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Can An 'OS For Electricity' Double the Efficiency of the Grid? (vox.com)
New submitter mesterha shares an "interesting article [from Vox] on how to optimize our use of electricity": Waste on the grid is the result of poor power quality, which can be ameliorated through digital control. Real-time measurement makes that possible. 3DFS technology, which the company conceives of as an "operating system for electricity," can not only track what's happening on the electricity sine wave from nanosecond to nanosecond, it can correct the sine wave from microsecond to microsecond, perfectly adapting it to the load it serves, eliminating waste." "They claim energy reduction of around 15% but anticipate their AI tuning can get eventually get 30%," writes Slashdot reader mesterha. "Seems too good to be true, but it has the support of publications like Popular Mechanics." [3DFS won one of Popular Mechanics' "breakthrough awards" in 2017.]
it's fun to read, but not terribly rigorous.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Drop in a couple of Voodoo 2 cards and run them on your electrical grid in SLI mode to get clean power!
They will just use it as an excuse to triple the cost. Did phone bills get cheaper? Did bandwidth get cheaper? Did rent get cheaper?
No.
Not it can't 30% max is nothing like double.
F**n click bate.
... so I'm leaning towards a "no" answer.
Actually, this sort of thing does have potential although non-electrical-engineers may not realize why. I have single phase (sort of almost 2Ã) at my farm. I installed a 3Ã digital phase converter (Phase Perfect for those who are interested) which uses very little power itself but generates a third phase and puts the other two in proper alignment so I can now run large motors (grinder, bandsaw in my butcher shop) efficiently. This makes the motors run smoother, cooler and last longer.
Power Factor Correction. They already do this.
Here is an incomplete list of creimer's accounts:
https://slashdot.org/~IDrinkFa...
https://slashdot.org/~cdreimer
https://slashdot.org/~criss69
https://slashdot.org/~Anonymou...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
https://slashdot.org/~ILoveFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IHateFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IAteFatC...
https://slashdot.org/~ITapeFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IApeFatC...
https://slashdot.org/~IPrayFat...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
https://slashdot.org/~The+Fat+...
I thought I am cool for getting multiple publications in Nature and Science.
Still havenâ(TM)t cracked Popular Mechanics â" well not directly anyway. :(
Most informative thing I've read all day. I must say.
I could see a 15-30% reduction in the amount of wasted power, but the overall power waste is probably ~10% so reducing the overall waste by 30% would be rather impressive.
Its all about cost. Thicker wires will also reduce losses, (as will coaxial cables etc. How does the cost of this compare to the cost of other methods of waste reduction?
Turn off your phone's fucking stupid smart quotes shit you asshole!
Got grid connected solar that will only turn off when the grid is down? Let the power company turn solar on/off at any time with their own network command.
That gives the grid control of all power that pushed back into their grid.
Got AC? Let the power company turn the AC on/off depending on weather and what they want to do with their grid.
Make everyone connected to the grid pay extra for a new huge new grid battery.
The new big battery will allow the grid to respond to slight changes in demands to the grid.
By having control of your AC and grid connected solar the grid can make more profit.
Suggest every new dwelling gets solar with a network on/off command connection to ensure the grid can control all new solar.
Suggest a battery pack for homes thats also grid controlled. So the grid can charge and access battery power as needed per dwelling.
Will this result in a better use of the grid?
Exisiting power generation can last longer without having to build more generation.
Thats an efficiency in the ability to generate profit every year.
The people living in a dwelling will have to be without their AC for hours for that to glance out.
All your AC are belong to the power company.
The power company will decide when on a 100 deg day your "networked" AC will be turned on and off on their grid.
No AC for you.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Trump is an imbecile AND a genius.
Go Clinton in 2032!
He's referring to "opposite phase", which is common in the US. You get two 120-volt phases that are 180 degrees apart.
You can go across the two phases to get 240 volts for high-power appliances such as stove and clothes dryer, but that's all you can do without special equipment. Three phase requires three sources 120 degrees apart, phase-to-phase.
Built on, and contributed to, open hardware also.
www.se-instruments.com
Ten years ago we charged $2.50/GB and we were cheap. My old business partner still has the page up:
http://xcite.net/hosting/
Current. Pricing is about 8 cents / GB.
When I was a kid long distance calls were about $1/minute. That was the "fair, minimal profit" price set by the government. Then long distance rates were deregulated and Sprint dropped their price to 10 cents per minute - a 90% reduction in price right away. Current pricing is about a penny per minute, unless you pay $30 for unlimited minutes.
Whoever you've been listening to, whoever has been giving you ideas about how the economy works, has clearly been lying to you, telling you the exact opposite of the truth. Might be time to get some new sources of information.
Iâ(TM)m tryinâ(TM) to. Itâ(TM)s hard to find. I couldnâ(TM)t locate it. I did find a button but it doesnâ(TM)t work. Whereâ(TM)s the switch? I called my friend and asked her, sheâ(TM)s going to get back to me. It might take her a while because when i asked her âoehowâ(TM)s it going?â she said sheâ(TM)s upset about her dad. Apparently heâ(TM)s going to jail. So anyway, I guess I tried, but I canâ(TM)t do it. Maybe it shouldnâ(TM)t be messed with, so letâ(TM)s just deal with it. Iâ(TM)ll just ask how youâ(TM)re using it.
