0]

Every reporter's going to have some sort of bias, whether they admit it to themselves or not. They're only human. And the counterpoint is, the less involved they are, the less accurate their facts may be.

Sure, but this is the information age. Accuracy of information is less of a problem when there are a multitude of sources to choose from. The problem isn't so much getting accurate data as piecing it all together into a representative whole.

I'd personally rather know what a reporter's bias is up front, so I can decide for myself how many grains of salt I should take with any particular claim.

Maybe, but even if you know somebody's bias you cannot know what information they are concealing or downplaying. This would only work if you had two wildly opposing sources.

Re:Northeast?

[Rolo Tomasi]

So you've seen Rashomon then? :o)

Re:Northeast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat shit and die , homo !!

Re:Northeast?

[listen]

I don't think that anybody is claiming that non-American news sources are peachy clean and experience things without a perceptual or cultural bias. That is a fact of the human condition - we can only know things within our perceptual framework - blah Descartes blah Heidegger blah.

The difference with American news sources is that this cultural distortion seems to be ignored, and as a result, much greater in effect. As a Brit, I was shocked when in New York at the one sidedness of reports on Israel-Palestine. And the whole NYT fabrication stuff - this would not have been so big an issue in almost any other country, because the assumption is that all the media has some slant. I was surprised at how a lot of Americans were so shocked that journalists are not transferring direct knowledge of deep reality into their minds.

I would say that American media is far more insular, and far more likely to distort the truth. They are not uniquely different in having a bias and twisting the truth - they are just plain worse than a lot of the rest of the western worlds media.

Re:Northeast?

[dirty]

This really is too stupid to respond to, but...Slashdot is an American site. It is hosted in America, run by Americans, and most of the readers I would guess are Americans. It only makes sense to report from an American perspective, and to use American phrases. What term should have been used? Do you think "New England" would have made any sense to anyone outside of the US? And it wouldn't have been accurate anyway. NY, NJ, PA, OH, and MI are not considered to be part of New England. The only way I can think to put it that wouldn't involve using local terms would be to list every area affected, and that's just not practical for a short story blurb.

In summary, get over yourself. If you aren't an American and are reading an American psuedo-news site, don't complain about things being told from an American point of view.

Re:Northeast?

[Anonymous Coward]

if any comment should be mod'ed up on this thread, its this one.

Re:Northeast?

[Anonymous Coward]

That' ok, since so many Americans couldn't locate Baghdad on a map.

Re:Northeast?

[Scrameustache]

I would put it to you that no news source can honestly claim to report news from a perspective too far removed from that of the reporters.


The simple fact that you think Canada is "too far removed" for U.S. reporters speaks volume.

Re:Northeast?

[iCat]

As a Brit, I was shocked when in New York at the one sidedness of reports on Israel-Palestine.

I agree. However, as well as being shocked I find the one-sided presentation extremely embarrasing. The fact is, in the UK, the media would never get away with the spin put out on this issue by our American cousins. People would just laugh then stop buying the newspaper or switch over to Big Brother.

Re:Northeast?

[Anonymous Coward]

We could if we wanted to. It's that big, black, burn mark on the map.

I'm sure you're just the mother-fucking map man where you're from. People waiting in line for you to give them directions and all that.

So what the fuck is your point, anyway? The appropriate people are taking care of business, and that means the rest of us lack how?

Re:Northeast?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "Canada"?

Re:Northeast?

[tealover]

Americans feel the same way when they travel to Europe and see the excessive slant to the Palestinians.

Recently it was reported that a professor at Oxford refused to take on an Israeli researcher for political reasons. When an esteemed European institution like that becomes infested with such anti-Israeli views, it makes me wonder whether the European perspective is really unbiased, as they would like to claim.

Re:Northeast?

[Igmuth]

That's like asking the French to give their news from the prospective of Germany!

Re:Northeast?

[Igmuth]

And the whole NYT fabrication stuff - this would not have been so big an issue in almost any other country, because the assumption is that all the media has some slant

There is a pretty big differnce bettween slant, and flat out BS. Any country that isn't annoyed when they find out they are being lied to, is either very jaded, or....

Re:Northeast?

[listen]

You really need to go and talk to some Israelis.

I mean normal people. Almost all Israelis I have ever met are shocked by the bias of the American media. They still believe they are in the right, and have a right to live where they do - but they don't take the exceedingly unbalanced view of the American press. The really sickening thing is the white wash - the fact that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis who are presented to the American people look very European.

I was in New Zealand, traveling around for a while with an Israeli jewish guy. He, like a lot of Israelis, has a generally semitic look - ie he could pass for an Arab. We met some American girls in a hostel, and when he said he was from Israel, you could see the thoughts going through their heads - "You must be Muslim, I'm scared, you must be a terrorist! Argh!!!". He had to spend a good five minutes assuring them that he was in fact Jewish, but he had some Palestinian friends, and that not all Muslims are terrorists. It was embarrassing.

I don't claim that a large proportion of Americans would act this extreme, or are this ignorant, but I just wasn't that surprised by this behaviour after seeing the kind of media coverage the conflict gets in the US.

Re:Northeast?

[listen]

It was the level of the outrage. The initial assumption was that the NYT is gospel, and never lies, has some vaunted "journalistic integrity", etc. No one would really believe that about any media source in the UK, it just would not shock people as much. It'd be a big story, true, but it would not be a revelation.

Re:Northeast?

[Wild Wizard]

In that case you could explain the missing ".us" on the end of the domain name then?

Re:Northeast?

[MegaHamsterX]

Oh, you must have forgotten that .com .net .org were originally US, such as why .us is not used for anything much other than local governments, sorry man, that's reality, it just isn't cool to have a .us domain, that and explaining what anything other than .com to an AOL user is fruitless. That how slashdot avoided the early AOL crowd :-)

But really, not trying to bash on you or anything, just general statements, even thinking slashdot is a news source of any validity is......well mistaken.

We can't even get the editors to use a spell checker or some sort of anti-dupe mechanism.

Slashdot is biased to the American side, it's in the FAQ, but please don't compare it with traditional news sources.

Funny thing is I have seen some of the comments on Slashdot used in traditional news sources, so smile you're being watched.

Re:Northeast?

[iamghetto]

The thing is, a lot of news sources can and do report events in an objective, in a sense, "removed" way.

In my opinion, america might the worst place for unbiases news because of the simple fact that america's sphere of influence is so huge. America's interests lie all over the globe. But if you look at a country like Canada, or say a smaller relatively independent country like Sweden, you will get a lot good open minded journalism. How much does Sweden really care about Liberia??? :)

It's just my observation that countries who don't mess around in other countries business, yet care about the world as a whole, can bring you fairly honest reporting.

Re:Northeast?

[Xrikcus]

Indeed, though that's not really relevent to perspective. An American reporter may be biased towards Americans, but they will still have a much better American perspective than, say, a British reporter would have.

Re:Northeast?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who in their right mind would want a world wide power grid?

Oh thats right...the Americans.

I think its a terrible idea. The US already consumes around 25% of the world's yearly resource consumption despite having a small percentage (what is it...1% or so?) of the world population.

Disgraceful.

What a nation of self-centered, self righteous gluttons.

As the world starts running short on resources, especially fossil fuels, Im sure we will hear a chant in the distance as large parts of the world begin to suffer due to no viable alternative for them to use.

USA....USA.....USA....

(And no, Im not Canadian)

"Click here to download infoporn graphics"

[Anonymous Coward]

What am I supposed to make of that?

One Power Grid...

[Anonymous Coward]

One Grid to rule them all,
One Grid to find them,
One Grid to bring them all,
And in the Darkness bind them...

Not a great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The power outage would have never occured if the power distribution system was distributed and centralized. Though the idea of one power gird for the whole world sounds interesting, it would have many problem, political and technical which would make it very difficult to implement.

Re:Not a great idea

[BiggerIsBetter]

The power outage would have never occured if the power distribution system was distributed and centralized.

Uh, I think Distributed and NON-centralized is a better idea. Otherwise your just giving monopolies even more power to gouge consumers and make big mistakes. If it did go ahead. we should be able to use any supplier in the world, including ourselves. Like that's gonna happen.

Re:Not a great idea

[buck_wild]

I'm pretty sure the power distribution system is both distributed AND centralized.

Note how the Northestern US and Southeastern Canada lost power, but Northeastern Canada did not. So a large group of folks have distributed power, yet the effect was more localized than it could have been.

Re:Not a great idea

[thebigmacd]

Quebec didn't lose power because they use HVDC which isn't affected so much by power reflections.

Re:Not a great idea

[Thor Ablestar]

Our Russian energy boss Chubais (hated by everybody because of his role in killing the Soviet economy. We even have the special (obscene) word "chubaisets" - meaning the end of final economical destruction caused by Chubais) told the www.rbc.ru that the similar total blackouts are IMPOSSIBLE in Russia. Firstly, the system is highly centralized, secondly, the protective automatics will initiate rolling blackouts long before the system loses sync and falls apart.
Then, Chubais needs only minutes to restore the grid.

Monopoly

[Luguber123]

I guess there are people that have spent more than 24 hours of their lives without electricity. then again, when there is only one provider left, I guess most of the polar areas will be unpopulated once again.

Poor you

[Anonymous Coward]

23 and a half hours without power? I had 24 hours without power and longer without water. Consider yourself LUCKY!

Re:Poor you

[Anonymous Coward]

Try eleven days in the dead of winter

Re:Poor you

[Anonymous Coward]

yikes. was it an ice storm? those are terrible.

Re:Poor you

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Try fifteen weeks in the Sahara desert.

I think this is very dangerous.

[Krapangor]

A world wide power grid mean that the whole world is connected with one power grid.
However, we all know that there are conflicts between many countries of the world. The world wide power grid would be soon a strategic element in such conflicts. One country could e.g. try to suck all power out of the grid to black out an opponent and make a preventive strike against them. But such tatic move wouldn't only affect the conflict members but the whole world. So if Bush strikes Iraq, then France, Russia and China would be sitting in the dark.
I think I dodn't have to point out further how dangerous this would be.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[suwain_2]

One country could e.g. try to suck all power out of the grid to black out an opponent....

Just short 'em together. It should make for a spectacular fireworks show. ;)

Realistically, though, I forsee this having advanced 'routing' and even 'firewalls' like the Internet. In other words, when Iraq suddenly starts using 10x the normal power, we simply say "Okay, we're going to cut back on how much power we 'share'"

It'd be more advanced than just wires run all over the place. I'd think you'd be able to say "Only share 10 megawatts" or whatnot.

It also gives us the ability to say "Iraq's been using too much power. We're about to go war with them." And get all the other providers to stop sharing power.

IMHO, this works perfectly if, and only if, it's just a means of sharing _excess_ power, but preserving (and steadfastly refusing to share) the power we need. When we have excess power being generated, we can share some. When we need a little more, we can borrow some. Like those "Take a penny, leave a penny" things. (Okay, strange example, I know.) Someone's not going to clean out your savings account by taking everything in the penny thing. All it does is helps others.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[grug0]

Not to mention the fact that some unscrupulous countries may try to pass off low quality power as higher quality power and cheat their neighbours. Nowadays, a lot of private energy companies make a quick buck by using cheaper sawtooth wave power rather than the sine waves.

The RMS voltage is still the same but the sharp points of sawtooth waves can damage sensitive components. In fact sawtooth power can decrease the lifespan of electrical appliances.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, if you're going to troll the comments you could at least learn how to speak English properly.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[CoreDump01]

A world wide power grid mean that the whole world is connected with one power grid. Right, but the trans-border connections can be opened by pressing a button - on both sides of the border.# however, we all know that there are conflicts between many countries of the world. The world wide power grid would be soon a strategic element in such conflicts. One country could e.g. try to suck all power out of the grid to black out an opponent and make a preventive strike against them And what would stop the victim to open up its connection to the outside? Interesting thought though. How could one waste thousands of MegaWatts? I mean it's not like it'd be enough to short out some wires heh, how can one "evaporate" thousands of MegaWatts? The only way to do that would be to nuke the plants i'd say. So if Bush strikes Iraq, then France, Russia and China would be sitting in the dark. LOL may i remind you that france, russia and china have enough plants to supply their own needs? They'd cut the grid at the border, problem solved. I think I dodn't have to point out further how dangerous this would be. No you don't, because its nonsense. A worldwide grid would benefit everyone who is hooked up. Poor countries w/o stable powersupplies would benefit a *lot* (they'd still have to pay for the current). The big blackout in the USA wouldn't have happened since europe has enough overproduction of power which could have helped to solve the problem within *minutes* and not days... You Sir, apear the be a Troll

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[los furtive]

A world wide power grid mean that the whole world is connected with one power grid.

Mensa member, beware of stating the obvious.

One country could e.g. try to suck all power out of the grid to black out an opponent and make a preventive strike against them.

No, that would be an offensive strike. There is no such thing as a preventative strike, only those who strike first.

I think I dodn't have to point out further how dangerous this would be.

You're right, you dodn't.

Mensa member, beware of the high IQ

Mensa member, beware of the grammar.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[mhesseltine]

Why is it that when I read this, the first thing that came to mind was Bittorrent? Maybe we should get Brahm to work with the electric companies.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[gl4ss]

well, i don't know about usa, but most developed countries have such system and contracts already(ie. finland buys electricity from russia, and takes care that it wont f*** up finlands system if it gets interrupted). and the grid is monitored constantly and if theres sudden surges or too much power on lines they adjust routing accordingly(with reserve powers available for this sole purpose of easing up the load in case lines get overloaded).

now, taken all that into consideration i must say that i was amazed that such a blackout that happened now in the usa was possible in a country commonly considered to be pretty developed. well, what amazed me more was that they didn't know instantly exactly why it happened. hell, blackouts like that shouldn't be possible unless major parts(or the final landline) of the grid gets damaged by something external, like a storm or other disaster. going for profit doesn't necessarely mean that you should fu** reliability(as it can get get very expensive as seen), this is the kind of a situation that i would have expected to happen in mexico, peru, russia or some other country that simple didn't have the money to keep up with the demand and even they would have seen it coming(and limited power).

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[kcelery]

Putting a 110V 60Hz with a 220V 50Hz together, anybody?

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[Politburo]

Long range power transmission is not done at 110 or 220 volts. That change is done at the transformers on the poles. The highest power lines on the poles in my area are at ~720 volts, and are stepped down to 120 at the transformers. For long-range transmission, we're talking tens of thousands of volts.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

ur a fag

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

break tags, motherfucker, do you know them?

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[Odin's Raven]

It also gives us the ability to say "Iraq's been using too much power. We're about to go war with them." And get all the other providers to stop sharing power.

Ah yes, a "Coalition of the Generating". ;-)

This scenario makes the assumption that Iraq would be getting a significant amount of its energy from the United States and U.S. allies, which I rather doubt is the case. It's difficult to inconvenience a country by embargoing a product that the country doesn't actually import from you. (Seems to me that this would be rather like the U.S. refusing to sell cigars to Cuba.)

It might be interesting to ponder which countries would likely become major power producers if there were a worldwide distribution grid. Would oil-rich countries find that it becomes economically advantageous to stop shipping petroleum all over the place, and instead use their resources domestically to run power plants, exporting electricity instead? Instead of OPEC being the "Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries", might it be re-acronymed as the "Organziation of Power Exporting Countries"?

And at the other end of the supply/demand curve, which countries would be major importers of power? How much of the U.S. power demand is actually met using domestic resources? Would the U.S. be able to meet all of its power needs, and be able to export power in significant quantities to other countries? Or would the United States instead have to rely on imported electricity? (Perhaps forming a "North Atlantic Transmission Organization" to ensure that it has a reliable supply of power in the event of a war?)

In short, if a conflict arise in the future, isn't it more likely that the United States would be at the receiving end of an energy embargo, rather than being in a position where it could instigate an embargo on its own?

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[kcelery]

The worst part is of course not the voltage, which could be step up or down by a transformer. There is a phase angle difference between the 50Hz and the 60Hz where the right state of mind would not mix the two grids together.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know converting frequencies on a large power scale is actually done by mechanically connecting a motor to a generaor.
Really big motor-generator combinations can have efficiencies right above 90%.
Additional benefit is that the inertia of the rotating masses helps stabilizing the system.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[ces]

Since many long distance power transmission lines are DC this shouldn't be much of a problem. You want to do this anyway when connecting a large area to avoid problems with generators being out of phase.

Connecting 50hz and 60hz systems together is a solved problem.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[operagost]

DC isn't very efficient over long distances. This is why we even bother with AC in the first place. Where are you getting your information?

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[thebigmacd]

DC is more efficient than AC for extremely long distances. Quebec's long-distance distribution system is DC, and it is the most modern in the world thanks to the big ice storm. As a matter of fact, the news is that Quebec was not affected by the blackout in any respect: the DC system buffers loads changes quite effetively. AC has huge power-reflection problems that will cook generators when a load disappears.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[Ashtead]

Low quality power -- as in heat or high-entropy variants? :) I guess it is more a matter of power with too much variation in frequency and voltage.

I think there will have to be some strict requirements as to frequency and waveforms, and definitely no sawtooth (which contains a number of harmonics that tend to be attenuated in transformers and such devices anyways)

As for interconnecting the continents I think the easiest way of dealing with the different system frequencies 50 Hz and 60 Hz, would be through a DC link. DC conversion would also limit problems with localized voltage spikes and variable frequencies.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

DC long distance transmission isn't any good for low voltages. Neither is AC for low voltages.

High voltage is a different matter.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[ChozCunningham]

Well, I guess, if we need the approval of France Russia and China to go to war, lest they be sitting in the dark, wars might be reduced by the multinational beuracracy... oooh, that sounds dangerous. Unless you are a draft-age citizen of a country with a propensity for initiating "police actions"...Then maybe, it ain't so bad.

Memsa members, beware your high IQ's. That and $5.00 gets you a cup at starbuck's.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[saturndude]

What happens when a rich country (like USA) frequently sells extra power to a poor country (say, Mexico) and the poor country cannot afford to pay?

What if the poor country sets up "dirty" generating stations that pollute a lot in order to be the lowest cost producer?

What happens if the electric generating industry is corrupt in either country (Enron)?

Do the other countries have good safe equipment with proper switching, failsafes and extra transmission lines? Sharing power on a millisecond's notice is nice, but it only works when everyone maintains their equipment well. If one country loses the trust of the others, nobody will have any incentive to maintain their lines well.

And larger grids mean that larger failures can occur. Each country might need to generate double or triple the amount that it needs to power its neighbors (and on a millisecond's notice). This is cost prohibitive.

Re:I think this is very dangerous.

[ces]

DC isn't very efficient over long distances. This is why we even bother with AC in the first place. Where are you getting your information

DC vs. AC really isn't an issue as far as transmission losses are concerned. Ohms law is still Ohms law.

From what I understand most newer long distance DC transmission lines are operating in the megavolt range. This is where the efficiency comes from. DC rather than AC is used more to prevent phasing problems, provide load management, and to provide isolation.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

This won't happen until the Africans start needing electricity.

how does it work?

[Cowboy Bill]

Take a look h ere</a>. Meanwhile let me read it and get back to you guys.

Re:how does it work?

[NickFitz]

That should be here, methinks :-)

Paraphrasing "Split Second"

[McNihil]

I need UPS... big fscking UPS

a few thoughts...

[SubtleNuance]

One solution is to have distributed, smaller, RENEWABLE sources of energy generation. Windmills and Solar installations go along way to making a neighbourhood, or small city 'black-out proof'; further, it provides an opportunity for community self-sufficiency and de-centralized administration of a communities' infrastructure.

instead of building 10 new natural gas power stations, we should build 1000 new small wind installations, distribute them around liberally to off-set the heavy reliance on out-of-reach massively-capital intensive projects.

The good would also be that this would cause NO POLLUTION.

Seeing how reliant we are on electricity in the West a couple things come to mind: A) Conservation, as always, is being overlooked by the pro-consume propaganda of western consumer-culture advocates. and B) The Re-regulation of the NorthAmerican Hydro infrastructure will only lead to a culture of capitalist finger-pointing, profiteering and irresponsibility. If the Hydro system is COMPLETELY privatized, who would get power first after a blackout? Residents who need it to live or Industrial/Commercial Interests who will write contracts to assure their production?

Re:a few thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, of course windmills and massive fields of solar panels are a danger to birds and other animals of all types. The environmentalist idiots pushed for a lot of windmill generators around here a few years ago and then whey birds of all sorts started flying into them and getting chopped up, they complained about that *too*.

Re:a few thoughts...

[kmak]

You mean like this?

It got to start from the government..

Re:a few thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

The good would also be that this would cause NO POLLUTION.

I'm certainly not an expert at this, but wouldn't the building and maintenance of these windmills cause pretty much the same amount of pollution as the gas stations?

