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."

Comments

Wind Electricity

[Doctor Matt]

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

Re:Wind Electricity

[MickyTheIdiot]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Kokuyo]

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...

Re:Wind Electricity

[Doctor Matt]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[jkflying]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Doctor Matt]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[tomhath]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

A few of them don't but in general black people suck.

Now from your armchair you can get all offended at how horrible that sounds. Fine and good. But you do agree with that. You, yes you, you sure do. Here's the test. You feel outraged I said blacks generally suck? Ok. Tell ya what. Why don't you go live where there are mass numbers of them. Say, Harlem or South Central. What's the matter? Don't want to be among them? Rather stay where you are, where you can walk outside without worrying about stray bullets from drive-bys?

Or maybe you would like it if lots and lots of blacks flooded into your area. After all, you disagree they suck so what's the problem. Right? Maybe you can put bars on your windows and get an alarm? Oh and do remember not to make eye contact. The gangsta types think it's a highly advanced form of aggression and they are known to get violent over it. Hey maybe you can try the ol' "hello neighbor, good to meet you" spiel on them. If you're lucky they will only take your wallet.

If you would not yourself move to Harlem and would not yourself stick around if Harlem moved to you, then just shut up. They suck and we both know it. Stop pretending they don't so you can prove how open-minded you are. Your hypocrisy is worse than any "racism".

Re:Wind Electricity

[Doctor Matt]

But it doesn't require as large power grid so therefore outages happen in much smaller area.

Re:Wind Electricity

[ciderbrew]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[h4rr4r]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't disagree with you I'd say your rant is in poor taste. Additionally you seem confused as to what it is we are talking about. BlackOUTS not Black people. Do try to stick with the group hmmm?

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[ciderbrew]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Bagels]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason most people would not move to these areas is due to the poverty not because the people there are black.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Kokuyo]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Teresita]

Sure, all we need to do is put a wind turbine in front of the mouth of every greenie weenie with poor ice sight and collect the methane from all the enviros farting around.

Re:Wind Electricity

[crazyjj]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[DeathToBill]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[aaarrrgggh]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[durrr]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[ultranova]

Wind causes sweat to evaporate faster, that's why it feels cool. It works whether the air is warmer or cooler than your body.

Re:Wind Electricity

[AmazingRuss]

If they'd quit breeding so fast, this wouldn't happen.

Re:Wind Electricity

[h4rr4r]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[SJHillman]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, yeah keep telling yourself that. Give them a choice of a poor white neighborhood vs a nigger infested ghetto then. Stupid ass bitch.

Re:Wind Electricity

[SJHillman]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[dbIII]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Lumpy]

" 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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Lumpy]

"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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[jkflying]

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...

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

It still would. They install switches to disconnect alternate sources when the grid goes down. It is for the safety of the repair crews.

Re:Wind Electricity

[ai4px]

Ever notice how crime seems to follow poverty stricken people around? Coincidence? Wow, I can't believe the schtuff the grandparent here wrote.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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'.

Re:Wind Electricity

[jkflying]

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?

Re:Wind Electricity

[mlts]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[RobertLTux]

and i have a bit of a solution why don't we employ these gentlemen as generators (or as Billboards) perhaps the problem is a lack of income or education and not some sort of inferiority.

but i do think that being able to tell your interns to PEDAL FASTER WE NEED MORE POWER (or as the case may be
àà¥àoe àà¥àà àà® à...ààà àààoeàॠàॠàààà¥àààà¾) would be a good idea.

Re:Wind Electricity

[evilRhino]

There was a study done that showed building wind farms to generate power did create a measurable temperature increase.

Re:Wind Electricity

[cyssero]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Gilmoure]

Exactly! And the approved house trim color is Ivory, not Ecru. You're just a couple shades away from a lawsuit.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Nadaka]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Forty Two Tenfold]

And nuclear reactors don't require cooling for good efficiency. Right.

Re:Wind Electricity

[petermgreen]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[petermgreen]

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).

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind power is a nice bonus but I wouldn't rely on it powering anything of importance.

"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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[dopaz]

Where can I preorder the iPony?

Re:Wind Electricity

[Stirling Newberry]

Which, sadly, have been shown to happen, and which, sadly, have outsized and unavoidable - and therefore high dread - risks.

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll use cheap Chinese products for your household power supply? A power outage may be the least of your problems.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Compaqt]

>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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Stiletto]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[NeutronCowboy]

Grub, is that you? I hope this is a good replacement for Dr. Bob. I miss Bob!

Re:Wind Electricity

[mcgrew]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[bigattichouse]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Pieroxy]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in the ghetto where you live? yes. My neighborhood I will have to go to the police station to give a statement as to why I put two rounds into your chest.
"he had a knife by my car, he then threatened me.. so I shot him. Here's the security footage."

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. It's illegal to park in your yard here, so I get to take photos of your car and get the city to fine you. I'm with lumpy, turn in the scumbags.

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....

Re:Wind Electricity

[Lumpy]

That's why you live in a ghetto and live in a slum. Come on back when you make real money and can afford to live where you dont have scumbags walking your neighborhood.

And yes I'll take on that loser. He wont be going to prison though, just the morgue.

Re:Wind Electricity

[CohibaVancouver]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[CohibaVancouver]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[dgatwood]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Belial6]

As I understand it, they already end up with brown and blackouts all the time scattered over local regions.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Stiletto]

I'm sure someone will reward you richly for saving them from the absolute TERROR of yard-parkers.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Bengie]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Forty Two Tenfold]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[presidenteloco]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Wind Electricity

[Aphoxema]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[StuDude]

I sure hope you are being sarcastic, because India's electricity is provided by a centrally controlled government entity.

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Aphoxema]

I wonder if destroying specific buildings and replacing them with parks or bodies of water would help.

Re:Wind Electricity

[jkflying]

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?

Re:Wind Electricity

[HornWumpus]

You live in a HOA. Ha Ha.

Too bad you couldn't afford a place with a few acres.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do people really do the hell neighbor routine?"

Yes! at least I do.

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[dgatwood]

India's electricity is provided by a centrally controlled government entity.

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).

Re:Wind Electricity

[benzaholic]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[TriCCer]

Your worldview is pie in the sky.

Pi in the sky: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1620

Re:Wind Electricity

[hey!]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[xelah]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[mikael]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

What a piece of shit

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Wind Electricity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[ciderbrew]

They'll need a cool drink after they've compressed the gas by hand!
The 2am transgender party is a wonderful idea :)

Re:Wind Electricity

[petermgreen]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[mcgrew]

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.

Re:Wind Electricity

[Paul Fernhout]

Thanks for the great post.

Re:Wind Electricity

[dgatwood]

Deregulation of generation has improved reliability and added features like Demand Response to incent demand curtailment.

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.

Thus, you need to build transmission lines to carry the generation from the supply to the demand.

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.

Nothing the government owns/manages is efficient.

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.

Also, changing building codes to require more energy efficient houses and buildings would also greatly improve the capacity of the existing structure.

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.

N

Re:Wind Electricity

[riverat1]

That works up until the Dew Point equals your body temperature. After that you're in trouble.

lesson learned

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't manage your power grid using Windows Server 2008.

Re:lesson learned

[Doctor Matt]

Actually, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is extremely good OS, especially compared to 2003 version. There are some unplanned outages, but nothing that causes major concerns.

Re:lesson learned

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't outsource development of the control software to a bunch of smelly indiots.

Re:lesson learned

[somersault]

There are some unplanned outages, but nothing that causes major concerns.

It sounds like you should be working PR for the Indian government, rather than Microsoft.

You definitely seem to be the best troll out there, Mr "I love to chime in whenever anything can remotely relate to North Korea and Microsoft".. but I really wish you'd get a new job.

Re:lesson learned

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with the uptight mods these days? That's easily a +3 Funny.

Re:lesson learned

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I think that if you look into it, you'll find that like most things nowadays, the grid was run by MBA executives armed with Microsoft PowerPoint and multi-million dollar bonuses---for the last 10 years at least.

Said executives probably had about as much understanding of electricity and grid operations as they did about finance and corporate management; that is to say, next to nothing apart from how to fake it. In addition, I suspect we're probably looking at another Enron/Cali power grid fiasco here too.

Re:lesson learned

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft makes powerpoint, that's why they'll help. They can make little animated lightning bolts and nuclear mushroom in the presentations. ;P

Re:lesson learned

[Fjandr]

In most places, those people don't actually run the grid. They run the companies that invest in those who run the grid.

Enron itself didn't actually own or operate non-plant electrical infrastructure in the USA, with the exception of about 3/4 million users in Oregon under PGE (which amounted to 1/3 of their worldwide retail electrical operations by customer count).

The real problem is that there simply isn't enough money anywhere to take care of the largest power grids (USA, India, and Russia), which are aging at an average rate which far exceeds the cost of incremental upgrades and critical infrastructure maintenance.

India's problem is also compounded by a bureaucracy which makes utility regulation in the USA look like anarchy, which is funny because the result at the transmission level is exactly the opposite.

Everyone's thinking it.

[Revotron]

"Dell Technical Support could not be reached for comments."

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It will actually be interesting to hear if any call centers that claimed Serious Redundancy And Stuff were a tad... optimistic... and will find customers going elsewhere in the near future.

It's not like backup power is total rocket surgery; but things that cost money all the time and only prove useful occasionally have a nasty habit of being neglected...

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, Global Call Center Operations routed calls to Round Rock, Roseburg, Waco, Twin Falls, and Nashville. Customer satisfaction increased, even with longer wait times.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[MickyTheIdiot]

But people still having problem with understanding through the accents.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell support is in Bangalore which was not affected.

And I have been in the building where they receives calls, the place has a generator the size of a large hotel lobby, so as long as the gas lasts, they can. They also have redundant phone lines, so even if one network operator goes down, they are in business

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to add to that. Most Indian outsourcing companies run with a 30 day power backup. It is part of running business in India.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[upto0013]

I heard a radio program about this, and most shopkeepers/bigger businesses do have backup generators and pay plenty for them. But without, they run the risk of losing their entire inventory. Ten years ago, when this area was accustomed to 3-4 hour outages each day, it was idiotic to make that gamble. One shopkeeper I heard interviewed hit the nail on the head when he said (paraphrasing), "They say we are a developed country, but is that really true?" Sure, you can take calls and McDonald's orders from around the world, but keeping the lights on is pretty basic for "developed" countries.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

But people still having problem with understanding through the accents.

A non-native accent is much more palatable than bad grammar. You seriously need to go back to school.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[tlhIngan]

It will actually be interesting to hear if any call centers that claimed Serious Redundancy And Stuff were a tad... optimistic... and will find customers going elsewhere in the near future.

It's not like backup power is total rocket surgery; but things that cost money all the time and only prove useful occasionally have a nasty habit of being neglected...

India's always had power issues. If you look at some Indian electronics magazines, what's the #1 most advertised product in them? Yes, power equipment - power conditioners, UPSes, battery banks, generators, etc.

The only guaranteed thing about India's electricity was that it was unreliable.

