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World's Biggest Battery Switched On in Alaska
windowpain writes "An article in the London Telegraph describes a 2,000 square meter 13,730 cell NiCad UPS that will provide backup power for the entire city of Fairbanks for up to seven minutes. 'This is enough time, according to ABB, to start up diesel generators to restore power, an important safeguard since at such low temperatures, water pipes can freeze entirely in two hours.' Now if they can just remember to keep it plugged in." Update: 08/28 14:58 GMT by M : A reader notes that the battery has enough juice for 12,000 people for seven minutes, and the city of Fairbanks has a population of over 80,000, so they couldn't keep the whole city powered up for even a minute.
i wonder how long my mp3 player would last on that thing..
MilkMiruku
WOuldnt some other kind of energy storage be better? Liv eheard ideas about using flywheels, compressed air and damn near everythign else. But those might not have the same instant on capability.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I wonder if they've got a broadcast service for it, so that computers can get automated details about the power system switching to City-UPS, and consequently deal with it?
... lessee ... a couple of sync's, put transaction queues in wait-state, hold tight on all processing ... *blink* ... back in business.
...
7 minutes of warning before switching to backup power
Of course, this'd give the average Windows user just about (but not quite) enough time to watch their taskbar-status control-pane/app thingies shut down, too
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It's simple to calculate that. But rather than spoil your fun, I'll leave it as an exercise for you to do.
I want one of those as my UPS... I wonder how many VA it is (I can't RTFA because it requires a subscription)... How much did this thing cost, BTW? It might have made more sense to create a smaller UPS just to power essential systems (water pumps, hospitals, etc.)...
"each battery weighs more than 12 stones..." :) ), i just found out about that unit of mass (here: http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/dictunit/ccmass.htm) and 12 stones is 168lbs or 76.2 kg. :)
if you were wondering about this like me ("what size of stone"
and i thought slugs were the weirdest invention in that backwards unit system...
please convert to SI!!!
Around the 5th of August give or take a day, the power substation for the town I was living in at the time (Rolla, MO) caught fire, cutting power for the better part of two days to the entire town. The city is supposedly fitted with backup generators capable of running everything in the event of such a power loss. Yet, it took the better part of two hours for the backup power to even come on. And when it did, only a few select areas of town had power at all. Do they really think they are going to be able to get backup power on in 7 minutes or less? Maybe if this battery was capable of an hour or two power supply it would be worth it. Even if they *can* get power on in less than 7 minutes, why would they need the battery? Is 7 minutes of not having power so bad?
Project Steve
batteries not included?
What can you do in seven minutes?
You can fix a mistake.
The giant energiser bunny of the apocalypse.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
The really impressive item is the huge 9-pin serial connector between the UPS and the city. Pins the size of manholes!
...the cheapest bid. Don't forget that Cities and Municipalities operate on a budget, and although Flywheel Energy Storage units may have been more environment friendly and cheaper for long-term maintenance, they were probably far more expensive up-front. Long-term financing isn't often a concern for short-term problems, so my guess is that the 2k sq. ft. battery was the cheapest.
assert(expired(knowledge));
How long does it take a UPS like that to charge?
I mean, the only clear cut "This person needs this amount of power" statistic I can think of would be a rather gruesome one: perhaps Fairbanks has a lot of electric chairs...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I want to get a UPS to power 3 computers and a modem for something on the order of 10 seconds when power drops. Do I really need a full blown 1000VA UPS for megabucks? Can I use a lower VA rating for less time? How much power does a typical base unit use. Howabout a CRT?
A typical average - at least in the lower 48 - is 1kw/household so 40 megawatts should handle 40,000 homes. For how long? We don't have that info other than the article's claim of 7 minutes. Assuming they got their signals crossed and mean that it can deliver 40 megawatts for 7 minutes then the batteries store 40,000kw * 7 minutes / 60 minutes = 4666kWh of energy.
For comparison, a AA nicad holds ~.75wh or .00075 kWh of energy so based on the preceding assumptions this battery bank is the equivalent of somewhat over 6 million AA batteries.
Another article indicates that the purpose is not to power the entire city but to carry the excess load when a single plant drops off line. Fairbanks does have outside feeds and multiple local plants just like the continental US but it has fewer of each so loss of a plant can cause a proportionately larger swing in the supply. It appears that this battery bank is really a load leveler, not a UPS.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
I submitted this to the Editor on duty, but aparently not in time. Fairbanks has over 80,000 people, not just 12,000 that the battery is capable of supporting for 7 minutes. Alaska is rural, but not so rural that its second largest city only has 12,000 people.
