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Half of India Without Electricity As Power Grid Crisis Deepens
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a massive power breakdown has hit India for a second day running, leaving more than half the country without power as the northern and eastern grids have both collapsed. The breakdown has hit a large swathe of the country including Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan states in the north, and West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand in the east. Power cuts are a common occurrence in Indian cities because of a fundamental shortage of power and an aging grid. The chaos caused by such cuts has led to protests and unrest on the streets but the collapse of an entire grid is rare — the last time the northern grid failed was in 2001. India's demand for electricity has soared in recent years as its economy has grown but its power infrastructure has been unable to meet the growing needs. In the weeks leading up to the failure, extreme heat had caused power use to reach record levels in New Delhi and on July 30 a line feeding into the Agra-Bareilly transmission section, the 400-kV Bina-Gwalior line, tripped, triggering the collapse. The second grid collapse occurred on 31 July as the Northern, Eastern and North-Eastern power grids of India tripped/failed causing power blackout in 19 states across India. The crisis was allegedly triggered after four states — Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and UP — drew much more than their assigned share of power."
Don't manage your power grid using Windows Server 2008.
"Dell Technical Support could not be reached for comments."
Saw an interesting and partially-related piece yesterday about scheduled and unscheduled power-outages in neighbouring Pakistan and the social unrest that can result from them.
We all know the old adage about a civilised society being just three missed meals away from barbarism. In the modern world, I wonder whether something similar could be said for the power supply. And might broadband ever fall into the same camp?
Is this another example of "all or nothing" attitude?
I use a bit of solar on my own house and I wish that I had a way to put up a wind turbine. They are great supplementary forms of power, but it seems like the attitude is that if they aren't perfect then they are worthless.
It's summer time and it's India. There's really hot.
Unless the wind decides to take a nap right about the moment when the sun tries to burn people to a crisp. You know, the reason you have to turn on air conditioning in the first place, because there's no wind to cool shit down.
Wind power is a nice bonus but I wouldn't rely on it powering anything of importance.
Localized LFTR reactors, on the other hand...
Just great. Now how am I supposed to get my cell phone bill corrected?
In my honest opinion the best solution is to use combination of wind power and solar power. Then it's also unlikely that you don't get electricity. Save some of it to battery and voila off you go.
It's not all or nothing. If a lot of people had some form of distributed power it would mean less has to be produced at a central location and then transmitted for long distances, thus easing the burden on the ageing infrastructure.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Guess this means that HP and Compaq's phone in help desks are down.
your chances of getting an english speaking representative who's name isn't either Jay or Mike.
I know that the people making the big bucks will just take the hit in customer satisfaction over this blackout, but maybe it will make them realize you can't offshore everything.
Wind doesn't cool things down, it merely makes it feel colder. That's why air conditioners are much better than pure fans. They of course use more power too.
If people in India and around the world would use more local wind power this wouldn't happen.
Oh really? What makes you say that? Wind power absolutely requires a grid to handle the extra power when it's generating and supply power when it's not.
It goes to show how "developed" India is, when it actually has a sewage crisis, water crisis and now this.
Kolkata's sewage system is literally collapsing in on itself.
The modern India we see on TV is held up by the rickety old infrastructure dating back to colonial times.
India needs to stop funneling their money from into their pockets and back into the streets.
They can be light years ahead of neighboring countries if they concentrate their efforts into massive public works projects.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Those paying attention are probably aware that our power generation capabilities are being neglected. As has been well-documented on this site, new technology nuclear power generation has been left off the table due to irrational herd panic. But the recent neglect of our infrastructure by profit-minded electrical distribution corporations is even more disturbing. Getcher gennyrater.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
But it doesn't require as large power grid so therefore outages happen in much smaller area.
Air cooling is a method of dissipating heat and does cools things down or allows things to cool down. So I've no idea why it doesn't cool things down; but makes them feel colder. My understanding of Thermodynamics is limited to work heat heat work work heat ... look out of window for an hour.
So your reactor no one has built and used is ok for important stuff but well developed and currently in use wind power is too much of a gamble for important uses?
I think we can all feel free to ignore your opinions on this topic based on that kind of nonsense.
if half of china's electricity collapsed the guy in charge would be executed within 3 months. this is why america hates china so much. when something crazy like that happens heads roll. in america (and apparently india) it's just "leave those job creators alone if you want any kind of employment, peasant!"
And what of our call centers?!?!?!?!?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I prefer to see it as half of India WITH electricity.
Forget all that.
From TFS " ... and an aging grid". I think that says it all. Solar power, wind power, whatever power, is useless without a proper distribution grid.
In fact, solar power and wind power are even more dependent on a well built powergrid than the traditional power sources.
I guess a heat wave in India in the summer doesn't leave a lot of cool air to make use of. Blowing 50c - 122f air about isn't going to feel cool anytime soon.
No, really... the network is fine, and constantly being brought up to the state of the art. The real problem is the rapid increase in demand, caused by households with multiple light bulbs. The utility company plans to remedy the problem by putting special meters on the highest-usage households, that will shut off their electrical supply if they use more than 15 kilowatt-hours per month.
For an additional fee, the customers may switch to the "unlimited" plan, which will cut them off after 30 kWh.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
My understanding is that wind exposure increases temperature change. If the air temperature is below your body temperature, wind will actually cool you down faster (hence the weather report's inclusion of a 'wind chill factor' during the winter months). That said, if it's warmer than your body temperature, exposure to wind will increase your body temperature, and in warm climates (like India) such temperatures are entirely possible.
Air cooling is almost always effective for devices like your computer's CPU/GPU as they're generally much warmer than air temperature.
--- Bwah?
The reason most people would not move to these areas is due to the poverty not because the people there are black.
This argument also counts for developed countries in a lot of cases as well:
Power is a commodity. This makes the cheapest provider of it the winner. Current technologies are such that coal is still (often by far) the cheapest source of power. In addition it is one of the few base-load options out there (others being biofuel, nuclear, hydoelectric). With these two features of coal, wind is often times too expensive an option for a country such as India and with an aging grid, the power fluctuations from other sources like wind and solar will often overwhelm the infrastructure.
Technology adoption is rarely the only barrier to a solution. Cost plays a major role and when you're subsistence-living you don't give a shit about whether coal will pollute your environment because you're more worried about where your next meal will come from.
Some will also argue that local power like wind requires less infrastructure. This isn't entirely true. You still need to run the wires from the local power station to the residences. You can save on long-distance transmission lines but considering you need those anyways for the base-load... that's a bit of a non argument.
In general, solar, wind etc are first world solutions where we have the option of paying a bit more to make up for the difference in costs involved in producing the cleaner and more local power and even then... these projects have a pretty high fail rate (Solar fields in Spain, Wind farms in Hawai'i).
