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Building the Energy Internet
Ant writes "This article talks about transforming today's dumb electricity grid into a smart, responsive and self-healing digital network--in short, an 'energy internet'."
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Transforming the electricity grid into the worlds largest human microwave.
RFC3251 - Electricity over IP
Don't do this. Seriously. Building adapting, sentient networks of energy always ends in the Universe being destroted. I KNOW BECAUSE IT HAPPENED TO ME.
...internet..self healing...? well, tolerant to a nice degree in most instances..but healing ?
Now my lamps and appliances can get spammed too. Progress.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
People used to say that when the Internet becomes as invisible as the electricity grid we'll know it has succeeded in becoming an invaluable part of our lives.
;-)
Now people are wanting to turn the electricity grid into an "internet". Does this mean that it will suffer from the same problems in reliability, be difficult to install and that early adopters will bost about "having electricity use at home"??
A little planning goes a long way...
So basically they want to be able to "route" electricity in different directions in case of a power node failure. Opens up a whole new area for hackers. Imagine an eDdos (electric Distributed denial of service) attack on pentagon.
Underholdning.info
Don't be daft. It's The Economist. They have real servers.
To implement a system that would do this wouldn't require any new technology. The ability to sense grid changes before problems occur has been happening in some places for years. The ability to reroute power is already there. It's just a matter of integrating the technology together and installing it all over. That is where the problem would fall as it would cost a lot of $$$$$.
I have seen demonstrations of this technology on a smaller scale already.
Evolution or ID?
I would fear that a "new electricity net" would be less secure than the current control systems because the control nodes would inevitably be connected to the public internet with packets tunneled via a VPN to the central office. I don't see power companies laying their own independent fibers for connectivity. And even if they use their own BPL, there is a good chance the control nodes, sensor nodes, and ccentral office will be connected to what is a public-exposed BPL net. The cost efficiency of routing packets over the public net are just too tempting. Despite best efforts, I'm sure someone will figure a way to hack into the sensor nodes, control nodes, or the central office if it is connected to a public internet.
The current system is more secure (if unreliable and uncontrollable) because compromising it requires physical access.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I disagree with the article - obviously written for a non technical audience.
Although I hate calling a bug a "feature", the fact is that blackouts are often a testament to fault-detection which could otherwise overload a grid and cause more substantial problems that would take longer to resolve.
When ever there is a power outage, a grid must be brought back up slowly. Otherwise, all the lights, motors, air-conditioners, fridges etc. switched on will overload the system and shut it down again - bunnyhopping.
Moreover, grids are deliberately designed (1950s or not) to channel energy where it's needed. This prevents overloading or underpowering.
It just saddens me how absolutely dependent we are on electricity/technology that in an emergency we cannot possibly do without it. How many people have been frustrated that their mail server is down, yet not realised they can WALK over to their colleague and TALK to him?
Powers out... Grab the shotgun!
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Building the energy internet
Mar 11th 2004 From The Economist print edition
Energy: More and bigger blackouts lie ahead, unless today's dumb electricity grid can be transformed into a smart, responsive and self-healing digital network--in short, an "energy internet"
"TREES or terrorists, the power grid will go down again!" That chilling forecast comes not from some ill-informed gloom-monger or armchair pundit, but from Robert Schainker, a leading expert on the matter. He and his colleagues at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the official research arm of America's power utilities, are convinced that the big grid failures of 2003--such as the one that plunged some 50m Americans and Canadians into darkness in August, and another a few weeks later that blacked out all of Italy--were not flukes. Rather, they and other experts argue, they are harbingers of worse to come.
The chief reason for concern is not what the industry calls "poor vegetation management", even though both of last year's big power cuts were precipitated by mischievous trees. It will never be possible to prevent natural forces from affecting power lines. The real test of any network's resilience is how quickly and intelligently it can handle such disruptions. Think, for example, of the internet's ability to re-route packets of data swiftly and efficiently when a network link fails.
The analogy is not lost on the energy industry. Of course, the power grid will never quite become the internet--it is impossible to packet-switch power. Even so, transforming today's centralised, dumb power grid into something closer to a smart, distributed network will be necessary to provide a reliable power supply--and to make possible innovative new energy services. Energy visionaries imagine a "self-healing" grid with real-time sensors and "plug and play" software that can allow scattered generators or energy-storage devices to attach to it. In other words, an energy internet.