I think all the equipment is tested quite regularly purely because of it. They're not "occasionally useful", they're essential equipment unless one likes to live intermittently.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[jkrise]

"Dell Technical Support could not be reached for comments."

Not so fast, Sir.

The southern grid where the city of Bangalore is located, is fairly stable, and no interruptions.

Besides, EVERY SINGLE IT company has diesel generators that can operate to supply full load, because scheduled power cuts are very common in India. And ALL computers have UPS backup for 3 hours because the normal power line quality (frequency and voltage levels) are both poor, compared to international standards.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Ashbory]

Have they tried rebooting the power grid?

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

But people still having problem with understanding through the accents.

Its time you learn that accent

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

but in the other hand the power bill will be more light this month.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[MyLongNickName]

How exactly does that help if power is out to half of your country. If you are in the half that is down, ALL of your phone providers will be down, won't they?

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same problem here, but actually in reverse direction. :)

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

the lower price you pay for dell products comes with some compromises.. one of them being a slight accent (these guys are trained by Americans on their accent... may be you should apply for a trainers job).

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[WindBourne]

Does not help if your lines are down.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad Grammar Meets Funny Accent.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe so, but what of all the network way points between that building and USA?

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think so. If you are in a big business that relies on phones, like call centers, then providing phone service to you is also big business. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if they phone companies have similar things in place to keep their uptime numbers high.

No one really cares about all the time your service is available during the 2 minutes they know it isn't.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[vistic]

Such original humor, how do you come up with such gems?

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[hobarrera]

I used to work at SAP when we had a severe power outage here in Argentina. I don't quite know how, but even when the entire area had no power, they turned on the diesel generator, and we got back to work, having phone(voip actually) and internet fine.
I'm not sure if they have some premium line, or if the ISP just had lots of backup generators.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[AmiMoJo]

Going OT now but is there such a thing as a reasonably cheap, efficient and silent UPS you can buy that will give you enough juice to shut down a single computer gracefully? Last time I looked you could pick any two of those.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[adolf]

I can't speak for India, but when most my my state (here in the US) was without power for a few days or a week recently, AT&T had (in additional to the giant diesel genset at the CO) trailer-mounted generators scattered around town keeping the phone network alive.

I don't think India would be all that much different; if their power is as generally unreliable as folks say it is, the telcos will have their own generation equipment.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell support staff, enjoying benefits like air conditioning.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

QuickBooks indian support were having issues with their "system" but apparently still could see customer data, just not much else.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was telco based, US central offices usually have battery banks and/or generators to provide the 50 line volts and whatever other crap keeps the phones ringing. Usually phones and power break at separate times, for separate reasons.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[ganesh.rao]

Does not help if your lines are down.

Seriously dumb, aren't you? Everyone in India has power backup. Period.

Apart from the railways and traffic signal posts, nothing else experienced anything too drastic. Blackout lasted for about 4-6 hours in the worst hit areas. Most places were back online within the hour.

Apparently, the media has its own story.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[kbx911]

all these places u listed, are they like inhabited by lots of young people or lots of unskilled people? I am just curious.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[kbx911]

let me say this once and for all. The speaker of Hindi is a better judge of English grammar than any other person, even the English - for the English Language. Why? First let's talk about "accent", which in India comes into play even when speaking the national language Hindi (directly derived from Sanskrit with the least amount of transmission-loss in any of the 100s of Indo-European languages spoken through Asia and Europe (and of course by u, the immigrants from Europe - Team USA)). Since India is a country of many countries every state speaks Hindi with a different twang and accent. Hence it is obvious that some of that will also happen when speaking English sometimes, for some people who do not speak even Hindi-regularly, they speak their state language at home. (as is the case when one is less than a few years in the BPO business). Since these call center people do not talk in English (why should they? Their own language Hindi (along with Secondary languages of each region) are higher in the tree of language-development than English (whose dominance can ONLY be attributed to the British Colonialism and the current American Imperialism and Colony-lootism acts). So we don't need to, or feel like speaking in the inferior language of English all the time. We can express and live much better with the Mother language of English - Hindi. Got that u twats? sorry for the many ( ( ) ( ) ) but this particular subject has a lot of subtexts. Now, about Indians being joked as having bad accents? We speak the best pronounced, most grammatically perfect English today - forget u Americans, we speak their language better than even the English. T

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Vastad]

I've just bought one of these for personal use in anticipation of my new gaming PC I'm building this weekend: APC Back UPS ES8 Power Saving Outlet 700VA

Found it while scouring for surge-protected multi-plugs with good reviews. The really good quality multi-plugs were already pretty pricey, so going for the UPS seemed logical. Based on its specs, I'll get about 8 minutes to shutdown my PC safely. Not too shabby for less than £100.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[WindBourne]

And yet, my friends in new delhi could not use the internet. OTOH, my in-laws in Chennai and some coders that I know in Hyderabad (via verizon) said that the net was quick and fast. However, they could not connect to ppl in new delhi either, though they could via cell.
[sarcasm]But hey, I am sure that you know everything that there is to know about India. And I am sure that my relatives and friends are liars and that BSNL really had their stuff together, even though BSNL is WELL known for being a bunch of screw-ups.

I mean you guarantee it. Right?[/sarcasm]

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[AmiMoJo]

Thanks, that looks interesting. I was a bit worried by the "power saving" bit because I hate those sockets which switch devices on/off with the PC. They are prone to getting it wrong... But it seems like in this case they are referring to something else which is not at all obvious from the specs.

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Vastad]

Ah right. Well the way this particular model seems to be set up is out of 8 sockets:

1. - 3 sockets are slaved to a master socket and have battery backup (4 in total)
2. - 3 sockets are not slaved and only have surge protection i.e. no battery backup
3. - 1 socket is an "always-on" socket, only surge-protected, no battery backup

Hope that clears things up

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[Vastad]

Woops! Got it wrong. Don't know how to edit my old comment. Out of 8 sockets:

1. a. 1 is a Master socket with battery backup
2. b. 6 sockets are slaved to the master, of which:
   1. i. 3 slave sockets have battery backup
   2. ii. 3 slave sockets are surge-protected only
3. c. 1 socket is an independent "always-on" socket

Re:Everyone's thinking it.

[ganesh.rao]

BSNL would be offline even when there is power. What do you expect when you pay chump change? That has nothing to do with the electric power supply, smart ass.

Extreme heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

What extreme heat? Global warming isn't real! It's a government conspiracy, these electricity grid collapses are all a conspiracy! Catch the truth on Fox News at 6!

Re:Extreme heat?

[Doctor Matt]

It's summer time and it's India. There's really hot.

Meanwhile, over the border...

[RogueyWon]

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?

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Doctor Matt]

Actually, Microsoft Research has published many papers over this. One of them consist of using cloud computing as heating source. This is extremely good for something like the mountains of Pakistan where it can get a bit cold.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[h4rr4r]

Too bad the mountains of pakistan are a totally worthless place to put a data center.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[RabidReindeer]

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?

Been there, did that. So, for that matter, did Virginia, more recently.

Hurricane blew by. Power went out. Stayed out 4 days. These were the things we missed:

1. Refrigeration - we had a full load of groceries, so we crammed everything we could into an ice chest and grilled the rest.
2. HOT WATER!!!!
3. Cooking electricity
4. Air Conditioning
5. Lights
6. Power for the electronics

Afterwards, we looked into alternatives. R/Vs operate with gas-powered fridges, which are actually simpler and quieter than their electric brethren. But, being a specialty item, the prices are ridiculous.

2. Hot water was actually not that big a problem. Put a large jug in the garage and it'll be 110F in a day. Locally, solar experts actually recommend roof-mounted solar water heaters as the #1 way to save on energy costs, since hot water is one of the biggest consumers of energy.

3. charcoal BBQ grill. Although I bought a propane camp stove afterwards.

4. Fortunately, the first day or two after a storm is relatively cool. After that, the humidity and temperature soared to about the same levels as much of India is recording. Not pleasant, but, like much of India, we didn't have A/C when I grew up anyway. A solar-powered fan gave a little temporary relief.

5. I brought in the solar landscape lights. Afterwards I developed a keen interest in high-brightness LEDs, which were beginning to approach 1 candlepower. Newer units are even brighter, so that problem is no longer a problem.

6. OK, at this point the serious suffering began.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[petermgreen]

But how much does backhaul connectivity from somewhere you can buy internet transit to the mountains of pakistan cost? and how much does internet transit (or onward direct connections if you preffer) cost when you get there?

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[sandytaru]

I can confirm that roof mounted solar water works, and works well. We installed a system a year ago back, and our power bill went down by a third and has stayed at that level pretty consistently. If full solar isn't an option due to cost, a solar water system is possibly in reach. Our system will have paid for itself by the end of 2014.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Nemyst]

Read up on the Quebec 1998 freezing rain crisis. Most people were cut off for a week, some as long as a month and a half (tens of thousands, not a couple hundreds). It was quite the chaos because right after the rain stopped it got really cold and the vast majority of people here depend on electricity for heating, but I'd say what happened was the opposite of barbarism. There was a huge movement towards helping each other, large community centers were created to provide shelter for those without power who had nowhere else to go, I don't recall any higher incidence of crime (burglary or otherwise).

Perhaps the response from the population is very dependent on the source of the outage. It's easily understandable to lose power in such a storm, but if there is no apparent reason I can understand people being pissed off about it. Going as far as mass protests or riots would be stretching it however, and I doubt we'd see that in first world countries; we're way too mellow by now.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[captaindomon]

Most of the western US uses natural gas for hot water, and most homes in my area use natural gas ranges for cooking as well. Kind of nice because the natural gas supply isn't disrupted by weather because it is all buried (now when an earthquake happens, that is a different story).

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[ThatsNotPudding]

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.

Given that a third of Indian homes have zero electricity (and I bet Pakistan is even higher), you might be over-egging the pudding here.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Anonymous Coward]

But don't you need power to keep the pump running for the solar heater? Without circulation it will just start boiling? We have a overflow bottle to contain the glycol if it happens.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[HungWeiLo]

Don't be so sure about the "civilized" first world. In Bellevue, WA (a generally high-income place with Neiman Marcus and Louis Vuitton stores), there was a gas shortage several years ago after a winter storm. All gas stations had been stormed and emptied by nervous housewives. There was a literal pitchforks and torches crowd outside the Chevron station, with blood-shot eyed people banging loudly on the door shouting at the poor kid trying to reset the pumps. I told a couple of them that "I'm sure they'll get the pumps going pretty soon". It was ignored in their fervent wrath. Another couple hours and garbage cans would have been thrown through the door. As the pumps were finally up and running, people were shouting at each other with accusations of "cutting in line".

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Anonymous Coward]

3. charcoal BBQ grill. Although I bought a propane camp stove afterwards.

Ah. I can't get enough propane and propane accessories. Taste the meat, not the heat!