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
Oak Ridge ran a thorium reactor for several years.
Also I'd like to point out that you don't make your worldview look any more credible by being rude to those who don't share it.
Guess this means that HP and Compaq's phone in help desks are down.
And every other company that has off-shored offices over there. And I hope all the software developers over there are also in the dark and all the US based companies that sent their stuff over there are squirming and bleeding money over this.
And I hope this makes all their projects late so that when the customer says, "Hey IBM (or whoever), why is our project late?! You now owe us $Big Bucks in performance penalties!"
IBM: "It's not our fault! It's India's!"
"Our super top secret project that will make us the top dog in our industry is being developed in India?! With no way to check if our trade secrets are going out the door!?"
*Terrified Silence*
I can dream, can't I?
Maybe this will be a test case to seee if the new television drama "Revolution" foretells humanity's reaction to a loss of electrical power, or debunks the portrayal.
Here's hoping its the latter...
Never ascribe to malice or conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
This is just what India needs to energise public opinion and motivate politicians and government to actually rebuild India's decrepit old infrastructure.
So, where are all the folks who were singing the praises of government run utilities over the evils of privately run utilities in the previous articles on power outages in the United States?
Your "fair share" is NOT in my wallet.
Wind and solar are fine as supplements in areas where you have room for panels and turbines. But I don't see them being a big help in densely-packed areas like India and Japan. For those areas you would still need to build plants far from the city, and that still means you need decent infrastructure.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Since the link seems to go straight to the Microsoft Research front page, it's hard to say. I'd guess that it's something to do with using turbines to help maintain grid stability.
It's a good idea. While older turbines typically make a grid worse, using a doubly-fed induction generator and so presenting a big inductive load, modern ones with fully-rated power converters can produce reactive power on demand, making them a good tool for maintaining grid stability. What's really needed to make this happen is sort of standard interface between turbine control systems, which control the active power output of a turbine, and the grid operator's systems, which know how much active power is required.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
What if the power company/government invest in solar panels for individual homes that will firstly decrease the load, secondly ensure that even if the grip is shutdown there is some electricity to homes, enough to have some light at night maybe?
Finally, if enough solar panels are distributed this can be used as a mesh network to counteract local brownouts.
Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?
Imagine the lines of people trying to microwave tupperware bowls full rice and beans.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My 'perfect' carbon neutral electricity source is 40% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, and 20% hydro/geo/other.
20% solar is a 'perfect' fit for the average 50% increase in power demand during the day. 1.5(day) + 1(night) = 2.5 * 20% = .5. 40% nuclear gives you a good amount of stability, while the 20% wind doesn't make you strain too much if power demand happens to increase when the wind isn't blowing ideally. The remaining 20% is for peaking capability(which hydro is good at), and niche electrical providers where they're just the best answer for that spot.
Best yet, since you have a variety of sources, you're nicely diversified and not likely to be as screwed by unusual situations.
I don't read AC A human right
"The modern India we see on TV is held up by the rickety old infrastructure dating back to colonial times." ...
sounds just like the UK - I'm pleased to realise that the colonial masters at least managed to leave some cultural impact
Looks like nuclear power is a bit like credit cards...
Distributed generation does help unload transmission lines, while allowing for stabilization of supply across a broader region. Unfortunately though, it sounds like every aspect of India's grids are stressed to the point where your benefit to reliability with major wind farms might be very limited. (Environmental benefits are a separate matter.)
The other option is to parallel all the diesel generators in buildings to the grid. Assuming proper protective devices are provided, and that the reduction in air quality can be tolerated, this would also unload substations to restore their function.
But there are so many heads to this problem that it really takes addressing it on many different fronts. The US grid isn't in that much better shape.
Living in the Washington D.C. Metro area, having PEPCO as our power company and reliably having several blackouts a year, last one for about a week, I can relate.
Living near the capitol of what USED TO BE the most advanced country on the planet is sort of like living in a 3rd world country sometimes.
Thank you PEPCO and other 1%ers who are willing to let the US infrastructure rot so you buy yourself islands
I am shocked and appalled that such an advanced power grid has crumbled: http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/cable.jpg
So your reactor no one has built and used is ok for important stuff but well developed and currently in use wind power is too much of a gamble for important uses?
Yeah, we aren't going to be depending on thorium reactors anytime soon, but I'd kind of like to see a manhattan type project, perhaps world wide with cooperation between India, China, France, Japan, and the United States to build 3-5 more or less identical test plants.
Unlike with ITER, we should be able to start designing a electric power producing LFTR reactor today.
I don't read AC A human right
Sorry, we don't have electricity. Call us later....a lot later....not so soon...
Instead you'd end up with brown and blackouts all the time scattered over local regions due to the variability of wind, also enormous costs for building them to start with and then maintenance.
You could of course connect all the tiny wind-islands so they can pipe away their power to where it's needed.
At the cost of massively renovating and improving the entire grid, which would solve the current situation too.
So your solution is to spend the money that could solve the problem on something that would just improve the situation that arises due to the problem.
Background:
I'm an Indian, presently in Gurgaon (within National Capital Region) and yes, there has been a blackout since past few hours.
As to homes and office, situation is not so bad because blackouts are such an everyday occurrence that diesel generators in apartment complexes and offices are *very* common. The immediate real effects are to infrastructure i.e. Railways and Delhi Metro (mass transport).
Now to address the system, a good reading : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India
relevant parts from first paragraph:
The per capita average annual domestic electricity consumption in India in 2009 was 96 kWh in rural areas and 288 kWh in urban areas for those with access to electricity, in contrast to the worldwide per capita annual average of 2600 kWh and 6200 kWh in the European Union. India's total domestic, agricultural and industrial per capita energy consumption estimate vary depending on the source. Two sources place it between 400 to 700 kWh in 2008–2009. As of January 2012, one report found the per capita total consumption in India to be 778 kWh.
India currently suffers from a major shortage of electricity generation capacity, even though it is the world's fourth largest energy consumer after United States, China and Russia. The International Energy Agency estimates India needs an investment of at least $135 billion to provide universal access of electricity to its population.
India's electricity sector is amongst the world's most active players in renewable energy utilization, especially wind energy. As of December 2011, India had an installed capacity of about 22.4 GW of renewal technologies-based electricity, exceeding the total installed electricity capacity in Austria by all technologies.
We do have a major problem on our hands.
1. Demand *far* outstrips supply.
2. Distribution losses are high. Illegal tapping, faulty meters, old equipment and corruption being leading causes.
3. Free/cheap electricity provided to agriculture sector and collection of dues waived due to vote-bank politics.
But we are working on it:
1. Looking into renewable energy like wind and hydro in a major way. (see quote above and wiki)
2. Major investment into Nuclear energy.
Environmental groups are slowing down development of the above though.
