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Smarter Electric Grid Could Save Power
Wired has a timely story about putting more of the automated and non-automated decisions behind the use of electrical power into and around households. From the summary: "If the electric grid stops being just a passive supplier of juice, consumers could make choices about how and when to consume power. Power providers and tech companies are working to redesign the grid so you can switch off your house when high demand strains the system, or program your house or appliances to make that move."
A similar story is featured right now on PhysOrg, highlighting a particular pilot project involving "smart meters" in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
It's not a matter of turning off all the electricity to your house. It's a matter of running your dishwasher and drier during off-peak hours and cutting back on the A/C during the really peak times. Right not, there are no incentives consumers to time their electricity usage, even though the cost to the utility varies wildly, and the utility is expected to provide as much power as you want. This BTW, is one of the reasons for the blackouts in California. That and the fact the companies like Enron knew this fact and exploited it.
--- http://davidnehme.blogspot.com
This kind of thing sounds like something that normally would happen in a 3rd world country, not the US or Canada. Are we really to the point where we have to start shutting off hot water heaters because we don't want to re-invest in the electrical infra-structure?
I'm all for more energy efficient appliances. I've got all compact fluorescents, have an automatic thermostat, and my computers power off when not in use. But not having hot water, or raising the temperature by 4 degrees? Forget about it.
AccountKiller
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
How does the meter do that? Does it control the circuit breakers connected to these appliances, or does it communicate directly to the CPU of the appliance to tell it to turn off? Here, we have small VHF receivers that the utility attaches to central air-conditioning units. They send a signal, a relay interrupts the control circuit to the compressor contactor.
The nature of power plants (turbines, etc) makes them plenty scalable, within a range of possibilities. Building more plants (or generators within plants) requires a massive new capital investment, as well as environmental compliance.
There is no type of currently-available power plant that is infinitely scalable without further capital investment--solar is limited by how much sunlight is shining, wind by how much wind is blowing, hydro by friction of water flowing through a finite pipe, nuclear by turbine and heat dissipation capacity, gas by turbine size, etc. You can't just dump more fuel into any of these systems and expect a positive response.
No the grid does not have to be re-engineered. All the inter-ties for micro-power already exist. All the laws are already on the books.
The technology already exists.
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I cry foul!!
The plants were designed to be scalable, and they did plan for growth.
Then a funny thing happened. Environmental-whackos stepped up and put a stop to all new electrical generation plants for a period of around 15 years. You couldn't even expand existing plants during this period.
Only when things started getting really bad, and California blacked out a couple times did the rules start to loosen.
Hell it was probably you marching up and down with your scruffy beard and cardboard sign in college that stopped infrastructure development for all we know.
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it sounds like what we have in this country is a shortage of capital. Rich people all have the best insulation, etc because they can afford to spend the initial big bucks to save more down the road. But this hurts us all because most people can not. We need an orginazation to provide more capital for poor or working class americans to conserve. This would help the economy and the enviroment, plus ease financial burdens on lower income households.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
Florida has the same, it saves you ~$10 per month for the power company to turn off high current items like - Air Conditioners. I had that cut, because of at home mom w/ 2 little ones. The house temperature hit over hundred, then it took up to 3hr to bring it back down 78, every evening. Where once it was cut (yes, they come out a cut a wire) house stayed even all day long, and our power bill dropped because the A/C worked less. Also mom and kids were not roasting all day, or driving to mall to keep cool (and spending money).
Capacity costs money. When it goes idle for 16 out of 24 hours, it's just a dead weight. Base load plants are generally more economical than plants that can easily adjust their output, so peaks genuinely cost more to cover in any event. If they want to offer customers a discount to help them shave the peaks and avoid the outlay, I fail to see the problem.
I don't think the plans that essentially have homeowners buying on a commodities market are likely worthwhile. People already have jobs, becoming ameteur commodities traders in the off hours is a bit much to ask.
Hoever, simple things like a different rate during set peak hours can work well. Most households can delay laundry and dishwashers until the evening or early morning. Many do anyway because people are at work.
Figures don't lie, but liars figure. They are required to pay more than wholesale because they charge the customers more than wholesale. It's a simple matter of fairness and incentive. Why would I find it fair to sell power TO the grid (often during peak houre when it costs the MOST) at $0.02/KWh and buy it back at $0.14/KWh (at night when it's cheap)?
