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Computers Causing 2nd Hump In Peak Power Demand
Hugh Pickens writes "Traditional peak power hours — the time during the day when power demand shoots up — run from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. when air conditioning begins to ramp up and people start heading for malls and home but utilities are now seeing another peak power problem evolve with a second surge that runs from about 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. when people head toward their big screen TVs and home computers. 'It is [not] so much a peak as it is a plateau,' says Andrew Tang, senior director of the smart energy web at Pacific Gas & Electric. '8 p.m. is kind of a recent phenomenon.' Providing power during the peak hours is already a costly proposition because approximately 10 percent of the existing generating capacity only gets used about 50 hours a year: Most of the time, that expensive capital equipment sits idle waiting for a crisis. Efforts to reduce demand are already underway with TV manufacturers working to reduce the power consumption in LCD and plasma while Intel and PC manufacturers are cranking down computer power consumption. 'Without a doubt, there's demand' for green PCs, says Rick Chernick, CEO of HP partner Connecting Point, adding that the need to be green is especially noticeable among medical industry enterprise customers."
Just change the air time of American Idol to 6:00pm and turn politics to 8:00-9:00pm
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Easiest way to fix these humps in power demand is to disable stanby/hibernation and leave computers on all day!!
CRTs are power hogs, but your laser printer is the biggest power hog of your computer system. The fuser gets up to 2k F to melt the toner on the paper.
Plasma displays use less than CRT, LED uses less than plasma.
A space heater uses more juice than just about anything in your house save your AC or (if it's electric) your water heater. Your toaster comes in a good second (while it's actually toasting, which isn't long) followed by your microwave.
If a device's primary purpose is to heat something, it uses a shitload of electricity.
All your electric appliances/gizmos are rated in watts. Just RTFM, it's usually listed on the back page. If you have no FM it usually says on the back of the appliance how many watts it consumes.
Free Martian Whores!
So, in other words, the consumers are demanding certain kinds of products, and the companies that make them are creating them.
Sounds remarkably a lot like the free market working.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You're young and naive; things don't move that fast. I'm 56 and the stuff that was science fiction when I was a kid has mostly already happened.
Look at Star Trek (it's dead, Jim). Self-opening doors? Yep, in every grocery store. Communucators? Yep, only we call them cell phones. Flat screen voice activated talking computers on a desk? Yep. When Star Trek came out the average computer wasn't much more powerful than today's scientific calculator and took a whole building to house, and cost millions of dollars. Say "Mom" into your Razr and it will dial your mother.
Some other things we didn't have included digital clocks, the internet, CDs, DVDs, VCRs, microwave ovens, motion sensors, crack cocaine (some things alas should never be invented), antiviral drugs, antidepressant drugs, LEDs, LCDs, air bags in cars, fuel injectors in cars, or global warming.
In Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan McCoy couldn't cure Kirk's age-related farsightedness. But Dr. Yeh cured mine!
In 2003 the FDA approved the CrystaLens eye implant. It was a life changing technology for me; as the linked journal says, I was very nearsighted all my life, and in middle age I became farsighted as well, using contact lenses AND reading glasses. I wear no corrective lenses at all now.
They invented the flying car in 1903, it's called an "airplane". There is more energy than I can use coming from the wall sockets in my home, is that not "limitless" for all practical purposes? And they can in fact cure many cancers these days provided it is caught soon enough.
To this geezerly nerd, I'm living in a science fiction world. You might be interested to read Growing up with computers. I think you are likely to see as much progress in your life by the time you reach my age as I have. Unless I croak soon I expect to see even more technological miracles.
Free Martian Whores!
Car battery capacity is usually between 40-60 amp-h. That is, if you wanted to use battery power for three hours of peak, you would get (generous estimation) of 20 amp-h per battery. Your battery gives 12 volts, and, again under ideal conditions you should get 12*20 = 240 W-h per battery for the peak time.
A standard light bulb is 100 watts. Your plasma TV may be 800-1200 watts.
Thus to run the TV for three hours you would need five batteries, and that assumes that you could run them to dry. Lead acid batteries can produce surge power pretty well, but it would likely be cost prohibitive unless you could get a lot of duty cycles out of them.
Looking at Sears -- a cheap car battery is around $50. Electricity costs $0.08 per kwh where I am. Thus to equal the cost of one battery you would need to produce 50/.08 = 625 KW-h of electricity before being spent. That is 625,000 W-h or 1,000 charge cycles.
I'm not sure if a battery can handle this before getting corroded and functioning badly. Of course, this is only the cost of the battery, and really what you care about is the delta cost from night and day electricity. Additionally, people could not use retail car batteries but could get cheaper lead-acid apparatuses.
At delta cost of $.05 per kw-h, then if you could get more than 1000 charge cycles from the battery, then anything above this is profit on the order of $.05 KWh * 1kW * 3h = $.15 = 15 cents per day for your plasma. Is it worth it?
The short answer is no. The long answer is probably not.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
1) More efficient drivetrains for cars -> we immediately think "kewl, now I can use a bigger motor and go 0-60 in 4 seconds!"
2) Lower power semiconductors just let us ramp up the GHz.
3) Better insulated homes, we buy bigger homes with more empty rooms.
4) Ultimately now matter how energy efficient we become, it will just make the carrying capacity that much higher (i.e. more affordable to have more kids).
All of these are good things - I like big flatscreens, fast cars, and kids as much as the next guy. But as for efficiency reducing mankind's footprint on the environment, I'm worried it might not happen.