The media is giving a lot of hype to this .. and half the nation is a big number and and grid is a big thing so i guess its important .. but India always had power shortage ..Bangalore used to have 6 hours load shedding in summers every day in city and 12 hours in rural .. but life just moves on .. it never really mattered .. almost every apartment has backup power generators and same with corporate offices as power is not so reliable .. and for others who dont have backup its not critical and no power means slight inconvenience .. nothing comes to standstill .. not even traffic light breakdown .. really those never worked and no one followed them anyways .. India is like that .. i am not proud of this and i am an indian .. i am just telling its no big deal .. and regarding the uprising this .. unless its on the final over of world cup india is wining .. no chance .. we are peaceful creatures ..
Wind causes sweat to evaporate faster, that's why it feels cool. It works whether the air is warmer or cooler than your body.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This should save way more energy than turning off the eiffel tower for an hour.
unplugging it and plugging it back in?
How much power did they sell to the public from that plant?
I am only rude because you suggest replacing something that works now with something no one has yet made work, then make the insane claim that this unproven thing is so much better.
Your worldview is pie in the sky.
I have no problem exploring more power options, but for now lets use those wind plants I drive past to work each morning.
It doesn't make the air temperature cooler, but it can cool things down by moving cooler air from elsewhere to replace the warm air pocket around the heat source. Let's try an experiment. Remove all of the fans in your computer. By your logic, this should have no effect on how well your computer runs since it's the actual temperature and not how warm it feels that affects your processor.
IMHO, the only way power scenario in India might develop is by privatising the Power sector just like telecommunication. That way, the services will become more reliable. The downside is there won't be any subsidies and hence the price per unit will shoot up (however, this rise in price will partly be compensated by competition amongst different players). This would also take care of the power theft problem (because private companies won't want their power stolen! They would take proper precautions so that it doesn't happen).
I've also heard that warm air (caused by your body temp, for example) tends to create a very thin insulating layer on the surface of your skin. The movement of air breaks up the insulating layer, allowing more heat to escape.
I know this is a troll, but anyway.
Do people really do the hell neighbor routine?
I see it all the time in movies, but I have never done this, and none of my neighbors have either.
Even when I used to rent a room in a house with 10 other people, the only time we spoke was if we met in the hallway due to bad timing.
1. You will need certificates. No matter what you do. Anything you do must have an application, usually in triplicate, and it should be accompanied by certificates. Tons and tons of certificates.
2. All these certificates must be obtained by bribing some official or another.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The line feeding electricity to Agra-Bareilly transmission section (400-kV Bina Gwalior line) is in a bad condition. Engineers at Microsoft Research most likely have a solution to this, and it is wind power.
If people in India and around the world would use more local wind power this wouldn't happen.
Cheers, Dr. Matt
Wind? Reliable power for 1.2 billion people?
Geez, don't let reality intrude into your fantasies.
Are you seriously putting that up as an answer? A very small experimental reactor from many decades ago? Then making noises about the credibility of the other poster?
While I'm a big fan of thorium (which you are obviously not or you would have mentioned the far more recent and advanced Indian experiments with thorium reactors that built on that ancient Oak Ridge stuff), you are just making pointless counterproductive noise here.
" Engineers at Microsoft Research [microsoft.com] most likely have a solution to this,"
Why talk to amateurs about this? Talk to REAL power engineers instead from Siemens and the power engineers in Germany. asking microsoft about electricity is like asking Apple to make you a pony.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
India is being run by inept, corrupt and rotten people. There is no professional ethic, commitment to work. Yes I am painting every one with same brush, because having grown up I have seen this happen everyday. On top of it we are in denial. To me Grid failure is smaller issue. There is failure of morality, honesty and basic human values.
Yup even a paltry 100watt panel on every home with a syncing mini inverter would make a huge dent in loads. and they are not stuck with overzealous UA requirements so they can use the inexpensive China syncing inverters that are 250 watt max that gives the ability to expand to 2 100 watt panels per home.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The sources are talking crap, or at the very least not talking about what you think.
You are a fool for listening to any of it.
If you prepared for every warning available out there, you'd be caught in so many vicious circles that you wouldn't be able to do anything.
I would mod you down if I had points, because I really need (I say I, I mean my brain and my personal need for people who actually think critically) people to stop believing tripe like this when their brains could actually be used to do something productive.
You're not being a good neighbour, you're being paranoid, and annoying, and spammy.
This is all total crap.
But most importantly:
You think a handful of YouTube links are something worth changing the way you believe for, and somehow hope that will convince me that everything I "know" is wrong and I should forget everything and trust in you instead. I find that quite insulting, to be honest. The same way I find almost all religion insulting too, for the same reasons.
I'm allowed to disagree. If you want to convince me, you need to convince me, not splat spam at me and assume I'll just watch it and agree with you and that if I don't I'm "wrong".
But, most of all, I find your entire approach insulting.
"Do people really do the hell neighbor routine?"
Yes! at least I do. Park on your lawn, I call the city to get you fined. Dont mow your lawn? again another call is being made. If you are a noisy party type going past 11:00pm, you will get a police visit.
I also attend association meetings and keep an eye out for problem neighbors. Like the renders down the street with crap all over in the front yard, again I wont tolerate it and will make your life miserable until you clean it up and live civilized or move.
More people need to do this instead of letting the neighborhood fall apart.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The US's infrastructure is not all latest, greatest, state of the art, but then nowhere is (since it is stuff you put in to last) but it is way ahead of India. The problem I think is people hear stories about US infrastructure problems, because there are, and because we want to look out and identify problems before they become a crisis. However that doesn't equate to the same kind of problems that India has.
As a good example: India has daily blackouts in much of the nation (seriously, you can see another post in this thread on it and it isn't hard to find more info). This isn't something new, or something that happens only occasionally, this is part of regular life.
I really think that the people who live in the US and like to hate on how bad it is need to do some traveling. Not to tourist hotspots, but to regular cities and villages in foreign countries. See how people live the world over. It can give you more appreciation for just how good we have it. Things are not perfect in the US, far from it, but that doesn't mean that everything is shit, as many people seem to believe.
That does not seem very safe.
OTHER Half of India Without Electricity As Power Grid Crisis Deepens
there, FTFY
India is becoming too much of a free market for shit like this to "just happen". I bet the government is preventing new power sources.
The article is about India idiot - a place that actually is building cutting edge nuclear power stations at the moment instead of just planning to build a 1970s design (AP1000) at some unspecified time in the future.
I didn't say "rely solely on wind/solar". I specifically said NOT all or nothing. Use wind/solar to help the situation by producing some of the electricity locally. 'durrr' indeed...