Re:a few thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would it be the same and not significantly more or less?

Re:a few thoughts...

[SpaceCadetTrav]

Solar and wind generation would definately help prevent power outages, as long as it's sunny and windy when we really need it. That sounds like a GREAT investment in reliability.

Re:a few thoughts...

[silas_moeckel]

Why bother with wastefull wind generation plants (they waste space and generate noise) Fuel cells work can be powered easily off biomass (aka our waste) and with a unit in every house producing 5kw we would have a good deal of excess capacity while keeping generation local the unit sits on a pad outside and is the size of a refrigerator. Realy is you use a pump to compress the natural gas to a storage tank you have a decent backup supply.

For the more power consious attach a battery farm in the middle (ok the eco people dont like these to much but they are reliable) with a larger inverter it could handle larger short peak loads. You still have a power grid to share power from house to house again filling individual peaks (eletric ovens on clean eletric water heaters) Obvious those 50s all eletric houses would need bigger units (or to get a life and forget about eletric heating with the current trends away from nucular power)

Re:a few thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes as we all well know SOLAR POWER works well in BLACKOUTS

That's right, it does, even overnight.

For a perfect example, check out the callboxes along many interstates. For those who don't have them in their area, callboxes are emergency telephones located every few miles in the breakdown lane. The idea is that if you run into car trouble and don't have a cell phone, you can walk to the nearest callbox, pick up the phone, and get connected to the state DoT or Highway Patrol who can send help.

Almost all of these suckers are powered entirely by solar energy. They have a small solar panel at the top, which powers the phone during the day and also charges a battery. The battery powers the phone overnight when no sunlight is available. Many modern electric construction signages (those big flashing arrows, etc.) are also moving at least partially to solar power.

Contrary to common misconception, solar power doesn't have to be used the moment it's generated. It will work just fine during a blackout, and the only thing that determines how long it lasts is the size of your panels and the capacity of your battery.

Re:a few thoughts...

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Yes as we all well know SOLAR POWER works well in BLACKOUTS.

Yes, we do. And we know they work espically well in a blackout at 4:10pm on a mid-august afternoon with not a cloud in the sky.

Re:a few thoughts...

[Jzanu]

Several faults in argument, presentation. First address, fault in distribution not commonly fault of lack of power for distribution as could be settled by use alternate sources, but by inadequate design of distribution system and incomplete use of distribution capacity to avoid potential damage to power converter switches. Imposed limitations to effective designs result use antiquated Gate Turn-Off Thyristor with expensive snubber capacitor power converters with low frequency AC at 50-60hz requiring larger VA load for particular motor than required with higher AC frequency and effect on industry demand for greater wattage supply setting high specific load to transformers and switches.

Secondary, method of use large-surface area generative methods electrical power generation, wind turbine or photo-voltaic cell, impractical for large scale generation and distribution. By means of setting necessary storage and exchange systems possibly valid with extensive reconstruction of even currently correctly designed redundant distribution systems may have validity, though still surface area required and power used in manufacturing for little return per-unit is detriment. Area required for photo-voltaic cells and limited local return from construction in non optimum locations makes rather impractical project, applies to wind turbine also. As to comment, no pollution, it is rather limited in scope or inaccurate, manufacturing waste for production large numbers of photo-voltaic cells is significant.

As to other, water turbine effective where possible, nuclear fission reactor-breeder reactor inclusive of plutonium cycle, steam turbine in use geothermal heat to water; first and third useful only in limited locations where geography allows for significant returns of electrical generation, second has by means of breeder reactor least effect detrimental on environment given control and limitation waste heat; all significantly more practical than described methods of provision alternate power, though again lack of power is not cause error in distribution, distribution system errors in design responsible.

As to concern over "west", rather odd and excessively generalizing terms are those not mentioning specific and defined geographical areas, is the bases valid? Failure of distribution systems effects all, though industrial facilities often have secondary distribution methods or do pay more to company and so have right to greater priority in restoration of power than residences. Consider also, hospital is considered in majority zoning as commercial type, goal is higher priority to simple residences above this and associated facilities? Expense of comparison construction 10 natural gas based generative facilities with output 65-90 MW each by power than waste generated in manufacturing for equal number wind turbines for generation equal amounts power and for wind turbine placement in optimum environments, assuming even constant maximum theoretical output of wind turbines after placement given rarity of environment with optimum conditions.

Conspiracy is illusion of public ignorant of economic principles, total cost of manufacturing and operation, in matters which are not clearly understood by the public. Seek information on matters, do not assume based on conspiracy of ignorant public. Do not accept conspiracy for illusion of forwarding effort of environmentalists; often forwarded ideas result in more detriment to environmentalist goals than current available efficient methods.

Re:a few thoughts...

[earthforce_1]

Unfortunately, it isn't easy to store electrical energy on a large scale. The wind doesn't blow harder, the sun doesn't shine brighter as the load increases. You have to use it as it is generated, and what will we do on a cloudy, calm day?

Besides, this suffers from the NIMBY syndrome. Nobody wants it sitting in their back yard. Distributed small scale generation would improve reliability, but nobody wants an ugly, noisy diesel generator operating near their house. Small scale hydroelectric projects would be great, except it would face opposition from those who would oppose damming up local creeks and rivers.

Public or private is immaterial. Private generation can be regulated and/or licenced under a charter that guarantees they will operate in accordance with the public interest. I a relative who worked for the (former) publicly owned Ontario Hydro, who can tell many tales of waste, for which we are all still carrying the debt.

Re:a few thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hydrogen is an excellent way to distribute power.

Hydrogen power generators can be powerful enough to power city blocks but produce no pollution except water vapor, so you don't get "not in my backward" opposition.

On top of that, wind power and solar (or whatever comes up in the future that is even better) can be used to produce the hydrogen that can then be easily transported to the small ministations.

Re:a few thoughts...

[suss]

The good would also be that this would cause NO POLLUTION.

Yes, windmills and solar panels just appear out of thin air...

Actually, these things have to be manufactured, a process which causes pollution.

I recall the manufacturing of a solar panel takes more energy than it'll ever give back.

Re:a few thoughts...

[lucifuge31337]

Fuel cells work can be powered easily off biomass (aka our waste) and with a unit in every house producing 5kw we would have a good deal of excess capacity while keeping generation local

I can just see it on the local news: "It's gonna be another scorcher today! Everybody please remember to eat some ruffage tonight so you can back one out before the afternoon heat. We'll need it to keep those air conditioners going."

Re:a few thoughts...

[yog]

Conservation. What a concept.

I read somewhere (can't find the ref, WSJ maybe) that California might have avoided its electricity shortage last summer simply by painting the roofs of all public buildings white.

I would advocate solar cells and solar water heating systems mandated for all public buildings, and make a tax incentive to home owners to install them on new or existing properties. Add to that fuel cells in the basement to store excess power for use at night or in cloudy weather. (It should be noted that, contrary to common belief, solar roof systems do work in cloudy weather.)

Every house should be able to coast for a few days on stored power during a blackout.

Remote towns and rural residences should make maximum use of wind, solar, and hydro power to mitigate the costs of transporting electricity from distant plants.

I'm surprised Mr. Bush did not announce a package of tax incentives to make these things a reality. But, I suppose that he takes a corporate, big oil point of view; simply swap hydrogen for petroleum and keep the existing infrastructure.

A tax incentive for hybrid gas-electric cars would be nice, too. Cut oil consumption and solve so many other problems: dependence on nasty Arab dictators, greenhouse pollution, etc.

Re:a few thoughts...

[afidel]

That is true only of the most inefficient of solar cells like those used in solar calculators. For high efficiency cells that are produced today for power generation the energy payback for their building materials ranges from a few months to a year and a half. Considering a well maintained solar stack can last 25+ years you obviously are getting back many times more energy than you put in.

Re:a few thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's kind of a cute idea. I think there are some legitmate aspects of it but it doesn't address the issue. The problem is that we needed more energy that we had for a period of time and the current electrical grid fails catastrophically when that happens. I think solar and wind work nicely to soften the edges and costs associated with power consumption but they don't address the issue of how the system deals with shortfalls.

Now if we continue to move ahead and keep deregulating then we could do something like take greater North Dakota and turn it in to a wind farm, it has plenty of land that isn't being used and enough wind resources to power California. While doing that, build a set of nuclear power plants to back up the wind and you might have something really nice. An area without a booming economy could become a major energy broker, most of the energy would be clean and in the event that there was a terrible wind drout they could use nuclear which would normally site idle and produce very small amounts of waste. As the technology progresses they could use surplus energy to create hydrogen for either the hydrogen economy or for fuelcells to fill the voids of wind. Best part, after the initial costs are eaten, and let's be frank, it's going to cost billions and billions to do, oil is simply the cheapest form of portable energy known, but after they are amortized and the system is paid for it doesn't hurt if the energy isn't used. There isn't an issue of storing oil or coal or transporting. You could simply use what you need.

Re:a few thoughts...

[thebigmacd]

It's actually quite easy to store electricity...hydroelectric dams use extra power when there is low demand to pump water back into the reservoir. It may not be as efficient as a capacitor or a battery storing DC, but it sure is large-scale.

Re:a few thoughts...

[ces]

While making wind turbines does use energy in manufacturing it is still a net gain with today's large (~1 Mw) wind turbines. I think the current numbers are no worse than a Coal or gas turbine plant and may actually be better (no need for boilers+steam turbine+cooling tower or a gas turbine)

Re:a few thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

You dolt. How is solar power 'renewable'?

Re:a few thoughts...

[SubtleNuance]

What you are describing is "embodied" or "latent" energy.

The manufacture of an object requires electricity. An object that *manufactures* electricity itself must overcome its own embodied energy in order to be sensible.

Wind power technology long ago passed this threshold. Current accessible solar technologies barely exceed these thresholds. The bottom line is this: Buy Wind power when you can, otherwise, buy solar -- solar is just there on small scale, but getting better..

Re:a few thoughts...

[Thor Ablestar]

instead of building 10 new natural gas power stations, we should build 1000 new small wind installations, distribute them around liberally to off-set the heavy reliance on out-of-reach massively-capital intensive projects.

Thanks a lot :-(. The 1000 wind installations will produce with their wings so much infrasound that all the population (And the beasts, too) will surely go mad.

Re:a few thoughts...

[Cyberdyne]

I would advocate solar cells and solar water heating systems mandated for all public buildings, and make a tax incentive to home owners to install them on new or existing properties.

Already done (the tax incentive bit) - you get (depending on the state) part of the cost paid by a grant, a break on property tax, and any excess electricity is often bought back by the utility at retail price (i.e. if you generate a total of X units/month, and use X units/month, you pay $0 - effectively getting to use the utility as a free giant battery). There's a major problem with increased solar cell sales, though: current solar cells use waste silicon wafers from semiconductor manufacture. Once you exhaust that supply - there are only a finite number of substandard wafers produced - you have to start paying the full price, putting solar cell prices up dramatically.

Add to that fuel cells in the basement to store excess power for use at night or in cloudy weather. (It should be noted that, contrary to common belief, solar roof systems do work in cloudy weather.)

They don't work too well at night, though - and trying to store power is very inefficient and expensive. (Someone linked to suitable batteries; one which could deliver a little over 100W through the night was $399. Painful.)

Every house should be able to coast for a few days on stored power during a blackout.

You want to store a few days worth of power?! Even the hardened, 100% self-sufficient solar/wind junkies don't attempt that. I'd also worry about what kind of problem you're planning for which would prevent the sun appearing for a couple of days ;-)

I'm surprised Mr. Bush did not announce a package of tax incentives to make these things a reality. But, I suppose that he takes a corporate, big oil point of view; simply swap hydrogen for petroleum and keep the existing infrastructure.

More accurately, he takes a pragmatic view: current batteries cost far, far more than the equivalent power station per kW, and that's just to store power rather than produce it!

A tax incentive for hybrid gas-electric cars would be nice, too. Cut oil consumption and solve so many other problems: dependence on nasty Arab dictators, greenhouse pollution, etc.

Again, already done. I'd prefer a strong move away from fossil-fuel power stations; if you scrapped them all, the only countries the US would be importing oil from outside North America would be the UK and Norway, without removing a single SUV or selling a single extra hybrid car. Or you feed America's agricultural waste (which is currently a pollution issue itself) into this - and make America the biggest oil producer on earth, making it entirely self-sufficient for oil at current consumption levels. No more oil imports from Canada, let alone the Middle East! Combine the two, and...

Re:a few thoughts...

[FroMan]

Hi, I'm a representative from reality.

Wind is not magic. Really, it isn't. I have been doing a fair amount of research for what it takes to install a wind mill on some property I am looking on buying/building on.

First, wind is not constant. There are only certain times of the day that actually is windy enough to use wind power. Second, wind mills require a large amount of land to be effective (which cities do not have in bounty). Also the tower the generator is on needs to be atleast 35ft tall, then it is reccomended to have the lowest point of the blades on the wind mill atleast 35ft above the ground.

Now we also have solar. Again, this takes a reasonable amount of surface area to work with. As of now, solar isn't terribley effecient also, so to have usable amount of electricity you need a lot of money and area for the panels.

Once we have either source setup you need to also setup batteries to store the energy (which are not cheap and need replacing every 7-10 years). Also toss in the need for an inverter (unless you plan onn running your house on DC, which is also more dangerous than AC). Finally if you want a grid connection you can add more to the cost there.

All in all, I think I will still work towards putting up a wind mill and possibley solar (probably later, rather than sooner with the solar) since I think it would be fun. But I will never realize the cost of all the equipment and setup required. Right now you will not make money or even save money by going wind/solar.

Porr little you

[GnuVince]

As someone who spent 23 and a half hours without power, I'm thinking this is a brilliant plan!

Wow, this must've been a real ordeal. It's not like some people in Quebec missed electricity for a month during winter 5 years ago. I mean, not having power for a whole summer day must be so bad...

Re:Porr little you

[the uNF cola]

It's the net withdrawl speaking.

Re:Porr little you

[ameoba]

My thoughts exactly; while growing up ('burbs outside of Seattle), it wasn't uncommon to have multiple power outages during the fall/winter every year, each lasting 2-3 days. This was really fun since we were running on well water.

I'm not talking out in the sticks, either. I'm talking about 45mi North of Seattle, right off the freeway.

One worldwide power grid would help

[Quasar1999]

If it were implemented like the internet...

Ok, hold on... what I meant to say was, if it were implemented like the internet was supposed to be implemented. If the entire world was on one power grid, then a failure could be averted by pushing excess power to other locations, with multiple failsafe routes. Obviously the cause of the power failure was that transmission lines became over saturated, and generators could not pump their power anywhere (Electricity must be consumed the instant it's generated, unlike other commodities like gas and water). So if we had a better connected system, the generators could stay up, and just reroute their power to other locations while simultaneously having the other plants reduce output slightly, thus keeping the grid powered while a small section of transmission lines would have gone down.

Instead, we had a few lines go down, and because of the lack of proper interconnectivity in the power grid, and the fact that demand for the power the generators were generating disappeared (due to lack of transmission paths), they had to shut them down, thus cascading.

The fault that the 'experts' will eventually find is that the system cascaded because of lack of alternate transmission lines. So a global power grid, interconnected properly would never have a mass blackout happen.

Re:One worldwide power grid would help

[smokin_juan]

Electricity must be consumed the instant it's generated

Now damnit, this just isn't true - or at least it shouldn't be. Sure, electricity is a different form of energy and must be dealt with in different ways, but there's no reason you can't store it. For instance, if the power plant down the road from you is generating enough power for the moment only to find that the load has dropped sufficiently then part of that energy could be shunted to a dynamo (generator/motor) where the excess energy could be absorbed and stored in the momentum of a flywheel. As generators are dropped to accomodate the reduced load the dynamo is switched in to dump it's stored energy.

Another example might be a brine substance - I can't remember specifics, but I used to work for a company who was mfg controls for a tractor-trailer heating device which stored engine heat in a substance (water and sodium from what i remember, but it was certainly more complex) so it could be realesed later on to heat the truck cab w/o the engine running. Any excess energy from a saturated grid could be dumped into a resistive load saturated in the brine who's heat could later be consumed to generate steam for turbines. (you might also remember the hand warmers that are boiled and later "snapped" into action to release the heat).

hell, if you just dumped excess energy into a resistive element submerged in a man-made lake to be wasted as atmospheric heat at least you haven't wasted a generator or two.

You see, i've hear this argument here lately and can't help but wonder if some of these ideas or something similar are already in use... Does anyone know? Does anyone have the money to implement?

Re:One worldwide power grid would help

[hhnerkopfabbeisser]

This would't be implemented like the internet.
The internet is a "stupid" network, anyone can join and have anything transmitted anywhere else, and it will find it's way.

A power grid has to be regulated... but that isn't the problem, really, it's done quite successfully here in Europe.

If we here in Germany lost several plants at once, we could get power from France or Austria or somewhere else in Europe. We're very well-connected. I think the same applies to large parts of the "old Europe".

The other reason why it is very improbable we could see an outage like this is that we have reserves. Every power plant has to be able to increase it's output by 2% in a matter of seconds.
Every plant also has to be able to increase it's output further by shoving in more coal or something (probably doesn't apply to wind/water/sun-plants).

If a plant goes black, the other ones have the reserves to replace it easily.
As far as I know, most plants in the US operate on full capacity with no reserves at all, so when one plant goes black, the other ones in the same grid overload and shut down.

A little regulation can do wonders here. And yes, this will make power more expensive.

Re:One worldwide power grid would help

[49152]

With an hydroelectric plant storing energy is quite easy. You just pump water back uphill into the dam thus converting electric energy into potential energy.

Re:One worldwide power grid would help

[LaCosaNostradamus]

There are two problems here, one related to the physical structure, and the other to the socioeconomics behind the structure.

The first thing is the physical structure. It's a grid, and by its very nature it allowed a power problem to spread beyond any rational failure area. Hence, I've no faith in a larger or finer-grained grid. If we're going to have a grid, what's needed are more responsible nodes, and more ability to control local areas. Toledo OH (where I am now) came back online because of reliance on local power.

The second thing is the socioeconomics. The grid failed because it was designed to fail, by the nature of interconnections and failsafes that are prone themselves to failure ... due to underinvestment and lack of mandatory oversight. That much was perfectly clear before the outage, a la "deregulation" and California's recent woes. The outage is just the next level of expression of the effects of systemic degradation.

From the take-everything-and-invest-nothing culture behind electrical power these days, I've no faith in the outcome of any grid changes. The entire culture of investment wants nothing to do with planning for decades of reliability. Short-terms and profiteering are now the rule, and these are society destroyers, but people are so enamored by the false glitter of wealth they refuse to acknowledge this. Anyone with a sense of community, culture and history will understand this, but those people are long out of positions of influence.

Soooo ... go on and continue with your senseless blather about globalization of this, that and the other thing. There will be only two benefits for such things: people like you will feel very good about the world since it will be all glittery until the fall, and even more millionaires will arise from skimming the profits off of ever larger operations.

If you are willing to step back from the impending doom we face from burning investment capital like it was cordwood -- and from shifting as much profit as possible to the investors -- you can explore the ideas of decentralization.

Re:One worldwide power grid would help

[Melchior_of_wg]

But it would still be true. You can use (or consume) the electricity to drive chemical processes, or heat up water, or whatever, and store energy in other forms that way. But that rule goes for 'pure' electricity.

Re:One worldwide power grid would help

[Mryll]

I hate to say it, but your comments about short-term focus and investment seem spot-on.

greed

[L0rax23]

Once the grid is fully functional, the only excuse for power shortages will be greed.

Good thing we don't hafta worry about greed!

Re:greed

[ameoba]

Yeah... all we need to after this is start producing an excess of food so that nobody on the planet ever has to starve..

Power Grid will be obsolete

[Baron_Yam]

Why move electrons across a grid and have to worry about cascade failures, power station accidents, etc?

The day will come, maybe in just a few decades, when every building has its own fuel cell, connected to a low-pressure hydrogen line.

Yes, you'll still need to generate the hydrogen - but show me how you can get a cascade failure with that! Also, it's dramatically easier to generate your own small amount of hydrogen to bolster your commercially supplied hydrogen than to generate and store energy in batteries.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[cethiesus]

There was a time in the 1950's or so when many people foresaw small nuclear power generators in every home. Now, hydrogen doesn't have nearly as many hazardous issues to deal with (that we know of) as nuclear power or even other current forms of energy, but household-based powerplants still seem a bit unlikely.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[cperciva]

Now, hydrogen doesn't have nearly as many hazardous issues to deal with (that we know of) as nuclear power

The dangers of nuclear power are overrated. I'd much rather have a Plutonium RTG in my basement than a hydrogen fuel cell (and associated fuel lines).