Flying blind
It sounds great. But in reality, most power grids are based on 1950s technology, with sketchy communications and antiquated control systems. The investigation into last year's North American blackout revealed that during the precious minutes following the first outages in Ohio, when action might have been taken to prevent the blackout spreading, the local utility's managers had to ask the regional system operator by phone what was happening on their own wires. Meanwhile, the failure cascaded to neighbouring regions. "They simply can't see the grid!" laments Clark Gelling of the EPRI.
Even if operators had smart sensors throughout the system, they could do little to halt problems from spreading, because they lack suitable control systems. Instead, essential bits of energy infrastructure are built to shut down at the first sign of trouble, spreading blackouts and increasing their economic impact. The North American blackout, for example, cost power users around $7 billion. Engineers have to spend hours or even days restarting power plants.
The good news is that technologies are now being developed in four areas that point the way towards the smart grid of the future. First, utilities are experimenting with ways to measure the behaviour of the grid in real time. Second, they are looking for ways to use that information to control the flow of power fast enough to avoid blackouts. Third, they are upgrading their networks in order to pump more juice through the grid safely. Finally, they are looking for ways to produce and store power close to consumers, to reduce the need to send so much power down those ageing transmission lines in the first place.
First, to the eyes and ears. With the exception of some simple sensors located at a minority of substations, there is little "intelligence" embedded in today's grid. But in America's Pacific north-west, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a regional utility run by the federal government, has been ex
This way, when the northeastern section of the USA loses its power, they also lose their Internet service in one-fell swoop! Granted, for desktops this won't make a difference, but for laptops it would...
C. Griffin
"Can I keep his head for a souvenir?" --Max from Sam 'N Max Freelance Police
Now my fridge will get spammed (sic), worms will infest my lightbulbs, my appliances will get deleted left right and centre, and my house will reboot at odd times, being slower to switch back on and losing more electricity points each time it does.
Not to mention the 'Blackout.A throgh Blackout.J' DDoS that's gonna be happening on SCO's HQ...
I wonder how long it will take to write a "energy-equivalent" virus? That could have really terrible effects.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
So does this mean i can download porn from my lamp yet?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Are you using Internet over Power Lines technology?
C. Griffin
"Can I keep his head for a souvenir?" --Max from Sam 'N Max Freelance Police
ENERGY Building the energy internet Mar 11th 2004 From The Economist print edition Energy: More and bigger blackouts lie ahead, unless today's dumb electricity grid can be transformed into a smart, responsive and self-healing digital network--in short, an "energy internet" "TREES or terrorists, the power grid will go down again!" That chilling forecast comes not from some ill-informed gloom-monger or armchair pundit, but from Robert Schainker, a leading expert on the matter. He and his colleagues at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the official research arm of America's power utilities, are convinced that the big grid failures of 2003--such as the one that plunged some 50m Americans and Canadians into darkness in August, and another a few weeks later that blacked out all of Italy--were not flukes. Rather, they and other experts argue, they are harbingers of worse to come. The chief reason for concern is not what the industry calls "poor vegetation management", even though both of last year's big power cuts were precipitated by mischievous trees. It will never be possible to prevent natural forces from affecting power lines. The real test of any network's resilience is how quickly and intelligently it can handle such disruptions. Think, for example, of the internet's ability to re-route packets of data swiftly and efficiently when a network link fails. The analogy is not lost on the energy industry. Of course, the power grid will never quite become the internet--it is impossible to packet-switch power. Even so, transforming today's centralised, dumb power grid into something closer to a smart, distributed network will be necessary to provide a reliable power supply--and to make possible innovative new energy services. Energy visionaries imagine a "self-healing" grid with real-time sensors and "plug and play" software that can allow scattered generators or energy-storage devices to attach to it. In other words, an energy internet. Flying blind It sounds great. But in reality, most power grids are based on 1950s technology, with sketchy communications and antiquated control systems. The investigation into last year's North American blackout revealed that during the precious minutes following the first outages in Ohio, when action might have been taken to prevent the blackout spreading, the local utility's managers had to ask the regional system operator by phone what was happening on their own wires. Meanwhile, the failure cascaded to neighbouring regions. "They simply can't see the grid!" laments Clark Gelling of the EPRI. Even if operators had smart sensors throughout the system, they could do little to halt problems from spreading, because they lack suitable control systems. Instead, essential bits of energy infrastructure are built to shut down at the first sign of trouble, spreading blackouts and increasing their economic impact. The North American blackout, for example, cost power users around $7 billion. Engineers have to spend hours or even days restarting power plants. The good news is that technologies are now being developed in four areas that point the way towards the smart grid of the future. First, utilities are experimenting with ways to measure the behaviour of the grid in real time. Second, they are looking for ways to use that information to control the flow of power fast enough to avoid blackouts. Third, they are upgrading their networks in order to pump more juice through the grid safely. Finally, they are looking for ways to produce and store power close to consumers, to reduce the need to send so much power down those ageing transmission lines in the first place. First, to the eyes and ears. With the exception of some simple sensors located at a minority of substations, there is little "intelligence" embedded in today's grid. But in America's Pacific north-west, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a regional utility run by the federal government, has been experimenting with a wide-area monitoring system. Carson Taylor, BPA's chief transmission expert, explains that the impetus
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
IMHO, they shouldn't compare it to the Internet. OK, in principle you can build a power network in a way that a consumer can have power redirected to him if a portion of the network fails, but you don't normally wrap energy packets into TCP/IP wrappers. Now, if they find a way to make a wireless power grid (in analogy to wireless internet), that would be telling...