FYI - I had family living in Fairbanks for a while so here is some trivia regarding the weather there:
Everyone must have three plug-in heaters in their car, one for the oil pan, one for the radiator, and one for the battery. All major shopping centers have outdoor outlets to plug your car into while you shop.
In addition to being wicked cold, their is essentially 0% humidity, this results in extremely high risk of static shock. And on a cold day you can actually throw hot coffee in the air and it fall to the ground as instant coffee.
The whole city is built on permafrost, so for any major construction they have to sink pilings into the ground to support the buidling once its ambient heat melts the soil below it.
The city is south of the arctic circle by a couple hundred miles, but there is small mountain nearby that if you drive to the top you can see the sun for 24 hours straigh on the summer soltice. THe favorite solstice activity is a city wide charity run.
In the Winter, there is nearby town that holds an annual statewide contest to guess when the river will melt sufficiently to allow a bouy to float freely. This event is called "break-up".
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Hopefully they have thought ahead with reguards to how they will dispose of this in the future.
I would have to have the worlds largest NiCad leak Cadmium into the Alaskan soil.
What would a Beowolf cluster of these look like. Or how long would a Beowolf cluster run on these. Or what would happen if you dropped a wrench down inside this thing?
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Is 7 minutes of not having power so bad?
Ask someone on a ventilator that question.
40MW for 7 minutes = 4.6 MWattHours. A D-cell is 12 AmpHours * 1.5 = 18 WattHours, so this battery pack is equivalent to 260,000 D-cells. A D-cell is 60 mm long, so this is would be a Mag Light 9.6 Miles Long!. Here's an artist's rendering
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Does it emit a heart-stopping, ear-splitting banshee wail when it kicks in? Because the lights going off just isn't sufficent notice that the power is out...
Ceci n'est pas un post.
One would hope that someone on a ventilator would have their own backup power supply for it, and not rely on the vagarities of the local power grid.
and one year there was a power outage on campus over christmas break. The called out the national guard. No kidding. They had to kick in back up generators and such to keep stuff from freezing up because it was sixty below.
Fortunately the city of Fairbanks was still with power and in a few hours they re-routed power to the University. This wasn't just good for keeping people from freezing in the dorms (the poor sots like me who didn't go home for the holidays) but it was very good for the Cray which was being threatened with imminent condesation...
If the whole city of Fairbanks lost power I wonder how people would have coped. I suppose families would have moved in together. Houses with wood stoves would have been very crowded... I wonder if there's even enough housing with other means of heating to support the whole town?
[signature]
Once Fairbanks is hooked up to the Matrix, the other 68,000 people will serve as backup power when the NiCads punk out.
It will also keep your boat battery charged up for your next fishing trip. Note however, that this does not negate the need for some sort of a power filter on your computer. This would allow your gas appliances to work and your microwave.
Now I'm not a Y2K-store-Xyears-of-food-live-in-a-cave fruitcake. I just don't want to be the grasshopper, and I want to provide for my family during outages that seem more common than they should. An extended winter power-outage at -25deg F. adjusted my perspective. All you need is shelter/water/heat/food. Maybe a little love too...
Yes, you can. "Volt-amps" are units of electric power, V*I, where V and I are vectors (the load may be reactive and the V vector and the I vector may not be parallel). If the V and I vectors are going in the same direction, they can be considered scalars and "volt-amps" becomes "watts."
Batteries are rated in "Amp-hour" ratings. That is, they can (to a first approximation), deliver current "I" for time "t" where I*t= the rating. I say "to a first approximation" because the time-to-discharge as a function of current draw is not actually linear, but is really more like an exponential.
Of course, there's some efficiency lost in the DC-AC converter electronics. I don't have a clue what it is; perhaps 80% efficiency is good?
So you have a setup like mine: PC with 500W supply, monitor, printer, speakers. I would recommend NOT putting the printer and speakers on the UPS. Only essential equipment that needs power in order to shut everything down gracefully should be on the UPS.
My monitor eats maybe 50W, and my PC consumes 500W max: 550W worst-case.
According to this page, a APC BackUPS 650 (rated for 640VA), will operate a 400W load for seven minutes. With a perfect 120V output, that (perfectly resistive!) load is drawing 3.333A. With the 80% efficiency I mentioned above, it implies that the battery has an amp-hour rating of about 0.5Ah (500mAh). (0.5Ah * 0.8 eff)/3.333A = 0.12 hours (7.2 minutes).
My 550W load (assuming again that it's purely resistive) will draw 4.6A at 120V. This same UPS (assuming that the switching electronics can handle it!) will operate my machine for 0.087 hour (5.2 minutes), plenty of time to shut down.