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[Lord Kholdan]

Why move electrons across a grid and have to worry about cascade failures, power station accidents, etc?

The day will come, maybe in just a few decades, when every building has its own fuel cell, connected to a low-pressure hydrogen line.
Yes, you'll still need to generate the hydrogen - but show me how you can get a cascade failure with that! Also, it's dramatically easier to generate your own small amount of hydrogen to bolster your commercially supplied hydrogen than to generate and store energy in batteries.

And tell me where are you going to get the energy to create the hydrogen at your home? And if you can get it, why bother converting it to hydrogen and converting that to energy instead of using the energy directly? Good plan except that it requires the violation of laws of physics.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

The day will come, maybe in just a few decades, when every building has its own fuel cell, connected to a low-pressure hydrogen line.

You think the oil cartels are going to just roll over and play dead? They will crush this before it even gets started. Welcome to the real world.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[iCat]

The EU and the US both have very ambitious plans for a new Hydrogen economy. The Europeans plan to use renewables (wind power, hydro) to generate a significant portion of the electricity required to split Hydrogen from water, whereas the US (under GW) plans a massive expansion of coal and nuclear to do so. If the infrastructure is put in place, Hydrogen could be distributed and stored geographically, with the potential to feed fuel cells when needed, so no dependence on an electric grid being up 24/7. However, what troubles me is the EU model will reduce the use of fossil fuels, whereas the US one will generate more CO2 emissions and more nuclear waste.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[Have Blue]

Yes, you'll still need to generate the hydrogen - but show me how you can get a cascade failure with that!

Simple: Stick a lit match into your hydrogen outlet.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that America isn't going to be magically using more power once a modern energy storage mechanism is put into place. By isolating power generation into large power plants, it is actually possible to dramatically reduce the environmental impact of dirty methods. Our solution would reduce the number of small peak power generators currently in use and would do wonders for the environment.

Coal and nuclear power are very clean and neither requires a foreign source of materials. Hydroelectric power is atmospherically clean but has an unfortunate tendency to destroy the environment around the plant. Personally I think wind power is great, but is far more expensive than coal and nuclear sources and has limited prime spots for deployment.

Please don't associate nuclear power with a bunch of radioactive sludge in barrels in a playground. That paranoia is old and incorrect. It would be educational to actually visit a nuclear plant and see the rigid mandates and control of hazardous waste and equipment. Real Life isn't like the Simpsons. A large hog farm deals far more damage to the surrounding environment than a nuclear power plant.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[buck_wild]

I thought the same thing at first. "Well, what if terrorists blow up the pipes near the generation plant" was my thought.

Well, if that could happen, then your natural gas line would have failed by now, right? It hasn't though, because gas lines have failsafes built into the line itself. Gas only flows one way, for example, so a break upstream only starves out the downstream portion, and the gas in the downstream portion remains in the line, not leaking back upstream and out the damaged pipe.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

While what you say is true, it's only half the truth. An RTG is very safe, but I don't want to have to protect one from terrorist! If there was an RTG big enough to power a house in each and every house, we'd have script kiddies with nukes.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[Nexus Seven]

Coal [and nuclear power] are very clean

LOL! Coal is clean? What, do you own stock in a coal mining company? Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel we use for power generation.
Coal pumps out far more Sulfur dioxides, nitrogen dioxides and greenhouse gasses than any other fuel in use.

The problem with Nuclear power isn't so much the immediate threat as what you do with the spent fuel. You can't keep burying it, or sinking it. You can't launch it into space. Instead it just sort of hangs around - that's the dangerous part.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[iCat]

Coal and nuclear power are very clean

Cleaner than using renewable sources to split water? Hydro can be damaging to the immediate environment, but I suspect less so than caused by an open caste coal mine. It is possible to exploit Hydro using natural sites without resorting to flooding thousands of square kilometres of land, which I wouldn't support either.

Personally I think wind power is great, but is far more expensive

Depends what you include (or exclude) from the balance sheet.

It would be educational to actually visit a nuclear plant

I would like to do so. The way I see it, why bother generating hazardous waste if there are alternatives. Ok, you might be able to convince me that it can be buried safely under a mountain and monitored daily (like for the next 100 thousand years), but I guess this is going to cost money, right?

Let's see... in 50 years we might develop practical fusion power in which case our problems are solved. I would then rather read about the story of an antiquated wind turbine technology in the history books than the waste products still buried underground somewhere.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[tigersha]

Cascading a failure ona Hydrogen line? Easy. Light a match and stick it in?

Remember the Hindenburg.

Re:Power Grid will be obsolete

[Baron_Yam]

As I said, "generate your own small amount of hydrogen to bolster your commercially supplied hydrogen"... I never said to replace it.

Oh, and you'd use solar cells, of course, what else? Maybe a small wind generator, but that'd be much uglier and require more maintenance.

More good than bad.

[Nakoruru]

It is very likely that the interconnected power grid has prevented far more blackouts than it has caused. The interconnected power grid allows for local failures to be mitigated by non-local resources being brought instantly into play.

The blackout is far more likely the result of aging and inadequate infrastructure in the Northeast, and not the interconnected nature of the grid.

Re:More good than bad.

[LostCluster]

Right, we never hear about the number of times having the grid has prevented a blackout. One one plant has to shut down, the power is instantly brought in from another place to balance it all out.

This cascading failure was a result of the grid trying too hard and failing. The grid should have cut off the first failed area, whatever it was, instead of allowing it to send its demands further down the chain. Some safety feature that was supposed to be there didn't kick in when it needed to... why it didn't is the question that the investigators will be working on for a while.

Having more connects to elsewhere does increase the risk and possible scope of this kind of disaster, but this is the kind of thing that on paper isn't supposed to happen. The solution isn't to rip the grid apart, or prevent it from expanding, but to make sure that all the systems on the grid are playing by the safety rules.

Re:More good than bad.

[monk_e_monk]

just for the record, nakoruru is the worst fighting character ever. especially in CvS2.

Re:More good than bad.

[Nakoruru]

I agree that she was weak, but I still beat almost everyone who I ever played against.

Should Be Okay

[suwain_2]

IMHO, if things were designed properly, all the power grids would be linked, but would be 'selfish' -- that is, if they started to reach their maximum load, they'd cut off surrounding areas. Kind of a "You can borrow some power from us, but only what we don't need."

I think it's no different than the Internet -- the big backbone providers 'peer' with each other, giving each other transit. But that doesn't mean that big DDoS attack aimed at one provider will cripple the whole Internet.

Interconnected power-grid not a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is doing it correctly. Obviously NYC, Detroit, and a few other areas did not do it well. The grid in Massachusetts did what it was supposed to do.. Instead of feeding power everywhere else, overloading and shutting down, it set a limit and stopped where it should have, leaving some residents in Western MA without power, but overall did not fail like the flawed power systems in NY and elsewhere.

Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[mkweise]

Nikola Tesla suggested a *wireless* worldwide power grid around (IIRC) 50 years earlier, and demonstrated the technology to make it posssible.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[mkweise]

Here's another link to info on Tesla's wirless power transmission technology, and a gooogle search.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[bersl2]

If you want wireless power, you need enormous Tesla coils, which will create a massive amount of noise pollution. Also, how do you control circuits when things like light bulbs automatically light up?

Or am I trolling?

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, *now* get out the tinfoil hats.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[mkweise]

Well...the real reason this technology has not been persued any further is, of couse, that Tesla didn't have an answer to one simple question from Edison: "Where do you put the meter?

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[RKloti]

"....If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amount. This would be the most efficient way of harsening the sun to the uses of man......" ( Nikola Tesla, June 1919 ) (1)

(emphasis mine)
Can someone explain exactly what Tesla means with this statement? Now I'm sure that he had a good reason for making such a claim but as it stands it is rather difficult to believe and makes the otherwise great inventor seem rather absurd. Does he seriously believe that precipitation and climate are driven by terrestrial electric currents or what?

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[mangu]

The Tesla system for electric power distribution is about as practical as the following idea for air transportation: you are raised in a large kite, and, when you reach a convenient altitude, you release the kite and open a parachute.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[mkweise]

The Tesla system for electric power distribution is about as practical as

Need I remind you that Tesla was called crazy by Edison and other critics when he first proposed Alternaticn Current?

It seems likely (or at least can't be ruled out) that Tesla's later inventions aren't fully appreciated because noone alive today understands them well enough.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...the real reason this technology has not been persued any further is

Another raving Tesla fan. Wireless power distribution is way too wasteful. That's the reason. DC power distribution (ala Edison) sucks. It's Tesla who really won. We're all A/C now, but the wireless stuff is fantasy. Everyone understands what Tesla was doing. We even have the math and physicals to explain it all. There's no secret black Tesla magic. I think I liked his 20+ phase motors the best.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[cpeterso]

but wouldn't it be dangerous to wear tinfoil hats in such a powerful, world-wide electric field? The Illuminati wants you to take off your tinfoil hats..

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[ameoba]

Well, didn't Tesla come up with -everything- related to electricity first?

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[thebigmacd]

DC power distribution sucks eh? How come Quebec which has the most advanced power distribution system in the world is installing DC lines? DC lines are the very reason Quebec has ZERO carryover from the blackout in the rest of the northeast. DC systems have no problem dealing with abrupt load changes: although generators may be loaded down and the voltage may drop too low, it is the end system that disconnects, not the generator. If the voltage goes too high, the generators simply slow down. There is no power-reflection like an AC system, and no frequency benchmark that kicks generators off if they get too far out. The only problem the Quebec DC system had was a few years ago when the James Bay line got hit with a solar flare and there was a HUGE overvoltage problem that knocked power out for a bit.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[Anonymous Coward]

IF, IF, IF we move toward moving power through high temp superconductors over long distance, then DC power will be very, very relevent. Till then DC is too distance limited to work well.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[Anonymous Coward]

suggested a *wireless* worldwide power grid

And then he tested it - found the losses were too high, and moved onto the next project.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[roman_mir]

No, he was serious of-course. He was talking about ionizing portions of the atmosphere and thus creating low and high electrical pressure zones that could be used as transmitters of large masses of air and vapour (rain). By using large Tesla coils you could really create ionized wind tunnels.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[Myxorg]

DC sucked at the time of Edison, and tesla because there was no way to up the voltage on dc. With ac all you need is a hunk of metal called a transformer. Upping the voltage is the secret to low line loss over great distances. With modern power electronics dc voltage can be increased making it just as efficient as ac over long distances (actually it's more efficient)

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[thebigmacd]

What I don't get is that if DC is so distance-limited, why does quebec use it to run 500 miles or more from their remote Churchill Dam project south to the US.

Re:Tesla suggested this *long* before Fuller

[thebigmacd]

yep, the gigantic equivalent of switching power supplies.

not only is it more efficient, but abrupt changes in loads can be absorbed easily by *electrolytic* capacitors, and different equipment can be designed to engage and disengage at predetermined voltage levels based on their critical value to the system

ianaee

[lazelank]

that is to say i'm no electrical engineer, but i wonder how much good this would do? unless scientists come up with a practical, maleable, room temperature superconductor, aren't we limited to how far we can transfer power (ala electricity). any thoughts on this?

Re:ianaee

[dJCL]

Superconductors would only really be needed if you wanted to get the power directly from the generator in africa to new york city...

In the global power grid it would operate more like(simplified): there is a power deficit in new york, it pulls in power from the west of north america, creating a deficit there, which will then pull extra power from (say there is an interconnect to) eastern russia, they will then pull power from central russia, and they from the middle east, and they will pull some from africa and everyone will hopefully have some juice when it is all said and done...

Basically, the power from africa is still relativly close to there, and other power is really dealing with the problem...

At least that is how I understand it... IAMAEE but I'm playing one today on slashdot...

Re:ianaee

[thebigmacd]

The compounded losses of the domino effect are the same or higher than a direct line from Africa to NYC. You can't get something out of nothing...the power has to travel through a long path that attenuates power linearly, no matter which way you look at it.

For everyone comparing outage length...

[Anonymous Coward]

During the big ice storm in the Kansas City area a year and a half ago, I went 8 days without electricity - some people went up to two weeks. All food was ruined (despite the fact that my apartment was freezing cold), my fireplace wasn't working, my car was hardly working and the only internet access I had was the access at work which I can only use to get here and our corporate websites. Sure, a lot of folks in the area had their power back in two days, but the average outage time was 4-5... so, nyeah.

23 hours? Try 5-10 days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Severe storms hit Memphis around 7AM on July 22. Hurricane force winds slammed the whole city, knocked over thousands of trees and power lines, damaged hundreds of homes/buildings, and immediately killed the power to 300,000+ buildings. Speaking of killed, I think the death toll wound up being 7, people died in fires started by candles, people died by carbon monoxide poisoning from generators, and one poor guy was crushed by a falling tree.

And nobody cared. Friends and relatives in other areas didn't see it on the news and call to see if we were okay. We had to call them, because it wasn't on the news anywhere else. I was lucky enough to have a good friend in a part of town with power, and went to his place by the afternoon, we were sitting watching all the news stations. The only place we saw any reference to it was the tiny ticker at the bottom of CNN Headline News, one blurb about "Thousands without power after storm slams Memphis." I think the only reason CNN bothered is that they're based in Atlanta (in the south) instead of NYC.

300,000 homes and businesses (more than half a million people in all) were without power for days. Most of us didn't see our lights come back on for 4-5 days. And it took more than 10 days to get everyone turned back on. But nobody noticed.

If NYC loses power, it's an instant media blitz, with all the networks scrambling to make new imposing music themes and clip-art for "Massive Outage: Are Terrorists Responsible?" And now, days later, it's still the top headline everywhere. But when half a million Memphians lost power for a week, no one cared. I guarantee if Fedex had lost power they would have cared..

Re:23 hours? Try 5-10 days...

[gl4ss]

natural disasters == good reason for failing to deliver.

stupidity(letting the grid age so that you have seemingly no idea what brought it down) == bad reason for failing to deliver.

oh yeah, one lighting wouldn't count as a natural disaster. even a goddamn hurricane shouldn't cause power outage this big.

you know, a 'smallish' natural disaster in usa isn't enough to have extra tv-news in finland, but when something so bizarre like the (25million?)outage happens we knew here in finland few minutes after it.

Re:23 hours? Try 5-10 days...

[freeweed]

Devil's Advocate, but 50 million people lost power, not just NYC.

For those not good with math, that's 100 TIMES as bad as what you're describing, although admittedly for a shorter period of time. I'd call it major news too.

Re:23 hours? Try 5-10 days...

[bj8rn]

I think the reason is, a storm is something natural, these things happen. Often [*]. The only difference is in size and where it hits. But people are used to natural disasters happening. However, what happend in NE US/SE Canada, was something unusual, something that doesn't happen as often as storms. Something you could, unlike a storm, blame on terrorists (my second or third thought after hearing about the blackout was "hmmm, they're probably speculate about it being a sabotage" and lo, the next thing they say is that GWB denies it being a terrorist attack).

[*] The storm in Memphis was in the papers here, by the way. Along the heat wave in Europe. It was also mentioned that these things are probably caused by the global warming. <sarcasm> This, of course, isn't worth air time in USA...</sarcasm>

Re:23 hours? Try 5-10 days...

[MightyYar]

Severe storms hit Memphis around 7AM on July 22.

Surely you can't expect Americans to be too interested in Egypt...

Oh! You mean Tennessee!

well its a good idea!

[acegik]

A bug in the design of the current grid shouldnt stop progress. If we design a power grid that many countries can share, that will save a whole lot of money and will be much more efficient. Of course we shouldnt hire those who design US power grid :) thats the lesson from the power failer ;)

Ironing

[mojowantshappy]

It isn't ironic. Damnit.

Re:Ironing

[m1chael]

is it ironic because its falsely claimed as ironic when its not really ironic? or is it just unfortunate? you outta know...

Re:Ironing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Ironic is rain on your wedding day, or a black fly in your Chardonnay. Alanis said it, it must be true!

Simple.

[nlinecomputers]

Yes, you'll still need to generate the hydrogen - but show me how you can get a cascade failure with that!

Simple. One nitwit that can't read a sign. One backhoe.

Re:Simple.

[SpaceCadetTrav]

I'd liked to see you affect the entire east coast's natural gas connection with a single backhoe.

Re:Simple.

[Politburo]

As pointed out, that would not cause a cascade failure. Also, the 'nitwit' would not have to read a sign. If you're digging with a backhoe, it is your legal responsiblity to call One-Call a few days ahead of time.

One-Call is a free system which will come by and mark out all known utilities on an area of land prior to any earthwork.

Information on New Jersey's One-Call program

If the black out was in India or China....

[raj2569]

I wonder what would have been the reaction of slashdotters....

btw, we do have power failures here (Trivandrum, India), but I do not think we ever had a black out of some thing like 24 hours...

raj

Re:If the black out was in India or China....

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what would have been the reaction of slashdotters....

Prolonged mass frustration. Considering it seems like 90% of companies have outsourced their tech support to India, if a huge blackout were to strike there, us slashdotters would suddenly face a surge of those "hey man, can you help me with a computer problem?" calls from our friends, relatives, and coworkers...

BAD idea....

[pair-a-noyd]

When I was a teen in the 70's I went to visit some people that live in the desert of New Mexico.
The dude and his wife were typical peacenic, hippy types, long hair, shaggy beard, robes and beads and, *a college professor*.

Anyway, this couple dug a hole in the desert and built a log cabin in the hole. They then covered the cabin back over with the dirt from the hole so that from outside the place looked like a big dirt pile with windows.

You walked down a flight of steps from ground level to the enterance, 12' below ground level.

They had burlap on string for internal doorways.
Everything ran on low power battery lamps that they charged from solar panels on a big tower outside. They also had a huge hot water tank buried undergound that kept near boiling hot water year round. There was a HUGE hottub that would seat about 15 people lined with turquiose tiles they collected themselves from the desert.

Everything in there was handmade from logs, there was no store made furniture, just adobe and logs. The fireplace was about 3 feet thick and it was bloody hot even 20 feet away.

I was in awe of the place, it was mega cool and I decided then that I wanted to live like that too. Ever since then I've been a strong advocate of non-polluting, renewable energy sources. I would love to see the world powered by solar and geo-thermal power.
MOST of the methods in use today have horrific enviromental impact.

Even wind mills have serious drawbacks. There is a place where they landscape is littered with the damn things, they are huge, ugly behemoths and they make a veyr low rumbling sound that the residents are saying is causing them ill effects. Most things that man produces cause someone or something serious problems.

Imagine the world on solar power. Silent cars. No pollution. A clean sky to look at, clean air to breath. Quiet to enjoy, not noisy cars and trucks roaring around and stinking the place up, spreading more of the agents that cause cancer and other horrible diseases.

And last but not least, when the people can generate their own power for free then there would be no need for parasitic energy companies like Con-Ed, Entergy, etc...

The world is a parasitic circle jerk system, everyone screws the next little guy down the ladder and those at the bottom of the ladder are slaves for those above them. Those at the top are the oppressors and the tyrants.

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, lets imagine the world on solar power. The only places that weren't covered over with solar panels would be the pits filled with toxic byproducts from producing solar cells. Sounds like a frigging utopia, doesn't it?

Re:BAD idea....

[pair-a-noyd]

You have a better idea??
Burn oil and coal??

Solar panels can be made and the toxic byproducts can be dealt with by responsible people. Slimy profiteers would dump the stuff in pits, like most do now, say in Mexico and China and other third world countries.

In a true "Utopia" people would be truely concerned about the enviroment and would put that FIRST on the list. People should learn to live *with* the enviroment, not change/destroy it to suit them..

Re:BAD idea....

[donutello]

The world is a parasitic circle jerk system, everyone screws the next little guy down the ladder and those at the bottom of the ladder are slaves for those above them. Those at the top are the oppressors and the tyrants.


You should seek professional help for your paranoia.

Human society is a system where people collaborate to achieve more than they could by themselves. So instead of having to learn how to hunt and cook and make shoes and build a home and make clothes, people can specialize in a single skill, perform it more efficiently and achieve more collectively. Money is what you use to facilitate this trade.

Re:BAD idea....

[pair-a-noyd]

"So instead of having to learn how to hunt and cook and make shoes and build a home and make clothes, people can specialize in a single skill, perform it more efficiently and achieve more collectively. Money is what you use to facilitate this trade."

And you think this is a *good* thing??

In other words, people are ignorant in everything that is important to life except one thing that will get them by and keeps them dependant upon everyone else.

That my friend, is slavery.

I would MUCH rather see people that are able to take care of their own needs without having to depend on others to survive. The world was a much better place 2,000 - 3,000 years ago than it is today. Look around you. You call what you see *good* ???? What's so much better??