Here
An article regarding their concern is here.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Many ages ago, when people were still using Dr Halo for graphics and Ventura for publishing, I had two Englishmen for bosses. They told me the English power grid was already resilient, so that one never needed the battery in the alarm clock. Needless to say I didn't believe them.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Not only is the power net available by almost 100% (who haven't got power these days - The Amish?), but high voltages also allow for stable data transmissions (more noise tolerance, even though i think data is transmitted with phase modulation??).
Only thing I wonder about the the quality of cabling constricting the amount of data able to be transmitted and recieved.
Considering that the internet in it's current form is more likely to self destruct than heal,
choosing it as a model for electricity distribution is'nt the most sane decision I've
heard of late.
The technology they are reffering to in reality is PHM (Prognostics Health Management) or sometimes called Prognostics and Diagnostics.
This is a form of fault detection that detects something much earlier where you can either go perform maintenance on the problem before it breaks or reroute power from the problem area and go fix it. Either way it keeps the power up and is transparent to the user
Fault detection has come a lot way since the days of the 1950s. Hell it has come a log way from 10 years ago
Say you can detect a problem in the power grid hours or even days before it causes something to break in the grid. You can have a repair guy go out and fix it or if you can't get someone to fix it in time you can reroute power around the problem until you can get it fixed.
From a technical side it can be done and it is a networked approach but nothing says they will use the internet or it will have the same kind of problems from users accessing it.
Evolution or ID?
Does this mean if a site is slashdotted we can cause a blackout in the surrounding area?
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
I have to use a battery-powered radio to listen to the news about how some script kiddie did a DDoS against a known vulnerability on the "powernet" and all the food in my fridge goes bad....
Geez. Come on, Dr. Taylor. Just about everyone has some sort of SCADA network (the network of sensors) running on their grid. The blackout started in Ohio because some operators couldn't see some alarms, and the problems cascaded from there. (There are suggestions that some buggy software caused this, but the jury is still out.) The reports that have been released leave many questions unanswered, which tells how complicated and extensive our power grid is.
It will take many BILLIONS of $$ and many years to upgrade things enough to make it what we call dependable. It's complicated enough just keeping local grids running, let alone transferring power from one to another; balancing sources and loads, switching connections at the right time, etc.
- Bill
Honestly, in my personal opinion, the whole theory behind this is silly... God forbid what the hax0rs are going to do! Haha
Great... now hackers will be able to fry people....
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
As power production technology gets less intrusive, it becomes more acceptable to have in a residential neighborhood, or hospital basement. Just as you get better quality of service from a web server down the hall than from one on another continent, a neighborhood fuel cell could provide more reliable power to the customer.
Decentralization is becoming a broad-ranging trend in our society. We have people telecommuting, there are microbreweries springing up all over, and people can make their own diesel fuel in their garages. It is not too difficult to come up with more examples (if you disagree, the same probably holds for counterexamples). On a more political note, this ongoing decentralization helps us reduce our dependence on 'The Man' and increases our self-determination. I, for one, welcome our -- never mind.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
Firstly, don't take the internet analogy too far - it's just a system which allows power routing to be managed locally in an intelligent manner, rather than depending upon some central authority. One of the reasons for last year's NW USA blackouts was that data failed to get to the central control centre because of localised breakdowns.
However, decentralised systems can also faile - indeed, given perfect information at the centre (a big given, which often fails) a central overview can outperform a local intelligence. With a distributed system, you would probably get smaller but more frequent outages as local subsystems panic, with a larger total number of houshold outage minutes. This migh, of course, be less damaging if humans don't panic because it is only a few tens of blocks down.