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Solandri]

2. Hot water was actually not that big a problem. Put a large jug in the garage and it'll be 110F in a day. Locally, solar experts actually recommend roof-mounted solar water heaters as the #1 way to save on energy costs, since hot water is one of the biggest consumers of energy.

When I evaluated a variety of renewable energy choices for a resort, this one came in at #1 in terms of cost-effectiveness (money saved / money spent). If you're going to be heating that quantity of water anyway, then it's absolutely the easiest way to harness solar energy. It doesn't have to heat the water to 110F. Any amount of heating it does to the water from your cold water tap represents energy you don't have to burn via an electric or gas water heater. It can be built for a few hundred dollars (basically a shallow insulated tank painted black on the inside with glass/plexiglass on the top), and it can capture >90% of the solar energy which strikes it. Compare that to PV panels which cost ~ten thousand dollars for similar coverage, but only capture about 16% of the solar energy.

We're letting our decisions about renewables to be driven by pie-in-the-sky imagery we've seen in movies and TV shows, not by what actually works. PV solar is pretty much the worst energy generation technology we have right now (without subsidies it costs about 7-8x as much as coal per kWh), making it really only cost-effective if you're completely off the grid (e.g. mountain weather stations which need power for electronics inside). But solar water heaters aren't as sexy so people never consider them. The only real drawback is that mounting all that water on your roof can be problematic in terms of weight and insurance premiums (though it helps reduce cooling bills), so mounting it in or over the backyard frequently works better.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[mikael]

I'd imagine the mountains would be above the clouds, and you could have a couple of giant satellite dishes. Works for astronomers, so it might work for a data center too.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Fjandr]

Most of the western US has the potential to use natural gas for hot water. Even in those places where natural gas is available though, there is a potentially significant portion of the population still using electricity to heat water (in my anecdotal experience in new and remodel construction, anyway).

I would be quite interested to see usage numbers for areas serviced by natural gas providers, since I don't know what the actual breakdown is. If you've got sources you trust, I would love to read through them.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[rmdingler]

Great to hear a group of people intelligently working together in a crisis versus the storm of barbarism that overtook reason during Katrina.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Anonymous Coward]

3. charcoal BBQ grill. Although I bought a propane camp stove afterwards.

Ah. I can't get enough propane and propane accessories. Taste the meat, not the heat!

You are the king of the hill!

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's USA - barely first world, and certainly not civilized.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so sure about the "civilized" first world. In Bellevue, WA (a generally high-income place with Neiman Marcus and Louis Vuitton stores)

LOL @ your definition of "civilized".

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[Anonymous Coward]

The mountains of Pakistan also host terrorists. You definitely do not want to put up a data center there! :-)

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[RabidReindeer]

We're letting our decisions about renewables to be driven by pie-in-the-sky imagery we've seen in movies and TV shows, not by what actually works. PV solar is pretty much the worst energy generation technology we have right now (without subsidies it costs about 7-8x as much as coal per kWh), making it really only cost-effective if you're completely off the grid (e.g. mountain weather stations which need power for electronics inside). But solar water heaters aren't as sexy so people never consider them. The only real drawback is that mounting all that water on your roof can be problematic in terms of weight and insurance premiums (though it helps reduce cooling bills), so mounting it in or over the backyard frequently works better.

7-8x sounds a little high for these days. Plus, I'm sure it depends on what scale you want to operate at. Coal almost certainly scales better, but conversely, generating a couple of hundred watts instead of a couple of million probably costs more with coal than PV. Locally, PV is pretty much standard for mobile traffic signs and fixed flashing displays. Presumably that set of PV-powered billboards on I-4 down near Tampa have amortized themselves, having been there for decades. PV is not - and may never be - a total solution, but like gas-powered refrigerators, it's as much about supply and demand as anything else. And I don't particularly like "total" anything. When "total" fails, you're "totally" screwed. Hence my researches.

I am told by someone older than I am that when he first moved to the area, a cistern up on the roof was his sole supply of hot water and it worked very well. It's true that some reinforcement is required, but solar pool heaters are almost universal around here.

Re:Meanwhile, over the border...

[kbx911]

perhaps if there was no internet - then 3 missed-calls or 3 days of missed-network-television certainly might throw the people in chaos - but we have tablets, batteries, generators, and the 3G service provider obviously has to have backup-power-generator. So no sweat about 3-missed-meals>>>barbarianism.

Great

[Anne_Nonymous]

Just great. Now how am I supposed to get my cell phone bill corrected?

Re:Great

[Doctor Matt]

Microsoft Research has done publications on mobile phone enabled banking. Maybe that's the answer.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

That was an absolutely useless answer. Is that you, Bing?

Re:Great

[RogueyWon]

Doctor Matt seems to have created his account very recently. He also seems to have found and be very excited by an awful lot of things that Microsoft Research have been saying. One or two of these things are even relevant to this thread.

Not that I wish to suggest anything but... perhaps Doctor Matt might wish to consider whether he has any particular relationships with Microsoft that might usefully be disclosed? :)

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure do mention Microsoft a lot. You remind me of those evangelical christians, who just have to work Jesus into every conversation.

"I'm not sure if we have finished debugging that code." "Yes, you know Jesus loves you even if you didn't debug that code!" *facepalm*

Re:Great

[clgoh]

Well. Microsoft Research has done publications on code debugging...

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

I just love how every MS advocate is a shill but every Linux advocate is just doing The Right Thing(tm).
 
You going to make some slur against Apple fans next? Reading your post is just like watching Faux News.

Re:Great

[RogueyWon]

Hey, I quite like Microsoft. They're not perfect, but Win7 is good enough that it's the only OS on my PC. I own all three video game consoles and, of the three, the 360 gets the most use. If you're looking for a rabid anti-MSer, then it's not me.

But an amusingly blatant shill is an amusingly blatant shill.

Re:Great

[jkflying]

Have you seen his comment history?

http://slashdot.org/~Doctor+Matt

Of his last 8 posts, 3 have linked to MS Research, and another had an endorsement of Windows Server 2008.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr Bob > Dr Matt


Now someone please explain how keeping your spine properly adjusted would help prevent this problem. And for a topper, how would maintaining the purity of your HOSTS file solve India's power woes?

Re:Great

[fnj]

Microsoft Research and Windows Server 2008 are two of the relatively worthwhile and competent things to come out of Microsoft. So he knows what he's doing.

Re:Great

[EdIII]

You fell for it.

The AC is just running interference for the shill account :)

Re:Great

[jkflying]

Yeah, but that doesn't mean he has to provide a link to them every second post. That is what is commonly referred to as a 'shill'.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Well. Microsoft Research has done publications on code debugging...

And Jesus loves you even if you hadn't read Microsoft's publications.

In other words MS is hardly the only source for this information. Not by a long margin. In the context of that guy's posting history, yeah, you don't know what you're talking about.

Help desks down?

[scharkalvin]

Guess this means that HP and Compaq's phone in help desks are down.

Re:Help desks down?

[Anonymous Coward]

our corporate email owa web interface is down.
global fortune 5 company.

as for the outage, one big issue in this country is that power plants require outside power to run. They require the grid to be up and power in order to start unless the plant is a black-start unit, and they are a very very small percentage of the units. If the us infrastructure has this risk I can only image how bad it is in India.

Re:Help desks down?

[dbIII]

I used to be in the power industry (not in India), and a couple of the power stations I worked at had jet engines hooked to generating sets to give enough power to start. They tested them once a month, and they worked nearly every single time for years, until one day when a major cable went down while another plant had all it's units shut down and the third, very old and tiny power station, had been shut down for the day. Apparently the small plant (40MW units? Tiny anyway) had a boiler that was still hot enough that huge piles of oil soaked rags and other bits and pieces raised enough steam to get the equipment that supplied the coal moving and a real fire going. Within a few hours that unit was generating enough to get larger units in the shutdown power station going.

Re:Help desks down?

[tibit]

I can't imagine a large (1000MW+) generating plant of any sort not having about 0.2%-1.0% of that as backup generating capacity that could be started without any external input. That's like plant design 101. Anyone with current experience please chime in, mine is 2nd hand knowledge. A 10MW backup turbine using liquid fuel that needs a small diesel for startup is not that big of a deal. Sure it costs money when you build the plant, but starting up a big coal plant takes a lot of energy last I heard. A natural gas plant of at least 100MW generating capacity probably could do with 0.1% backup supply if it was designed for it, but it seems like really cutting things down to a minimum (site lights turned off, no CCTV, etc).

Re:Help desks down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like how that plant in japan had generators to keep cooling running in case of an emergency? oh snap!

Re:Help desks down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the OWA web interface use the SMTP protocol? ;)

(From the redundant acronym department department.)

Hold times will increase, but so will

[Rooked_One]

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.

Re:Hold times will increase, but so will

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who can't tell WHO IS from WHOSE, you're in no position to make fun of other people's english.

Re:Hold times will increase, but so will

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, my name is Jay, how am I to be helping you today?

Re:Hold times will increase, but so will

[Lumpy]

Nope... they switched to the New Jersey call centers...

"Moooorning, this is Snookiums. what can I be helping you with? I can transfer you to my supervisor Vincenzo, hold your horses."

Re:Hold times will increase, but so will

[Rooked_One]

Replied like the AC that you are...

You obviously understood the message, so why bother trolling?

Re:Hold times will increase, but so will

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I doubt there will be much of an impact. Call centres are equipped to handle day-long power shut downs which happen fairly frequently for "maintenance". Most offices are equipped with battery backup for at least 20 minutes with diesel generator backup that can go for hours.

Re:Hold times will increase, but so will

[EdIII]

LOL.

I would rather struggle listening to a heavy Indian accent than some Jersey Shore idiot trying to help me all day long....

Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[madhatter256]

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.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds alot like the USA.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[na1led]

The country needs Population Control. When population explodes as it has in India, what else can you expect.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[crazyjj]

India needs to stop funneling their money from into their pockets and back into the streets.

Sadly, rampant corruption in both the public and private sphere is something all too few companies factor in when they decide to do business there. We take certain things for granted in the West that you can't in India, and many western companies that try to outsource there find out the hard way that you had better factor in the additional costs of bribes (LOTS of bribes), crime, infrastructure problems (which will also include bribes), etc. I had a personal experience involving a company that had to give their workers special "bonuses" during every crunch time or they would just basically lay down on the job. Not to say there aren't good people there, but there is also a LOT of corruption.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[h4rr4r]

Go away Malthus.

They need to invest in infrastructure, less people able to pay for that is not going to help the issue.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey how's New Orleans doing there in your "developed" country? Doing OK yeah? Movie theater shootings on the menu for this week?

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Hatta]

I had a personal experience involving a company that had to give their workers special "bonuses" during every crunch time or they would just basically lay down on the job.

Sounds fair to me. Why should they work extra hard to reach your deadline if they're not going to get any extra benefit from meeting the deadline? Not everyone sells their soul to their employer like we have to in America, nor should they. If you don't like it, plan better so that there is no crunch time.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away Malthus.

They need to invest in infrastructure, less people able to pay for that is not going to help the issue.

More people who are not able to pay for that is also not going to help the issue.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

who said India is developed?