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
So stop goofing off in Slashdot and save your laptop's battery for something more important!
That's very easy to fix, even without adding supply.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
It still would. They install switches to disconnect alternate sources when the grid goes down. It is for the safety of the repair crews.
Look at how that worked (I'm being sarcastic here) in California with Enron and a pile of other places that followed that lead. Everything goes into decline apart from bills to consumers. Your other example is telecommunication? Are you joking or just haven't seen what happens when you privatise telecommunication?
Ever notice how crime seems to follow poverty stricken people around? Coincidence? Wow, I can't believe the schtuff the grandparent here wrote.
Which is why motorcyclists tend to wear long sleeves even on 90+ degree days because they can still go into hypothermia due to the 'wind chill effect'.
I'm curious, what then would be the best way for a neighbour to host an 18th/21st/30th/... party? Would you still call the police if they sent out "We apologise in advance for the noise" letters and wrapped the party up by 12:30? Where do you draw the line?
Similarly, what if they work late hours? Do you expect them to mow their lawn while at work, or would you complain about them mowing their lawn at 11pm?
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Taking that a step further, there are a lot of appliances in a house that don't take that much wattage. A 400-500 watt solar panel system, a MPPT controller [1], a bank of deep-cycle AGM batteries, and a decent inverter could keep low wattage appliances going, such as electric shavers, smartphone chargers, laptop chargers, perhaps a TV or audio system.
There are a lot of RV boondockers who can run their whole rig, everything but the air conditioner, microwave, and engine with a similar setup.
Of course, the higher current appliances will still need grid access, such as the washer and dryer, dishwasher, electric stove, HVAC system, but it will help deal with the low draw items.
Since most chargers use small amounts of current even when nothing is plugged in or the device is fully charged, it wouldn't hurt to have them on their own circuit that is off a battery bank and not on the grid. As a bonus, with a good PSW inverter, even if there are surges and spikes from the power grid, those items wouldn't be affected.
[1]: Yes, a MPPT controller is more expensive than a PWM controller, but you can use higher voltage solar panels which helps with electricity loss over the wires. It also helps ensure the best charging voltage for the battery bank.
There was a study done that showed building wind farms to generate power did create a measurable temperature increase.
Solar panels are abundant throughout Udaipur, a city in the affected state of Rajasthan. Rooftops are scattered with them here but I don't know or believe the rest of the country has them as widely installed.
Exactly! And the approved house trim color is Ivory, not Ecru. You're just a couple shades away from a lawsuit.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Wind power does not work for base line power. It is inherently unstable and unreliable. The speed of wind changes all the time, turbines are easily damaged by storms, and large calm periods are not infrequent. A nuclear powered heat engine IS fundamentally stable, reliable, and impervious to all but the worst man made or natural disasters. I am not suggesting there is no place for wind power. I am suggesting that there is no place for wind power in establishing a base line level of power. Wind is fine as a supplement, and very useful for use in stored energy applications where reliability is aggregated over time. For base line power production, nuclear and solar are the cleanest, safest, most reliable, most stable power plants available.
Huh. I figured news artificial light and Twinkies have not reached there yet.
And nuclear reactors don't require cooling for good efficiency. Right.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
If an object is hotter than it's surroundings in still air a volume of air arround it will start to heat up reducing the rate of heat transfer. Similarlly if a wet object is in still air a volume of air arround it will increase in humidity reducing the rate of evaporation. Moving air means the air has moved away from the hot/moist object before it has a chance to increase in tempreature or humidity much.
In cool climates the temperature is lower than body temperature so both heat transfer and evaporation will be working to cool your body.
In a hot climate though the direct heat transfer will be warming the body and the only cooling from the wind will be through evaporation.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Actually i'd say if anything it requires a beefier grid. When the wind isn't blowing in your locality you either have to fall back to conventional generation (in which case you need a grid pretty much the same capacity as before) or import power from somewhere where it is blowing (which will require extra grid capacity).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Maybe the government is just turning a blind eye because the alternative is much worse. If the poor are unable to 'steal' power they'd probably be worse of than at present.
"Of importance" misses the point. I think what you mean is "time critical." Even someone absolutely depends on flour production (it's high importance) could say something "I don't care when the windmill gets the grain turned into flour, as long as it gets done some time this week," and not sound insane. It's sort of like "I don't care if the Internet is slow right now, as long as the torrent completes by tonight when the wife expects her show."
And if you can come up with a good storage tech (whether it's electrical batteries or elevated cisterns or pressured caves or whatever) to decouple usage times from production times, then lots of energy production can become not-time-critical.
Cheap hard disks killed Netflix. Cheap batteries will kill expensive energy production.
Where can I preorder the iPony?
I'm sure this isn't really related, but...how come I can't reach my help desk?
Thorium as a breeder reactor is slower than Uranium cylces, and requires processing that is at least, if not more, dangerous than known U-Pu cycle breeders.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
You'll use cheap Chinese products for your household power supply? A power outage may be the least of your problems.
The US will experience a massive outage like this one. India is handling this a lot better than we will.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
When I first got to China in 2004, summer blackouts were just part of life. From 10am until 4pm, the power at my apartment just went off. I had to go find a cafe or something and sit around until the heat of the day had passed and the power came back on. It only happened sometimes, not every day. I found out later that there was a schedule for such things, but I couldn't read Chinese back then so there was no way for me to know. I haven't been in a residential blackout for years now. Obviously, things have gotten better. A big nuclear plant went online near here a few years back and I'm sure that ended the power problem permanently. It must be nice having your society run by scientists and engineers, and treating the environuts as the Luddites that they are.
Factories were on a schedule of blackouts, too. There was not enough power to go around, so one or two days per week there would be no electricity. This delayed production and caused all kinds of problems, particularly when the factory failed to inform the customer that this was the case. Factories could get diesel generators to pick up the slack, but generally the factory owners were too cheap to invest in this sort of thing.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
This sentence makes my brain hurt.
I ran out of foil.. so don't even bother saying it!
Distributed solutions don't have the economics of scale that large centralized generation benefits from. Also in the case of wind and solar distributed generation is less reliable because you can't cherry-pick a location for consistent generation. You instead have to deal with whatever wind/sun haperns onto your little square of land.
The net result is that having your own wind-mill or solar unit can be a nice way of lowering your power bill, but it will do so at the cost of stability for "the grid". This is because as soon as you spend a week without wind you'll be drawing from the grid. If enough people happen to be drawing power they would normally generate themselves you'll overtax the infrastructure, and there is no way to predict or prevent those fluctuations in usage.
"The per capita average annual domestic electricity consumption in India in 2009 was 96 kWh in rural areas and 288 kWh in urban areas for those with access to electricity,"
Now wait a sec. 100kwh for a YEAR? I use that in five days in the U.S. I think an alarm clock would use more the 100kwh in a year. How is that amount of usage even possible?