Computers?? TV?? Cars?? Plastic?? Airplanes?? All these things are *good*??
All of these things are detrimental to the health of planet earth and detrimental to mankind. TV is the single most destructive device mankind has ever invented.

Re:BAD idea....

[tommertron]

People should learn to live *with* the enviroment, not change/destroy it to suit them.. So should beavers stop building dams? Should birds stop building nests?

We are part of the environment. The environment changes all the time. Sometimes people change it, sometimes animals, sometimes germs or geologic forces.

We shouldn't follow old environmentalist dogma saying that we shouldn't change the environment because it's bad. We should be concerned with how we can change the environment in responsible ways so that it does not harm us in any way. Polluting the air is bad, because it makes us sick. Tearing down a mountain or draining an ocean (hypothetically speaking of course) would be fine if it proves useful to us and can be found not to have negative reprocussions on our species.

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

"The world was a much better place 2,000 - 3,000 years ago than it is today"

Then why the fuck are you using a computer and accessing the internet? There are many tribes in Africa and South America where you can go experience what the world was like 3000 years ago. Why are you not living with them? Hypocrite.

Re:BAD idea....

[frostman]

When I was at school (CSU Chico) around '91 a guy came and gave a slide lecture at the art department about a setup almost exactly like what you describe.

I can't remember enough of the details to guess whether it's the same house (the guy was 50 or 60ish when he gave the lecture). One point I do remember: he didn't actually own the land. He was basically squatting with permission - he had asked the landowner and the owner didn't mind, in fact thought it was pretty cool.

As impressive as it all is, I wonder how practical such a structure is if you don't get so much sunlight for solar.

Re:BAD idea....

[machinegunben]

We are living better today than we ever have in the past. Indoor plumbing, electricity, heat and ac, mass transportation.... It all makes our lives much much easier. We couldn't live in cold climates without many of the modern convieniences we have today. The world would be packed in a small corridor along the equator. What about when people get cancer? Or get sick? Without todays medicinal advances, there would be no treatment. Without everyone being dependant on everyone else, there would be no innovation. There would be no specialization, and no doctors. This idea is nice when your mind is high on drugs, I guess, but when you look at it in reality, its a dumb idea.

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, people are ignorant in everything that is important to life except one thing that will get them by and keeps them dependant upon everyone else.

That my friend, is slavery.

Nope. I CHOOSE to live my life this way. I am not the slave. YOU are the slave because you don't want to live your life this way yet don't have the balls to go live in the desert or forest by yourself.

Humans are slaves to their desires. Conquer your desires and you are a slave to no one.

It always cracks me up to see these hippies who want to eat "natural" and live the "way of the ancients" in order to be healthier - ignoring the fact that the ancients had an average lifespan of 30 years.

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

The world was a much better place 2,000 - 3,000 years ago

Just one question, really. How the fuck would you know?

Re:BAD idea....

[solarrhino]

Here's a thought: get really sick once. Or maybe suffer a terrible injury. I've done both. 3000 years ago, I'd have been dead at 9 y.o. If I'd avoided that injury, I'd have died in horrible pain about 3 years ago.

That said, I don't disagree with some of your quality of life issues. But before you get too worked up, read "Guns, Germs, and Steel", a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on, for lack of a better description, the evolution of human civilizations. Apparently, as civilizations expand, they tend toward "kleptocracies", where those closest to the ruler benefit from the work of the mass of people further away. Dang, you think, how awful! But it has to be that way, because kleptocracies promote specialization, which promotes effiency, which steal the lunch for any less efficient civilization. That's just reality, dude, and no amount of wishful thinking will change it.

Re:BAD idea....

[groomed]

The original poster told us something he actually experienced for himself. You are telling us what you were taught from books. His words carry more force than yours. Even if I think you are closer to the truth than he was, donutello.

Re:BAD idea....

[pair-a-noyd]

First. So sorry, I don't drink or do drugs. At all, of any type...

Second. You say "It all makes our lives much much easier".
Yes, too much easier. That's why people are fat slobs. People are soft. Look at the power blackout. People had NO CLUE how to deal with it. Everyone in a big panic, no air conditioning, no cold beer, no MTV... Boo hoo...

People have lived in cold climates for tens of thousands of years, I hate to tell you. And they did it without electricity. Unless you can show me that the Vikings came from the equator and lived in air conditioning, you should rethink your statement.

Medicine?? Ah, most of these man made chemicals imitate compounds that occur in nature. The drug companies make HUGE $$$ selling you these chemicals that string you along.

They don't CURE people, they TREAT the symptoms.
If they were to CURE you they would lose any future business. It's in their best financial interest to NOT CURE people.

About 20 something years ago I was remodeling a house and my dad was helping me. In the Kitchen where the fridge went, I pulled a wall board away and found a gas pipe capped off. I asked my dad why in the hell was there a gas line in the refrigerator area. He told me that when he was a kid they ran on Ammonia and natural gas.
A pilot light heated the Ammonia to cool the fridge. http://www.nh3tech.org/absorption.html

My dad told me that the refrigerators were excellent, they had no moving parts, they were silent, very energy effcient and never broke down.

Well, considering these things, they figured out that they would only sell one per family, and that a couple could leave the refrigerator to their kids and so on. The market would be limited. So, they invented the Freon based refrigerator and touted it as much better and imporved. Yes, improved, in that the refrigeration companies would now sell an average of 4-6 refrigerators per family over the lifetime of that family and the chance of it lasting long enough to pass on, forget it.

The Freon refrigerators break down often and have limited life spans, on purpose. They used to make money selling parts and servicing them, now they just make you throw it away and buy a whole new one. I mean, why sell you a $25 part when they can sell you a whole new $800 refrigerator??

It's the same way with "medicine". They don't cure people, they treat people so that they can milk them into utter oblivion, even beyond the grave.

My uncle was dying of cancer and they knew it but they opened him up anyway. The cancer took off like wildfire after that and they had him in the hospital for the last two months of his life, draining his life savings away. Just about the time they got his accounts down to a level below poverty he took the dirt nap.

Even after he was dead the hospital and doctor bills flooded in. My cousin will be paying those bastards off for years now. So in the grave they continue to pick your pockets.

They prolong your life so they can milk you.
Once you are milked, you'll find out just how short life is..
Just like "justice", how much "justice" the rich can buy versus how much the poor can buy..

Re:BAD idea....

[buck_wild]

So lets use someplace like Austrailia for the pits of toxic byproducts so the rest of us can live in Utopia.

Sounds like an even trade to me. :) (Ok, bad joke)

Do you think that if a very large number of people were buying solar panels and there was an actual competetive market for them, that they would get better and better? Even more efficient? Perhaps (gasp) smaller and less expensive? Maybe this would even influence better efficiency in the battery storage tanks.

Re:BAD idea....

[buck_wild]

I'm certainly no expert, but I believe you can still generate power on cloudy days. Not sure how much less, but the system still works as designed.

Combine that with less power usage (I don't think the person in the story was powering an entertainment system or a back of servers) and you should still be doing very well.

If you lived in an area where bright sunny days were not the norm, you'd probably want a larger array of panels (or whatever solar generation material you're using.)

Re:BAD idea....

[pair-a-noyd]

"Then why the fuck are you using a computer and accessing the internet?"

Because it's here. You make do with what you have. I use computers, despite the fact that I dislike them, as a means to make a living.

"There are many tribes in Africa and South America where you can go experience what the world was like 3000 years ago."

Uh, no thanks. They are savages. They live like ignorant savages now, as they did then.
My forefathers didn't live in mud huts and eat their neighbors.

My forefathers came from Western Europe and were more civilized than the mud hutters.

"Why are you not living with them?"
As I said, I have no desire to live with or like savages. However, once my kids move on to have their own life I *WILL* move away to a mountain, to live in the woods, away from the pollution and the noise and the crime and the filth..

Re:BAD idea....

[buck_wild]

"They don't CURE people, they TREAT the symptoms.
If they were to CURE you they would lose any future business. It's in their best financial interest to NOT CURE people."

Funny. 18 years ago, my brother developed cancer. Nasty stuff, spreading. They caught it early, though, through the miracle of regular checkups. He's been cancer-free for 17 years now.

Do you really think that doctors actually helped your uncle's cancer spread?? Are you HIGH?

And why would I want a refrigerator passed down from my parents or even grandparents? Do you honestly think that they were even AS efficient back then? If your parents passed their car (from the 70's down to you, would you still drive it given today's gas prices?

So what's your point?

And what have you done to make things better? Why haven't I heard your name connected to a super-efficient, super-reliable refrigerator yet? Too lazy? Afraid of becoming one of US, and the lure of success? Or are you just one of those people who complains and does nothing?

Re:BAD idea....

[buck_wild]

AND the same people make it a point of bitching about it on the INTERNET. Ah, the sweet sweet irony.

Re:BAD idea....

[cpeterso]

Solar panels can be made and the toxic byproducts can be dealt with by responsible people.

Nucelar energy can be made and the toxic byproducts can be dealt with by responsible people..?

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a thought: get really sick once. Or maybe suffer a terrible injury.

Heh, heh... I second that. Get sick you stupid hippie (pair-a-noyd).

Re:BAD idea....

[buck_wild]

"Look around you. You call what you see *good* ???? What's so much better??

Computers?? TV?? Cars?? Plastic?? Airplanes?? All these things are *good*??
All of these things are detrimental to the health of planet earth and detrimental to mankind. TV is the single most destructive device mankind has ever invented."

Funny how you are bitching about this on the INTERNET. Bravo.

Hypocrite.

I'll have more faith if I read what you're saying in the smoke signals (oops, pollution. Nix that one) or when I hear your signal drums banging.

Until then, troll on, hypocrite.

(I'd agree with TV being the single most destructive device mankind has ever invented. I just destroyed several million cells a little while ago, watching the naughty channels.)

Re:BAD idea....

[cpeterso]

I used to think underground homes were cool. As you pointed out, they have huge advantages for insulating both cold and heat. The problem with underground homes is maintenance of services. You want to add a cable TV service? oops, you gotta dig up your home. Your plumbing is backed up? oops, you gotta dig up your home before you can pinpoint the location of the plumbing problem.

And if you have any problems with water leakage, good luck fixing that.

Re:BAD idea....

[pair-a-noyd]

"Do you really think that doctors actually helped your uncle's cancer spread??"
Yes.

"Are you HIGH?"
No. I don't indulge, RMFP.

"And why would I want a refrigerator passed down from my parents or even grandparents?"
You might not but someone else might. Are you afraid you might catch something?

"Do you honestly think that they were even AS efficient back then?"
Yes, as a matter of fact they were a hundred times more effecient then than they are now.
They didn't use electricity (which pollutes in the generation stage), they use a natural gas pilot light which pollutes very, very little and there are no moving parts. I would say that's extremely effecient.. Read up on Ammonia based refrigeration.

"If your parents passed their car (from the 70's down to you, would you still drive it given today's gas prices?"
Well, as a matter of fact, I still own the 1965 Dodge Polara convertbile that I drove as a teenager in 1975. I don't drive it now because I'm restoring it, but I will when it's done.

I also drive a *large*, 28 year old 1975 Mercedes which is just as effecient as a modern car as it was outfitted with California emission control when it was imported here in the fall of 1974. I keep it fine tuned and it runs great. I have no need or desire to own anything else. I wouldn't have a brand new car if it were given free to me, including a new Mercedes.

New cars are shit. They won't last 10 years, and most people get rid of them within 5 years because all the plastic *shit* on them breaks, the latex based paint wears off, the aluminum engines crack, the nylon gears strip out. No thanks, my all metal, 1975 car is STILL running just fine and it looks damn nice too. And if I continue to take good care of it it will last me another 28 years and I can pass it on to my son someday.

You people with your "throw it away and buy a new one because it's GOOD for the enconomy" types are really sad..

NEW is usually NOT better...

Re:BAD idea....

[SmackCrackandPot]

There's a place in the UK similar to what you have described. It's called Mole Manor. Located in Gloucestershire, it was documented in several web pages. I saw the documentary on TV once, and I thought it was really cool to live like a hobbit. In case you're interested in looking for the opportunity to buy an underground house in the UK, there's adedicated property guide. Interestingly Mole Manor was valued at 950,000 pounds (around 1.4 million dollars) about a year ago.

There is also an underground log cabin in Idaho. Could this be similar to the place you described.

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

While I remember reading the same stuff in the 70's, I think the true test is whether those same hippies are still living that way. If they aren't then the question is why? My quess would be the inconvenience of it. Me, I'm not living in a dirt cover cabin with burlap doors. I don't care what the reasons are.

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you know, you aren't allowed to mention nuclear power because just saying nuclear causes deformed babies with cancer to be born.

I'd rather live next door to a modern nuclear power plant than a coal or gas fired power station, and i'd recieve less radiation exposure to boot, but enviro-mentalists have decreed that nukes are bad.

Whilst burning coal and gas is far from ideal, we aren't going to be relying on wind/solar any time soon. The tech just isn't up to it. And hydrogen is not a power source before anyone brings it up.

Re:BAD idea....

[pair-a-noyd]

In Merry Old England, they have refined the solar cell to be much more efficient.
I read that a company had developed solar cells that are up to 30% efficient. They claim that these solar cells can provide high output even in the ever cloudy and foggy days of England.

With the new extremely bright LED's available now, you could light a room with more than enough light to preform your usual tasks, using very little electricity and generating very little heat. You could turn on high power compact for when you need very bright light for brief periods like repairing things, finding something dropped, house cleaning, etc. then turning them back off and using the LED lights.

I've tried it and it's very feasable.

I'm also trying to build a sterling engine that I'll mount to the focal point of a 14' satellite dish I have, to track the sun and generate free power, heating and cooling. I spend a lot of my time working on such designs.

I designed and built a solar powered heater that you put in your window like an air conditioner. It works fine, runs totally free and is very quiet and 100% zero pollution. Problem is placement. You have to have your house *just right* for this to benefit you. So, it's a limited market idea.

There's a million things people can do to help.
I recycle things, like old appliances. I take people's old appilances, repair them, clean them up and make them look and work like new then resell them to people that appreciate getting a good appliance for a fraction of the price of a new one.. Not to mention, it keeps stuff out of the landfill too..

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

tsk, tsk, tsk

So arrogent and so shallow. Perhaps you should seek professional help for your over-inflated ego and sense of worth in this world. So what happens when the medium of commerce is interrupted? All of a sudden most of that specialization is worth squat to your personal (and tribal) survival. Unless you specialize in hunting, farming, metal and wood working and natural remedies, I would bet you and your ilk wouldn't survive a single generation.

By looking down your nose at someone who seeks to be self-sufficient within this parasitic capitalist orgy of a world you paint yourself as an ignorant fool.

Thats ok though, you were obviously programmed that way. Question is, can you hack your own ring zero to learn the true value of these basic human survival skills before you are ever forced into a situation that requires them?

Re:BAD idea....

[ces]

My dad told me that the refrigerators were excellent, they had no moving parts, they were silent, very energy effcient and never broke down.

Well, considering these things, they figured out that they would only sell one per family, and that a couple could leave the refrigerator to their kids and so on. The market would be limited. So, they invented the Freon based refrigerator and touted it as much better and imporved. Yes, improved, in that the refrigeration companies would now sell an average of 4-6 refrigerators per family over the lifetime of that family and the chance of it lasting long enough to pass on, forget it.

Reliablity isn't necessarily a property of only ammonia fridges.

My mom's neighbor has a 1934 GE Freon fridge that still works fine and maintains a nice 40F. The only maintenance she has every had to do to the thing is replace the door seals.

While she now uses a much more modern fridge as her main one in the kitchen she still uses the old one for pop, beer, and for overflow.

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are personally able to construct and maintain the car you drive, synthesize the drugs that you use, and design and stitch the clothes you wear, then you are correct.

If you cannot, then he is correct.

Re:BAD idea....

[buck_wild]

Interesting! I was under the impression that solar was only up to the 17% range. 30% is awesome! Well, a lot better than before, anyway.

Do you have any further information, or clues on how I can find more out on trusty google? I'm very interested in setting up my home with solar.

Re:BAD idea....

[buck_wild]

"You people with your "throw it away and buy a new one because it's GOOD for the enconomy" types are really sad.."

Thankfully I'm not one of those people. I have a '68 Camaro but it sucks down the gas too quickly to be a daily driver. I drive ~30 miles one way to work, so I bought a Honda Civic. It won't last forever, but my brother has ~327,000 miles on his. Can't complain about the gas mileage, that's for sure.

I'll definitely have to read up on Ammonia-based refrigeration. With money as tight as it is for so many folks, I'm surprised it hasn't made a resurgence if it's that efficient. All I know is I got one passed down to me (mine divorced me) from my parents and I was damn shocked at the $125 difference in my power bill...for not even an entire month.

Re:BAD idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

Your idea does not take into account the role of the head of the company, who spends his days at his resort on his private island, spending the profits from various companies.

What single skill, pray tell, does this person perform?

Re:BAD idea....

[soccerisgod]

So instead of having to learn how to hunt and cook and make shoes and build a home and make clothes, people can specialize in a single skill, perform it more efficiently and achieve more collectively.

Now, one might argue that people did that as far back as the ice age, without ending up polluting the whole planet, and without money :)

total blackout's now possible?

[wardk]

not so sure I want my grid connected to this new york grid. at least right now I just get to read about the blackout, not participate. ;-)

Serious conceptual muddle...

[listen]

Disclaimer: I work in the power trading business.

This article has a few oddities. The idea that everyone will be connected to "one" grid is misleading. There will always be multiple grids, and interconnectors between them. This can be thought of similarly to ISPs peering arrangements.

The article is really saying that it may be economically feasible to have extremely long interconnectors, eg across Siberia, the Atlantic, the Pacific, or up the length of Africa.

I have some reservations with this. When power is transmitted, there is a loss through the resistance of the transmission lines. This clearly becomes more acute the longer the transmission. In most grids in europe, the costs of these losses ( and the requirement to cover them with reserve power) is built into the fees to become a trading company within those countries. There are exceptions -eg the UK -> France interconnector - there is ~ 1.5% loss which the trading party must bear. This is for a 26 mile link. So 3000 miles might be a bit hopeful... I can't be arsed to do the math, but...

It is very hard to see how exploiting the varying liquidity of these markets would offset the huge transmission losses. Especially when compared to the ability to ship huge amounts of oil and gas in pipelines and tankers, with little loss, even at the expense of flexibility.

If this is about some new technology for power transmission ( eg superconductors) this could be great.

Australia could do pretty damn well by covering WA with solar. This could be transmitted to China, converting the Three Gorges Dam - an ecological crime, but its there, I've seen it ;-( - into partially stored hydro... could be interesting.

Re:Serious conceptual muddle...

[alexburke]

There are exceptions -eg the UK -> France interconnector - there is ~ 1.5% loss which the trading party must bear. This is for a 26 mile link. So 3000 miles might be a bit hopeful... I can't be arsed to do the math, but...

I heard on the radio a few days ago that the link between England and France is DC, so you really can't use it for comparison with high-voltage AC links as far as transmission losses go...

Re:Serious conceptual muddle...

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, Russia has its grid span the whole country. So not only thousand-miles long grid is feasible, it is implemented and works.

Re:Serious conceptual muddle...

[Anonymous Coward]

i think that there will always be losses at the termination points of an interconnector caused by conversion bewtween systems that aren't in phase which will happen no matter how short the interconnect is

What you say!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

...you would set up us the bomb!!!

Re:For more information....

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah. heh.

power up! and share through one grid!

the only question is who's exporting and who's importing?

An oldie, but a damn fine goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

In A.D. 2001
Dubya was beginning

Davis: What happen?
SoCal Edison: Somebody set up us the blackout.

PG&E: We get bankruptcy.
Davis: What !

PG&E: Electricity turn off.
Davis: It's you !!

BC Hydro: How are you gentlemen !!
BC Hydro: All your power are belong to us.
BC Hydro: You are on the way to Stone Age.

Davis: What you say !!
BC Hydro: You have no chance to Chapter 11 make your payment.

PG&E: Governor !!

Davis: Take off every 'regulation' !!

Davis: You know what you doing.

Davis: Move 'regulation'.

Davis: For great darkness.

Re:An oldie, but a damn fine goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

Aw man how is this a troll? It's pretty damn funny!

Re:An oldie, but a damn fine goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah, I don't get it. Stoopid moderators.

In A.D. 2001
Bender was beginning

CmdrTaco: What happen?
Sims: Somebody set up us the fp.

Katz: We get trolled.
CmdrTaco: What !

Katz: /. turn on.
CmdrTaco: It's you !!

AC: How are you poofters !!
AC: All your flamebait are belong to us.
AC: You are on the way to ridicule.