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

The burning question is why is one of the world's most desperately poor country North Korea have cities that look like Tokyo, and is quite competitive in the London Olympics, while the anointed world's next superpower festers in heat waves with no electric power?
I'm starting to suspect that our western governments have not been telling us the entire truth.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

True to some extent. In Florida, people buy gas generators for when a Hurrican knocks out power lines. Business owners in India buy generators for frequent blackouts. NPR did a bit on it yesterday.

However, India is working on their infrastructure. Kolkata's sewers are being revamped and was featured in a recent ASCE's publication Civil Engineering Magazine. However, Kolkata's sewage problem isn't the exception.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[MickyTheIdiot]

The thing is that like the rolling Enron blackouts this isn't likely to change a thing.

As long as the corporate bastards at the top are all right, jack, they could give a rats about anyone else.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Insult the USA when any other country is mentioned even if you can't put any meat to your statement.
2. Get modded up.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Bigby]

The shooting weren't anywhere close to New Orleans.

The New Orleans area was the only place affected by the under-engineered barriers.

A better example might be the blackout of 2003, when most of northeastern US were out of electricity for multiple days because of a cascading failure that started in Cleveland.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[DigiShaman]

As someone who's been both overseas to Asia and much of the USA, you haven't got a clue. Sincerely and honestly. If there's one thing you must remember, it's that culture has everything to do with how a nation manifests it's own productivity. Americans and Europeans have a high demand for a quality of life. We as a society work hard and play hard. It's why we are so organized to get shit done and places like India and China are now just catching up as they become more "westernized".

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off, strawman.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Threni]

Kind of. But we in the west benefit from cheap stuff from India and you'll be hard pressed to find anyone here who even pretends to give a shit about life over there, much less who actually does, so really it's the same for everyone.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[cerberusss]

I had a personal experience involving a company that had to give their workers special "bonuses" during every crunch time

You mean getting paid for overtime? Oh my god, what kind of savages were you dealing with??!?

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Hey, Mitt Romney, how did you find time off from your campaign to post on slash dot? Shouldn't you be insulting Syrians or Egyptians today, according to your campaign schedule?

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[h4rr4r]

They can provide useful labor.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually New Orleans has been doing a lot better since your mother stopped whoring there. STD's are down 17%.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I hear about Americans pulling 60-80 hour weeks on a semi-regular basis, just to get software out of the door by an arbitrary deadline, I'm glad I live in a civilized country.

Yours,
The Prince of Nigeria

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, now, manners, please!

We call them Socialists.

(Or Communists if they get paid holidays)

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[MysteriousPreacher]

If you don't like it, plan better so that there is no crunch time.

You can make a lot of money showing corporations and pretty much everybody how to plan sufficiently so as to completely eliminate times when demand outstrips normal capacity. Even if you don't want to get rich, use the proceeds to fund the glorious revolution.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a personal experience involving a company that had to give their workers special "bonuses" during every crunch time or they would just basically lay down on the job.

Did anyone else wonder what the Bollywood version of Office Space would be like after reading this, or was it just me?

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[timeOday]

Nobody could seriously claim that culture doesn't affect productivity. Romney's problem is he forgot that other things can affect productivity too... like permanent occupation and brutal economic sanctions imposed by the same government you're holding up as culturally superior, for example.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[tnk1]

Sounds alot like the USA.

Clearly you have never been to India. The difference is significant.

There's some really great things about India, and some nice people there, but their infrastructure blows. If you can get your services taken care of via the private sector, you can do all right, but once you rely on the government for anything, forget about it.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[tnk1]

It's not that they expect extra pay for extra work, it's that they wait until you are desperate to get something done and then start extorting without any concern about the long term effects on the business, and by extension, their own long term job security. I get that business owners can do the same things to employees, but it's not good either way.

The rest of the comments about bribery in general are spot on. The problem with corruption is not that people get paid, it is that they generally erect roadblocks where they would otherwise not be in order to extract that money. It's like the corporations creating artificial DVD regions coding or DRM to maximize profits. And just like the corporations doing it, it hurts the average person. If you're paying barely educated government functionary #1 a bribe because he can use the bureaucracy to hold up your requests, that is money that is not being spent to either build the business or to pay to the government as a tax to be distributed for things like education.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

Multiply all your estimates by a factor of 4.

It worked for Scotty.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[na1led]

This world only has a Finite amount of resources. If the rest of the third world countries tries to live like we do here in the U.S., we will need 3 Earths to sustain the current population.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a personal experience involving a company that had to give their workers special "bonuses" during every crunch time or they would just basically lay down on the job.

Here in the US that's called "collective bargaining", but the response is to offshore the labor.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Thud457]

This world only has a Finite amount of resources. If the rest of the third world countries tries to live like we do here in the U.S., we will need 3 Earths to sustain the current population.

Good thing Elon Musk & Planetary Resources are formulating plans for just such a contingency.
It's gonna suck having gravity 3 X as strong though. If we only had space enough to put all that stuff somewhere...

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't crunching on rare occasions, but doing it all the time. This is the very reason why it should be compensated generously.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[MysteriousPreacher]

In cases like that I agree. Work shouldn't a death march in to poverty.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're mixing up "quality of life" with "standard of living"... Us Americans and Europeans have a high demand for a "standard of living".. It can be argued that Europeans value their quality of life..

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Bengie]

NK total population: about 25mil
Tokyo total population: about 35.6mil

Tokyo is about 50% larger by population. There is no way an inhabited city in NK can compare to Tokyo, even if everyone in NK lived in the same city.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Jawnn]

As someone who can remember when the U.S. infrastructure was the gold-standard, I can say that you don't have a clue. It used to be better. A lot better. So it's not as bad as (insert shit hole country here). Big fucking deal. The fact is that we have, just like India, allowed our roads, power systems, sewers, water supply systems, etc. to fall into disrepair at an alarming rate. The only difference is that we started at a higher level. It's still crumbling and without serious change, is headed for the same place.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[grantspassalan]

"This world only has a Finite amount of resources."

If all of the human resources spent on controlling and containing evil would be directed toward true human needs, then the resources on earth would allow for the world population of at least 20 billion. If all military, police and prisons were to become unnecessary, then the world could be a beautiful paradise. If human selfishness and greed were gone, disease and poverty would disappear also.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Hatta]

It's not that they expect extra pay for extra work, it's that they wait until you are desperate to get something done

So the problem isn't that they demand bonuses during crunch times. It's that they don't do the work you pay for.

It's like the corporations creating artificial DVD regions coding or DRM to maximize profits. And just like the corporations doing it, it hurts the average person.

So it's just like the US, but instead of being the privilege of an elite few, everyone can get a piece of the action. I'm not seeing how that is actually worse for the average person. I certainly have a better chance of becoming a government functionary than I do the CEO of a major corporation.

In short, since I can't have a society without corruption I might as well have a society where I can benefit from the corruption. It's hard to moralize about corruption on the part of your employees when the people running the company (and the country) are likely throwing up even larger roadblocks to make even greater personal profits. Why shouldn't I throw up my own roadblock and get a cut of that?

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[na1led]

You're talking about a fantasy that will never exist. Humans have too much ambition, and greed to be sustainable. These bad traits are in all of us, and there is no magic wand that will change it. If the world would stop eating Beef, it would probably solve half our problems, doubt that is ever going to happen.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not talking population.
Images of some cities in North Korea can be confused with Tokyo in terms of appearance (busy, tidy, modern...).
Detractors will barf that NK builds showcase cities to give a false appearance.
Whether that's true or not is another question. The fact of the matter is that so-called "superpower" India cannot even afford to build showcase cities to give false appearances. It's a third world slum in any image collection of India you care to view.

And NK has got three gold medals at the Olympics so far (more than Japan so far BTW).
I think India has got one bronze.
Olympic medal count is not necessarily a measure of any desirable qualities, but it does give some indications of infrastructures.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Areyoukiddingme]

A depressingly succinct analysis. My mother bemoans the decline in morality in this country, and blames it on the decline in Christianity. I remind her that the nation is still by far majority Christian, but she doesn't listen. What's obvious to me is precisely what's obvious to you: morality flows from the top. If the most powerful, richest people in the country are incredibly corrupt motherfuckers, THAT trickles down. The money doesn't, but their actions do.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[mjwx]

It goes to show how "developed" India is, when it actually has a sewage crisis, water crisis and now this.

Depends where in India. Like most developing countries there are cities and towns that look like they rival the top modern European and American cities. Then drive 20 K's out of town and find shanties and shacks. Take a look at Bangkok (Thailand, I know but you're more likely to go there than India), in the Rachetwan district (city centre) you'll find glass skyscrapers, BMW dealerships, chain stores and banks. Take a 10 minute ride on the Skytrain and you'll find this changes very quickly, buildings with corrugated tin walls, very run down apartment blocks and so forth. Just like in the west, the best infrastructure tends to coalesce where money is concentrated its just a lot more obvious in the developing world.

This is one of the big reasons Communist parties are so popular in the poorer regions of India, very little infrastructure is built there.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Anonymous Coward]

When the world is so populated there isnt enough clean water for YOU to drink, you might look back and think about modding this person a troll.

Re:Infrastructure needs restructuring...

[Rexdude]

It goes to show how "developed" India is..

Uh, no one's claiming that it is.

India as a country, had everything going for it. Plenty of natural resources, forests, rivers, minerals, human resources..
Bad economic policies will screw you no matter how good initial conditions may be. The British left in 1947, but their government system built for extracting wealth and keeping people poor was retained, just that there were Indians in the drivers' seat. Add to that the first PM Nehru's fascination for socialism, and we ended up stagnating for the first 45 years.
Growth started to improve only after opening up the economy to foreign investment in 1991. And even now, socialism is a holy grail among politicians, and gigantic social welfare schemes are the norm.
Add to this an utterly indifferent middle class that never once got off its ass to vote, and we have a classic case of the poor voting themselves largesse out of the public treasury.

TL;DR - We're at the other extreme from the US where big business makes the rules and government power is steadily eroding. Tell you what, send over your Tea Party crowd here along with Romney and the rest of the Republicans, and we'll trade you some of our Congress party socialist politicians;)

For the "It Can't Happen Here Bunch"

[rmdingler]

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.

Re:For the "It Can't Happen Here Bunch"

[Stirling Newberry]

If they can't run an old style grid, then running more volatile technologies is inadvisable.

Re:For the "It Can't Happen Here Bunch"

[aaarrrgggh]

I agree with what you are saying minus the profit motive. It is economics--the investments can't be made while providing electricity at the current costs. The regulators and consumers are just as much to blame as the power companies. Nukes aren't really commercially viable today compared to gas-fired combined cycle plants in terms of time to market, cost per MWh when operational, or general risk. When natural gas prices go back up to $3-4 then alternatives make sense again... But today generating from nat gas during peak summer hours only offers something like a 5 year payback. Going 24x7 brings you down to 4 years or so.

From what I am seeing in southern California, it looks like the substations and sub-transmission lines are going to start to be a bigger problem... At least after San Onofre gets back online.