>You'll use cheap Chinese products for your household power supply? A power outage may be the least of your problems.
Says the AC posting on a cheap Chinese computer.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
By manipulating markets? If I remember, they actually phoned some power station employees.
One of the worst mass murders in recent times was in Mumbai a few years ago. Some people claim hacking the power grid should not be too difficult.
I realize you're probably just trolling, but there are people out there actually like this, and they REALLY need a dose of "Mind Your Fucking Business". Not saying revenge is right, but deliberately being a prick to neighbors who have done nothing to you (besides not living exactly the same way you would) is a good way to get your tires slashed, your pets poisoned, or antifreeze sprayed over your lawn.
Get a hobby.
Yes, look at it, one major blackout in 40 years. I'd call that a success. Feel free to compare that with India.
Grub, is that you? I hope this is a good replacement for Dr. Bob. I miss Bob!
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Be glad some of the people I know from that bar in the ghetto I drink in aren't your neighbors. Your insurance would be sky high when they were through with you (both property and medical insurance). One guy I know spent time in prison for murder. Surely you're not stupid enough to fuck with someone like him?
Some people don't give a rat's ass about the law or the police. Those people are a lot more adept at making someone's life a living hell than a law-abiding citizen ever could be.
Free Martian Whores!
Difference between first world and third world country. But I'll explain somewhat.
Imagine the following scenario:
1 Fridge, 1 TV and 2 Fluorescent lights in a family of 7-8. Not that unusual for somebody doing manual labour. This is infact better than family of somebody doing manual labour in unorganised sector. Such a family would be living in a temporary shelter like a tarpaulin tent or a hutment even in the middle of a city or a slum. Possibly using no electricity and cooking with foraged firewood.
Ofcourse the middle class would be much more comfortable though still using less energy per-capita than the developed world. For eg. washing machines have a spin dry not a heat dry because that uses much more energy.
I live in central Illinois, near a large number of windfarms. The week they cut the crops down, the wind blows hard until well after spring planting. It blows 99% of the rest of the year as well, those towers run all the time. It's rare to see them all stopped. In fact, that was my first thought (we should farming the wind) when we moved here.
meh
You use cheap china toasters, cheap china stoves, cheap china circuit breakers, cheap chine outlets, and etc in your home.
Yes I GUARENTEE your home is 90% cheap china products.
The problem is, it doesn't help. Compute your peak power, and your grid HAS to provide that power. If the grid provides 80% of that and you build a wind farm to provide the remaining 20%, when the wind stops, so does your electricity. You may have an "emergency grid" to power schools and hospitals, but aside from that, you're just in the dark.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
"I'm curious, what then would be the best way for a neighbour to host an 18th/21st/30th/... party? "
Invite all the neighbors is the first thing. second is you move it inside after 11:00pm or when the noise laws take effect in your community. Where I live it's 10PM when noise laws take effect, I give them an extra hour. And I dont care if I cant hear you inside. But if I hear nothing but "BOOM BOOM BOOM" through my walls, yeah I get to be that guy that calls the cops after 11:00pm.
But inviting the neighbors and getting them drunk on free booze at your party usually fixes most problems.
Maybe using a line for 50 years when that line was supposed to last 30 years is a bad idea. Electric companies do that all the time. The transformers near my place and work were around 50 years old. They all blew with 3 months. The electric company people who were replacing them said that these things are designed for 30 years of service. They should have been changed 20 years ago. To save a few bucks, the electric company did not change them out. They waited until they broke to do he change. Maybe over in India a similar thing is going on. For where I live and work, the power outages could have been totally avoided if they actually changed them before they blew. Or at least the power outage could have been shortened and scheduled.
The one near my place has been changed three times in four years. Once from breaking. Once from a car taking out the pole it was one. Once from a tree branch going through the transformer in a storm. The electric company guy's name is Bill. It is sad that I am on a first name basis with the electric company repair guy.
Where do you draw the line?
You draw the line when your activities impact others around you. I live in a residential neighbourhood with two small kids. My kids need sleep and we (the parents) need sleep. Therefore, you do not have a right to have a party that keeps us awake. If you have a lifestyle where loud parties are part of what you do, then go live somewhere where this doesn't bother others.
Similarly, what if they work late hours? Do you expect them to mow their lawn while at work
Then you pay a local kid to mow your lawn after school, or a lawn mowing company. When I was 14 I mowed a bunch of lawns for people when they weren't around.
would you complain about them mowing their lawn at 11pm?
Yes, but it's largely an academic question. Unless you live in the Yukon or Alaska, it's too dark at 11pm to effectively mow your lawn anyway.
The half that pays for it? Or the half that just climbs a pole and hooks up illegally?
Have gnu, will travel.
But if you do have decent insolation and greater than 2mph average windspeed, you have options. If you can only do a roof-mounted wind turbine, then there is this:
Honeywell Wind Turbine
If you have an average windspeed of greater than 8.5 mph then you could also do one of these units, which can be mast-mounted for greater than rooftop-level windspeeds:
Windtronic Wind Turbine
Whatever works for you, it's worth considering that traditional, fossil fuel-generated grid power has and will continue to rise a lot for the forseeable future. For example the cost per kwh in the Pittsburgh increased 10% in the last year alone. In NYC, it's currently greater than $0.30/kwh for the end user. It doesn't take much of that to get your personal break-even under 5 years (not that long when you consider most people own their homes for 30+ years).
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Wind power does not work for base line power.
Depends where you are. Works pretty well in The Netherlands. Probably not so much parts of India.
Yeah. Americans need to take a good look. This is the United States in a few years if the power companies have their way. Want to know why they're so heavily behind forced conservation measures? It's because our power grid is aging, and is not growing at a rate that keeps up with the growth of demand. Worse, instead of improving it as a nonprofit or government-owned utility would, they're giving excess profits to their stockholders while pressuring everyone to do stupid hacks like adding emergency cutoffs on air conditioning so they can let your house hit a hundred degrees to save power, forcing everyone to use those crappy CFL bulbs, paying people to replace their old refrigerators, and other temporary bandaids that merely delay the inevitable, but don't really solve the problem.
What this proves is that for-profit corporations simply cannot be trusted to maintain such a critical resource. Their natural tendency is to operate on razor-thin margins to turn maximum profit. When they screw up, the government ends up declaring a state of emergency and paying for the losses, so having that infrastructure in private hands is basically nothing more than government subsidizing a bunch of wealthy fat cats on Wall Street. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of paying Wall Street billionaires, the government instead spent that money to actually improve the power grid?