CmdrTaco: What you say !!
AC: You have no chance to redemption disable your 2 minute limit.

Katz: Taco !!

CmdrTaco: Take off every 'moderator' !!

CmdrTaco: You know what you doing.

CmdrTaco: Move 'moderator'.

CmdrTaco: For great idiocy.

Re:An oldie, but a damn fine goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to nitpick, but wasn't it the repulican governor or CA before Davis who did the 'Take off every regulation' part? thats one of the things that always baffled me about their stupid recall thing

Re:An oldie, but a damn fine goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't get it...

France is #3 exporter of electricity ???

[Anonymous Coward]

US is #1 importer?

We either better be nice to France or invade 'em.

Fishy.

[ulwen]

"Click here to download infoporn graphics"

I guess slashdots spamfilter didn't get this one. ;P

No.

[cperciva]

Wind and Solar power would not solve this problem -- they would make it worse.

The entire reason we have a power grid is to improve reliability. When a power plant needs to be taken down for maintainance, power is brought in from somewhere else; without the grid, we'd have blackouts every time plants were shut down for maintainance.

Solar and wind power are far less reliable than fossil and nuclear power. As a result, using them would require a larger, more expensive, grid in order to maintain the same quality of service.

Having distributed generation might be a good idea, but it would need to be distributed *reliable* generation; wind and solar just don't make the grade.

Re:No.

[SubtleNuance]

Solar and wind power are far less reliable

Huh? What are you smoking? They are very VERY low maintenance and incredibly reliable (low maint because of few problems).

where nuclear, gas and coal, because of their risks (explosion/meltdown) require MUCH maintenance. Also, this maintenance requires that they be shutdown, monitored and generally have $ dumped on them to keep them from going BOOM!

Coal/Gas and Nuclear are *not* cheaper either, this 'avert explosions' maintenance and built-in-capital-investment make it expensive. Its only the direct subsidy of the EXISTING NON-RENEWABLE industry that makes it price competitive at all.

If North American Governments werent such plutocratic pigs, we could have a responsible re-investment into RENEWABLE energy, but oil/gas/nuclear lobbies have far deeper pockets that people who want LESS INDUSTRY in their lives.

Re:No.

[cperciva]

How do you plan on getting solar power in the middle of the night? How do you get wind power when there isn't any wind?

Nuclear, gas, coal, and hydro power can all run at 90%+ of their peak capacity 90%+ of the time. With solar and wind power, you're lucky to be above 50% of peak capacity more than 50% of the time.

Re:No.

[Anonymous Coward]

That may have been true in the past but here is a solar power plant that can run 24/7 at 70% capacity... http://www.sandia.gov/awards/images/R&D/Solar. pdf

Re:No.

[autopr0n]

George W. Bush is a Fascist. [66.92.134.175]

I don't think that this little audio thing is very effective (anti-bush) propaganda, listening to bush's statement's over and over again just makes me want to agree with him.

Reminds me of something

[niom]

This proposal reminds me of Asimov's short story Sha Guido G in which the main character "saves humanity from oppression by overtaxing the generators of the flying capital city, crashing it to the ground and killing everyone on board".

Seriously, it looks like the incentives to a potential terrorist of a successful attack on a worldwide power grid would be tremendous, so the security should be the very first priority. Which never is, of course.

Correction: Sorry Bram

[mhesseltine]

s/Brahm/Bram

The irony is ironic

[Michael.Forman]

"A little ironic that this article on a world wide power grid was published in the September issue of Wired."

It's not ironic rather it's a timely and coincidental. Thanks for the lesson on irony Slashdot!

Michael.

Re:The irony is ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha! How was this rated as overrated? It hadn't even been modded up!

Now isn't that ironic?

Putting the numbers under this idea.

[vkg]

Small Is Profitable - The Hidden Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size by the Rocky Mountain Institute covers the technical, financial and quality of service arguments for making a mixed power generation economy the standard approach to service provision.

What does that mean in real terms? Not windmills and solar everywhere, but about 8 - 15% wind and solar at carefully picked positions, augmented by microturbines.

It's a good book, if you can make it through four hundred pages about loadhsap matching and energy futures.

backwards

[dh003i]

So, instead of having less government intervention and destruction of the private market, we should have more, and decrease consumer-choice even further? What is really needed is a completely free market for power, free of regulations and open to fierce competition, not these super-socialistic programs.

Re:backwards

[drmaxx]

It's just not that easy to get a fierce competition if the distribution of energy to the customer is de facto a natural monopoly. The more customer you can deliver energy to the more cost efficient you will be. One single big company delivering will be the most cost effective solution and in this case these guys can determine the price at will. So a completely free market does not work for electricity. You need a very sophisticated split-up of the market -- controlled and guarateed by the governement -- that makes competition possible. A somehow good example is the telecom business. A example that it is not that easy is California.

Re:ianaee -DC dude.

[ahfoo]

If you check the reference in the story it was to my main man Bucky Fuller. Of course he didn't invent long distance high voltage as he didn't invent the dome or the octet truss, but he popularized the use of all these things and I try to do the same. Boy oh boy does it bore the hell out of my wife.
But anyway, that's the answer to your question --HVDC. It's a well known and old idea that was never implemented for political rather than engineering reasons.
But another idea right along these lines of scaling up electricity is to simply build larger conventional turbogenerators. The big multi-gigawatt plants we have todays don't even come close to maximum efficiency. You know why they don't build them any bigger? The parts would be too expensive to transport. Really. It's fact. Terrawatt turbogenerators are possible and they'd be even more efficient at using conventional fuels, but they'd be so big they wouldn't be cost effective to build. Cost and efficiency is all so relative.

infoporn graphics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who is seeing "Click here to download infoporn graphics" as the link to the PDF in that page?

Re:infoporn graphics?

[GeorgeTheNorge]

I see it too. Who hacked this?

It's not that ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering Wired in their techno lust publishes an article like this once every other month, it's really not that ironic. Nevertheless, it's none more poignant then it is now.

Power loss

[erf]

Power losses are too great to ship electricity over very far distances. It makes cross-continental power delivery very expensive and inefficient.

A more-interconnected electricity grid will likely be one that is even less stable.

There is a cure for all of this, in two parts: regulation and decentralization. Electricity regulation worked much better than the current insane system. Ask California and now the Northeast for details. Decentralization allows for waste heat from power generation to be used for heating, improving efficiency (i.e. your office building could heat & provide power for itself with a small on-site plant). Solar and wind (but esp. solar) can be easily added to residential buildings, further insulating homes from grid instability.

More grids, more massive centralized facilities, less regulation: big power problems in the future. Guaranteed. Trying to do this on a world wide basis is general idiocy.

Some articles...

[useosx]

Here's some articles from around the web about the power outage (all collected by one site, CommonDreams.org). Personally, I would rather live off the grid totally. It's inevitably going to be so much cheaper, which is the main incentive for me.

An Industry Trapped by a Theory by Robert Kuttner

The Latest Bogus Fossil-Nuke Blackout: This Grid Should Not Exist by Harvey Wasserman

Power Outage Traced to Dim Bulb in White House by Greg Palast

A Tale of Two Power Outages by John Turri

greatest idea ive heard in a long time

[shaikhs]

do i hear ppl complaining... crying..
aawwwww
it was'nt such a bad blackout... was it...
man u shud come over here to karachi(pakistan)
weve got blackouts aleast once a month.

for us, the idea is fantastic, atleast we can get rid of the local electricity co's

Re:greatest idea ive heard in a long time

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, go back to your terrorist training center, where the lights aren't necessary.

Actually, YES. But you need a mix.

[vkg]

Coal and nuclear put all of your generation capacity at large, centralized locations which are very reliant on the National Grid to move the power around.

And as we've recently seen, you can't put complete faith in the Grid. It is not a completely secure system, nor can it be made so.

Solar and Wind are both *very* reliable - over a long enough baseline period. Over a period of, say, a year the total solar energy available varies by only a few percent.

So what does that mean? Well, either you need energy storage (not for a whole year, but say for two or three days) or you need to have other power sources, like natural gas generators, that you run with the sun is away.

It's not a simple as you think: really very sophisticated approaches are needed to provide reliable power, and it's not "either, or". You need redundancy not just in terms of multipe instances of coal or nat. gas or solar, but in terms of a mix of technologies and scales of deployment. Even an all-gas power system can benefit from a mix of large plants and microturbines.

$0.02.

hey dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have a nuke plant in the middle of nowhere compared to a dozen windmills littering the landscape. What happens on calm days? Nuke plants also have little pollution. When the uranium is spent load it into a rocket and point it at the sun. And don't give me any enviromental bullshit because NASA has used plutonium power on their rockets and spacecraft for years.

Distributing risk... and responsibility

[TheViewFromTheGround]

Geopolitically, a global power grid distributes risk and there are good reasons, hypothetically, to do so, particularly for mitigating the extremism that leads to violence. For example, if Iran, which has moderate tendencies, joins the grid, it would have a strong incentive to itself quash extermism precisely because if Iranian terrorists go Allah Mode in a place like France and try to knock out infrastructure, moderate Iranians, who make up the majority of the population, may suffer as well.

The problem is that the major global powers have not indicated that they are willing to obey or respect any international law or organization. In Rwanda, France, who has lately championed the use of the UN in Iraq, aided and abetted the genocidal army over and against the UN force working in the region to save a few beleagured Rwandans. The United States has similarly revealed little or no inclination to respect the UN or other international "decision" making bodies on critical issues.

Lately I've felt as if advocating isolationism makes some sense, and this power grid idea is a example of why: it seems likely that, like the U.N. and like a great deal of international law, the major powers will disingenuously support such structures for a variety of reasons (appearances, genuinely felt convictions and ideals, gains in prestige and power). Unfortunately, unlike the U.N., where flaunting it just means that geopolitics is like geopolitics without a UN, an international power grid is physical, and dependence on it and control of it could become dangerous and unwieldy.

Re:Distributing risk... and responsibility

[DancingSword]

Replying to yer subject: because the thought of isolationism ( giving-up on cooperation ) vs cooperation/coopetition ( out-waiting incooperation ) is something I'm gonna have to think about fer awhile...

Home Power Magazine

Yeah...

[imsabbel]

and it is a prime example shown to everybody that even a genius can produce SHIT ideas.
If you think 5 minutes about the consequences of this tech, you will see why....

OMG

[sandalwood]

A bad idea? In Wired Magazine!? Say it isn't so!

Reminds me of an old SNL episode

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is all part of the city's plan, to have a massive disaster" -Norm McDonald

What is so hard to understand?

[xintegerx]

If the ice caps melt in Florida, or there is a draught in Alaska, that would be interesting and newsworthy, yes? That's why NYC without power is so.. strange. All those people in the subway breathing toxic fumes (poor ventilation) in NYC, a bright city of all places!

But what we don't want to hear about is stuff that we expect. Stuff like tornados and hurricanes in places where you chose to live. Yes, even when it happens in other places it's newsworthy, but the NYC thing was MORE newsworthy and strange than anything else, and thats how it will be reported in international news. You won't hear about a tsunami in vietnam if on the same day, Tokyo loses all of it's power. Why is this so hard to understand?

Worldwide Power Grid: Natural resources

[pg133]

We already have a world wide power grid it called "natural resources" and as the article says "the only excuse for power shortages will be greed"!

Not much to discuss

[serutan]

This article was pretty short and skimpy, certainly no earthshaking insights. Whether Buckminster Fuller or anybody else proposed it first, of course there will be a worldwide power grid eventually. Lots of things are evolving into worldwide nets, for example all the stock markets will be linked eventually. So the discussion veers into the merits of solar energy, living in a log cabin in the desert, etc.

Ok, how about this: what would it take for the distribution systems of various utilities, not just electricity but things we all need at some level -- food, water, medicine, communication -- to evolve into networks with uniform, demand-driven price structures? And if that happens why not collect a uniform payment from everyone, eliminating all the effort spent moving individual beans around between individual piles? I'm not talking about socialism, I'm talking about a 100% efficient market. Is that possible?

Networking spreads information uniformly. Could the business world as we know it even exist without the scarcity of information that enables one person to find a better deal than someone else?

Private power sources

[djk29a]

A friend of mine from MIT was talking about one of the buildings there that was 18 stories tall but was on like 30 ft risers, and the wind gusts under there made it seem like a wind tunnel. Now, if we could cough up the money, we could get some wind power out of that and possibly provide some extra power to the building and cut costs in the long run. If EVERY home in the developed world ran a combination of solar and wind power, would we really need the electric companies? And no, I don't think it's actually feasible given the initial and maintenance costs.

Re:Private power sources

[Animats]

You're describing Building 54, a 1960s design by I.M Pei, when the "building on stilts" idea was popular. While that worked well in Brazilia, where directing moving air down to ground level created cooling breezes in the plazas around the buildings, it was a terrible idea for Boston. When Building 54 was built, strong winds off the ocean would make the ground-level doors slam or be hard to open. This was very embarassing.

The solution was an art object - that huge Calder stabile ("the Great Sail") in front of the building, designed in cooperation with aerodynamics experts to divert the wind.

No. Carbon payback time is usually three years.

[vkg]

Run the windmill for a few years, it usually pays for itself in carbon terms: i.e. the amount of carbon emission it saves is equal to that produced in it's manufacture. I'm pulling that number from memory, but it's certainly not much off.

Re:Poor little you !

[prs_013]

hmm...you can only appreciate light if you have seen darkness! get used to it... cos the problem will only get worse!

I can buy electricity from any producer.

[Colin Smith]

In the UK. The electricity all comes from the same place of course and comes in through the same set of wires, but the electricity companies don't have a monopoly on the customers in their region.

It means that I can do stuff like buy "green" electricity. I use the electricity, pay my green supplier and how they handle the generation, top up supply to the grid and inter company billing is completely up to them.

e.g.
http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/pre ss_for_c hange/choose_green_energy/

It'll be an interesting experiment.

Re:I can buy electricity from any producer.

[kzadot]

Heh. They have that here in Germany too. Theres a cheap normal option, and an expensive "green" option. Guess which one I chose?

Re:I can buy electricity from any producer.

[Jmstuckman]

Many electric companies in the US have this too (green electricity), but not all of them. I can buy wind-produced electricity for a small extra fee in MN. (No, I'm not getting the same "electrons", but that's not the point.)

Re:I can buy electricity from any producer.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reality is that you buy electricity from whoever in closer in most cases. That wind farm far away may have people paying for 500MW, but may only be pumping 300MW into the grid, because most of the consumers will be closer to another plant. The problem with this system is that those plants that cost the most steadily lose more and more money, corners are cut, things break, and those plants with the cheaper power that never supplied the area in the first place can't take up the slack.

All the control systems in power stations run on electricity, so when the grid goes down it is not a trivial exercise to get a unit on line. One incident a long time agoin the area where I live led to all kinds on problems when the emergency generator (an old engine out of a meteor jet fighter - still being used as backup today) wouldn't start. Apparently a whole lot of paper, wood, and anything that would burn was thrown into the boiler of a small power station that was being used for peak load, and after four hours there was enough steam to be able to get coal into the thing - and after six there was enough power to start up the units in another power station.

The ideal would be something like little windmills or solar panels on every power pole to suppliment base load - and really good control systems to made sure that there is always enough power. The reality is that we don't have the control systems and that economies of scale, and pollution issues make us put big power sources far from the areas where it is used. The "great white hope" (or elephant) of nuclear power was supposed to put the power where it was needed, be cheap without subsidy in less than fifty years, and be clean - but it is none of those things.

When superconductors are in the main transmission lines you can have green power - 'till then you get power of another shade from the local plant, with NOx and SOx or help to pay the enormous British Nuclear Fuels debt.

Currently, there's no way to use Antarctic catabaric winds to power the world - and it unlikely that will ever be a sane option even with perfect conduction. I think a good way for the future is to use a lot of opportuninstic power sources and control the flow in such a way so that there is always enough. Current technology is not quite there yet - resistance in the wires, surges, power factor etc prevent big networks from working at the moment without a lot of local generating sources.

Re:I can buy electricity from any producer.

[demaria]

Same thing exists in upstate New York (Niagara Mohawk). Most power here is supplied by nuclear, although there is some hydro power from Niagara falls. You can buy power from a renewable company (wind, hydro or biomass), however it costs extra. See .

As a Canadian

[phorm]

I'm thinking that they should place blame later, and just get the f***ing power up again. Piss on either of our governments for the blame game, and just find a solution so that it doesn't happen again - I think that would satisfy most people more than putting fault on anyone else.

And yes, Americans are quite good at shrugging off blame, and Canadians are good at not blaming others - except when it comes to Americans. And when the American gub'mint ain't perfect, flinging our nosepickings at them isn't a great solution either. Perhaps we both need to grow up, as gov't seems to degenerate to the maturity of a 5yr-old whenever blame is ambiguous (blame the other Country, other political party/candidate, whatever).

The Oil Companies are PRO HYDROGEN.

[vkg]

Actually, you often make the hydrogen from oil. At the Reformation stage, you can strip off the carbon. At the moment it comes off as carbon monoxide which then becomes carbon dioxide and gets vented, but there are some patents for systems which would give off the carbon as lamp black - soot, essentially, which you can just bury as landfill with no toxicity or climate impact.

Believe me, these guys are all about hydrogen.

Re:The Oil Companies are PRO HYDROGEN.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when did carbon dioxide or monoxide for that matter contain any hydrogen?

It's a matter of STABILITY

[mangu]

Solar and wind power, wind especially, are no good when stability is required. They may be good to supply a baseline power, but the problem that causes blackouts is when a large amount of additional power is needed suddenly, for instance when a transmission line is lost. You cannot increase suddenly the amount of power a windmill is generating, because windmills are usually generating all the power they can get from the available wind. It's the same with nuclear, normally nuclear stations are operated continuously at 100% capability. The best power plants for quickly raising power are gas powered generators, but hydro is also good if the system is well stabilized enough, with inductors and synchronous or static stabilizers to compensate for the inertia of the water column.

World wide grid

[synergy3000]

We already have a world wide grid of sorts with regards to the internet. You need that kind of redundancy in the power grid as well. Heck if you can run IP over powerlines and then set up wireless broadcast hubs on every tower you can have internet connections around the towers. This would also allow countries to develop specialties in power production. Some countries may be better capably at generating solar power than others.

Re: Yes.

[Ricdude]

Solar and wind power less reliable than fossil and nuclear power? You must be kidding. If you're talking about the new solar energy power plants, well, they're just plain silly anyway. However:

Park a few solar panels on your rooftop, put a stack of deep-cycle batteries in a closet, and disconnect yourself from "the grid". Don't run major appliances after dark, and your batteries will last longer. Install 12V DC lighting around the house, use 12V appliances and accessories (e.g. designed for cars/boats/RVs) where possible, and run them straight off the batteries. Get large appliances (refridgerators, freezers, washing machines) that were designed to run efficiently, and use even less of it. A large part of the problem in converting an existing house to solar energy is is the task of replacing the house's infrastructure to one suitable for solar power.

Another part of the problem in converting the average modern house is that, although stick frame houses are cheap and inexpensive to construct, they cost a lot to keep cool in the summer, and heat in the winter. Think of them as one big heat sink. By orienting houses with large windows to the south, and roof overhangs designed to allow low winter sun in, and keep high summer sun out, (or with a few large deciduous trees to your south for the same effect), you save a big fat bundle of energy in climate control. Add a fair amount of thermal mass to your outside walls (cob, adobe, straw-bale, rammed earth, earthship), put some of your living space underground, and you might even survive year round with no climate control.

Don't want to go whole hog? Get a grid intertie system, park the solar panels on your roof, and connect them through the intertie straight to the local power grid. It won't power your house after dark, or through a local (or widespread) outage, but you'll be helping offset the electricity demand period during the day, when electricity usage is highest. Better yet, if you make more electricity than you use (and your state requires the participation of the electric company), you can get paid by the electric company for the surplus you generate. The power company pays me $15 a month for the ability to cycle my water heater and air conditioner off for up to 15 minutes an hour (25% load reduction) in the summer, I don't see why they don't offer me $30-$50 a month for the privilige of parking an extra 3-5kW power plant on my roof.

The whole point of solar/wind/geothermal/renewable power, IMHO, is that you wouldn't need a "larger, more expensive, grid". With sufficient distribution of solar panels, backup batteries, and (worst-case) backup generators, you wouldn't need a grid at all. Each neighborhood could be fairly self sufficient, houses with good solar siting would provide the panels, those without could provide backup batteries, or house generators for emergency power. With houses built for energy efficiency from the start, you'd need a lot less power (find the exact statistics yourself) to get through your day. All of which would mean less mass power generation, which means fewer fossil and nuclear plants, which means greater energy independence, all of which is good for the future.

Dream on?