Re:For the "It Can't Happen Here Bunch"

[Stirling Newberry]

Nonsense, utilities are generally sitting on large cash hoards, and waste large amounts of power that isn't traces. I've spent time in the industry, investments could be made at current electricity prices, but cannot be made if large payouts in the utilities and generation industries continue. Where ever you are, chances are, you are being soaked as a residential customer, because individually, you are round off error in the profit picture. It's the ToD and commercial tariff - large commercial tariff - customers that get attention.

Re:For the "It Can't Happen Here Bunch"

[rmdingler]

I concur, but I think the coal-fired plants would be first in line for replacement.

Re:For the "It Can't Happen Here Bunch"

[rmdingler]

Coal burning plants pollute all the time, both traditionally with carbon dioxide and coal-fly ash, and, interestingly enough, with radioactive elements several magnitude worse than your run of the mill nuclear accident. All day every day.

Re:For the "It Can't Happen Here Bunch"

[aaarrrgggh]

Cash reserves aren't regulated, just profit. I would agree though that the PUC should have efficiency targets for the utilities, but logistically that doesn't come from the profit they have already made.

india is no china

[Anonymous Coward]

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!"

Re:india is no china

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

And the fact that they are kicking our ass at the Olympics.

But who's going to do our programming?!?!?

[crazyjj]

And what of our call centers?!?!?!?!?

Glass half full

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer to see it as half of India WITH electricity.

Aging grid

[Sarten-X]

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.

Re:Aging grid

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Cant decide if it is funny or informative or insightful.

Re:Aging grid

[Anonymous Coward]

Your numbers seem a littlle bogus. According to wikipedia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption

the average power usage per capita in india is 100W, so approximately 2.5Kwh/day and 75Kwh/month/person

Re:Aging grid

[Anonymous Coward]

I was recently in India, far up in the most remote portions of Uttarakhand. This was my third trip to India, so I've seen nearly all of it before. The odd thing this time was that almost universally, every building had compact fluorescent light-bulbs, regardless of the age or condition of the building.

Re:Aging grid

[Sarten-X]

I recently was in Ghana, and saw the same thing... almost every bulb was a CFL. There were a few incandescent bulbs, but they were mostly in lamp fixtures on abandoned buildings.

Re:Aging grid

[dbitter1]

I have no mod points, and you are already at "5" even if I did, so let me take this opportunity to say you owe me one monitor cleaning; for the best comment I've read on /. in pretty much as long as I can remember.

Power in developing countries...

[Bysshe]

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).

Re:Power in developing countries...

[Stirling Newberry]

Excluding externalized costs, yet, including them, no. Economics always sides with dumping the problem on someone else, that is, until that some one else gets angry enough to do something very uneconomical about it.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[Bysshe]

That's right. Its the same problem that we're all facing in the airline industry: China, Russia and US oppose European airline CO2 tax.

I'd say tackle the problems in power generation, airlines, passenger cars, land and sea-freight and you've tackled pretty much the whole problem. This can be accomplished by regulating and the input (fuel). Of course the income made from these taxes should go to actually solving the problem then instead of random pet projects from politicians. Regardless, none of this solves India's current problem.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[Bysshe]

*regulating and taxing

Re:Power in developing countries...

[h4rr4r]

Coal is only cheapest because it can externalize its waste disposal cost. If the Nuclear power plants were allowed to just dump their waste into the air that would bring down costs quite a bit.

The costs are comparable if clean air and medical costs for those impacted have a value.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[Stirling Newberry]

They are different problems. Stationary power generation and distribution – as well as the correct ratios of losses in the two - is different from transportation, which is driven by power to weight ratios and delivery curves.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[Bysshe]

Not different problems since they all contribute to the same effect that we're trying to prevent. The problem being externalized costs not being accounted for as mentioned earlier in the thread. Where they differ is in the engineering, or more specifical in the end use of the resulting energy (being conversion into motion, or into electricity [let's ignore electric engines for a moment]. Also, they can both be addressed by regulating the fuel input, whether that's coal or gasoline, heavy fuel oil, or jet fuel.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[Ant2]

You mean like Fukishima?

Re:Power in developing countries...

[Attila Dimedici]

Guess what? In countries where people are worried about where their next meal is coming from they don't care about "externalized" costs. People don't really care that it will cause them health problems in 10 years when they aren't sure they will have enough to eat to live to the end of this year.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[wganz]

You're falsely assuming that the waste are toxic. If rising sea levels are so destructive, the explain how our world is so 'right' compared to 8500 years ago as shown in http://tinyurl.com/cby6z95 . There have been multiple periods of glaciation and warming since the Pleistocene Epoch started and even up to today.

This blackout was caused by India shutting down due to a lack of coal generated electricity. The real tragedy is that the greenies in the US are going to miss this point and try to ram down our throats even more pie-in-the-sky schemes for 'renewable energy'. Guess we need to start growing some algae.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[WindBourne]

Actually, nuke power plants DO dump their waste into the air. We call them coal plants. After all, more uranium and thorium is dumped from them, then real nuke power plants.

Sad. We have the technology to solve so many issues, but fear gets in the way.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[painandgreed]

You mean like Fukishima?

Thing is, the reason we are evacuating areas and watching radiation levels so closely is to avoid deaths that we are comfortable with and are already happening related to things such as coal mining and pollution. We place a great economic value on saving lives from nuclear power, but little on saving lives caused by coal power.

Re:Power in developing countries...

[sjames]

If nuclear was even allowed to dump as much radiation into the air as coal does, it would be a good bit cheaper.

I'm glad

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:I'm glad

[captaindomon]

I've worked with India-based development contracts where IP is involved. It's actually rather amazing how gestapo-like the control is on some of those. Firms in India are very aware of controlling IP, even more so than most companies based in the US.

Re:I'm glad

[ThatsMyNick]

They also know that software patents are not valid in India and take good advantage of it.

Re:I'm glad

[bingoUV]

There is not much advantage to be taken. Software market in India is, like , 5 orders of magnitude smaller than the US and EU. Especially the part where most of the "innovation" is going on, where the innovation really gives a competitive advantage.

"Rrevolution" show?

[wannabegeek2]

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...

Re:"Rrevolution" show?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sales of used Toyota Prius will skyrocket in India.
They can be used as generators.

If you're an optimist

[Zubinix]

This is just what India needs to energise public opinion and motivate politicians and government to actually rebuild India's decrepit old infrastructure.

Government Run Power

[SonnyDog09]

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?

Re:Government Run Power

[Stirling Newberry]

The government just lost the next election in India.

Re:Government Run Power

[Anonymous Coward]

do you remember the wonderful "rolling blackouts" that the Free Market blessed California with a few years back? that's why no one sings the praises of privately run utilities in the United States.

Re:Government Run Power

[MysteriousPreacher]

Probably off being just as dumb as those people who think the private sector to be the magic bullet that fixes everything.

Re:Government Run Power

[MickyTheIdiot]

Everyone in the U.S. agrees that it's okay to have your goal as "making a profit." People that try to claim otherwise are creating a fallacy.

What people in the U.S. don't actually agree on is that it is okay to have a goal *other* than "making a proft." This is the crux of the whole Enron mess. It's okay to have an organization whose main goal is make sure other businesses have power at a decent price and to break even at it. Saying such things in the U.S. right now will likely get you labeled a "socialist" by the modern know-nothing party.

Re:Government Run Power

[tnk1]

A great proportion of the Indian population lives below the poverty line, they don't care about black outs. That's why India is having trouble with improving capabilities across the board, most voters don't care very much as long as basic needs are met. I very much doubt this will affect the next election at all unless maybe it causes the parties to shuffle their front bench a little bit.

Re:Government Run Power

[tnk1]

The problem with the break-even corporation is that it generally has to be financed, and financing is done in large part by the private sector. In order to get private financing, the company needs to show it can make profits, both to pay current investors and to attract future investors. The best way for a company to make a lot of money fast will be by selling worthless pieces of paper (ie. stock) in return for the promise of future profits.

It is not impossible for a static company (in terms of break-even) to exist, of course, but investors will prefer one that generates the possibility of large profits to make their stock have actual value. Further, a company with a goal to maintain power generation may well find itself in deep trouble in the event of disaster or mishap, or even just mismanagement. Without a healthy profit margin to provide cash reserves and investment attractiveness, it could have a great deal of difficulty managing exceptional circumstances.

Re:Government Run Power

[Mashiki]

Probably off being just as dumb as those people who think the private sector to be the magic bullet that fixes everything.

Living in a country(Canada) where there are both, via crown corporations. Let me say, that the private sector is vastly better a providing a service to the general public. Unless they're unwilling to provide the service. Fine examples: Ontario and the LCBO(booze control board, and in turn only place to buy it), the only reason they exist is to line the coffers of the provincial government with money. On the other hand, places like Saskatchewan where for decades the private industry wouldn't touch the telephone system. And the provincial government was required to invest into it. In you could get your phone service from the prov. government.

Isolated communities, where the federal government provides rail access. Plenty of those in northern ontario. On the other hand, Hydro. Which was semi-privatized, but now has additional 'feed tariffs' causing the price of power to climb through the roof for things like wind, and solar.

Re:Government Run Power

[jpmorgan]

No, they'll just buy their way into power again by offering free electricity to more voters. It's the Indian Democracy way.

Re:Government Run Power

[dcw3]

Oh, did you mean like the post office?

Why? Take a read (Nibiru/PlanetX/Marduk/Wormwood)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUMAuY32Cjc&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNdtb2ZKRU&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCtfTU787w4

http://www.google.com/search?sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=US+Naval+Map&btnG=Search&gbv=1&sei=vNkXUIjuIuq90QHCloH4Aw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wALNWwzERQ4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qx20LA4PM0&feature=player_embedded

Hope the sources are wrong (NASA people, Naval geologists, Google Sky being blocked from the constellation of Leo's direction, US Govt FEMA camps 800 over the USA, US Antarctic viewing stations and IRAS satellites, global warming, gulf stream stalling, magnetic pole shift happening, Gov. Jesse Ventura, John Moore, and others like prophecies by the Hopi Indians, the Book of Revelations, the Chinese IChing, Mayan calendar, Mother Shipton, and Nostradamus which I take into far less stock than that of current scientists and government personnel and what they've seen and told of) and that I am a fool for listening to any of it. Doesn't mean I don't take some stock in warnings and prepare for it. Go on, mod me down, but at least take a look at those. My captcha's neighbor and that's what I am doing: Being a good neighbor is all. I hope this is all total crap, I really do. I don't want it happening anymore than anyone else would.

Just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Just a thought

[ledow]

And if you could afford that amount of solar panels, battery, charge regulators, and equipment to shunt things back to the grid, then you wouldn't need the national grid at all and everyone could probably retire early.

