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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.
Of course it is important to only control the right loads. Water heating is a good candidate, so might be charging electric vehicles overnight. Basically loads that need juice but not necessarily constantly.
Probably a good idea not to do this to TV sets or medical equipment.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You wouldn't want to come home and find that all your Cherry Garcia has melted and your arugula has wilted because your "smart" house decided to take itself off the grid. You need to have some sort of backup power for quite a few appliances. A way to do this is to produce your own power with solar panels or wind turbines, and in fact a lot of people are already doing that (and pushing electricity back into the system as a net supplier!).
But really, the way to avoid the crunch is to make the systems we use more efficient. If we can't live without air conditioning, maybe we can take steps to make it cheaper and less energy-consuming than our current HVACs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_lake_water_cooling
Of course efficiency improvements are only a temporary band-aid. At some point consumption will overtake the gains made in efficiency. However, if we can forestall the inevitable long enough to move more of our power consumption needs to a renewable energy solution, the better off we will be and the less dependent we will be on fossil fuels.
In order to effectively balance sources from grid-tied power sources, such as wind and solar, the grid needs to be re-engineered. Load balancing is a part of this. Decentralized power has some enormous advantages.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Nothing new here.
First consumers can already "make choices about how and when to consume power".
Second, Utility company cut-offs to high-load things like water heaters already exist. Energy suppliers in some ares pay you a small amount to have the ability to drop your water heater elements during peak usage (cooking time and high air conditioning loads).
There is nothing suggested in TFA that does not already exist.
The most immediate single change that the average consumer can impliment is CFL lightbulbs. These are so effective that some Power companies PAY for the bulbs for you.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This is really old technology. We have separate wiring to these appliances.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
With a tank system you can spread the heating over the night (eg. turning on each tank for an hour means that you can service perhaps 6 times as many customers with the same peak load).
Most retail suppliers get charged some multiplier of their peak load so are very keen to keep peak loads down.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Do you want to save power - here's an easy solution, make devices that actually TURN OFF. Most TVs, DVD players and other electrical devices use almost as much power when they are "off" as they do when they are on. While some devices always need to be on (e.g. tivos, routers, etc...) most would work just as well if there was a way to turn them fully off.
I'm not a specialist in electric power, but here in Switzerland we have what we call are "Pumpkraftwerke".
They are basically water powered generators utilizing a large storage lake - when demand is high, the water runs from the upper to the lower lake, creating electricity. When demand is low, the water is pumped from the lower to the upper lake.
They require a large difference in height between the two seas (usually in the lower hundreds), but otherwise are pretty low maintenance.
There _is_ of course some ecological impact. But they have served us well during the past years.
They do plan for it - and is the reason "grids" came about in the early days of electricity ... industrial loads tend to run somewhat opposite times of residential loads, and thus much of the time, base-plants, despite often not being that scaleable, can economically cover much of the load without problem.
... it's typically only extreme cold or hot weather that leads to excessively high peak loads, though many transmission operators mitigate such extreme situations by directing industrial users to shed load and/or slight voltage reduction.
So while people use more power at night, many industrial users tend to use less, so it evens out most of the time.
The tricky time is late afternoon / early evening where peak loads can occasionally spike significantly requiring the extended use of peaking power plants, such as gas fired units to cover the shortfall at much higher expense...
However, on many grids in the U.S., most days, such peaks are not a big issue
Ron
There's two issues here. One is reducing the total energy consumed (i.e. not using it at all) and the other is reducing the peak power (choosing when to use energy). The former is always useful. The latter mainly works around infrastructure problems. In terms of reducing emissions, the only reasons I can see for changing when to use energy is to balance the load for "green" energy like wind/solar that aren't available all the time.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Sure, there's plenty of ways to bank cheap off-peak electricity if you're clever about it. There's a system for commercial buildings to make ice at night in an insulated tank that's used for AC during the day.