[vkg]

I think we're at least two decades from that kind of system. Hydrogen for office buildings and commecial plants, yes, but nobody is going to run house-to-house pipe anytime soon, and most domestic gas won't carry hydrogen safely, as far as I know. (Will it? that would change things)

I don't think this approach is feasible.

Re:Dream on?

[SmackCrackandPot]

Well, I don't know about the US or Canada, but over in the UK, we have natural gas powered central heating systems. One of the side-products of North Sea oil extraction is natural gases such as methane. Some bright spark discovered that when producing petrol (or gasoline), this gas was made and could be piped to houses. With a small boiler and an emergency shut-off valve for safety, it is possible to heat an entire house in this way. Even the old tenement housing have gas pipes running through the buildings, and these pipes are still in use.

Re:Dream on?

[vkg]

Yes, it's a delightful system. But if you put hydrogen in those pipes a lot of it leaks away. Right through the metal in many cases.

But yes, sorry, I should have said "nobody is going to run *new* pipe any time soon".

Re:Dream on?

[Baron_Yam]

Well, in Canadian territory, when an oil company finds a deposit, they take out all the thick goop they can and then either cap it, or burn off the natural gas, which I think is criminal. We have enough natual gas deposits here to do away with all our dependance on other fossil fuels, and if we did so, we'd be reducing our pollution problem at the same time.

The reason we don't? Well, natural gas has a low energy / volume compared to other fossil fuels, the infrastructure isn't really there, and because of the first reason, the average joe simply won't buy a vehicle that runs on it.

Re:Dream on?

[ces]

Natural gas is fairly common in the US and Canada particularly in urbanized areas.

Many homes use natural gas for heating, hot water, and cooking.

Many of the newest generation plants are natural gas fired gas turbines. They work very well particularly for covering peak loads.

There is a US and Canada wide pipeline system for moving natural gas from place to place.

And an interesting thing to note

[phorm]

Is while Quebec was also in the periphery of the effect grid, they avoided this domino affect - most likely because what they had already experienced. While it is a different situation (it wasn't based on bad grid so much as horrendous weather conditions), the Quebecers put in safeguards to protect their grid and thus didn't go down with everybody else when this happened.

Of course, there were supposed to be safeguards that prevented the domino effect anyhow, but perhaps somebody should check out what Quebec had different that actually worked because the existing "safeguards" obviously didn't this time.

Re:And an interesting thing to note

[Scrameustache]

Actually, while Hydro Quebec claims its post 98' Ice Storm countermeasures saved the day with this one, it is not the primary reason why it was not affected.

Quebec's grid's power is out of phase with the rest of the continent because, IIRC, of the great distance it has to travel from the giant dams up north down to the metropolitan areas of the "south". So, at the borders are stations wich synchronise the power (alternative current, 60hz on both side of the border, but not in synch) before sending down south (quebec exports lots of electricity, its produced cheaply with a clean renewable source: hydro power).

Isolation was the hero here.

Re:And an interesting thing to note

[belar77]

Quebec's grid is connected to other grids via DC powerline. Which is why it didn't go down.

THe irony of it is that it was done that way so that the Quebec grid wouldn't take down the other grids.

It's easy to store heat though.

[Colin Smith]

Y'know, like molten salt. The heat boils water to superheated steam and turns a turbine, generating electricity on demand.

Solar II proved that this works. They can generate power 24 hours per day from a solar thermal source.

No hazard?

[mangu]

hydrogen doesn't have nearly as many hazardous issues to deal with (that we know of) as nuclear power

Yeah, right! A highly flammable gas, whose molecules are so small that it leaks through solid metal walls... No thanks, I'd rather have the solid reliability of nuclear power, proved through over 40 years of operation worldwide with only two major accidents. What other human activity can beat that safety record?

Re:No hazard?

[cethiesus]

the solid reliability of nuclear power, proved through over 40 years of operation worldwide

But that stable nuclear power has always been under the care of extremely well-trained professionals. Remember when computers were the domain of scientists who kept them in controlled environments (not talking about atmosphere) and knew how they worked? There was a very, very small chance of malfunction. Now fast forward to today where anyone who can read can basically work with a computer and where crashes or mishaps are virtually hourly with a single machine.
Now take nuclear generators out of the hands of professionals and give them to the average homeowner who knows only enough to know when the lights suddenly go out. Unless there are some serious advances in radiation containment or leak-prevention, I do not want any sort of radioactive fuel-powered devices in mine or my neighbor's hands.

Re:No hazard?

[mangu]

OK, so let nuclear power stay in the hands of trained professionals. But don't put hydrogen in the hands of amateurs. There are several different gases which are used in homes today, but they are all hydrocarbons. Those gases have small amounts of strongly odorous components added to them, such as mercaptanes, so that people with a normal sense of smell can detect leaks. Now, hydrogen, with its much smaller molecule, will seep through leaks which mercaptanes don't flow through. Unles a *much* safer method of distribution can be devised, in a hydrogen powered society explosions would happen on a daily basis on homes everywhere.

Re:No hazard?

[Anonymous Coward]

We pipe natural gas around everywhere, it is almost as flammable as hydrogen.

Hell.. We could have CH4->C+2H2 in the home.

Re: Yes.

[|<amikaze]

I don't see why they don't offer me $30-$50 a month for the privilige of parking an extra 3-5kW power plant on my roof.

They would however. You can generally sell extra power back to the grid. Plus, you'll have a huge savings in energy costs even if you're still using a bit of grid power.

2 challenges ! 1 technical, 1 strategical

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be 2 challenges to solve the issue: Crossing the pacific and the atlantic without too much energy losses and without electrocuting too much fishes. Otherwise the mesh of power grid will be not viable. There is a need for at least two interconnects in the atlantic, connecting north america and europe, and south africa and south america. More difficult/costly will be the two interconnects in the pacific ocean. one linking n. america with japan/china/eastern russia, one linking south america with australia. Once this is done, we will have a "balanced" power grid. That's where the strategic problems start... How to set an energy embargo on a (evil, real or assumed) country if it can either cut the interconnect grid (if it runs over its territory) or overload it and harming its neighbours... That's why I recommend the europeans to keep there powergrid for themselves. Makes life for Europe with the USA easier. Sorry Canada, you are on the wrong side of the Atlantic. We are still partners with the USA, but in those times of economical battle (instead of cold war), a water curtain (remember the iron curtain ?) like the Atlantic is very helpfull. And to those who say that we had a lot of help in the 2nd world war and delivered us from the dictators, i say : look at Iraq ! Those guys are doing the same a we, europeams, did 50 years ago... Yes the issue at stake is energy ! Not petrol ! Energy. Once this power grid will be in place, the next international crisis will be based on energy ! Either one has been starved or overloaded ! Even wars could be sparked by it... Sorry for being pessimistic, but even Nostradamus predicted such things in 1556 !

Not so sure...

[El Camino SS]

The day will come, maybe in just a few decades, when every building has its own fuel cell, connected to a low-pressure hydrogen line.



Ahhh, but the day will never, ever come where the laws of thermodynamics will stop, creating a way to not lose copius amounts of energy creating hydrogen. Can't get more out than you put in. Never going to so much as break even. Water is a very, very sound molecule. It doesn't even come close to trying to break it for energy. There is no energy solution, because we're talking the first law of thermodynamics, and we're talking basic science. Sounds great. "We've got whole oceans here!" So is it really going to be that much better if we went to it?

What about other chemical processes? Unless you want wholesale ecological disaster in exchange for your Playstation 2 time, I cannot imagine it. Acids? Bases? What else just makes a LARGE, CONSUMABLE AMOUNT OF H2? It would be great for a camp stove, but what about whole cities?

You can't flip a molecule and make water into hydrogen and oxygen so easily. Water is the ANTI-FUEL. It's not gasoline that is waiting to combust. It's a real nightmare to try to get the energy back. Electrolysis just doesn't cut it. We'd really need a magic bullet with hydrogen.

Are hydrogen lines better than power lines?

IMHO It's never been about the resource, it is all about the energy you consume. We need to learn to lower our overall energy usage. That is my solution to all of this.

Hydrogen sounds like the greatest idea ever, too bad physics doesn't seem to back it up, at least right now.

Re:Not so sure...

[Rysith]

WEll, I, Like most /. readers, have no idea what is really happening research-wise with hydrogen fuel cells and stuff, but it seems like water would be the wrong place to get hydrogen from: as you said, it's a very sound molecule, and very hard to split. But water is not the only source of hydrogen. For example, stripping hydrogen off of carbohydrates. Again, I'm not sure how that would work in terms of energy gained vs energy used compared to water, but carbohydrates are (literally) lying around on the ground, and they seem much easier to get hydrogen out of than water.

Re:Not so sure...

[iCat]

Ehh... am I missing something here? I thought the key to this technology is to use renewable energy sources to split water into Hydrogen. We all know energy isn't free, but we can generate it using sustainable sources then store it in the form of Hydrogen. The Hydrogen can then be used to power a fuel cell when needed, with the only by-product being H2O. Please enlighten me.

Re:Not so sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, it would be dumb to try to get hydrogen from water to fuel fuel cells. That's why the hydrogen is harvested from natural gas, a not so sound molecule. Is that the silver bullet you were looking for? Or maybe you'd like to do some actual research. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. What physics are you refering to that doesn't back it up?

Re:Not so sure...

[Tim C]

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.

Overall, yes, it is, but not locally, and that's really what matters, unless you envisage sending out spacecraft to harvest it.

Re:Not so sure...

[Psiven]

We could mine asteroids and the moon for fuels like hydrogen and methane, and whatever else comes with a massive object that floats around the solar system. The moon would be a little trickier.

You'd have to drill straight to the center of it to reach anything usefull - but hey, once you empty out the inside of the moon we could move in to it and have the worlds most outrageous disco.

I got the "mine the moon" idear from Stephen Baxter. He wrote a thesis on the topic.

Re:Not so sure...

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Ahhh, but the day will never, ever come where the laws of thermodynamics will stop, creating a way to not lose copius amounts of energy creating hydrogen.

And in this house, we follow the laws of thermodynamics.

How to get a cascade failure with H2

[mangu]

...a low-pressure hydrogen line.

OK, that's equivalent to an electric power system where every building is connected to a low voltage line. Highly wasteful, the amount of power wasted in the lines would be a significant percentage of the power used. it's the same thing with hydrogen, if you connect everything with small pipes the amount of power wasted in pumping the gas would be too much. If you want to reduce wastage in your hydrogen system, you would need large pipes, at high pressures, conducting large amounts of the gas. But then you would start getting the same stability problems you get with a large electric power system.

First terrorism now this

[fluor2]

Q1: USA was attacked by terrorists.
A1: "Let's make this a GLOBAL war against terrorists, involving each country in the future".

Q2: USA has a power-outtage because of their bad power-backbone.
A2: "Let's make this a GLOBAL backbone against any power-outtage in the future"

Transmisson model is wasteful

[Ex-MislTech]

For every mile of huge arm thick copper wire linking
power plants across the nation, we could invest in
local power plants based on technology similar to
smith Cogeneration .

http://www.smithcogen.com/aboutcogeneration.htm

There are other vendors out there as well, and throughout
alot of the US natural gas is plentiful and affordable .

Each mile of copper wire carrying 100,000+ volts and
1,000's of Ampere lose alot of their power due to the
natural resistance in the wire .

The costs of the giant towers, and the huge copper wires
is truly amazing, and could be better spent on local power .

The Tranmission model allows for less human workers is
its biggest cost savings .

In a time with a job crunch, and a weak grid in California
and the upper east coast, it is time to think differently .

Smaller regional grids are less wasteful, and make more sense .

10,000 miles of Transmission towers and wires must have
cost billions of dollars . It may have been a good idea
at the time, but the smaller Cogeneration model is better
under current political, financial, and economic conditions .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Transmisson model is wasteful

[oakad]

Your argument was used by T. Edison some time ago. Did not held the test of time. Nowadays, using MV rated DC transmission systems and a handful of atomic power plants is the best way to make energy.

Re:Transmisson model is wasteful

[Ex-MislTech]

I think this says enough :

http://www.ramgen.com/about_doe.html

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Transmisson model is wasteful

[oakad]

No, it does not. Most of the US transmission lines have very low voltage ratings (compared to european) and thus large loss. And for claimed efficiency on the mentioned website, I know of no practical proof of it possible.

Norway trading power to Laos

[geirhe]

I am a Norwegian. We mostly use hydroelectric power. Usually, we have more than enough, but there has been very little rain in the west of Norway the last year. As a result, prices have gone up in the west of Norway. We can't bring cheap power in from Sweden to cover the deficit in the power budget because of transmission losses.

Now someone has suggested we export power to Laos. Methinks someone should read up on basic physics.

Power grids and GOELRO

[oakad]

For these, who does not know, GOELRO was a plan to connect the entire USSR (in the early 1920th) to the unified electric grid. And since then, the grid worked fine and mostly without break-downs (even when Chernobyl gone kaput, taking a 4000MW of power with it to the grave). And all this only because the original inspirer of the program was V. I. Lenin. The same Lenin said: kommunizm equals socialism plus unified electric grid. Therefore, my question is: what is capitalism without electricity?

Why not use the existing grid?

[Tomcat666]

The lines are ready and the technology works according to this RFC:
RFC 3251 (rfc3251) - Electricity over IP

Long haul transmission wasteful

[Ex-MislTech]

Transmission over distances is wasteful, transmission
thru thru the air similar to radar is VERY wasteful .

Tesla was a brilliant man, brilliant beyond his years,
but Local power wastes less .

When you consider the US is the largest consumer of electricity
world wide, something like 12 Trillion Watts , 10% of that
would be enough to supply multiple entire countries .

10% is just an example, actually MUCH more is wasted due
to line loss over thousands of Grid Transmission Lines .

The biggest savings has been the ability to run less plants
with less ppl, but now small operation like Smith Cogeneration
as affordable, can use jet enegines that do not meet high RPM
vibration tests for flight dynamics .

http://www.smithcogen.com/aboutcogeneration.htm

Natural gas in a pipeline traveling from one side of the country
to the other has veritably no loss in comparison .

Solar and Wind power are great, but they take a great deal of
time to implement, and take up ALOT of surface area .

In metropolitan areas the price for land is fairly high,
this system could run underground, taking little space .

Considering the economic and job situation of the country,
putting more ppl back to work has some merit .

Considering a "possible" attack on the power grid just to
cause financial damage, it may be prudent as well .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Long haul transmission wasteful

[thebigmacd]

Actually for long distances (>100km) and MF, airborne transmission is MUCH more efficient than wired transmission. Considering that copper cable (unshielded) has an attenutation of 6dB/km (300 kHz) whereas radial transmission has 6dB of attentuation for every doubling of distance, beyond a certain critical distance, to double the distance is MUCH longer than an additional km for cable (for the same attentuation). Now, change the airborne transmission system to a point-point dish system and the attenuation drops even further.

Re:Long haul transmission wasteful

[Anonymous Coward]

Power drops with 1/r2 (one over r squared) for wireless. It's gets worse faster than linear. I don't know where you get your ideas from.

Re:Long haul transmission wasteful

[thebigmacd]

Where I get my ideas from? Telecommuncations class in Control Engineering. Beyond a certain point inverse-squared gets more efficient than linear. Try drawing a downward-sloping graph (linear equivalent) and an inverse-squared curve (airwave equivalent) on the same graph. At a critical point, the linear curve will drop below the 1/r^2 curve and soon after reach the zero point. The inverse curve will never reach the zero point. Ever wonder why we can see stars so clearly even though they are so far away? Because one you get really far away, even an extra trillion kilometers does not even get close to halving the light energy. At extremely long distances, attenuation of a radial transmission become trivial. As a matter of fact, RF (300 kHz) sent 100 km over copper cable will be reduced by ~600 dB, as compared to ~100 dB over airwaves. Deal with it.

Re:Long haul transmission wasteful

[Anonymous Coward]

The downsides to solar and wind are not that they take a great deal of time to implement. (wind and thermal solar are considerably faster than any medium sized or larger nat gas or coal plant because so much of the plant can be built in parallel. The land that is typically usefull for wind power production isn't in places where people want to live (AFAIK the Dakota's and N Texas don't have a lot of high density housing). The downsides of wind are
a) it requires quite a bit of transmission infrastructure (because high wind areas are typically distant to high population centers) and b) quite a bit of the cost of wind is in labor and labor costs are traditionally difficult to control.
The cost of the electricity from wind is cost effective NOW but it is not politically expedient because it moves a)jobs and b) economic power away from local control. The wind power in N. Dakota, S. Dakota and (mostly North) Texas could power the entire US.
There are plenty of promising solar technologies, but so far AFAIK all are more expensive than wind power.

Personally I think we'll need a good deal of the natural gas we're currently burning to transistion to a hydrogen based economy
http://www.rmi.org/images/other/E-H2Futur eOfEnergy .pdf
http://www.rmi.org/images/other/E-20Hydrogen Myths. pdf
(and even with really cool stuff like "anything into oil" http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html or
biodiesel (particularly w/ spicy mustard)
http://www.powerturn.net/~matthew/biodie sel.html
or
http://www.ott.doe.gov/biofuels/pdfs /mustard_hybri ds.pdf
)

If any of these seem like flights of fantasy that would be too expensive to work on, as a Californian, I can assure you that they are not.

Force Recon - The Dark Side of the Force

[Anonymous Coward]

Behold Leviathan
1st Books Library
208 pages (paperback)

Force Recon units are part of the U.S. Marine Corps. We conduct raids, do enemy captures, and collect intelligence. We perform other special operations, too. One of these dark ops is covert surveillance of our national security, to expose the mind set in Washington that tolerates acts of domestic terrorism like the "Great Blackout of 2003" that just happened.

Now you can read all about it, in this first ever public disclosure of our activities stateside ... a document which clearly predicts events like the "power failure" in the NorthEast that left 50 million people without electricity on August 15th, 2003.

About the Author

William Clark was 21st in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy, and later received the Army''s highest peacetime award for turning in a cache of drug users and dealers at White Sands Missile Range; the military''s highest security installation. Clark is a licensed Professional Engineer in several engineering disciplines, and has a MSE in Celestial Mechanics . He is considered an international expert in energy conservation, having published many technical papers, and two textbooks with McGraw-Hill, Retrofitting for Energy Conservation and Electrical Design Guide for Commercial Buildings He is quite knowledgeable in all aspects of major power distribution systems. Fundamentally there are two problems: the electrical distribution system and total neglect of the principles of energy conservation. Why has nobody in authority mentioned the latter? That is what "Behold Leviathan" is all about.

Wimp

[Anonymous Coward]

>As someone who spent 23 and a half hours without power, I'm thinking this is a brilliant plan!

Where I used to live, the power would sometimes go out for days. You people act like its the worse thing in the world to lose power for a few hours.
Wimps.

Eventually,

[DoraLives]

when they come out with a little something that can roll on like a coat of paint, with 90 percent plus percent efficency at converting sunlight (or anybody else's light for that matter) into electricity, for about thirty cents a gallon, nobody's gonna be hooked into much of anything by way of a grid any more.

At which point I shall piss and moan mightly over the fact that every last manmade thing in sight will be an amazingly ugly shade of flat black.

Beyond which point, white houses will be an ostentatious statement of the owner's ability to just squander money away on electrons provided by others.

Restart was way too slow

[Animats]

Generating companies have gotten sloppy. After the 1967 blackout, generating stations were supposed to install enough backup power to be able to restart without cranking power from the grid. Yet we're hearing utility executives whining "We never expected to have to restart without power from the grid". Detroit and Cleveland were down for days. And that's with no major equipment damage. The slow restart is inexcusable. If this happened in winter, there'd be thousands of dead people.

Since deregulation, there's no one to blame, of course. The invisible hand of the market is supposed to do it all. Generating companies, transmission companies, and retail delivery utilities are all separate organizations now.

It's not really economic to have reliable electric power. Would you pay 20-30% more on your power bill for 99.99% uptime vs. 99.9% uptime? That's about what it costs.

Re:Restart was way too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Plants are not required to carry there own blackstart capability.
2. With such a widescale transmission outage how would you transmit the power over the system.
3. When any largescale generation goes down there is a minimum downtime.

Re:Restart was way too slow

[Scrameustache]

The slow restart is inexcusable. If this happened in winter, there'd be thousands of dead people.

Lets not be too alarmist, in canada there was a power outage in 98 that lasted weeks , there was no mass death. And that was CANADA, in WINTER. Think about it.

Re:Restart was way too slow

[soccerisgod]

It's not really economic to have reliable electric power. Would you pay 20-30% more on your power bill for 99.99% uptime vs. 99.9% uptime? That's about what it costs.

Curiously enough, we here in Germany do...