Secondly, it won't decrease the load. Because the solar panels would not be enough on their own (think flats with low roof surface area but high occupancy), wouldn't be able to power hardly anything (conversion losses to get it to "normal" electrical characteristics are quite high, not to mention not many people have 24v air conditioners, etc.), and thus you would still need to supply grid energy and still have blackouts, brownouts, etc. You may, quite literally, save a handful of watts and be able to switch the light on in a blackout (but a blackout that lasts two days? I'm not sure). That's about it.

You wouldn't be able to feed back to the grid because the amount of wiring, metering, conversion, storage and everything else would probably cost more than a new national grid.

All you've done is spend billions to let them all have a very expensive torch (flashlight) that works for a little while when the power goes out.

Let's not even get into the "mesh" thing. Electricity has inate losses in transport and unless you want to convert those panels to push out 40kV so you can get to the next village without significant loss only to downconvert it the other end, you're wasting your time by the time it gets there.

Solar is still NOT a national solution, even in a highly developed country with subsidies and the latest technology. Honestly. Forget what press releases you've read and go buy THE most expensive model you can get your hands on for your back garden. If it pays for itself (and we're not talking ecologically, because it can't) in provable and defined savings on electricity bills within it's operational lifetime, I'll be impressed. But when you multiply up to millions of people living in a few square miles, solar is a complete waste of time. And putting solar "further out" to supply them is a waste of time compared to just bringing up another "ordinary" power station (e.g. nuclear, which would out-class any solar plant by factors of dozens or more).

And then, if you ever DID make your money back, you'll maybe make a handful of KWh "profit" until the panel dies (not counting regular maintenance, installing, conversion, taking away subsidies, etc.) which is the surplus you're expecting to "take the strain" off an entire national grid.

Not to mention installing MILLIONS of solar panels on properties (which, in terms of human effort expended and product transport alone makes them loss-makers) individually.

Or, they could just build a nuclear power station or two and have done with it. Currently, out of all renewable sources of energy, they make up about 10% worldwide, if that. And the majority of that is biogas. Solar is considerably minuscule even with the largest solar arrays in the world.

Re:Just a thought

[MickyTheIdiot]

This is a *really* biased opinion and even if it is true now it isn't going to be true forever.

Re:Just a thought

[ledow]

Solar's maximum theoretical W/m^2 means it will stop being useful before most other forms of energy production. This is why wind power is also tailing off. After fancy 3D simulations give you a theoretically perfect shape / efficiency, you can't improve much on that.

At 100% theoretical efficiency, solar is inadequate for most power needs and can only supplant a (very) small percentage of total energy production. Unless you want to get into beaming solar power to Earth via microwave which, I would argue, is an entirely different power source altogether.

But, let's just say, as photovoltaics, solar's a bit of a waste of time outside of the toy industry. And is very likely to remain being so. By comparison, burning landfill gases is 100's of times more productive. You can go look on Wiki if you like, at the actual production from photovoltaics for electricity (which is only one form of energy storage). Last time I looked, it was a little pink line on the 2D cumulative graph that was SO narrow, I couldn't see it without zooming into the SVG file.

Of course, in the future things will change. But we're not living in the future, and we can't "see" ahead. So there's nothing useful in solar, as far as this argument is concerned, until something drastic happens - like we find a non-photovoltaic / non-heating-water-pipes way of producing energy from sunlight, or change the entire delivery method for something much more productive and interesting (e.g. energy collected in space and beamed to Earth, which I *haven't* researched as to efficiencies at all).

Re:Just a thought

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your argument against the seemingly successful adoption of solar power in Germany. It provides 3% of total and at times up to 40% of electricity. Is it really a waste of time. Is there no room for photovoltaics at all?

Re:Just a thought

[Bengie]

Let's not even get into the "mesh" thing. Electricity has inate losses in transport and unless you want to convert those panels to push out 40kV so you can get to the next village without significant loss only to downconvert it the other end, you're wasting your time by the time it gets there.

Most of the time, the power generated locally doesn't need to transfer to the next village, but only a short trip down the road. From your flat, out to the street and back into someone else's flat.

It would be similar to everyone having a very small water pump that can only trickle a small 10cm of water/sec. The water doesn't need to flow the entire way back, most of the time it will flow to whomever is locally using water. It will work at the aggregate level with a bias towards local usage.

Please do the needful

[Gothmolly]

Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?

Imagine the lines of people trying to microwave tupperware bowls full rice and beans.

Re:Please do the needful

[Donwulff]

I particularly loved the quote from TFA from BCC saying 'the chairman of the Power Grid Corporation of India said the exact cause of the power cut was unclear, he said, but that it appeared to be due to the "interconnection of grids".' That sounds a lot like the "series of tubes" speech...

But at least they've got this things under control and are honing on the root cause, they've already managed reproducibility of the bug!
'After Monday's cut, engineers managed to restore electricity to the northern grid by the evening, but at 13:05 (07:35 GMT) on Tuesday, it collapsed again.'

Wait, no, according to a NY times article, another electric company chief executive clarifies: '“We have one of the most robust, smart grids operating” in the world, he said. It would “not be wise” to give an assessment of what happened at this time, he added.'

Okay, that's settled then. Just keep replugging it, one of these times it's bound to work.

Re:Please do the needful

[PPH]

it appeared to be due to the "interconnection of grids"

Hey! They're reading off a canned script. Give them a break.

Still too limited!!!

[Firethorn]

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.

Re:Still too limited!!!

[sula9876]

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.

And 'my' perfect carbon neutral electricity source is 100% Nuclear and the energy that is not needed to feed the power lines is used to produce cheap petrol and kerosene by CO2 capture, electrolysis of water and then using it in a Fischer Tropsch process.

Re:Still too limited!!!

[slashrio]

And disasters and decommissionings paid by the public.

Re:Still too limited!!!

[trum4n]

Nuclear isn't magically more dangerous than other fuels. Stop spreading panic, you idiot. Look up disasters at coal-dust facilities. Look up explosions at natural gas plants. Nuclear accidents are far more rare, and due to the incredible safety requirements, typically, harmless. Look at 3 mile island. Tell me how many people died at the worst nuclear power accident in American history. And don't talk to me about Chernobyl. That reactor was a bomb the day it was design. Modern reactors are far safer.

Re:Still too limited!!!

[Firethorn]

You're falling prey to the 'One True Source!' fallacy that says that ONE SOURCE obviously has to be the best to the point it's the best in ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. In reality there's lots of reasons to want a variety of methods of generating electricity.

The trick is that when you're only generating 20% of your joules from wind or solar, you're going to need less than 1/5th the towers or panels because you'll be able to optimize your install locations much more. IE let's say you study sufficient locations to power the USA off of solar and divide them into 1% blocks. The 'best' 20 blocks will be much more ideal than the last 20. Same with wind. So you don't want to overdo it. In any ONE source. Heck, for the short term you're going to run into supply problems just trying to double the number of reactors in the USA(to reach 40%), and thus using alternative sources is necessary to meet the time scale.

Re:Still too limited!!!

[Firethorn]

Heck, TMI's reactor design was safer, and it's design predated Chernobyl's by a couple decades.

One thing to realize about Chernobyl's design was that it was really intended to be a plutonium producing reactor that made electric power as a side effect. If you're not worrying about that, you can go with much safer reactors. I like the idea of LFTR(thorium) reactors, but recognize that there are still design issues remaining. I'd actually have no problems with a 'manhattan style' government funded project to get a full size 'test' power generating station operating. Perhaps have it supply power to one of the bigger military bases as an excuse. Put a couple 'tiny' ones in at Eielson AFB up in Alaska that are set up to provide heat as well as power.

Re:Still too limited!!!

[slashrio]

Stop spreading panic, you idiot.

Look at Fukushima, you even bigger idiot! Almost contaminated the whole world and is still a ticking bomb. How dare you respond in such a demeaning manner after you almost blew up the whole world--with your 'unsafe', 'safer', 'safest' mumbling.
Finally accept the truth: Nuclear Energy Is Unsafe!
And if there were a safe instance of it, management and government in collusion would make it unsafe.
Disgusting!

Re:Still too limited!!!

[trum4n]

How many people did the Fukushima accident kill?

Re:Still too limited!!!

[slashrio]

Short term ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster : 0), medium term ( http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/medical-journal-article--14000-us-deaths-tied-to-fukushima-reactor-disaster-fallout-135859288.html : 14,000), long term (nobody knows)?
And what if/or when reactor 4 blows up?

Re:Still too limited!!!

[trum4n]

Impressive! That is the first i have heard of that study. My side of the argument. http://www.the9billion.com/2011/03/24/death-rate-from-nuclear-power-vs-coal/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/14/power-plant-air-pollution-coal-kills_n_833385.html

Re:Still too limited!!!

[slashrio]

Thanks for your links.

...that study.

That one, contrary to the one you linked to, is not yet corrected for the amount of energy supplied by nuclear vs. coal.

Aging grid

[Anonymous Coward]

"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 ...

nukuler

[bazorg]

Looks like nuclear power is a bit like credit cards...

Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[assertation]

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

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Having lived in a third world country (Cambodia) for a few years, and currently living and working in Washington, DC, I can tell you that living in DC is nothing like living in a third world country. Residents in a third world country tend to capable of adapting to a troublesome situation much better than folks in the US. They don't assume the power will simply work. They don't wait for the county trucks to show up after a storm to clear trees. They deal with problems themselves, directly.

Now that might not be the best solution to a problem. You might end up running your saw through a live power line. But don't think for a moment that living in DC is anything like living in a third world country.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my... of course living in the West is nowhere like living in a third world country.

But this cannot be an excuse for the state of things in our nations. There has to be a better way. There has to be less corruption and greed.

Additionally, I do not believe that the current energy management is the pinnacle of what mankind is able to achieve in terms of planning skills. It's a mess if you think about it. Nothing has fundamentally changed over the last 50 years.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[assertation]

If your post was meant to shame me on my virtues of self reliance it didn't work.

I don't think I or any other American *SHOULD* need to what to do if a basic utility goes out for more than a day at time.

We are the country that invented the air plane and landed on the moon. The shame is in having our basics be so unreliable.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the original poster, but I am originally from a third world country and currently living in a first world one.

This attitude that is frequently displayed by people from first world countries, to immediately compare their "awful" living conditions to real third world countries is downright insulting - you have no idea how good you have it.

You take too much for granted.

Not saying things can't be better, there is plenty of things that are wrong in first world countries, plenty of things that are getting worse. But don't for a moment think that the US is anything like a third world country in any respect.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[assertation]

Hello Anonymous Coward;

You can take my post as an insult if you like. That isn't how it was meant. I stand by it.

It SHOULD be the case that Americans take uninterrupted power service for granted. Many people fought long and hard for the standard of living we Americans are losing.

Instead of telling people to adapt to it via shaming them for not being self reliant when basic utilities go out, as the other Anonymous Coward did, people should be encouraging others to complain about it so it gets changed.

That is how the world works.

Instead of taking my message as an insult I encourage you to complain about and fight the conditions in your country instead of accepting and adapting to it. That is how progress gets made.....and as Americans are starting to learn...that is what is necessary to maintain it.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[dfenstrate]

Thank you PEPCO and other 1%ers who are willing to let the US infrastructure rot so you buy yourself islands

Now, I don't know a thing about PEPCO, or the grid regulatory structure down there, but.....