My question is not, then, why it is not in wide use, but rather why it took me a long time to dig up the project information on these protocols, why information tends to be very sparse from the hobyist/garage community, why there are no Woznik Mk. II's providing homebrewed household systems, or Prof. Heinz Wolff II's running an X-Prize for such systems. All the foundation work has been done, the protocols are all available, the proofs of those systems exist in many of the more sophisticated facilities, everything that preceeded the hardware revolution in microcomputers has for many years also existed in the domestic appliance level and even the local substation level. What we have not seen is much of a garage revolution, the way we have for many other technologies. X10's aility to turn lights on and off seems to have been about the closest attempt.
Don't expect the Big Guys to do it. If there are trains that don't support regenerative braking yet, given the state of the rail network, then it is reasonable to assume nobody else in the upper echelons is going to care. This stage has invariably, for virtually all technologies out there today - including television and radio, been carried out by hobbyists, enthusiasts and homebrewers. My guess would be that if those hobbyists don't hobby along soon, this concept will simply never enter any market ouside of the real high-end. Mainframes will rule forever and the micro of the appliance world will never exist.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
IMHO, to prevent instabilities and peaking, system can not be left blind and non-cooperative. We should have an integrated intelligent system for power delivery:
...) on low price/priority settings and our immediate need appliances (hair dryers, computers, lights, microwave ovens, ...) on high price/priority settings.
There should be an asynchronous handshaking protocol for appliances to request exact amount of additional power from the grid and to postpone activation before the grid acknowledges that it is ready to supply it.
Furthermore, when load intensifies, in order to prevent "starvation" of new appliances waiting to be switched on, all appliances would have to be able to gradually scale down their consumption on demand from the grid.
Alternatively (/additionally), there should be "power bid" system: consumer should set the limit for the price of a watt consumer is willing to pay for given appliance (according to consumers' own priorities and preferences) and then the grid could clear the overload by raising the price (thus pushing of-grid appliances with lower priority set by their respective owners) in real time.
Obviously, we could set our low priority "batch job" appliances (dishwashers, clothes washer/dryer,
Interestingly, this system could also allow small/micro/local rapid response energy producers and merchants (buying low, selling high, provided they have efficient energy storage/retrieval systems) to compete on the "watt market" and offload the system, thus creating new opportunities, better energy supply and more accurate cost management.
For instance, we could also express the timing in monetary equivalents: you can buy immediate power from small producer or merchant now, for higher cost, or you can book lower cost watts delivered from huge power station at some later time, when they are ready to deliver some extra power. In short, if you can tell exactly how many watts you need, for how long and you can afford to wait some time to get it, you could get yourself significantly lower cost.
Modern Hydro (and Pumped-Storage) plants can actually respond within a minute.
In areas where it's geographically practical, Pumped Storage is also a fantastic way of dealing with the peak/off-peak usage problem, and could also potentially be used to provide "solar power at night," albeit at great expense.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
And once running, 200MW turbine can change its production for 5MW (2.5%) in just 4 seconds! Probably even faster, but that was a limit that we had to obey when we were controlling power system frequency in Serbia.
No sig today.
I've got mod points, but it's better to reply in my capacity as a controls engineer working in sustainable energies, then just mod you down.
As debatable as it is whether CA utilities did or did not build for excess capacity, it is quite frankly irrelevant. The kind of excess capacity that they would have planned for would have not been what we needed then, and especially what we need now.
We need measures to reduce energy consumption and measures to better use what we've got. Thermodynamically, a big plant isn't anywhere near as efficient running a small load, than a small plant running a small load. Ideally, we'd be able to generate 95% (I made that number up out of thin air. 100% is of course ideal, but obviously not attainable) of our energy with base-load plants and only occasionally spin up small gas turbines for the peak loads. While smart grids do nothing for the former (unless people just become more aware of the cost and thus reduce usage) they certainly do help with the latter. A washing machine run at 3AM, for all intents and purposes, is ready in the same amount of time as one that was started just before bedtime.
A good place to look is island grids. Many islands literally do not have a second source of power, so they have to specify their one plant to handle both base and peak load. This is increases capital costs and reduces efficiency at base load, increasing recurring costs. And they can't even sell excess capacity, so the island utility is really pushed up against a wall. Unless... unless you do something to spread out the load. Because, let's face it, an island grid is actually pretty nice from a simplicity standpoint because there are a lot less unknowns. No trains, little industry, just a lot of washing machines and air conditioners.