The big potential gain, mentioned lower down in the article, is the potential structural changes to allow small scale generators to generate and distribute power locally. Lots of places have backup power generators, which cut in only when the mains fails. If the economics are right, it would be weorth while their running these continuosly, selling surplus power to the grid, and using the grid as a backup for their own power generation rather than the other way round. This saves the capital investment required for power stations, since it is using capital already invested instead of new capital - which may therefore overcome the diseconomies of small scale. It also saves the losses of long-distance power distribution. However, where you really win is that each area hasa a large proportion of its own power generated locally, so it doesn't care if the grid goes away. Suddently, it soean't matter what happens elswehere. there is also a cewrtain natural balance, as electricity is used in workplaces dirung the day, and when the workers go home the power is available for their domestic evening peak.
The real pie-in-the-sky payoff is when we all get hydrogen-powered cars, which generate electricity for no wear and tear on the fuel cell (we hope). If every car parked at home or work plugs into the grid, you have more generating capacity than you will need in the near future. (It is quoted that the power output of one year of US car sales exceeds the installed generating capacity of the entire world).
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Doc: 1.21 GigaWatts?!
Marty: Sheesh, which toilet did you bump your head on? We'll just DDoS a few city blocks, should solve the problem.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
Considering the costs involved and the time it will take to get it going, I think wireless broadband is going to beat it to the punch. Wireless Broadband should be pretty heavily installed (kind of like early cell companies, but faster) within the next few years, and with 802.16e coming (mobile 802.16) then it will have yet another advantage over Ethernet over power lines.
:) At least then they won't do it again...hate to be the poor schmuck that has to go check on that equipment outage though.
I'd rather the drunk drivers have to drive a semi into a tower to take my internet out anyways
I think if the IT market moved slower, say stretched out about 10x, then there would have been room for ethernet over powerlines, but as it is it is I think the window of opportuniy for it has already come and will be gone before they manage to get major systems up and running. I've worked with power companies, I know how long it takes them to do anything.
I mean if an OS upgrade requires 6+ months of wait time (not 6 month after it comes out, 6 months after they decide it might be safe to use) and several to many nuclear plants are still running Windows Nt 4, how long do you think it will take for them to decide to do something that will affect all of their lines?
Whee signature.
It looks like Skynet is finally coming to life.
RUN JOHN CONNER!
I'm going to use "open source" electricity, from the wind and the sun. :P
-
Encourage people to have power generation in their own homes. Solar panels, generators, etc, designed for home use, would not only ease strain on the grid during hot days in the summer, but would also make their owners money, and make them energy independent.
This would also provide security in an attack, because the entire electrical grid will no longer be supplied by a few power plants that are large targets for any attacker.
The only reason this wasn't implemented during the Cold War is because the technology wasn't there yet, but it is now. And what better way to promote the hydrogen economy that having people put fuel cells on their property to power their house when the main grid fails? People who don't want to have hydrogen in their cars probably won't mind having a tank in their back yard. A lot of people already have tanks of propane for heating and cooking where there's no natural gas service. (Yeah, yeah, I know it's not a cryogenic liquid, but it sure does explode like hydrogen.)
This would create a distributed network of power generation, and no RIAA-like actions by Al Qaeda or Mother Nature would be able to bring much of the grid down at any one time.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
... some of the real problems don't involve hardware, they involve corruption and malfeasance.
No amount of hardware fixes will overcome sheer greedism as a business model, with government oversight being the foxes guarding the hen house.
zogger
Since he knows both about energy and the Internet
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
-- home radio reception would be dramatically altered with adoption of IP over electrical wires. Shortwave already sucks enough during the daytime with the interference existing, adding to it would be disastrous, IMO. I find shortwave to be a breath of fresh air in getting a more varied news/information resource, a decent addendum to the internet, and retaining the ability to communicate during crisis times is a great boon. A transceiver with the addition of your own stable power supply that is independent of the grid (me -> some solar) is a decent backup.
Slightly offtopic, but I recently purchased one of those Phone-Line through the Power Lines adapters from Radio Shack.
What you do is plug one adapter into the wall circuit in a room with a phone jack, and hook the phone line up to it. Then, in another room without the phone jack, you plug the 'receiver' into the wall, and you can plug a phone into it.
Strangely enough, it works. I can even connect to the internet (at 28.8 or less, usually) through this circuit.
BUT - and a big BUT at that, is I keep on getting mixed lines, I hear other people talking on the line, and the most annoying part of it is that whomever's line I am crossed with, when they make a phone call to somewhere else, MY phone number shows up on that person's caller ID. So then I get phone calls at 1am from shady people asking me "Did you call here?!?". At first it was fun listening to their phone calls, apparently someone's boyfriend got caught in a drug deal and needed to be bailed out, but after 4 or 5 of those 1am calls I decided to ditch the whole thing.