We need to convince the U.S. government that this is an important problem to solve now, before we have more widespread blackouts that take out a huge swath of the U.S. like the one last September in southern California, Arizona, and parts of Mexico. The only way that's going to happen is if our government steps up to the plate and builds a government-owned and government-managed power infrastructure. What we need is the nationwide equivalent of TVA, but with a network of modern, superconducting power lines crisscrossing the country.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You need one source that is predictable and flexible. Sun/wind off yours is not predictable, and nuclear too constant. You cannot vary the power from a NPP very much. Gas power plants are for this use case.
Or you store your renewable energy somewhere, like reservoirs or battery farms.
As I understand it, they already end up with brown and blackouts all the time scattered over local regions.
I'm sure someone will reward you richly for saving them from the absolute TERROR of yard-parkers.
And I DARE a pussy like you to come and confront me.... 45cal to the chest will change your mind. "I was scared for my life! he came after me into my yard!"
My god, what trash. Only trash talks big like that.
If the United States doesn't get off it's ass and start building new infrastructure to strengthen the power grid, we'll start seeing this here as well.
Every year we have rolling blackouts because there isn't enough power capacity to satisfy demand.
That should be a giant hint to those in the power business.
It's not like we're going to get FEWER folks using electricity down the road. :|
Everything in my home is as energy efficient as I can financially make it.
Insulation, double paned glass, heavily insulated garage doors, new high eff AC unit, all bulbs swapped out, etc.
I would love to have Solar Panels installed but:
1) Probably not a good idea along the coast where Hurricanes are common
2) Would take three years to recoup the install costs ( going with a 50% power reduction only ) based on incentives
( Not taking into account any maint costs )
Use some of those amazing profits they keep reporting every quarter and invest in infrastructure. Lest we find ourselves on the news as well.
Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ec'had!
Works pretty well in The Netherlands. Probably not so much parts of India.
I may be wrong, but if I understood my primary school geography correctly, India has mostly quite predictable, regular weather patterns with plenty of wind in the South and the northern part is quite suitable for hydroelectric plants. I believe Nepal could earn big bucks selling both hydro and wind energy to India.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
That makes a little more sense.
I only ask because I work in the tax/electric office here in the U.S. I am solely responsible for every electric, water, sewer, and tax bill in town. All I do all day is look at electric and water usages. Anything under 100kwh a month is typically a vacant property. A fridge, TV, and two lights I would expect something like 200 - 300kwh a month; largest variable being the fridge.
Either way, that is crazy low usage for a household.
And ~ $1.00 per person would 'provide universal access of electricity to its population'.
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
Try 4 in under 18 months.
Firstly, I hope you are not equating wind and solar with small-scale. Very large wind and solar projects are possible with today's technology. See European offshore wind development. See various Sahara solar project plans.
Secondly, the potential for large, grid scale storage has not even begun to be tapped. e.g. Underwater airbags, molten salt storage, etc etc etc not to mention the flexibility of small-scale Lithium-chemistry batteries or sodium-chemistry batteries added to the local electricity distribution system.
Thirdly, low-loss high-voltage DC transmission, and probably in the near future long-distance superconducting transmission lines, have the potential to completely change the use cases for non-dispatchable intermittent renewable generation, allowing power to be switched around an entire continent from where the generation is high to where the load is high.
Fourthly, we have not started to take advantage of "negawatt" generators; large scale pooled demand response technology.
All these things together, with bi-directional power flow the norm, and energy hubs instead of conventional substations, will lead to a much higher potential use for distributed and intermittent renewable energy sources. The technology building blocks are either here already, or within a decade of production usability, so it would be best to start right now changing the plans and assumptions, and, with carbon taxes, the economic incentives, to accommodate these new green and more stochastically reliable power technologies.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
And I DARE a pussy like you to come and confront me.... 45cal to the chest will change your mind. "I was scared for my life! he came after me into my yard!" Again, only a couple hours at the station....
fuckin lol
A mod down of the post I just replied to was based on what exactly?
Air conditioners don't "blow cool air", they remove heat from one system and move it to another.
The Earth is one big, fucking air conditioner and winds take heat from one place and move it to another. They very much "cool things down". This is especially nice when home air conditioners are relocating heat into the space around those homes, taking it a step further.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Yeah. Americans need to take a good look. This is the United States in a few years if the power companies have their way. Want to know why they're so heavily behind forced conservation measures? It's because our power grid is aging, and is not growing at a rate that keeps up with the growth of demand. Worse, instead of improving it as a nonprofit or government-owned utility would, they're giving excess profits to their stockholders while pressuring everyone to do stupid hacks like adding emergency cutoffs on air conditioning so they can let your house hit a hundred degrees to save power, forcing everyone to use those crappy CFL bulbs, paying people to replace their old refrigerators, and other temporary bandaids that merely delay the inevitable, but don't really solve the problem.
What this proves is that for-profit corporations simply cannot be trusted to maintain such a critical resource. Their natural tendency is to operate on razor-thin margins to turn maximum profit. When they screw up, the government ends up declaring a state of emergency and paying for the losses, so having that infrastructure in private hands is basically nothing more than government subsidizing a bunch of wealthy fat cats on Wall Street. Wouldn't it be nice if instead of paying Wall Street billionaires, the government instead spent that money to actually improve the power grid?
We need to convince the U.S. government that this is an important problem to solve now, before we have more widespread blackouts that take out a huge swath of the U.S. like the one last September in southern California, Arizona, and parts of Mexico. The only way that's going to happen is if our government steps up to the plate and builds a government-owned and government-managed power infrastructure. What we need is the nationwide equivalent of TVA, but with a network of modern, superconducting power lines crisscrossing the country.
I wonder if destroying specific buildings and replacing them with parks or bodies of water would help.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
You haven't really answered the main question. Let's say in a few years your kids are pretty much grown up. You want to hold an 18th for one of them that doesn't involve having to hire an entire hall in a non-residential district and fork out the $$$. Your teenager, understandably, doesn't want a 10pm curfew. How do you intend to go about this? Move?
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
We run datacenters, one in the impacted area specifically.
There hasn't been any impact to us at all and are quite used to the local power utility turning off regularly for no apparent reason.
We also test fanatically. Running mock tests on UPSs, generators, battery banks etc quite routinely.. and everything is N+1 or more.. We'll continue as long as we don't run out of diesel.
The media likes to hype things up, guess we in India are catching up fastest with the west on one of their worst aspects. The 24x7 media machine. Soon we'll have paparazzi style coverage, wait.. I think we already have Fox in India.
You live in a HOA. Ha Ha.
Too bad you couldn't afford a place with a few acres.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You forgot Edgar Cayce a respected enough 20th century prophet and his U.S. Map which is much like the U.S. Naval Map, and to note fishing to feed yourself.