Re:Restart was way too slow

[Animats]

About 30 people died in that power outage.

it talks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would any country seriously want to increase america's arrogant hegemony by joining a electricity grid with them? Fat americans use more power tyhan anywhere else in the world - by a very long way. Mmmmmm - profit.

What would have happened?

[Doctor Cat]

With the recent outage on in the northeast, think of what could've happened if the entire world was on one grid.

Well, given that we already had a grid much larger than the area where the power went out, and automatic safeguards kicked in on a lot of its connections and limited the area of the blackout... If the rest of the world had connections to our grid too, I think what most likely would have happened would be a blackout of the same size we did see, or just a little bit larger. Big deal.

dumb question...

[frostman]

I always wondered: if you had a huge wireless power grid, how do we know it wouldn't be harmfull to people to live beneath the airborne electric currents?

I never got around taking physics... but I bet a lot of people on slashdot did and someone can provide me with a clue. ;-)

worldwide grid

[freq]

Leave it to wired and you slashdot wankers to screw up a perfectly good idea.

The worldwide power grid idea was detailed in fuller's book Critical Path and its not a new idea by any stretch (

Yeah bucky was a ridiculous optimist, but the jist of this whole book (and his life's work for that matter) seems to be that if we can eliminate inefficiencies and work together on a global scale, there will be more than enough power/food/resources for everyone to live extremely well.

Of course the wired people decided to drop their grid on a truly crap-tastic map which kills the whole point. take a look at the worldwide grid on bucky fuller's dymaxion map which shows the earth as one giant continent without distorting the relative sizes of the landmasses.

Electricity demand is low on one side of the world at night, they send their excess capacity to the other side of the globe where it is day. and vice versa. same deal with summer/winter in the northern / southern hemisphere. of course we need to solve the sticky problem of transmission loss :)

and if you are whining about being without power for a day someone needs to unplug your ass and send you outside for a little nature.

Re:worldwide grid

[soccerisgod]

Yeah bucky was a ridiculous optimist, but the jist of this whole book (and his life's work for that matter) seems to be that if we can eliminate inefficiencies and work together on a global scale, there will be more than enough power/food/resources for everyone to live extremely well.

If by that you mean, we can all waste energy as much as the average american...seriously, you people should learn to conserve energy. If you did, and improved your "3rd world" energy network to something up to standard, then you wouldn't have such problems.

I mean, is it really necessary to leave the AC and the lights all over the house on for 24 hours a day? Here in Europe we not only have a very well working power grid (which basically leaves us with the wish NOT to be connected to other grids), we also know that conserving energy is important - not least because wasting energy means trampling all over the environment.

And btw, have you seen those sat pictures of america at nighttime? You wouldn't be saying demand is lower then. Not if you don't switch off stuff!

Are there any Iraqi news sources on the web?

[frostman]

I know you probably just meant it as an example, but I'm curious.

Do you know of any newspapers etc in Iraq using their newfound freedom of the press to get their point of view out on the net? Maybe even in English?

Re:Are there any Iraqi news sources on the web?

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

This is not quite Iraqi (it had a slight American tilt during the war but only slight):
http://www.foxnews.com/geraldo/

Off topic but

[panurge]

Boasting of being a Mensa member on Slashdot is probably a bit like boasting of once having had sex at a hookers' convention. My IQ on the scale used by Mensa is only in the mid 170s, and I often feel like the dumb member of the class when I read some threads. (ACs and trolls excepted, of course.)

Hmmm... decentralized backup?

[frostman]

I've always wondered why urban places end up without local backup for infrastructure needs like power.

In my home town (pop. 325) the power often goes out in the winter. When it does, most of the time they get the big old diesel generator up and running and the town has power again within an hour or so. Day-long blackouts are really rare, even if it takes them that long to find and fix the downed line.

Is there some reason why cities can't have relatively local (say, block by block) emergency backup for things like power?

Or is it just habit, or maybe just being cheap?

I doubt the folks in Downieville have more money than the folks in [big city of your choice].

Re:Hmmm... decentralized backup?

[smithmc]

In my home town (pop. 325) the power often goes out in the winter. When it does, most of the time they get the big old diesel generator up and running and the town has power again within an hour or so.

Is there some reason why cities can't have relatively local (say, block by block) emergency backup for things like power?

You've got to be kidding, right? There are probably 325 people living on my block. Just to handle my neighborhood would require 50-100 "big ol' diesel generators", all of which would need to be fueled and maintained to a state of constant readiness in order to be any good - not to mention the entire town of some 200,000 people (and that's actually a town, not a city - they're not even required to supply police etc., never mind backup electricity!).

POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE

[Anonymous Coward]

POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE --- The Tale of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=257&r ow =0

Electricity must be ubiquitious

[tjstork]

For the American economy to work, it is in the interests of society that everyone should have electricity. Therefor, availability that might otherwise be constrained by market forces - such as in rural areas, must be handled or at least guided by the government.

At the start of the 20th century, prior to regulation, there were in fact hundreds, if not thousands of electric companies. Anyone with sufficient capital can and did run wires. You could have homes with wires from five different systems! Accidents were common and thousands of linemen were killed each year. The government created the "natural" monopolies of phone and electric service to solve these problems. We have "one" set of wires because the government said it would be that way, and, in a completely unfettered free market, there would be wires everywhere..

Re:Electricity must be ubiquitious

[Ex-MislTech]

I agree with your arguement toa point .

The long haul transmission lines are not needed IMHO .

We can work off metro based solutions .

The only exceptions I could see to this would be to
tap alternative power sources like Hydro .

It is now common knowledge that if all countries in the
world switched to nuclear power, we would run out of
material to power them in just a few decades .

The nuclear waste left behind in countries even less
scrupulous than the US is cause for concern as well .

I think nuke power needs to be phased out over the
next 20 years .

I think tidal, and geo-therm need to be given more interest .

The bay of fundy is the largest potential tidal power generator
in the entire world, moving more water every 12 hrs than all
the rivers in the world combined .

It is just off the coast of canada near Nova Scotia .

We need to not make a reservoir system there, it would destroy
the ecosystem, underwater turbines or a flotation hydraulic
based system would work best and have the least environmental
impact .

France's tidal power generation system has had a negative
impact, we can learn from that and make a better one .

Theirs uses a dam to hold back water, and then release, and
make power on the flow . Not sure if it makes it bidirectionally
or not .

The grid currently wastes 9% - 15% just in Transmission .

http://www.ramgen.com/about_doe.html

Thus why I say make it locally .

Smith Cogeneration has found a way via natural gas to make
it for less and use the energy to its fullest .

http://www.smithcogen.com/aboutcogeneration.htm

The VAST majority of the population lives within 75 miles
of the coast , design this into the equation .

Transport energy "natural gas" via high pressure pipelines
from high pressure gas wells to coastal areas .

When we can move to alternative power, then make the gradual
switch over as time permits .

After all we cannot make the switch over night .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Electricity must be ubiquitious

[turbod]

Wow, what's your Greenpeace card number?

"It is now common knowledge that if all countries in the
world switched to nuclear power, we would run out of
material to power them in just a few decades "

And I'd like some data to backup this piece of troll work.

I need:

1) estimates of what is in the ground that hasn't been mined.
2) how much material is now in circulation
3) how much "waste" material, such as U238, can be converted into fissionable plutonium for further energy production?
4) Please list as many nation estimates as possible, and give the sources of your data for each nation.
5) authenticate those sources.

Pls Thx

TurboD

Re:Electricity must be ubiquitious

[Ex-MislTech]

Here ya go, my math is based on the statement they make
in this article saying that "if uranium is used at current levels"

currently is a minor energy producer, if pushed to top
producer it would run out MUCH faster .

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.htm

That gets you 3 out of the 5 you asked for .

I am not a Greenpeace member, nor am I green party .

I think fusion vs. fission would be better, thus why
I said phase it out over 20 years .

I think Robert Katia will get his hot fusion liquid
metal wall reactor working in 20 years or less .

At least he seems to think so .

You seem quite cranked up on this subject, I take it you
were in the California blackouts or just the East Coast ones ??

hehehe, if you were out any money, I am sympathetic to
your personal loss , but the US needs more responsible
energy policy .

Yes, I am in the US .

It was not intended as Troll work, it was a statement based
on them saying 50 yrs if used at current levels for easy to
access uranium . My statement says if Uranium was pushed
to the top used fuel it would be used up in a few decades .

Now converting all we could to plutonium, no idea there .

I also think the world could do with a little less plutonium
considering its alternate use .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Electricity must be ubiquitious

[Eunuchswear]

Strange, you seem to be reading this report in exactly the opposite way to me.

They do say:

Thus the world's present measured resources of uranium in the lower cost category (3.1 Mt) and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for almost 50 years.

But they then go on to say:

This represents a higher level of assured resources than is normal for most minerals. Further exploration and higher prices will certainly, on the basis of present geological knowledge, yield further resources as present ones are used up. A doubling of price from present levels could be expected to create about a tenfold increase in measured resources, over time.

Hardly sounds like time to panic.

One odd thing is that the sources of uranium ore they list doesn't include Niger, where Saddam and other nasty people (i.e. the French) get most of their uranium.

Correction, Utilities no longer required to buy...

[tjstork]

Utilities are no longer required to buy power from producers, since an act of congress in 1990s...

Solar after dark: batteries

[Ricdude]

How do I plan on getting solar power in the middle of the night? First, reduce your electricity needs after dark. 12 V DC lighting, avoid large appliance usage, surf the net on the laptop instead of the desktop, etc. Next, get a rack of these Solar Gel Batteries. Store excess energy during the day, burn it up at night. No problem.

Am I going to do this on my current house? No. It's far too energy-inefficient to even bother with. My next house? Might go with a solar intertie system. House after that? Grid-free living. Have a plan.

Think about reliablity...

[autopr0n]

Yeah, the internet was deregulated, and the power system was regulated. But think about how generally unreliable the internet is compared to the power system. Parts of it go down all the time. Think about the last network outage compared to the last blackout. How long did that blackout last compared to the network outage?

The power system is much more critical then the internet. Without power, people can get stuck in elevators, AC goes out, the cellular phone system can go down, etc.

Another problem that showed up in the power system is that companies like Enron were, with no equivocation, bandits. They actually fucked with the California power system in order to extract better deals from the state, along with the well-known securities thieving they pulled off.

Any attempt at power deregulation should also require a much, much better standard for open-ness and honesty from the companies. Peoples lives are actually at state here and leaving our power grid in the hands of criminals is not a very good plan.

And we also need to design a much more fault-tolerant grid system as well. It's just ridiculous that one fuckup can shut down the entire east coast, especially 40 years (or whatever) after the exact same thing happened...

Re:Think about reliablity...

[Anonymous Coward]

But think about how generally unreliable the internet is compared to the power system. Parts of it go down all the time. Think about the last network outage compared to the last blackout.

My dialup connection remained up through the entire power outage, with no network problems, even though I dial into a city that lost power (I didn't lose power, and I guess the NOC had a good backup power system). The longest outage I remember was 90 minutes, and I wasn't even using my computer at the time (it was in the middle of the night).

Lots of things can happen to the internet without major problems. It was really slow when someone cut a fibre optic line with a backhoe, but everything still worked.

The power system is much more critical then the internet. Without power, people can get stuck in elevators, AC goes out, the cellular phone system can go down, etc.

Then those are poorly designed elevators. I had the power go out while I was in an elevator once - the emergency lights came on, it went down to the nearest floor, the doors opened, and I got out.

The AC going out is an inconvenience, but not a serious problem. Lots of people don't even have air conditioning. A more serious problem is refrigerators going out - the freezers and fridges at my local store were pretty bare, and I'm guessing they lost a lot of money throwing out all that spoiled food.

Resistance of just wire ...

[Ex-MislTech]

http://www.cirris.com/testing/resistance/wire.html

If you consider one loop at just 5,000 miles,
and 3 strands one for each phase of AC ,
then you are looking at 79.2 million ft. Transmission
line .

As the size of the wire goes up so does the resistance,
and as the heat of the line goes up so does the resistance .

Summer heat can cause "sag" which actually makes the
wires longer for the equation as well .

The only figure I have found is about .0025 Ohms per foot .

So at optimal conditions we have 72.2 million ft. x .0025 Ohms =
198K ohms and that is if you figure in Zero resistance
in interconnection .

198,000 Ohms * 1,000's of Ampere of current, you get the idea .

All so we can build centralized power plants, and have
lower staffing levels .

Local power is honestly a better way to go, and I think
deregualtion leads to corporate corruption .

Ask Enron !

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[Melchior_of_wg]

"As the size of the wire goes up so does the resistance," I'm not sure what you mean by size here. Longer wires certainly increases resistance. It's counted at ohm/meter (or ohm/feet or whatever you want). However, if you make the cable thicker, the opposite is true. If you use twice the metal, you get half the resistance, basically.

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[thebigmacd]

As the SIZE of the wire goes up, the resistance goes DOWN. As the LENGTH of the wire goes up, so does the resistance. As the wire heats up, resistance goes DOWN. That's how the cascade effect breaks down resistors that can't dissipate power quickly enough...they let more current through, increasing the temp. I do agree with you on the local power though.

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[Ex-MislTech]

>>As the wire heats up, resistance goes DOWN.

You got to be kidding me, as the wire gets hotter you
are telling me it becomes a better conductor .

Uhhh, no, it does not .

Heat increases resistance through a piece of wire. Use an ohm meter on a light bulb and you see it.

Excerpt:

Positive Temperature Coefficient = high heat =high resistance because heat causes electrons to collide.

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:jkWzAaJcA-Y J: www.geocities.com/spederson7587/elnsreview.doc+ele ctricity+wire+%22heat+increased+resistance%22&hl=e n&ie=UTF-8

Heat is not electricity's friend, ask your CPU !!!

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[thebigmacd]

Check out the cascade effect sometime. Wire gets less resistive as it heats up. Try the same experiment on a metal-film resistor sometime.

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[Ex-MislTech]

So super conductors will work better under hotter condtitions ???

I do not think that is the case .

We have had to super cool them for some time .

I think you may have noticed an effect of certain electronic
components, and even then I am a bit skeptical .

Provide some linkage that demonstrates your point .

A picture ( or link ) is worth a thousand words .

Especially amongst arm chair scientists .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[thebigmacd]

I'm not an arm chair scientist. As a matter of fact you have been blatantly CORRECT the whole time. The temperature coefficient of pure copper is ~ +0.39/degree centrigrade [celsius/kelvin] (which I have in memory) Just wanted to see how long it took for you to call a 60-year-old a "young punk" :D Didn't happen, but it's always fun.

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[Ex-MislTech]

Hahahahhaa, I did out loud here, but I refrained form it .

OK, I am troll bait, LOL .

I did not have the numbers in my head, and I learned what
I knew so long ago that it was like a rusty hinge, LOL .

I get to emotionally involved in power issues, I want to work
on a major alternative power project so bad I cannot stand it .

Alternative Power is a passion for me, as is Wi-Fi, and
networking, and Hologrphic storage .

If you want a look inside my head it is sloppy, but
here is my website :

http://www.geocities.com/duanenavarre

As I am not a "highly" educated individual and just a Ex-navy
guided missile radar tech, I am stuck doing more mundane work.

Cest la Vie , LOL .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[Ex-MislTech]

Added you as a friend even though your a nasty evil under
the bridge troll, why I added you is you admitted it, LOL

Baaahh !!! I am troll bait !! LOL

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Resistance of just wire ...

[thebigmacd]

Added you too I actually *AM* a young punk! Double-baited! :D and ya you are still right

Dual source

[autopr0n]

You know, it would actually be a good idea to have two physical sets of wires leading to your house, or at least to the neighborhood distribution center. That way, if one set of wires goes down, you still have power.

Re:Dual source

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea it would, but what would it cost - is 100% power uptime versus 99% (say one blackout a year) worth an extra several thousand dollars to you? If you want 100% reliability get yourself a generator.

Re:Dual source

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, it would actually be a good idea to have two physical sets of wires leading to your house, or at least to the neighborhood distribution center. That way, if one set of wires goes down, you still have power.

Having dual-source power on every house could easily overload the grid. Assuming the load is balanced equally, when one source dies the draw on the other source will double, probably overloading it.

To ensure reliability, you'd want to make sure that each houses draws only 50% of the power when one grid goes out. Certain circuits (like fridges, freezers, lights, furnaces, water heaters, and maybe a stove) would have to be marked as backup power, and everything else (especially air conditioning) would be shut down in a low-power situation.

It would also help if when power was returned, everyone didn't start drawing power from it immediately. If circuits were brought back gradually over a few minutes (maybe with a random timer), the system would be more reliable. Right now, thousands of air conditioners begin drawing power as soon as it becomes available (the power companies were constantly reminding everyone to turn their ACs off when the power went out).

It would never work....

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA, japan, and parts of S. America use 60 Hz AC. Europe and the rest of the world uses 50 Hz. Not to mention the voltage in Europe is 230 Volts.

That would fit right in with One World Government

[Quickening]

You're not going to read about this in the mass media.

Bad Link

[Ex-MislTech]

That link I offered is not a very good one, here is
a better one , with better numbers :

http://www.ramgen.com/about_doe.html

9 - 15% loss is the overall factor they think .

At 12 trillion watts of usage, that is a GREAT deal of power .

Thanks,
Ex-MislTech

Yeah, and your argument is worng too

[Ex-MislTech]

http://www.ramgen.com/about_doe.html

9 - 15% of the grid power is wasted .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

better idea

[lerouxb]

Why not just use a combination of all the mentioned ideas?

Link up everything in a big uber-grid, use solar panels for when the sun is shining, wind turbines for when the wind is blowing, tidal/wave generators (because the seawater never stops moving) and fuel cells/hidro-electricity for backup.

Hell - even nuclear power is not as bad as burning coal/gas.

But remember - the ultimate best solution will be to just use less electricity/energy. And I don't mean save fuel - just manufacturing new things (a new car every 2 years, new trendy clothes, new pc parts, new containers, etc.) also wastes energy/resources.

And try to use solar energy as far possible, because (and I don't think I have to mention this) energy from the sun is the only real source of energy for earth. Everything else is just stored energy. Seems very counter-productive to burn things that took thousands of years to form in the first place.

RF transmission is MORE wasteful

[Ex-MislTech]

The energy it takes just to get electricity to reach
the radio spectrum is a HUGE wasted .

More than the 9 - 15 % already being burned by the grid :

http://www.ramgen.com/about_doe.html

I worked on Radar for the military, High Energy RF
transmission is ENORMOUSLY wasteful .

dB power level is regards to RF reception has nothing
to do with shooting multi milliion volts of electricity
thru the air .

The sound and light generated by lightning is a good
example of the amount of wasted power when travelling thru
the air which has a resistive value .

One of the best di-electrics for a Capacitor is air, because
of its high resistive qualities .

Back to school amigo ...

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

As someone with power for 30 years...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking buy a fucking generator.

Sod batteries, you want hot salt mate.

[Colin Smith]

Solar thermal is far more efficient than photovoltaic.

Solar power at night is no problem.

[Colin Smith]

There was an article on Solar II on Slashdot very recently. Tut tut.

I mentioned this yesterday

[cyberguyd]

I commented about this article in Wired yesterday and only got modded +1 and "interesting" in this article:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08 /1 6/1354229&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=162&tid= 99.

I felt it was at least "informative" and maybe deserved more mod points and maybe even qualifies as first post!!

How is this a troll?

[tjstork]

It is a simple fact that Utilities in many states are no longer required to buy power back from indy producers. The requirement to buy power back came in the 1970s during Carter as a way to fund the development of alternative energy. In the 2000, because anyone can now build a generation unit and sell the power to the now independent grid operator / rto, it was no longer necessary to force the utility to pay for power.

transmission and generation are now unlinked. anyone can use the transmision system to sell power if they can produce it, and that is the essence of deregulation.

The previous author's post was just flat out wrong .

Re:How is this a troll?

[ZPO]

I never said the utilities were required to buy back excess power from cogeneration sites. Just that many will do it.

The gain isn't really in generating a profit by selling power back to the utility. Its just a way of dropping your bill if you have to pull power from the grid occasionally for high-load activities on your site (home/business).

Termites

[N8F8]

The world is a parasitic circle jerk system, everyone screws the next little guy down the ladder and those at the bottom of the ladder are slaves for those above them. Those at the top are the oppressors and the tyrants.

Your rant is just more typical liberal jibberish bullshit that blames other people for their own actions. Anyone living above your standard of living is an "oppressor" and anyone living below is "oppressed". Bullshit!

Re:Termites

[pair-a-noyd]

"Your rant is just more typical liberal jibberish bullshit"

LOL!! That's grand! I'm so diametrically opposed to liberalism that it's not even funny. I'm so far to the right that I think that Fox news is a subversive pinko commie, leftwing propaganda machine.