If the power company buys excess power at retail from home producers, they STILL gain because it helps them shave the peaks.
One problem is that the peak and average demand on the power grid are quite different. Obviously we have to build the grid to handle the peak, or we'll get blackouts/brownouts. Now what something like this could do is help reduce peak demand. Try to balance things out so that there isn't as much usage during peak times. This in turn means we don't have to spend so much money building out more electrical distribution and production.
This is already done on a large scale in the US. For example grid controllers will talk to a company about shutting down part or all of their usage at a certain time. A good candidate might be something like a food processing/storage facility. The controllers ask them to shut down their coolers at the time when homes are kicking up their usage (like around 4-7 PM). This isn't a problem for the company, they just cool it down a bit more before hand, and the temperature stays low enough.
Well a similar thing could be applied to houses as well, in theory. Shut down or reduce certain things during peak times, or zone the usage so only part of the homes in a given area are using it at once.
I'm not saying it is a cure-all or that we want it doing things like shutting down air conditioners for 3 hours in the desert or something, but there is potential to balance things out better and thus save money.
Because the power companies are providing a service, namely, the transmission lines.
Why would you find it fair to sell used games to Gamestop for $1 per game, and buy games for $20 per game? Same reason - because Gamestop provides a service, and pays money for the right to provide it (in inventory space, real estate, and employee wages.)
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
The environmental wackos had little to do with the blackouts in California. The problem was that the state took forever in deregulating the power sector, so that no one wanted to build a power plant for five years because they knew they would be forced to sell it due to deregulation (which required each utility to own plants corresponding to 50% of power it sold).
It's called "the electric bill."
but then again there is good investment return in peak load powerplants like pump storage powerplants, especially when coupled with a nuke powerplant.
they can be loaded using the cheapest electricity availiable and they can sell at the peak load (the most expensive electricity).
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Environmental-whackos .... Only when things started getting really bad, and California blacked out a couple times did the rules start to loosen.
No. Enron, amongst other crooked energy traders, and the states that enabled them (Hello Texas!) stepped up. California wasn't counting on being screwed over by its fellow states (as in transmission lines deliberately scheduled to block power going *into* CA during peak times).
The California blackouts were caused solely by criminals doing criminal acts. There was plenty of power otherwise.
If anything, California has since realized that it needs more of its own power generation facilities to protect itself from its neighbors that would sell it down the river (more literal than you know) in no time flat.
Any technology that requires heating large quantities of water will not be instantly scalable yet can still be used for peaking (high load hours).
Gas fired electrical generation plants can respond faster than Coal fired ones, and Nuclear (contrary to your assertion) can also respond quite quickly to additional demand.
All of these require that their boilers be kept at or near steam temperature at times when peaking is likely to be necessary.
About the fastest responding technology is hydro power. Penstocks can be opened and turbines spun up in less than 5 minutes.
Current electrical generation capacity is "scaled" by replication. As a utility approaches 100% utilization during peak periods it starts planning another generation plant. These things 1 year to design, 2 years to build, and 15 years to get permission to build. By that time the design is obsolete.
The problem is one of NIMBY, pure and simple. It will take several California brownouts before the political hacks get out the the way and let the engineers do their job.
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> California has since realized that it needs more
> of its own power generation facilities to protect
> itself from its neighbors
But this is exactly what I was saying.
California had long had the practice of dis-allowing new electrical generation plants anywhere in the state by tying them up in such a morass of regulation that it was effectively impossible to build new plants there.
This was done intentionally to push the generation plants (and the associated pollution) out of their back yard into someone elses.
Why should Texas, who built and owned their own plants and transmission lines (and who, for a long time saw no need to tie into the national grid) be forced to deliver electricity to California SIMPLY so that California could avoid pollution. Texas didn't escape the pollution. They had gas and coal fired plants belching 24/7 so California could flip the switch but never see the smoke stack.
California got exactly what it deserved. Washington, Oregon, and even Montana also faced increased rates due to California refusing to improve its infrastructure.