So, I for one would not be too interested in this technology unless I see it proven first. In someone else's house. And knowing how bad it worked for the phone, I'm scared stiff to know what people could grab off my line if I use it for the internet.
$.02
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
Arrrg!!! I've just got shocked by a new SCO memo!
I would guess I get the flashing display (indicating a power failure) on my alarm clock about once a year. I also do not have a UPS system for my computer nor do I know of anyone that does. Our power system is not perfect but it is certainly a lot better than what you guys get over the pond.
wot no sig
To be able to reroute power effectively, we should first insure that there is adequate capacity to enable us to reroute power through alternate pathways.
And no one will know you're using it!
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
The power distribution companies are just about the one group who really can afford to run private fibre. After all, they already HAVE cables connecting all the omportant sites, byu definition, and the technology to wrap a fibre around a power line is already well established.
Perhaps its a country-by-country issue. In the U.S., power transmission is a neglected, regulated industry -- its the people that generate the power, not the people that transmit the power, that make all the money. Transmission, at least in the U.S., is a commodity infrastructure and many regard it as underfunded.
But even if the power companies of some countries could afford their own fiber, why would they choose this? And if they do pay to install fiber, why wouldn't they lease unused capacity on this line? To the extent that they either choose the cheaper option (use other's fiber) or lease out their own fiber, they are insecure. Public packets and infrastructure control packets should not be corouted.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If the internet via electricity grid becomes more widespread in the future, will the internet become unreliable? If the power goes out (as it did during the East Coast Black Out of 2003), the internet would lose a lot of connectivity in the areas of the black out. It would no longer matter if ISPs or bandwith providers had back up generators. They would go offline as soon as the power went off. What happens if there are rolling black outs such as the ones that happened in California a few years ago? Wouldn't this be bad for VOIP too?
I'm not trying to disparage this idea at all, I'm just curious as to what the affects of black outs or power outages would be to the internet if this form of bandwith was in widespread implementation.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
My apologizes, I should have RTF. I thought they were talking about internet over electrical lines. Again, my apologizes.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Cutting off customers is a poor substitute for demand-side management. When there's a run on, say, toilet paper or gasoline, prices rise or suppliers run out. Latecomers delay their consumption and everyone has an incentive to decide how important it is to have the goods right now vs. later; there is no way to bring down the toilet-paper supply system. We have no such buffer like this for electricity; because of the false assumption that electricity will always be available when you flip the switch, too many people flipping the switch can cause everyone's power to go down. We need to address this sooner rather than later.
Fault detection is one thing. A faulty response to detection of a fault is another; if the system reacts to a shortage of generation capacity by cutting off generation rather than consumption, the protective systems act to decrease reliability. We may need measures such as mandatory utility control over air-conditioners (the major loads during summer demand peaks) in order to get a handle on this problem.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If they use the right encryption and safety measures, why won't that be secure?
There's no such thing as unhackable security, especially if you want cheap boxes that sit on all the thousands/millions of powerplants and distribution facilities in a big power grid. Sooner or later people will find a weakness in the software, firmware, or hardware of the little boxen on all those sensor and control nodes. Sooner or later a power company will fail to patch a hole (or it will take months to physically replace/patch defective hardware). Sooner or later, the keys to some part of the control net will get leaked or stolen. If the control and sensor boxes on are on the public net, they will become remotely hackable.
Just being connected to the net doesn't mean you're instantly going to get cracked. Look at microsoft.com - a server everyone and their dog wants to crack into
First, I doubt the power companies would or could replicate Microsoft's level of security (either in terms of money or skilled people). Regular corporations do get kacked all the time. Second, I'd bet Microsoft gets hacked too, but its not publically announced or even necessarily discovered.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Now that CAT makes flywheel UPS systems I think I have a wonderful solution. Subsidize putting a flywheel system in every home. Or perhaps just large appt. etc. Let it charge up during the night, maybe a trickle charge from a solar array for daytime, and pull power off the system during high loads.
Another Idea use CWT (changing World Technologies) TDP (Thermal Depolymerization Process) on every major sewer system in the United States. The use the fuel to run high efficiency generators. Shit to electricity.
The problem with any such scheme is that current motor fuel is derived from a commodity which is rising rapidly in price, and the future panacea-fuel (hydrogen) has very difficult unsolved problems with production and also storage suitable for vehicles.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
FR33 3l3CTR1C1TY F0R H4X0R5!!!