Interesting. I'll take a look at the rest. Conspiracy theories aren't always 100% untruth's my reason. Ledow your naysayers just sounds too much like a shill or plant ( which forums are loaded with that are paid to turn aside various topics and to downmod, discredit, and hide them ). You owe him one since I read his post and it was so full of obvious "downmod his post quick because "we have one that can see"" I had to read yours.
The grandparent made a typo; given the context of the post he was replying to, he clearly meant "hello neighbor". But thank you for that view of dystopian control-freak suburbia.
I neither said nor implied that India's electric grid was private. India's electric grid is screwed up because their government hasn't spent the money to improve it. Our power grid is screwed up because private industry hasn't improved it. Both methods can fail miserably, and almost invariably do.
That's the whole point of my proposal. TVA is not the government, nor is it a for-profit corporation. It is a government-owned non-profit corporation. By law, its profits must go back into improvements in the grid. This means that it has neither the problems of directly government-run power grids (where improvements take a back seat to the political crisis of the day) nor of corporate-run power grids (where improvements take a back seat to profit distributions).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Not sure if you meant hell neighbor or hello neighbor. If the latter, on my block in a country town not too far outside of Austin, Texas, it's, "Howdy, Neighbor!" and we really do say it. Saves me from having to recall names when I'm too drunk or learn names for somebody that may or may not stay long.
Your worldview is pie in the sky.
Pi in the sky: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1620
c0w goes moo.
Well, I agree that *in general* intermittent power sources aren't a solution to the problems we have with electricity distribution. It's the other way around: better electricity generation will allow us to exploit more intermittent power sources. However I don't see how adding more local generating capacity, even *intermittent* capacity, *adds* to the stress of the grid when those sources are offline. Either way the rational approach is to build enough transmission capacity for peak transmission demand and charge the cost back to the customer. It makes the amortized cost of remotely generated electricity higher per kwh, but the *average* cost can still be lower.
As for the cost of building and maintaining wind and solar generating stations, that is paid for -- by selling the power generated. Just because your wind generator doesn't earn money when the wind isn't blowing doesn't mean it can't earn enough to pay for itself.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Not trying to offend anyone, but how well is that nuclear going for supllying baseload power in Japan, or Ukraine for that matter?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I worry a lot more about the irresponsible rich, because they have the resources to do a lot more damage with their mindless attitude.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Suggested earlier.
Unfortunately the business method of fixing a power grid by rebooting has been patented.
But wait, if no one can access the patent database because the power is off, does a patent on computerized obviousness still make a sound?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
There's nothing particularly wrong with wind, but just 'wind' its hardly the solution (though they do have quite a bit, and seem to have big plans for solar, too). AIUI locally administered price controls combined with India's state coal company digging up too little coal leave electricity producers and distributors both making losses and producing too little power. They're not going to pay for sufficient infrastructure without a big chunk of extra subsidies or an increase in the price they can get. The poor economic design is going to have to be fixed first.
You use the basic laws of thermodynamics. Take a gas that can be easily compressed into a liquid through a narrowing of a pipe. When this happens, heat is given off, then the now liquid gas becomes cool and is pumped into the freezer compartment. Then the liquid absorbs heat from the freezer, cooling the freezer and heating the liquid. After passing through the cooling circuit, it is released into wider pipes where the liquid expands back into a gas and cools down. The cycle then repeats.
In the modern apartments of India, an Indian family is going to have the TV, DVD player, satellite dish, dish-washer, fridge, freezer, air-conditioners in the living room, bedrooms and kitchen, cooker, microwave, steamer, electric garage door and gates. They are even going to have power-pumps for the cold water supply to ensure they get their fair share of the water supply. The most critical are the cooker and washing/machines. Both of those on together will top 9 Kilowatts (We know, because our old house had a 9 Kilowatt trip switch, and it would trip right when these items were on, along with a TV and several laptops). Add a few air-conditioners on permanently and that goes over 15 Kilowatts. Add a water mains power-pump (because everyone else has one, and if you don't, you don't get any water), and that would go over 20 Kilowatts. Multiply that by several hundred million, and you've got massive demand in the Gigawatt range. Well beyond what the grid was designed for.
In the past, the solution to blackouts was simply to redirect the energy to whoever was complaining at the time.
Some people were getting so fed up, they were hiring the transgender community to party and dance outside the home of the electricity board's CEO at 2am in the morning. If they weren't going to get any sleep, neither was he.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
IMHO, the only way power scenario in India might develop is by privatising the Power sector just like telecommunication. That way, the services will become more reliable. The downside is there won't be any subsidies and hence the price per unit will shoot up (however, this rise in price will partly be compensated by competition amongst different players). This would also take care of the power theft problem (because private companies won't want their power stolen! They would take proper precautions so that it doesn't happen).
Or the public power sector could raise prices and skip all the financial losses of involving more intermediaries...
Look at how that worked (I'm being sarcastic here) in California with Enron and a pile of other places that followed that lead. Everything goes into decline apart from bills to consumers. Your other example is telecommunication? Are you joking or just haven't seen what happens when you privatise telecommunication?
Surely you can recognize the difference between power generation and transport being done by private industry while still being tightly regulated by the government.
To my knowledge, California's problems came after their market was deregulated. Their power had always been generated and transported by private companies.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Pretty well.
Uh huh. Per Wikipedia: Average per capita income for India: $1,219. Average PPP $3,608. "$1 a day poverty rates in rural Orissa (43%) and rural Bihar (40%) are some of the highest in the world"
Good luck supplying the people of India with that. (Oh, and the fun of anything with recharging batteries: Sooner or later, you must replace them. Even deep-cycles.)
Did the employees at the power grid hear ac/dc on their speakers :)
No this is not the US in a few years. Deregulation of generation has improved reliability and added features like Demand Response to incent demand curtailment. Nothing the government owns/manages is efficient. The problem is NIMBYism and the general population expectation. Most US population centers are not in areas where wind/solar economies of scale are. Thus, you need to build transmission lines to carry the generation from the supply to the demand. Good luck with that. Also, changing building codes to require more energy efficient houses and buildings would also greatly improve the capacity of the existing structure. But with all the building PACs pumping money into DC saying that increased building will hurt their business and negatively impact the consumer, this isn't happening much either
How does that work during winter? Is the water in a tank exposed to the cold weather?
And there is not enough battery capacity out there to store the surplus to even it out.
Except that there's plenty of non-battery methods used to store power on industrial scales, actual batteries are incredibly rare in such usage. There are alternative methods. One I've seen decouples the turbines and the electrical generators - instead the turbines are used to pump air into a storage system, and turbines are then used to produce electricity from the pressurized air. Pressurize a large building, or better yet a pre-existing formation like a salt cave or even a depleted oil well and you can even out power production over up to a week. With solar power, specifically solar thermal, you increase your molten salt amount and keep heated mass in an insulated container to run your system when the sun isn't out.