Electricity use and infrastructure should logically be paid for out of the ratebase, ie, the cost apportioned to usage, and capital investments made with those funds.

I'm not sure how your hate of rich people and their islands has anything to do with that. It's really a non-sequitor.

If PEPCO makes infrastructure improvements, your bill and those nasty 1%er's bill will go up by the same proportion. Don't you think those EEEVVVIIILLLL 1%er's want a reliable power source as well?

Backup generators are expensive to run. Everyone knows that.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

That blackout was storm related. The worst hit were old neighborhoods with lots of trees over the power lines, and lots of residents complaining when the power company tries to trim them. Of course they also complain when those trees fall on the power lines. Much of the county has underground power lines, and had no significant problems.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[ProfBooty]

Move to virginia. We have Dominion Power, which never has the issues MD/DC have with Pepco lower taxes too. On the downside, there is no Jamba Juice or Bolocco in Northern Virginia.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Washington D.C. is a Federal District and is, technically, under control of Congress.

Which I think says it all.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

Electricity use and infrastructure should logically be paid for out of the ratebase, ie, the cost apportioned to usage, and capital investments made with those funds.

I agree with your statement, but it doesn't, however, reflect reality.

Instead, Dennis R. Wrasse, (PEPCO's CEO) makes $1.5 million per year in salary and bonuses.

Maybe some of that money, and other high-end salaries should be reapportioned to keeping their grid upgraded properly? But that won't happen.

This is the argument against the 1%. They have a strong tendency to put their needs first and to hell with everything else. This tendency is why the U.S. is in the lousy shape it is today.

Honestly, why do you defend this psychopathic behavior?

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[sjames]

The infrastructure should be paid for out of the ratebase, but instead the 1%ers abscond with it in the form of fat bonuses and dividends.

His hate of the 1% is because they're dirty thieves.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[sjames]

Correct, in the west you can get hauled off to jail if you attempt self-help.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

funny i haven't lost any power here in NW

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people have fought long and hard throughout history for all kinds of things. You did not.

Being born in a country that does not completely suck is a luxury, not something you deserved - a bit like being born into a wealthy family. You have nothing to be proud of as you yourself likely did not contribute much to the US being the way it is today.

The issue, and the insult, is that you think what you experienced in Washington DC is anything like what people in third world countries experience - it isn't. Comparing the two is an insult.

There is a quote attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette who upon hearing that the peasants had no bread said "then why don't they eat cake?"
For her having no bread was a minor inconvenience, she did not understand the concept of not having any food at all.
Your insult and ignorance may not be as extreme but is along these lines.

Re:Just like PEPCO in Washington D.C..

[dcw3]

Maybe if you moved to Fairfax with the rest of us 1%ers, and not living in the People's Republic of Maryland, you would have only experienced the 4 days of downtime that we did.

As for 3rd world, you're trolling, exaggerating, or clueless, with the comparison. We're not anywhere close to 3rd world.

O dear

[Ashenkase]

I am shocked and appalled that such an advanced power grid has crumbled: http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/cable.jpg

Thorium reactors

[Firethorn]

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.

Re:Thorium reactors

[h4rr4r]

Absolutely, but let us not pretend that right now LFTR is further along than wind power.

Re:Thorium reactors

[tnk1]

Wind power doesn't produce base power load, it just doesn't. And there is not enough battery capacity out there to store the surplus to even it out. There certainly isn't enough to do all of that economically. So the concept of "further along" isn't sufficient here.

By all means, build more turbines, but the fact that wind power has been around for a long time doesn't mean it is any more suitable for what a coal plant or a nuclear plant is there for. It is not going to provide power uniformly enough to rely on to solve brown/black out situations .

I get that thorium reactors are not quite there yet, but other nuclear plants are. Thorium has some features that may be worth putting into place over the usual suspects, so it should probably be considered moving forward if we're willing to build plants of new design.

Re:Thorium reactors

[h4rr4r]

It works, as opposed to it works in theory. I would also say the electric car is further along than LFTR, even though they do not do the same task. I was not comparing their suitability only the insane claim that LFTR was ready to be used for serious work.

HP support?

[stanlyb]

Sorry, we don't have electricity. Call us later....a lot later....not so soon...

Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying about)

[khoonirobo]

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.

People there are used to this

[pmathew]

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 ..

Re:People there are used to this

[khoonirobo]

The problem is because it's a grid failure, high priority endpoints like railways and metro which would normally not lose power in regular load shedding are down. Homes and offices are less affected ofcourse due to backup generators.

But hundreds of trains have been cancelled, power was out in big government hospitals like AIIMS and Safdarjung (which would not normally be targeted during load-shedding).

Delhi Metro was not working causing traffic chaos as commuters took to private vehicles, taxis, autos and buses.

So all in all was a big deal

Re:People there are used to this

[Anonymous Coward]

true, proud to be an Indian.

Re:People there are used to this

[Anonymous Coward]

Here ! Here !

Most folks do not understand how resilient the Indian population is.

This sort of mass scale grid failures a extremely rare and there is no Nation on this planet either immune to it or prepared for it! Case in point, the North American Blackout due to grid failure.

Yes this scale of events is scary, but does not bring the life to a standstill, as it would in US or other western nations, where you can't even buy a candy if there is no power and POS terminals are down. Also, most sales transactions in the country happen using real tender, not credit cards, so life goes on in most such cases.

Hopefully, this event will turn out to be a blessing in disguise, if Government and long term planning agencies learn from it and put in place fall back arrangements, not just in India, but the world over!.

better than earth hour

[Anonymous Coward]

This should save way more energy than turning off the eiffel tower for an hour.

Have they tried

[Anonymous Coward]

unplugging it and plugging it back in?

homer simpson messed up the power grid

[Joe_Dragon]

homer simpson messed up the power grid and he is union so they can't get rid of him.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[mostwanted678452056]

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).

Corruption in India

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The corruption in India (and Pakistan, China and Bangladesh etc) is different from the corruption in the western countries. In the west, corrupt officials do illegal things for bribes of money or power or women. In the East corrupt officials demand money to do their regular job for which they get paid salaries. Simple things like getting a driver's license or getting fitness certificate for your bus/truck, or getting a residency certificate to apply for a bank loan, or getting a legal heir certificate to probate a will, or to register a property deed, or police verification report to apply for passport or no objection certificate from the Urban Development Authority for something or the other, or from the water board for something else .... any thing you need to do, there are two things that are certain:

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.

Re:Corruption in India

[CrimsonAvenger]

In the East corrupt officials demand money to do their regular job for which they get paid salaries. Simple things like getting a driver's license or getting fitness certificate for your bus/truck, or getting a residency certificate to apply for a bank loan, or getting a legal heir certificate to probate a will, or to register a property deed, or police verification report to apply for passport or no objection certificate from the Urban Development Authority for something or the other, or from the water board for something else .... any thing you need to do, there are two things that are certain:

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.

What you are describing here is NOT "corruption". It is "graft". Subtle difference, possibly, but significant, from a cultural perspective - some cultures have no problems with graft (it's assumed to be one of the perks of the job)....

Re:Corruption in India

[Raenex]

I'd count graft as at least a subset of corruption. It's still rotten.

Re:Corruption in India

[Anonymous Coward]

In México we have both kinds of corruption!!!

Re:Corruption in India

[CrimsonAvenger]

I'd count graft as at least a subset of corruption. It's still rotten.

That's your privilege, but it pretty much requires that you ignore the actual meaning of the words. Graft is bribes to do your job, corruption is bribes to break the law.

Note that accepting bribes to do your job is not illegal or immoral in most cultures.

Re:Corruption in India

[Raenex]

pretty much requires that you ignore the actual meaning of the words

graft: "the acquisition of gain (as money) in dishonest or questionable ways; also : illegal or unfair gain"

corruption: "a. impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle; b. inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery); d. a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct"

Note that accepting bribes to do your job is not illegal or immoral in most cultures.

References needed.

Re:Corruption in India

[mellyra]

I'd count graft as at least a subset of corruption. It's still rotten.

That's your privilege, but it pretty much requires that you ignore the actual meaning of the words. Graft is bribes to do your job, corruption is bribes to break the law.

Note that accepting bribes to do your job is not illegal or immoral in most cultures.

economic literature on the subject does not make that distinction - the only common distinction is corruption without theft (e.g. "pay me a fee so I bump you to the top of the line") and corruption with theft (e.g. "pay me $10 and I will ignore the $40 speeding ticket I would have to write otherwise").

The first is relatively easy to combat as the people suffer from it and once you create awareness (ad campaigns, anonymous hotlines, ...) they are generally happy to help the administration in fighting it (South Africa had significant success with awareness campaigns). The second type is a real problem as the citizen and the official conspire to defraud the state and none of them has any interest in stopping that practice.

Re:Corruption in India

[doesnothingwell]

All these certificates must be obtained by bribing some official or another.

In the US we just have to pay the lawyers who later become politicians. Legal fees, bribes, just a matter of which thieves get the money for no real effort.

Re:Corruption in India

[Trogre]

Is tipping in restaurants rotten?

Re:Corruption in India

[Raenex]

This analogy is daft. Tipping is at the sole discretion of the customers and is not required to get service. Alternatively, if a standard tip is required by large parties for monopolizing servers the policy is upfront and not an unwritten rule held over your head by a government figure. And finally, if tipping really bothers you, you could always find a place to eat that doesn't expect tips.

Re:Corruption in India

[kbx911]

hi ive been lurking a lot on /. but only recently started posting while logged in, how do i "mod" or +1 ur comment. For the first time i understood the meaning and difference between Graft and Corruption and even such a simple definition (Graft is bribes to do your job, corruption is bribes to break the law.) changes my perspective on India. Ty.

Re:Corruption in India

[kbx911]

ty too, i do agree that graft and corruption are almost synonymous - i recently started noticing this term Graft in the Indian Media after that joke of a movement IAC-Anna-Ramdev started. And i agree only Indians and that too those who have been reading the news events of the last couple of years might want to differentiate what is defined as graft from what is defined as corruption. Actually i don't want to, i want corruption to be called corruption, dividing the severity of the crime in two different words, is like saying, it is okay to do the less severe crime. I wish India, all of it, starts thinking like that before i die.

Re:Corruption in India

[kbx911]

very well said, someone please tell me how to +1 a comment so i can show that it is appreciated?

Re:Corruption in India

[kbx911]

tipping the waiter is not of course, but tipping the gate-bitch to get u in before those who are also waiting and who were earlier than u, is corruption. But shows like Friends and other sitcoms did their job of telling the populace to embrace corruption and be like the producers of the show, when they feature deliberately-stuffed wannabe-comic scenes like chandler trying and failing at bribing the french-restaurant maitre-de or whatever (the one who takes ur name down as u wait).