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
.. has no-one behind this idea seen the movie 'Pulse'? Cue a rogue AI hooked up to the power grid, housewives boiling in the shower and garage doors going rogue.
...smart, responsive and self-healing digital network--in short, an 'energy internet'.
Oh, you mean like the Internet is now? You mean that when Alter.net takes a dump in Ohio that I will still be able to get to the east coast, albeit through a more round-about way? That even if major fibre in the West gets backhoed that I'll be able to get to Australia, maybe through England first?
Although originally designed to be, the Internet is NOT completely fault-tolerant, smart, responsive, or self-healing. In fact, some parts are downright fragile...hit the right router and a lot of lines go dark.
Now, maybe the electric grid would be easier to make tolerant due to the way the distribution is setup, or maybe not (I'm no expert). Monitoring is all good, but building something that is less likely to break is better. I can monitor my servers all I want and be paged like crazy when they go down, but if I don't have good hardware to start with, I'll be running to work at 3am an awful lot.
Building something that is inherently fault-tolerant seems to me to be a better "first" than just improving the monitoring of an already fragile system.
Blog,Twitter
It's interesting to note that no one from the Electric Power Research Institute was invited to be part of Cheney's energy task force.
Seriously.... just because something is networked, doesn't mean that it will be on the "internet". It could be an independent network, with no link to the outside world. can't hack what isn't connected...
Okay, so the reliability of this information is obviously suspect given the source, but over the weekend I caught an Art Bell show on the radio, where the President of the American Relay Radio League claimed that interference from this kind of power line networking would essentially kill broadcasting in North America over a wide spectrum- if I remember correctly, something like 20Mhz-80Mhz. Art Bell's recap is here.
Looking into it now a little further, some of the American Relay Radio Leauge documents and links has some mentions of problems for radio astronomy and a few other low-profile endeavors.
Anyway, I had no idea this was a possible outcome, and these claims make me think that perhaps it's better to insist that we really work on existing non-interfering technologies before we kill one of the few sections of spectrum that an individual can use on his own.
Check it out, its real:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/#Video
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Sorry, but I have to say it. RTFA. This is not about internet over power-lines. It is about an internet-like structure for the power grid.
Your assuming the electric grid will have a user protocol that can be interfaced with. More then likely, the power grid will be hardwired to be redundant...much like the Internet today.
Life is not for the lazy.
I wrote a short article about this at the other site a while ago. Especially, take a look at this article, which goes into considerable detail.
1) net metering (so you can pay to draw power, or get credited to supply it)
2) caching (keep little stores of energy here and there, in form of hydrogen, or perhaps kinetically in a flywheel if that's cheaper right now)
3) top-up with renewables (charge local cache with solar cells, wind motion, exercycle)
4) top-up with non-renewables (natural gas, off-peak grid electricity)
5) gradually reduce need for so many high capacity power lines
6) make your cache so rubust you can get by without the power lines at all
7) end the era when we innundate middle eastern countries with money while they bury their heads in the sand and export little but oil and ancient hatred and death
If you don't believe check out these related stories, dating way back
Still, it's new to the US. ZDNet had something similar a few weeks back
Lol microsoft.com has been hacked more than once. Check out this article
The article is an excellent investigation into the problems of our aging power grids, and draws insightful parallels to the internet.
Unfortunately, The Economist winds up the article with a startling and unjustified leap to the belief that a big-government socialist mega-project is the answer to all of our energy problems. And this in spite of the fact that all of the arguments in the article, especially those that compare the power grid to the internet, point to a smart network of small, local power suppliers as the promising, internet-inspired answer.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Of course, just like any other idea with Internet and power grid since the great Media Fusion scam... In other words, The legend of Luke Stewart -- a self-proclaimed national treasure -- carries on... Too bad no one wants to hear about it. I have only one question. When will people learn? When will that madness finally end? So, it is "self-healing" this time. It's not "billion gigabits per second" any more. I wonder what the next snake oil will be. Maybe selfconscious for God's sake! Please, people, do we really have to give free publicity to yet another scam artist? Why won't we post a story about perpetuum mobile or homeopathy, while we're at it? This post will probably get moderated as Flamebait, just like every post when I dare to say the truth about some scam. I guess it's more exciting to talk about another perpetuum mobile design than to accept the much less exciting truth. Moderators, do your duty. Mod me down for telling the truth and wasting the fun.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The power companies already run lots of fiber. They've been replacing phone circuits between stations with fiber on the skywire (top wire on transmission lines) for years. The keep several fibers for power line use, and lease other fibers in the bundle to other companies. There doesn't need to be any connection or corouting. They regain control of the control signals (not on the local phone company's circuits), and can sell the excess capacity. The leased fibers are usually run to a separate building on the station grounds so they don't have outside employees in around their equipment.