That being said, doing such things increases the base cost of the power. So while you'll certainly want to do some of this, I believe that nuclear remains a good option for 'most' of the baseload.
I don't read AC A human right
In the case of countries that shut off their nuclear power plants, such as Japan and Germany, a better question might be, what has the cost been for their not using said power?
Japan's goals under the Kyoto protocols were shot even before they started old coal and oil standby plants back up. They're burning through natural gas at an accellerated rate, causing additional pollution.
I don't read AC A human right
No Surprise: "Power minister promoted" Sure the engineers in charge who caused the blackout will be placed in key positions. (same as those bankers from Lehman/JPMorgan with big bonuses). News said it was like a "civil war" (one more objective achieved). Now only need to make provision for essential services: top officials and politicians homes need to have 24/7 power, (for security reasons, but no fear, the West already has solutions - ( http://phys.org/news145561984.html ), I looked for the original article on New Scientist (around 2004) but the Internet is a good place to hide) Small nuclear reactors buried underground will supply power to a small community. Not to worry, we will still be producing half-literate chaprasis and 'software people' to man the 'helpdesks' and do the dirty jobs.
What a piece of shit
I live in a neighborhood where I don't and many others don't tolerate white trash or other scumbags making the place look like a dump.
Enjoy your fascist shithole
Then you pay a local kid to mow your lawn after school, or a lawn mowing company. When I was 14 I mowed a bunch of lawns for people when they weren't around.
I like the six foot tall grass...thanks anyway.
PS: fuck off and mind your own business.
They'll need a cool drink after they've compressed the gas by hand! :)
The 2am transgender party is a wonderful idea
You are somewhat right, if the grid does collapse then distributed generation will disconnect itself to protect both itself and those working on fixing the grid.
However if you get to that point you have already lost. The goal should be to stop the grid from collapsing in the first place and distributed generation can in principle help this.
The problem with wind is it's unpredicatable, you can have a day that is hot but still. Solar is probablly a better bet for dealing with peak load in hot countries because it will have it's maximum output on the same days when people are using maximum aircon.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
That's why you live in a ghetto and live in a slum.
Actually it's not IN the ghetto, just close. It's a mixed-race neighborhood of mostly working and retired people. Tha bar's about fifteen blocks or so away. I'd go to the one down the street, but I don't like the attitude of the people who work or drink there; the folks in the redneck bar in the ghetto are far friendlier and far more diverse -- everybody from homeless crackheads to businessmen driving new MBWs and Ford F-150s to bikers with Harleys that cost more than my car.
As to my income, I'm right at median for the nation and above median for Illinois. I'm not hurting for money, but the less I pay a landlord, the more I have to do other things with.
Free Martian Whores!
Are we sure it wasn't Stuxnet hopping over from Iran?
I have a Generator that can power my computer and house and a decent UPS that can run my system without any issues. To reach this point I have been through hell. In Pakistan the power crisis has only gone worse each year. I can't remember the last day when the power didn't go out. Every day it goes out for 8 hours or more. It's literally a hell hole for online business. I have trained myself to work in harsh conditions in the past which included running the computer and keeping the fan off (40+C temperatures) and before that I would usually shutdown the PC before the power went out. I literally memorized the power schedule and I would constantly keep working and then powering off and then coming back to work. That routine was amazingly harsh; you were put under a lot of stress physically and emotionally. Now, even with this backup solution you still get pwned because the gas prices are high here and if you venture outside you will just roast yourself. In short, India is just facing a major blackout just now but Pakistan has been facing this for years now.
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Thanks for the great post.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Deregulation brought us the Enron collapse, rolling blackouts through California, etc. From what I've seen, deregulation has mainly brought us escalating prices and decreasing quality of service.
And demand curtailment isn't beneficial, at least when you're talking about consumers. Businesses have funds to upgrade equipment. Consumers generally don't. Unfortunately, when deregulation causes "features" like Demand Response, the consumers are the ones who invariably get shafted. You don't see businesses cutting their power consumption, for the most part. Instead, you see people coming home to houses that are 90 degrees, and sweating for two or three hours because their air conditioner refuses to turn on.
You have to do that anyway. If you don't, eventually, you aren't going to be able to provide power to the customers. Hacks like Demand Response prolong the amount of time we can get by without upgrading the grid, but as the population increases, that will not continue to be enough for very long. That buys us a couple of years—maybe even four or five if you're lucky—but every year that the industry delays upgrading the grid brings us another year closer to rolling blackouts because of insufficient grid capacity, and when it finally does hit the breaking point, there's going to be a lot of finger pointing, but there won't be anything anyone can do, because it takes time to run the additional power lines.
Guess that's why the TVA can afford to provide power at an average of 7.9 cents per kWh, while California's privatized power grid that you claim is so wonderful costs around twice that much on average. Or why TVA has consistently beaten the national average by about 20%. But keep telling yourself that government can't possibly do anything efficiently. Maybe if you repeat that lie often enough, some other people might even start to believe you.
Only in the very long term. Building code changes only kick in when you are either building a new building or massively renovating an existing one. And most existing buildings that don't meet energy efficiency standards also cannot be easily be retrofitted to comply with them, so short of red-tagging people's homes, even if you mandated energy efficiency in building code, it would take decades to reach even 20% compliance.
Besides, there are some popular home designs that are fundamentally incompatible with energy efficiency requirements—open beam ceilings, for example. You can't just pass laws and demand that everyone design their houses the way you want them to be designed simply because you think protecting power company profits is more important than individual freedom. That's the very definition of corporatism/fascism, and that's what gets us ridiculous laws like bans on standard incandescent bulbs (to artificially prop up the American CFL industry that otherwise couldn't compete with the dirt-cheap cost of traditional bulbs from China, which basically ended up propping up the Chinese CFL industry instead) or plastic grocery bags (ostensibly to reduce plastic waste, but really resulting in local businesses making extra profit by charging 10 cents apiece for paper bags that in most civilized parts of the country, stores give out for free). As a rule, whenever government passes regulations that effectively ban product categories for reasons other than serious safety problems, they've gone off the deep end and need to be reined in.
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It works very well for us - even on the rainy days (I live in India). We even get really hot water early in the morning. This cuts our electricity bill by about 30%. Solar heaters are very popular here.
Incidentally the outage didn't hit South India at all (where most of the IT business is). We have a separate grid. Phone, wireless networks and broadband were unaffected in my experience. That's because these setups are fault-tolerant (and that includes electrical faults).
That works up until the Dew Point equals your body temperature. After that you're in trouble.