Snake oil as far as everyone there is concerned. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/...
My current phone bill is $35/month. That's an all-inclusive price, I don't pay $1-$2 per minute for long distance like I did in 1980. Don't pay extra for call waiting, caller ID, etc. Of course that also includes internet; I'm posting this on my phone.
That's less than half of the *minimum* you could pay in 1980, if you didn't make any long distance calls. Calls from one side of Dallas to other were long distance. The average cost for basic phone service, without any long distance, caller ID, call waiting, etc was $64 in constant dollars ($19.64 in 1980 dollars).
If you had basic features like call waiting, call forwarding, and called ID, the cost would be about $77. No long distance, though - dad will be so SO pissed if you make a long distance call.
> Waste on the grid is the result of poor power quality
Total average losses on the US grid as a whole is about 7%.
This isn't a problem that needs fixing. Sure, getting that down to 5% would be great, but first we really need EVs.
...make this OS for the grid air-gapped from the Internet has never use Windows! Have the NSA offer their secret secure version of Linux and maintain it.
I don't know if it's possible to use more buzz words in a article. What exactly do you mean when you say 'electricity' in a supposedly scientific explanation of a process? We don't generate electricity, we use the existing electricity in matter to transform and/or transport electrical energy. The KE of 'current electricity' (usually electrons) is a loss factor in the transmission of electrical field energy but the VOX article mixes the two into a unrecognizable mess if you are looking for technical details.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Some places that finer control of electrical load equipment might pay off are in things like variable speed motor control. Instead of spinning a pump or fan at a fixed speed, vary it to match system demand. This is becoming more economical as the power electronics needed are dropping in price. But it is already prior art.
Have gnu, will travel.
Here is an E-mail I just sent to the author:
I just read your article on 3DFS technology. I have been in power generation for 17 years, and I think I can explain the problem you encountered with the professor of electrical engineering who hung up on you. My bullshit detector was going off pretty hard due to a single claim in the article, which you repeated a few times. After reading the full article, I think the technology is entirely possible, and even plausible. The problem is that the conversion losses in the DOE graph are not the same conversion losses that 3DFS is referring to. The DOE conversion losses are looking at the thermal efficiency of the generation being turned in to electricity. For example, a single unit at my nuclear plant operates at about 1675 MW thermal output, but the electric generator only puts out about 570 MW of electricity, of which about another 30 MW is used by the station to power pumps, fans, and other loads. While having a grid full of 3DFS equipment hooked up might increase that efficiency, it would be miniscule. 3DFS’ technology really effects everything from “net generation of electricity 13.70” to the right. The conversion losses 3DFS would be improving is almost entirely on the load side. I cannot rightly say that it will make an average wall-wart AC to DC converter go from 30% efficient to 95% efficient without a much more in-depth understanding, but there is much more room for those kind of gains within the laws of physics than the conversion losses in the DOE graph. Those are limited by carnot efficiency, which applies to all heat engines, like the rankine cycle or brayton cycle. If you correct that deficiency, I suspect that you will get much less negative feedback on the article. I hope this helps!
There is a lot of innovation here and everybody has an opinion. I spend a lot of my days talking with engineers who continue to tell me how my technology works. Anthropologically it is fascinating to watch so many people twist their heads around in circles attempting to figure out what we are doing, so here I am to answer questions. For the record, I am not always very polite in my responses, and kind of a smartass, but this comes with the territory as we will all see when the trolls come out to play. So, ladies and gentlemen, Where shall I begin?
There is a lot of innovation here and everybody has an opinion. I spend a lot of my days talking with engineers who continue to tell me how my technology works. Anthropologically it is fascinating to watch so many people twist their heads around in circles attempting to figure out what we are doing, so here I am to answer questions. For the record, I am not always very polite in my responses, and kind of a smartass, but this comes with the territory as we will all see when the trolls come out to play. So, ladies and gentlemen, Where shall I begin?
Making the web rounds about your product. I've had my say about it elsewhere.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
I've seen way too many overly skeptical reactions on your product. To me, the technology looks amazing and sensible and the approach you have chosen with regard to protecting the technology from abuse by greed seems very noble.
I'm afraid I don't have the EE chops to ask you the right technical questions, but I do want to wish you luck and urge you not to be demotivated by the onslaught of kneejerk skepticism. I think people have a hard time in accepting stuff that sounds too good to be true. The potential savings your company cites are huge, so it is not that surprising that people are wary. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that.
They say the proof is in the pudding, so for me this was the most convincing line in the Vox article:
"Power consumption dropped by 20 percent, server temperature dropped by 20 degrees"
It's pretty hard to argue with numbers like that. So if could ask anything: do you have more of these examples? Hard data from external (reputable) sources on power and waste heat savings?
The individual savings always varies depending on the setup and power consumption, but the 10-15% is fairly standard on non-inductive loads and 20-25% on inductive loads. Over the coming months, we are releasing a "rental" program, where prospective clients can temporarily (albeit expensively) install Software-Defined Electricity into power networks and experience it directly so that the benefits are realized firsthand. By the end of the year, the market will be deluged with information regarding the savings and improvements. In the mean time, here is a report from a live data center showing the effect on electricity consumption of two separate tier 1 server racks. https://3dfs.com/download/3dfs...