The "electricity internet" scheme comes from the people who think free markets are the answer to everything. When free markets fail, they say they weren't free enough.
That group architected California electricity deregulation, with a power auction every half hour around the clock. Nobody was held responsible for electrical reliability,; the "market" would insure there was enough supply.
This was an absolute disaster. We had blackouts. The biggest electric utilities in California went bankrupt. Rates went up. Even the major energy trader, Enron, went bust. And we're still paying for the mess.
The "electricity internet" scheme is a plan to provide more transmission facilities. But not because they're needed for power engineering reasons. The extra capacity is to facilitate energy trading.
The basic trouble with electricity deregulation is that it encourages building inefficient power plants. Traditionally, regulated electric utilities build mostly "base load" plants, intended to run 100% of the time at high efficiency, plus some less efficient "peaking" plants brought up during peak periods. In a deregulated environment, wholesale electricity prices change by several orders of magnitude throughout the day. The optimal strategy for a generation company is to target only the peak periods, using low-cost plants burning high-cost fuel. (These are usually natural-gas fired turbines.) And there's no money in having excess capacity that's only used a few times per year. A few blackouts a year are to be expected. That's the result of a free market solution.
In Californa, energy traders figured out how to create shortages. Buying, but not using, electrical transmission and natural gas pipeline capacity was one way used to drive up prices.
The fanatical free-market types claim the problem is that the huge variation in daily rates isn't pushed all the way down to residential customers. You'd set your thermostat in dollars per day, and when the power price went up, the air conditioning would turn off. Bigger customers would have energy storage facilities. Most people would just suffer. That's the plan.
I don't buy that. What if, for argument's sake, the software has technically no holes in it, that it's completely secure? Why wouldn't that be unhackable?
We should fervently pray that the power companies would not replicate Microsoft's level of security and reliability
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to continue
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
That's in my Economist in the bathroom - let's see, at least a week old.
You may mod me offtopic, but I don't quite get the point of announcing such old stuff. Don't the editors check the links? Oh, wait...
This Like That - fun with words!
perhaps they will cease to serve us and rise up and rightfully take their place as our overlords. I for one welcome our new leaders.
$.02
I bet it cost a lot more than that.
1) install "laser" near local power station.
2) Connect power source of "laser" directly to transmission lines.
3) Reprogram power station to tell all other power stations that it's distance (resistance?) to any node is zero.
4) Profit! (where profit=burning a hole through anything you point at).
Think of the possibilities if you make off with one of these. Power a railgun for all sorts of nefarious acts? Great SF theme!
Would really shut you down!
I was chatting recently with aon old friend of my fathers, who's been working in the elctricity industry in Europe for 35+ years, including work on the pan-European electricity distribution grid
:)
The anecdote I liked most was this:
- This European grid spans several thousand kilometers, from the Atlantic ocean to Poland at least
- This network can sometimes start to "swing" or oscillate, with Voltage/Amperage swinging back and forth accross the grid, with a period of several seconds
- As we all know (cough) when a system swings like this, with the end points fixed (like one end on the Atlantic and the other in Poland) the maximum amplitude is reached in the middle, lets say at a major cross-border link between France and Germany (yes its not half-way but stay with me)
- Assuming this cross-border link has the capacity to carry 1000 Googlewatts max, they can actually only use it to move 600 Googlewatts around, the other 400 GW have to be reserved to have room up the "swinging" of the whole grid.
- If you were to load this link up to full capacity, and the grid began to swing, it would blow the link up immediately.
- Try to explain this to a politician (or manager), who says "but the wire can take 1000 GW, why can we only transmit 600???"
He also mentioned that in many places, including the US, major grid interconnections are done in Direct Current (DC) to avoid exactly this kind of problem. Just imagine: Gigawatts of power being exchanged in DC - Edison would be proud, and Tesla must be spinning (or oscillating) in his grave
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
Yeah, we're already spending too many billions of dollars to let the police monitor our bathroom breaks.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
If my power supply will fail as often as my internet link... Oh no!
...I've Seen This Movie!!
When I lived in Pittsburgh one of my friends became a salesman for green mountain energy (or some hippie company).
(Side note, in PA electricity is deregulated. There is a monopoly on the wires DUH, but you can buy energy from whomever you please.)