So: to find the minimum-sized UPS you need, add up the load of the essential equipment, calculate the required current, and find a UPS with a big enough battery to provide you with a comfortable shutdown time.
That and Fairbanks has only 30,224 people as of the 2000 census. Ever think of verifying information before it makes it to the front page?
n ame=DEC_2000_SF1_U&geo_id=04000US02&_box_head_nbr= GCT-PH1&format=ST-7
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?ds_
Its a problem of electronics. If I run a power plant, chances are I have digital displays, fuel conveyors, sensors, etc all electrically powered. If the plants running, you can use that energy to power yourself. If not, normal operating assumptions are that you have an outside power source supplying plant load at least long enough for your generator to start. In the case of a total blackout, you don't have that luxury.
Now, we can't help that your town can't start a diesel generator in less than two hours. A properly maintained diesel unit should be up running at full output (say 8 MW) at 60 Hz in 30 seconds. Using that energy, we can supply electricity to a larger plant so they can run their controls, and get them going. Your average combustion turbine can start in 5 minutes, and can provide say 50 MW of power. You now have enough energy for 45,000+ people. A small fossil fuel plant can cold start in a couple hours, generates 600 MW, enough for say 550,000 people.
Ya know, we can't help it if the maintenance people in your town can't properly maintain a diesel generator. If properly maintained, they start automatically and produce power in a matter of seconds.
27 MW (probably more like 30-40 MVA, for power factor), $35 million.
Why back up power in a centralized location using batteries when you could just let each building back up itself? It's not like you're going to gain any efficiency using 13,760 NiCad cells in a central location instead of in 13,760 locations. Seems like a huge waste of money to me.
As for water pipes freezing in two hours, they don't freeze in 7 minutes while waiting for the backup generators to kick in.
Maybe a little love too... Microsoft AND virus free...
I can see how you want your love to be virus free - that's a reasonable line of thinking. But microsoft-free? I agree, but microsoft isn't quite the first assoication I make when I think of good-loving. It's more like good-loving and natalie portman.
The city of Fairbanks has a population closer to 40,000. The surrounding small towns and military installations almost double that, but I don't they're included in the backup plan. I think the batteries are supposed to provide power to 12,000 hourseholds, rather than individuals. In the slightly more than 2 years that I've lived here in Fairbanks, I've noticed that the town is plagued by frequent brief interruptions in the power. Just enough to get all the clocks in the house blinking. The TV ads promoting this new battery backup building have emphasized that the blinking clock scourge will be coming to an end. And if the power does stay off for more than that 7 minutes, I'm ready with my kerosene heaters to keep my house and pipes above freezing temps.
An interesting addition to the "Fairbanks Trivia Game" is that in the early 1970's the local telephone company had a five story office building constructed as their headquarters downtown. When I was living there (1980-1985) it had become a three story building with multiple sub-basements. This due to a gross miscalculation of the amount of heat dispersed through the foundation and a rather large ice lense located directly below......
Alaska poses quite a chalenge to the typical idea of what is required to survive (as anyone who has spent a winter in a wood-heated cabin on Chena Ridge can tell you)
Why in the world use NiCads, with all of the toxic problems related to cadimum, when NiMH battery technology would have let them build safer batteries with about 3x the power capacity and without other NiCad problems like the memory effect? In two weeks will we read that this was just another hoax repeated on slashdot? (And why can't I find the story from last night of the hoax about the guy with his "new theory of time" either by scanning back articles or using the search tool and looking for words like hoax or "red flag"? I know it was there yesterday, was does it seem to be removed today?)
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Sign me up, I hate resetting my clocks!
SCO to Hell
Is 7 minutes of not having power so bad?
Ask someone on a ventilator that question.
Virtually all hospitals have a UPS and a diesel generator. The grid is too unreliable. Heck, even a lot of offices I know of have UPSs and generators.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Slashdot is NOT journalism. Do you see any famous NDs striding about? ;-)
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
But I could be wrong, yes?
Is it fascism yet?
Thanks. I knew I had seen it, but lately I have been unable to find that and several other things that I'm certain I saw here with the search engine. I'm really at a loss to understand why the search engine is failing me, it used to work well, but lately it's been missing stuff that I know I've seen and should be able to search for easily.
No Karma is given if one is modded up "funny".
"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar."
Just a shot in the dark, but maybe having an instant backup will allow them to reliably start up the backup generators? If the backups are gas driven, they could easily get cranky (no pun intended) if the power fails and the heat goes out.
I realize you don't get the UPS advantage with a generator, but what's the big deal with 10 minutes of darkness while you fuel up the generator and fire it up?
A Beowulf cluster pf these.
Someone had to say it.