Re:Corruption in India

[kbx911]

aaah the lawyers, their breed is the same worldwide, the ones in US, as u said enjoy the patronage of the you-know-whos that run your country from another far-off country.

fix fundamentals first

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why? Take a read (Nibiru/PlanetX/Marduk/Wormwoo

[ledow]

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.

No kidding

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:No kidding

[DerekLyons]

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.

No, the problem is that (as the grandparent opines) people are clueless. They hear memes (which almost invariably tell half the story) and then repeat them (blaming their bugaboo de jour), and hear them being repeated back at them (in the vast echo chamber that is the internet) - and all the sudden a "truth" is created where none exists before. They aren't looking for problems to solve, they're looking for stuff to blame the 1%ers, or the current party in power, or the Birchers or whoever for.

Re:No kidding

[div_2n]

Why travel to another country? You can do that without going outside the USA. There's some shockingly poor areas of the country that if someone were to simply show you some photos, you'd swear it was from a third world country.

Re:No kidding

[girlintraining]

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.

1 in 7 of those people are justified in that belief, since they're in jail. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country on the planet, by a significant margin. And some of our prisons are in places like... the desert, in Nevada, where this is no air conditioning, you sleep outdoors with cockroaches, and your housing consists of tents. If you decide to run... it's at least two weeks' walk in any direction, and once you leave, if the guards see you, they shoot to kill. Bonus: Whether you die from dehydration or bullets, they drag your body back through the prison and leave it there for the day as an example to the others before it's collected. 14% of the population presently lives in similar squalor, though perhaps without the cockroaches and lack of air conditioning.

So please, don't say that there aren't justified reasons for people to say the United States is not number one, since for the most part, people who say that say so because they were born here; And that's just as arrogant.

Re:No kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

1 in 7 of those people are justified in that belief, since they're in jail. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country on the planet, by a significant margin.

1 in 7 incarcerated? That would be over 40 million people! Who modded this crap up? Common sense should be enough to give pause, and actual figures of roughly 1 in 135 are readily available. We do top the list (due mostly to the wasteful war on drugs), but there are many smaller countries with incarceration rates greater than half of ours, and a few large countries such as Russia; the next 7 (mostly small) countries on the list have rates greater than 1 in 200. The next closest western nation (assuming Ukraine isn't considered "western") is UK at roughly 1 in 650, so we're far worse than any western nation, but that's not what you wrote.

- T

Re:No kidding

[1s44c]

I don't know what areas you are talking about but I have traveled around India and find it hard to believe anywhere in the US is quite like that.

Although Indians deny it India has rivers of sewage which in hot weather smell in a way that can't be described in words. It has people, and I mean the majority, taking dumps in the street because they don't have toilets, and I mean in cities not small towns. It has mice and rats like you would not believe. It has groups, and I mean groups of hundreds, of beggars who will follow anyone foreign around and beg all day. It has a massive population who sleep on the streets or in train stations. The trash mountains are literally mountains with people picking though them looking for anything of value.

Show me pictures of the US that look anywhere near that bad and I'll be astonished.

mine lifts don't have backup power?

[Joe_Dragon]

That does not seem very safe.

stupid headline is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

OTHER Half of India Without Electricity As Power Grid Crisis Deepens

there, FTFY

Smells like a lack of capitalism

[jasmusic]

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.

Paying attention? Start with you!

[dbIII]

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.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[Anonymous Coward]

Background: I'm an Indian, presently in Gurgaon (within National Capital Region) and yes, there has been a blackout since past few hours.

So stop goofing off in Slashdot and save your laptop's battery for something more important!

Did I say I absolutely believe them? No

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Call me paranoid (the city I live in is SO crime-ridden and violent that it teaches you 1 thing over time - that it's not how paranoid you are, but rather if you're paranoid enough). So as to your ad hominem attacks on myself, I don't care. Most current day source(s) I used state that which you do in essence, especially John Moore: Don't listen to a talk radio show host, do your OWN research! I did, and admittedly, it scared me. I felt like "No way, this is madness" but it doesn't mean I don't assign people from NASA, US Naval Maps, and others SOME credence and prep for the worst... the prophecies from The Book of Revelations, The Hopi Indians, Nostradamus, the IChing, Mother Shipton, and Nostradamus only supplemented it (to an extent but they are accurate on things TODAY oddly enough). So, in my opinion at least, if you don't YOU'RE the fool! Here's some more to listen to, costs you nothing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUMAuY32Cjc&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNdtb2ZKRU&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrROT5LQTNk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDydGJDCYfA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYt8Ltuk5xQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKrVnaVCE00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d70HG9V3yxs&feature=related

(This last one, 2 suns in the sky, I haven't watched, but I have seen others like it so, there you go. The IRAS satellites and Antarctic US viewing station are others including the global heatwave, the gulf stream stoppage 6/1/2012, earthquakes recently like mad? Only scare me more and again - I hope my sources are wrong, crazy/stupid, and that I am a fool for even paying them ANY heed at all (so, that make YOU happy? I hope so!)).

Were I anybody reading this? It can't hurt to prep yourself for situations like this anyhow, by:

1.) Learning to hunt (with bow and arrow over guns + ammo, those run out)

2.) How to do basic medical treatment/1st aid

3.) Get canned food

4.) Bottle a lot of fresh water (if not learn how to desalinate and treat water)

5.) Get seeds, and learn how to garden

6.) Get wood gathered for heating

Re:Did I say I absolutely believe them? No

[Anonymous Coward]

A mod down of the post I just replied to was based on what exactly?

Re:Did I say I absolutely believe them? No

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[Ichijo]

1. Demand *far* outstrips supply.

That's very easy to fix, even without adding supply.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[dbIII]

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?

India has electricity?

[Westwood0720]

Huh. I figured news artificial light and Twinkies have not reached there yet.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[0ld_d0g]

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.

Probably offtopic but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure this isn't really related, but...how come I can't reach my help desk?

Just wait ...

[Wansu]

The US will experience a massive outage like this one. India is handling this a lot better than we will.

Re:Just wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

We'd handle it better, if you turned our power on and off every week. When you go 20 years between major blackouts, it sucks more when it happens. Now, for a brownie point, ask yourself, and your neighbors, which they would rather have.

Re:Just wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

We had one, back in '03. It remains to be seen whether India's response is better or worse than ours was, but it does seem that they were at least better prepared for it (since they're accustomed to unreliable power). It worries me a great deal that we do not seem to have taken any meaningful steps to upgrade our own transmission infrastructure since 2003.

Re:Just wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they won't. There are redundant systems in place to prevent just that. Yes, we had smart people back in the day who designed this system to prevent such a catastrophe like in India that the whole nation goes into a black out. The western half of the United States will most likely not be affected by an outage from the Eastern Electrical grid. Yes, a certain region may go dark, but the rest of the US will continue on.

China's improved greatly

[DNS-and-BIND]

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.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[JohnnyBGod]

in contrast to the worldwide per capita annual average of 2600 kWh and 6200 kWh in the European Union.

This sentence makes my brain hurt.

Stuxnet again?

[Tasha26]

I ran out of foil.. so don't even bother saying it!

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[Westwood0720]

"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?

Didn't Enron Cause One Of The Larger Outages...

[Anonymous Coward]

By manipulating markets? If I remember, they actually phoned some power station employees.

could it be terrorism?

[peter303]

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.

Re:could it be terrorism?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Terrorism is the means by which a state inflicts mass-fear upon its respective population. It is, by and large, a manufactured phenomenon, either via false-flag or by deliberately incubating and covertly directing ignorant people into acts of terror.

All secret services are employed, not by the electorate, but rather by elitist power brokers, i.e., the banking elite. The elites like their status very much and are quite happy to use underhanded techniques to ensure their continued existence.

If the electrical grid was undermined by 'terrorists' you can be certain that the state endorsed it at the highest levels.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, look at it, one major blackout in 40 years. I'd call that a success. Feel free to compare that with India.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[khoonirobo]

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.

how long were the lines supposed to last

[BlackSnake112]

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.

Which half?

[PPH]

The half that pays for it? Or the half that just climbs a pole and hooks up illegally?

What's your zipcode?

[DaKong]

If you live in a place with low insolation (that's avg. hours of peak PV efficiency) and low average windspeed, then you have to have some water--a creek, brook, whatever--running through your property to have good chances of generating your own power needs.

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).

This cannot work

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This cannot work

[Firethorn]

Sun/wind off yours is not predictable

It's actually VERY predictable once you've expanded the install base to somewhere the size of the USA or Europe. It's not controllable though, which is why I mention peaking.

and nuclear too constant. You cannot vary the power from a NPP very much.

False, but a common mistake. BWRs have the capability to 'load follow' down to somewhat under 60% of capacity. With the correct construction, PWRs can go between 30-100%, at 5% a minute.

They're just typically not used in this fashion because nuclear power has the lowest marginal power cost going - it doesn't save significant amounts of money to load follow given that most of the costs are capital and operating, not fuel. So you literally shut off the coal plants before you start throttling nuclear. France does load following because they have just so much nuclear.

Gas power plants are for this use case

But NG plants aren't carbon neutral. Unless you're using biomass for the gas, which would be included in 'other', explicitly for peaking.

like reservoirs or battery farms

Or hydro, like I mentioned?

Coming soon to a grid near you

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Stuxentan was here

[Anonymous Coward]

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Ec'had!

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[Westwood0720]

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.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[bdabautcb]

And ~ $1.00 per person would 'provide universal access of electricity to its population'.

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[Anonymous Coward]

Try 4 in under 18 months.

And nothing of value was lost..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why? Take a read (Nibiru/PlanetX/Marduk/Wormwoo

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Nuclear reactors and base load

[presidenteloco]

Not trying to offend anyone, but how well is that nuclear going for supllying baseload power in Japan, or Ukraine for that matter?

So you're afraid of the irresponsible poor

[presidenteloco]

I worry a lot more about the irresponsible rich, because they have the resources to do a lot more damage with their mindless attitude.

Re:So you're afraid of the irresponsible poor

[Attila Dimedici]

That is as may be, but it has no bearing on the discussion about a story about large sections of India being without electricity and suggestions for how they can most easily avoid it happening again.

That was the Microsoft Research solution

[presidenteloco]

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?

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Some facts (just to avoid all the BS flying abo

[acoustix]

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.

Re: Nuclear reactors and base load

[ThatsMyNick]

Pretty well.

Do you hear AC DC

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the employees at the power grid hear ac/dc on their speakers :)

article miss one big reason..

[Anonymous Coward]

They been closing coal power plants to be more "green". I can understand why some writers would not want to say that, since Obama also wants to shut down coal power here in the US.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

How does that work during winter? Is the water in a tank exposed to the cold weather?

I gotta be accurate

[Firethorn]

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.

Re: Nuclear reactors and base load

[Firethorn]

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.

All Went according to 'Plan'

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Are we sure it wasn't Stuxnet hopping over...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we sure it wasn't Stuxnet hopping over from Iran?

Welcome to the Party

[LordDfg]

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.

Re:

[rinka]

The tank is insulated and generally stays hot for quite a while.

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).