So, in short, placing the blame on someone else is not the answer. Conservation is not a virtue, and global warming and energy shortages don't stop at our borders. Smart grids are coming and are in fact a very good solution to many of our capacity problems. While they don't help save power use, they do make the usage more efficient.
P.S. As an aside, it's unfortunate that the last, least important step-- time optimization--, is being done first. If people would just put that damned ADSL modem on a timer (mine uses as much energy in a day as my refrigerator), unplug chargers they're not using, and put the computer in hibernate mode at night, that would do far more than time-optimized smart energy.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Only people in CA. have the luxury of their utility company turning off their AC for them. How nice it must be to come home to a hot house after a long day of work. Yeah, I'd make some separate wiring to a few key appliances...
Do that kind of thing in the South and you'd have a rebellion. Temperature swings in high humidity environments create mold that destroy health and belongings.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Indeed. Good point
.au we do that with most things now. Fine make tankless systems a 'deemed to comply' solution, but provide a performance based spec, to enable 'performance based solutions'. Otherwise you'll preclude sensible innovation towards your own ends.
Here in
If you're designing a building for somewhere without a gas main, a tankless system isn't the way. You'd be looking at a reverse cycle hot water tank, or that's what the hydraulic ginger beers tell me...
These systems are BIGGER because they're a tank with a reverse cycle A/C strapped to the top. (heat exchanger) Apparently they get used as A/C for small apartments in much of Asia, but this is NOT deemed to comply in Australia.
Seems to me to make a lot of sense. Why put two heat pumps next to each other, performing opposing tasks? Maybe to make you feel a bit more 'first world', I don't know. I don't get it. If A/Cs are OK (another discussion entirely), why does strapping a water tank to the bottom change anything?
thx e
Really? I find that very hard to believe. On average, the fridge is using about 1 kwh/day.
Energy Star
It's always on and always drawing some power even if the compressor isn't cooling. The DSL modem is drawing more power per day? How much? I just really find that hard to believe.
I forgot the EPA link:'
http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/product_specs/program_reqs/thermostats_prog_req.pdf
sorry
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Actually, scientists have been looking at creating VAST underwater resivoirs, combined with surface resivoirs, in a cyclic pumping solution. The idea is that water exists in it's natural state underground. During the day, when solar is being generated faster than it can be used, we pump water to the surface, or simply a higher level resivoir. At night, we let it flow back to it's subteranian home, and generate power. Since the flow of water from surface to underground can be tightly controlled, we can produce variable power at will, and "store" wind and solar energy.
The resivoirs are manmade, in mostly non-pourous rock, that are coated with a sealant. The underground portion would be hundreds of feet underground. The surface resivoir would fill and drain like a tide (and "sureface" doesn't necesarily mean open to air, it could just be one higher up in the rock bed)
Since the water is contantly cycled, it can also be easily filtered, so contamination is not an issue. As a bonus, in some places these can be built where rain runoff normally goes, and we can turn it into a great big water purification plant, and any water arriving by steam or river generates electricity. We don't need to dam it off, just funnel it into a hole in the ground, so there's no mass change to the environment (no new lakes 6 miles across to deal with). If we start by pumping seawater to the location, and fill the system from scratch, we also don't have to cannibalize existing ecosystems to get the water, and desalination and filtering would render it drinkable for future uses.
With all that water, we could build the nuclear plant down there, 500 feet underground, where it's safe from terorists, airplanes, and leaks.
Sure, it's gonna cost A LOT, but water power systems have VERY long lifespans, as do solar and wind generators. We'll need to replace the filters regularly, and the pumps occasionally, but a modular infrastructure would be part of the plan.
It's quite nearly sci-fi, but also quite possible.
Expanding the system for additional power generation is as simple as building another resivoir below the 2, giving another chamber to flood water into. We'd just need more solar and wind to pump it back to the surface.
Instant poewr, at instant notice, over superconducting lines to regional power grids anywhere in the USA we need it.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.