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What we need are some REAL leaders and not just spineless congress critters.What we NEED is some leaders who will say-"We NEED safe affordable power and a good modern infrastructure. So we ARE going to build new nuclear power plants where they can be the most benefit,while putting more research into both alternatives and safer nuclear power designs.We ARE going to rebuild our failing bridges and roads,and we ARE going to have a national broadband infrastructure so we can compete in modern society!" What we NEED is a leader who'll tell all the NIMBYs to take a hike and do what is best for the nation.
But,sadly,I doubt that is going to happen. Instead we'll get more wars over the ever dwindling oil reserves,more finger pointing and useless rhetoric,and we'll slowly slip farther and farther behind everyone else as we slowly turn into just another third world dictatorship. I truly hope that I'm wrong. I truly hope we'll get leaders that can look ahead and think long term instead of simply looking at the next election cycle and the enrichment of their friends and ways to ever increase their powers over us. But I haven't seen anything in a long time that would make me believe it just won't keep going the way it has for the past couple of decades. But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
it was effectively impossible to build new plants there.
No, it was done to curb pollution. Previously, the environmental impact wasn't considered -- or hardly at all.
You do realize that CA prides itself on protecting and cleaning up its environment?
Why should Texas, who built and owned their own plants and transmission lines (and who, for a long time saw no need to tie into the national grid) be forced to deliver electricity to California
No one forced Texas to do anything. Keep that in mind for my next counterpoint...
[Texas] had gas and coal fired plants belching 24/7....
No one forced Texas to do anything. Besides, you just effectively argued that Texas' environment (and consequently the health of its own citizens) comes secondary to heavy polluters.
California got exactly what it deserved.
Now we see your true feelings. It's a blame the victim mentality. Enron felt the same way.
Washington, Oregon, and even Montana also faced increased rates due to California refusing to improve its infrastructure.
Perhaps you missed where energy traders, such as Enron, were illegally gaming the market. Criminal acts drove up prices for everybody.
Once Enron imploded due to its sheer unsustainable greed, energy prices fell again. The fake power shortages went away. People went to jail. People lost their ill-gotten gains. Funny, I haven't seen a rolling blackout since.
Exactly. I live in Texas, and if you don't want to pay through the teeth for polluting our land for your cheap electricity then eat blackouts.
Stop building power plants, then regulate how much suppliers in your state can charge the people. What could go wrong?
Did Enron screw California over? Yep, don't like it? Fix your goofy ass laws, and build some infrastructure. It's the same exact thing that's happening right now in the oil market. In the U.S. we stopped building any infrastructure in refining or producing, now idiots are crying that someone else controls the price of their fuel.
Yes the small stuff adds up. But aparently you didnt do the math...
.1 per KW)
Lets say everyone in your neighborhood has a 3W soft-off TV. Lets say there is 100 houses in your neigborhood. Then lets say no one turns on the TV for 1 month or 30 days. Let say (pulling from the air power is
Now at 3W per hour that is 3x24x30x100 or 216000W (216KW) per month. In dollars thats $21.60. For 1 year thats 2628KW, or $262.80. That is 1-2 houses for 1 month in power. So extra capacity needs to be built just al the time.
Yes its not that big of a deal for you, but scale that to a city the size of New York, LA, Denver, Dallas...
That is the issue. Also if you REALY want to just give money away (which you are) why not give it to an org that can do something with it like buy food or blankets for people who need it?
Also what OLD ass TV are you using? 3 W to keep the tube elements warm I havent heard about that in YEARS. Tubes? There should be 1 tube in your tv and it doesnt need to be kept warm. The rest is caps. Most TVs go from off (no power) to on in about 4 seconds. The only thing you are saving these days is 3 seconds. OLD (i mean early 70s and earlier) TVs had tubes that needed to warm up and be kept warm.
I used to be with you on the 'it doesnt matter much'. Then I went around and unplugged everything in the house. Saved me about 5-10 bucks a month. It was a lot more than I thought it would be.
Woah woah woah.. Who decided that 78 degrees is the target here and that less than that is "unacceptable?"
Humans are most comfortable at a "room temperature" of 72 degrees, on average. At 78, you're going to have nearly one standard deviation of people that are actually sweating (and not necessarily just the fatties, either). I think we can all agree that office stench is also important to keep down.
The problem is manifold, as like I often say, "You can always put on another sweater. You can't take off more clothes than all of 'em."
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They still stink. Fresh clean air doesn't small at all.