Re:Termites

[N8F8]

I think perhaps that you are lying to yourself.

Isn't it ironic?

[coryboehne]

Isn't it ironic that the use of ironic in the article here is a perfect example of what not to use ironic for as discussed on /. a while back?

InfoPorn

[ReadParse]

Yes, they actually link you to an "infoporn" graphic with a straight face. Apparently, InfoPorn is a division of BMEdia and provides absolutely no explanation on their website for what's GOT to be the most frequentely asked question: "Info PORN?!?!?"

Weird.

RP

yea, sure

[dh003i]

Yea, sure, monopolies are the best thing for consumers. Riiiiiight. Sure. That's optimistic thinking at best, idiotic at worst. The way for consumers to get the best prices at the highest quality is via competitive market. This allows the mainstream consumer interest to be met as best as possible, and for niche companies to satisfy the needs of niche consumers.

A government sponsored monopoly with government regulation is bound to be inefficient and costly. It also eliminates any leverage consumers have, and any choice, because they can't switch to companies which better suit their needs. Ultimately, a government-sponsored monopoly is theft from you and me (because it takes taxes to support that, which is theft) and a violation of the property rights of the company share-holders (because they can't run the company as they otherwise would).

Re:yea, sure

[drmaxx]

Not quite sure whether my English is so bad or whether you just read the word 'governement' and started with your rant!
Let me repeat it bluntly:
Completely free electricity market = MONOPOLY OF ONE COMPANY!
Completely free electricity market = NO COMPETITION!
In this sector this just does not work that simple. Same thing for water supply or wastewater removal. It is a very tricky thing to guarantee a competitive market and there are many examples where the free market just failed miserably. You can have a completely free paperclip market, because a) it does not really matter if there is a paperclip shortage of 48 hours and b) you do not need expensive paperclip-pipes to every consumer.
For electricity you need to have sophisticated rules that regulates and separates the producer from the seller and both needs to be integrated into a transportation scheme.
Or would you let your competition use your power line to supply electricity to one of your customers if you would not be forced to do so?

Bottom line: A completely free market is a myth! Only strict controlled regulations (paid by the taxpayer) guarantee competition. The question is: What kind of regulation are best for the market...

peace

[stubblehead]

we can't get a "worldwide" anything. why don't we first work on peace and proceed from there.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

fag psychiatry. fag mindset. dwell and prevail. rich people, business people, mininger people, grace apiscaple catherdral people. "You were the preacher, we paid ya! YOU'RE SUPPOSD TO WATCH FOR OUR SOULS!!"
"Yea well you didn't want your souls watched for, having 18 years and I accomadated ya."
Aye ya, that's the general... tenor of the conversation, that is, that is gonna be goin' on.

Well he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.

Not to pick nits, but...

[Cid Highwind]

Natural gas in a pipeline traveling from one side of the country
to the other has veritably no loss in comparison .

Gas pipelines are not as efficient as you think. Friction and turbulence in the pipes slow down flowing gas, so you need compressor stations every so often to keep the flow rate (and pressure) up. The energy to power those compressors comes from burning some of the gas. Over long distances that can easily add up to more than the 10-12% loss in electricity transmission.

Re:Not to pick nits, but...

[Ex-MislTech]

Did not know about them having to re-pressurize it,
but then of course I have not sutdied that tech that well .

Although natural gas wells do dot most of America .

I think is cheaper to push natural gas, then to run
10,000 miles of Mega-Watt grid that is presently
failing even at at present awesome capacity of
12 Trillion Watts anually .

Most of the power plants in the Midwest run on natural gas now .

Like in plumbing, if you used bigger pipe, and reduce it in
size as it is distibuted , well head pressure is often more
than enough to push it GREAT distances .

Some well head pressures in the midwest are high enough
to be used or the new power generation systems because
they are so high in pressure .

http://www.cryotherm.com/natural-gas.html

Chk it out .

There are lot of low pressure wells too, but I think this
show the gas wells as a better deal, all the way around .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech
]

How the hydrogen economy really works.

[vkg]

sigh

Ok, all of this is answered quite comprehensively in 20 Hydrogen Myths a paper by the Rocky Mountain Institute.

The short answer to your questions is this: you make hydrogen from methane. Why do you bother? Because in an electric car, hydrogen-from-methane is still twice as efficient as any other fuel source: i.e in dollars per vehicle mile, it costs half of gasoline. Why? Because electric motors are just much, much better than internal combustion engines, and probably always will be.

Good enough? But there's more!

Electrolysis *IS* good enough: you can still take 3c / KWh grid electicity, make hydrogen, and run a fuel cell car cheaper than a gasoline vehicle.

Not much cheaper, but it's a start.

And here's the kicker: renewables can power hydrogen cars, so as well as cheaper driving now, you get to build the infrastructure of a renewable economy while you're at it.

Now, do I believe even 50% of the hydrogen hype? No, but it's a viable alternative for some situations now, and people are going to explore those first: hydrogen fuel cell car and bus fleets will be here in a few years.

If those work, then let's talk about a hydrogen economy.

Re:How the hydrogen economy really works.

[Baron_Yam]

Isn't Vancouver already running a fuel cell bus fleet for public transit? I thought that was where Ballard launched their test/proof of concept.

You're splitting hydrocarbons (oil)

[vkg]

into hydrogen, and carbon.

i.e. it's a new market for them, and it might get them off the hook with regards to climate change.

Microwave Radiation is the way to go

[EEGeek]

About three years ago, I saw a display at Canada's largest student run science and technology show at the University of Saskatchewan - College of Engineering. The Canadian Space Agency displayed a working model of a satellite that would capture the Sun's rays, and convert them to power via a massive array of solar cells. The device would then beam the electricity to Earth base stations via microwave radiation (these are just electromagnetic rays much like your microwave oven generated, not what you make think of radiation as (ie. beta, gamma, xray, etc)). The rays would have a power lower density so that animal life would not be affected. They would place a bunch of these satellites in orbit, with a good amount of redundancy. It is estimated that only three of these would be required to take on the entire world's power consumption needs, with ground stations all over the world. I actually saw a working model, where they used a 60W incandescant light bulb to power this little satellite model, which beamed the energy to a map of the world (about 3 feet away) with little LED's all over the place. It was quite interesting, and I hope their research proves fruitful, as it is a fair amount more environmentally friendly that most other power alternatives. Also to get the entire world on this, you would not have to convert say the United Kingdom to 120V RMS/60Hz from 240V RMS/50Hz, as each base station could convert the energy to whatever it deems necessary for the grid. A world-wide power grid would require major changed to a lot of the countries as there are different standards for voltage and frequency, among other things.

The "I have no children" option?

[Colin Smith]

No?

It's more than green/normal. I can buy from any of the providers. Most people just go for the cheapest though.

Re: Yes.

[ces]

Low voltage DC appliances and lighting aren't inherently more efficent than 120V (or 220V) AC equipment. In fact in many cases (motors) higher voltage AC sources are more efficent.

The trend nowdays for houses with photovoltaic or wind generation is to run the house at standard grid voltages. Modern inverters at the loads in a typical residential application are quite efficent.

While deep cycle batteries have gotten pretty good especially with high-tech charging systems there is a possible alternative on the horizon. Use solar or wind power to make hydrogen. Store the hydrogen and use it in a fuel cell to power things when your solar panels or wind turbine can't generate enough power (or use it in your car).

In most parts of the country you can build a house that is mostly independant of the grid that has all of the modern convieniences and stays warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Personal power generation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually as solar/wind power generation becomes cheaper what is more likely will happen is that more people will generate all or most of their own power.

Current fleets are mostly for show.

[vkg]

They may well be, but nobody is doing it for financial reasons yet - they're all technology demonstrators.

Which is important, but until it's cheaper than the alternatives, nobody is going to take is seriously.

Hydrogen Sulfide

[Ex-MislTech]

One of the VERY nasty by products of the Oil and Gas Industry
has been Hydrogen Sulfide .

Also in fractioning towers to obtain butane/hexane/pentane/
propane, and a few others, methane is in there .

Methane and a certain process can provide hydrogen .

I think the oil and gas ppl are going to try to use the
hydrogen out of the H2S ,and the hydrogen from the
methane processing .

Linkage:

http://www.bepress.com/ijcre/vol1/A2/

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

Re:Hydrogen Sulfide

[Ex-MislTech]

Hydrogen Sulfide is largely burned off at this point,
and is considered VERY explosive, and the famous movies
about poison gas wells are talking about this gas .

Oil refineries actually end up making more of this
stuff in their processes, this would turn it into a
revenue stream like they did with Carbon Fiber .

Carbon Fiber, Stronger than steel, lighter than Titanium .

Excerpt:

http://www.cas-bikes.com/page9.html

The carbon fiber and the epoxy matrix has the best strength to weight ratio of any material in the world.

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

this is the dumbest /. article ever

[Anonymous Coward]

... or atleast one of them.

has everyone failed to realise the logistics of this make it impossible?

Agreed

[Ex-MislTech]

3 feet down the temperature remains the same 59 degrees year round.

Solar and Wind power cost more to implement than their
counterparts .

Natural Gas "at this time" is the cheapest to build .

Over time if the Solar/Wind system is not a victim of
hail or lightning it wins out .

The problem is we are geared towards 7-11 type economics,
ie. what does it cost right now, that is why solar and wind
are hurting .

That and storage of electricity in batteries is VERY inefficient
at this time .

I am still curious why someone has not made a cheap large
capacitive based system .

You sound like one of the guerilla solar folks, I like those ppl .

Peace,
Ex-MislTech

One Grid

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

"One grid to rule them all, one grid to find them, one grid to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

Darkness...hmmm...

Not Insightful

[Monkeybaister]

All that you have said applies to any energy source.

As someone has pointed out, there's a paper that explains the 20 myths about hydrogen. You have touched on one of them that the main source for hydrogen would be water.

Hydrogen lines may be more efficient at transfering energy over long distances when compared to electric lines (at least until superconductors that operate at outside temperatures).

The best way to get energy would be to get it from the sun, but hydrogen may be a great medium for transportation of the energy. Think of what a UPS could be instead, since places could just have reserve tanks incase there is a hydrogen shortage.

But the best choice is to make total energy usage minimal, but getting as close to 100% efficiency as possible is also a step there.

monopolies

[waspleg]

i think it's pretty obvious what the real problem is .. you're talking about executives who have localized power monpolies, and as they have no comptetion they have no incentives to give af uck outside of whatever the law absolutely mandates them to do.. this is the same reason why many areas still do not have cable modem access.. and heave to deal with absolutely retard phone companies

monopolies destroy competition in the market and when that happens a market economy fails to be the most efficient which invariably leads to problems

The real cause

[PingPongBoy]

of the powerout is a bunch of ppls waking to their reality in the Matrix.

You have to be careful who you sleep with.

--
Anyone know how to split the screen in Internet Explorer?

What about compatibility?

[VCAGuy]

This all sounds well and good until we come down to the nitty-gritty of power engineering. Somehow, I don't think a 345kV, 60-Hz, 3-phase feeder is gonna cut the mustard in a 3,000 mile power link... But, ignoring that, there are many electrical standards in the world: 100V, 110/120V, 208V, 230V, 220/240V (which, in retrospect, wouldn't be much of a problem). What would be a problem is the whole 50/60Hz thing and the delta/wye issue. Not to mention that reinverting the power (or using rotary converters for that early 20th-century touch) would cause intolerable losses and clocking to ensure synchronicity of a world-wide grid would be...well...a mess.

Re:What about compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you do a web search for the term "HVDC".

Power standards not compatible!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Am I the only one here that knows that power standards world wide are not compatible?

The idiots at Wired certainly don't either.

There are two major frequencies used, 50Hz and 60Hz and probably several voltages. Europe is on 60Hz, at 220V. Japan is 60Hz at about 100V. USA, Canada 60Hz at about 120V. Of course there are other voltages, in the US I have access to 220V three phase, at 60Hz, and 440V three phase, same frequency. The voltage levels can be compensated by tranformers but it will be a long time before any region will convert to different frequencies, I'd say decades is a lower bound estimate unless politicians want a lynch mob at their gates. I have a lot of stuff that can use both frequencies, but I have a lot of stuff that can't

And let's not forget that transmitting electricity becomes more pointless the longer the distance it has to travel. Transmitting power from Maine to New York isn't such a bad idea, but Main to California is stupid, and transmitting over or through oceans is worse.

Infoporn?

[MacGod]

Can anyone please explain to me why the power griod layout PDF is linked to from the article page by a link that reads "Click here for infoporn graphics"?

WTF is infoporn?

The shit idea is called radio

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Tesla moved onto something else when it didn't work well - which is why all those sketches of broadcast power machines were only ever in pencil. Other people took the loose ends of that research and we have radio.

If you think 5 minutes about the consequences of this tech.

It was back in the day with few big conducting structures that would pick up RF - and it was in the days when what RF could do were still being worked out (Maxwell et al).

Re:The shit idea is called radio

[imsabbel]

Yeah, now think about how much energy density you need to have a resonable range. People dont like outdoor microwave ovens....

No it's not!

[Anonymous Coward]

randomned writes "A little ironic that this article on a world wide power grid was published in the September issue of Wired. With the recent outage on in the northeast, think of what could've happened if the entire world was on one grid." As someone who spent 23 and a half hours without power, I'm thinking this is a brilliant plan!

That's not ironic, that's just coincidental!

One grid doesn't mean everyong goes down.

[Gilmoure]

Here in Florida, we're on the same grid as the North-east and likely the rest of the south and midwest. It's one big grid from Canada down to Key West. The dominoe effect occurs due to how power is routed on the grid. Here in Florida, we're pretty self sufficient and usually sell power to the rest of the eastern US in winter, now that Crystal River Nuclear plant is back online.

Re: Yes.

[Thor Ablestar]

Park a few solar panels on your rooftop, put a stack of deep-cycle batteries in a closet, and disconnect yourself from "the grid".

Imagine a deep cycle battery that feeds half an USA, and how will you recycle it.

It may be useful for some extra reliable applications, for distant homes, for some green enthusiasts, but I doubt it will be widespread. And BTW: I pay about 200 roubles per 3 months for electricity. It's a price of a tiny solar panel for a pocket radio.

Thanks...

[El Camino SS]

Didn't know that info.

Good stuff. I just thought that all of this hydrogen stuff was bunk... I stand corrected.

And happily corrected at that.

Thanks again.

Reminds me if Highlander II

[Alpha_Traveller]

"All is well under the shield."

Let's hope if they go this route, we won't have the kinds of problems Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert would need to pull us out of... ::grin::

Your right, nobody gives a shit about tennessee

[Anonymous Coward]

Try moving somewhere important.

23 hours is nothin!

[Cinematique]

Taco,

A month ago, we lost power here in central Ohio for almost three days straight, and it wasn't the first time. The longest I've been at home without power was back in the early 90s when we lost power for a week after a powerful line of storms.

Plus, we have a well for water. When the power goes out, so does our water. Not fun, limme tell ya.

You think a day without power is bad, try several! :)

Taxes. Was: BAD idea....

[Thor Ablestar]

Human society is a system where people collaborate to achieve more than they could by themselves. So instead of having to learn how to hunt and cook and make shoes and build a home and make clothes, people can specialize in a single skill, perform it more efficiently and achieve more collectively. Money is what you use to facilitate this trade.

Every time when the money is involved (Instead of do-it-yourself or direct service exchange or barter) you are obliged to pay taxes. It may be prohibitively costly.

Moreover, I am absolutely sure that in some economies (In Russia, for instance) the only way to do something well is to do it yourself. Due to the laws that protect the workforce it may be impossible to fire the negligent personnel, and due to the wage levels it may be too costly to hire the qualified one.

[Place for a standard quote about Soviet Russia]

HVDC?????

[hughk]

I thought the reason that AC was chosen (apart from DCs ability to fry elephants) was the ability to self-quench any arcs formed by switches opening. DC is otherwise great for transmission, you can move more of it down a cable than the same voltage AC b ut it isn't so easy or efficient to transform.

If we have to use AC, it would still be better to use a higher frequency. The AC bus on aircraft is 400Hz, which means smaller and more efficient transformers.

Re:HVDC?????

[ahfoo]

Well, maybe I didn't express myself clearly. I was refering to the topic at hand and meant that long distance HVDC, like intercontinental power sharing, wasn't adopted a long time ago for political reasons. Of course you're right that for short haul use AC makes more sense.

Re:HVDC?????

[hughk]

With long distance lines, we are normally talking about 400KV or so. How can the AC -> DC -> AC conversion be handled efficiently enough for serious power transmission? If we used DC, what could the long distance transmission voltage be reduced to?

Re:HVDC?????

[ahfoo]

In fact, 400kv is an old standard. The US started using 800kv AC for long hauls in the 70s and then switched to DC in the 80s and 90s along with the rest of the world precisely because improvements in technology made it very efficient, reliable and cost effective.
If you google for HVDC, you'll find that Quebec is a leader in HVDC and even has a GUI CAD package for designing HVDC networks. Looks like a fun toy. But there's also lots of information on the history of the transition to HVDC from AC and the hows and whys and technical background.
It's not just that it's efficient either, adding DC makes your overall grid more reliable. It's simply better technology.

Power outages no big deal

[aszaidi]

I live in Pakistan and short outages, upto a couple of hours at most, are usual, but it doesn't cause a meltdown of everything.

My journaled fs servers come back up and resume their functions (UPSs aren't affordable yet, at least for me) and my laptop's battery takes care of the real data.

But the most frustrating thing is when the power goes while I'm posting to Slashdot, just before I click Subm.......oh oh.

Reliability

[Anonymous Coward]

With a worldwide grid, and some parts of that grid extremely unreliable (go ahead, how much electricity does Bagdad have?), it would seem to risk massive cascades every single day.

Order of reliablity of our local networks:

1. Telephone Landline Service ... have you ever had this go out?
2. Electrical Service ... the Great IceStorm, the recent blackout...
3. Snail Mail / parcel service
4. Cable TV service ... this is crappy service
5. Cellphone Networks
6. internet service
7. WiFi connects
8. the grapevine

Nope, just not right.

[TamMan2000]

The transmission losses for pipelining operations are much smaller than electricity transmission.

And the cascade senario goes away because there is a lag built into the system, if a low pressure pipe pops a few miles away, I still have hydrogen in the pipe for a while, the further away the failure, the longer till it effects me, you could even have a small reserve tank at your local fuel cell in case of temporary distribution problems, and in areas of importance (hospital, fire, police, airport...) I am sure this would be the case...

I am not saying that hydrogen distribution is invulnurable to failures, but it is less vulnerable than wires.

bullshit

[dh003i]

You assert that, but have no proof. In fact, there are many places where de-regulation and competition has worked very well (e.g., Australia). You provide no evidence for why the free market can't work to supply water and power. Since taxes are theft (thievery under any other name is still thievery), taxing people to support your property-violating regulations is not justified (sorry, the ends justifies the means is a morally bankrupt argument).

Re:bullshit

[drmaxx]

Thanks for this really insightful eyeopener. I just trashed about 15 reports about 'privatisation in the supply sector' which claim something else. But since they mostly made by tax subsidised non-profit research organisation they must be corrupted by the governement and their only try to justify their research grants.

Re:bullshit

[dh003i]

Three points:

1. Considering that lifting regulations and letting the free market work has done very well in many areas, yes, you can trash those reports (which, btw, you don't cite).

2. In many areas, "de-regulation" is really no such thing, but merely regulates to death how to de-regulate; and all regulations are not lifted, with often the worst ones remaining.

3. You still can't justify theft. Taxes (and inflation, tarrifs, etc) amount to nothing less than stealing from people. Legislating it into law doesn't change the fact that it is the moral equivalent of stealing. Government buerocracies naturally do whatever they can to try to ensure their own perpetual existence. Those legislating may have "good intentions", but good intentions don't produce good results, and they hardly have the knowledge to centrally plan how power companies are to be run thousands of miles away.

Market fundamentalists at it again

[Anonymous Coward]

It was unfortunate that California's rolling blackouts of two years ago did not finally convince the market fundamentalists that the profit motive and deregulation will not always magically coincide with what's best for society. There is never any shortage of greedy men in suits (ENRON amongst others) who are only too happy to play on this myth and use politicians' belief in it (or the politicians' own greed) to line their pockets.

Greg Pallast, a journalist who writes for the Guardian Newspaper and files the occasional report for the BBC's Newsnight show, has plenty of info on how this latest blackout came about. Believe it or not you can trace it back to Britain in the Margaret Thatcher years:

"In the 1980s, "NiMo" [Niagara Mohawk Power Company] built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers.

"To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators."

It gets better. Read on.....