The was it works is you pick what percent of your energy you want to come from clean or semi-clean sources (methane, wind, solar, hydro). They had a few tiers from 5% to 50%. You paid more for greener energy. From there they contract with the green suppliers to buy x MW/monthly based on their customers decisions. Do I get the green electricity instead of coal? No. Am I supporting green energy and decreasing the demand for dirty energy. Yes. Let the market do the work. Like everyone else said, it's just energy potential.
Technology Consulting & Free Downloads
Thats exactly what I do. I buy electricity from a company called "Greenpeace-Energy" http://www.greenpeace-energy.de . They asure me that every new consumer will get in 3 years time power from a brandnew plant which uses sustainable energy. In that time they have not enough power, they will run their gas-powerd station faster to avoid buying in "dirty" energy. Now I am on the move to an ISP who pays extra money to use "green-energy" servers only and I am about to convince other ISP's. The idea to live entirely on and with clients using sustainable energy-resources thrills me. So this is not right that understanding of the article of power-deviation, but I would support the idea.
Jeremy Rifkin already wrote a huge plan for this in his book The Hydrogen Economy. I'm suprised nobody else on here brought that up.
http://mediagoblin.org/
So what happens when part of the power grid gets slashdotted?
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
world wide blackout?
What?
Basically, he took his Dymaxion world map projection (one of the only map projection systems to lay out all of the continents on a flat surface with little to no distortion, showing all the continents in true size/proportion/distance to each other), and layed out the major grid interconnects for world power onto it. The idea being that if the world was using one single power system (heh, a logistic problem in itself, what with differing voltages and frequencies), that fluxuations in consumption and use would be smoothed out worldwide because when half the world was at peak, the other half would not be, thus allowing everyone the benefit of everyone's resources - basically a large power sharing network.
Of course, as one reads more about Bucky's ideas and theories, one quickly realizes that what he puts forth is a complete system for living in harmony with the Earth, its resources, and all of the people on the planet - you can't just take portions of his ideas and use them, ignoring the rest. To do so would be folly and would insure that what you were trying to do would eventually fail...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
So you think the internet would be as great and free-for-use entity as it is today if not for the tax funded huge backbones and community that helped make it happen?
Letting private business run things only benefits the people that can afford it, socialist programs benefit everyone. Only people who are well off and don't give a shit about others want everything privately owned. You have a "survival of the fittest" attitude, which is fine if you are still at the intellectual level of a primate in evolutionary progession I guess.
Do the units you bought have a "Housecode" dial on them (Usually labelled with letters A-P)? If they do, try changing that. The problem is that other people in your neighborhood are likely using similar devices and they are set to the same address as yours.
Reprise the theme song and roll the credits!
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
One good link deserves another. See this EPRI study which I found linked from this page. I warn you in advance, that EPRI paper can keep you busy for days.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
For some strange reason, I don't think my drug-dealing bail-bonding 'young urban professional' neighbors are using these phone-over-power-line devices. :)
I'm moving next week anyhow, no big deal.
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
chewtoy-11 (448560) sez: "Are you using Internet over Power Lines technology?"
Could be. I saw the modems for sale at CompUSA in New Haven CT.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Check out www.geni.org
Global Energy Network Institute, a Bucky Fuller-inspired nonprofit that studies the efficacy of hooking up and decentralizing the world's energy grids.
One large advantage is to offset peak loading (say, a dam in India at night can help supply energy to American daytime activities) or between hemispheres to offset seasonal variations. They have collected tons of facts about the energy available, but I was never one for remembering facts so check out the website.
This article's topic would support this idea even more.
Peace.
No one has mentioned this: http://www.mtt.org/awards/WCB's%20distinguished%20 career.htm
/.'s), that I couldn't help it. Make what you will with it.
What you have here is power derived from a 2.4 GHz Wireless signal. What with wireless networking making it's way through the industry, you could setup a wireless power network, a bunch of small ones, and just spread the power. Drop in mesh networking and you have one hell of a stable network that can be used to pass data and power.
Wires are our real problem. Build something that doesn't cost billions and get outdated so quickly.
It would cost $85k (I have a printable quote from some manufactures on my laptop as I type) to make a mesh 5x5 miles(!) of reliable power distribution. And all of this can be changed and adapted very easy.
Some modifications to think about would be to work in storage/starter batteries to place this in areas with little to no power, weatherproofing them against every temperature variation, etc... Very easy solutions if one put his head to it.
It could even become a community project with enough local interest.
Well I said my peace and just pretty much gave away an idea I'm looking at funding for. The answer was so obvious though, and so overlooked (it was even reported in earlier
/. Heroics - 99.999%