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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.]
The root problem is mostly cheap/crappy industrial AC motors. Replace them with variable speed DC motors and the reactive load mostly goes away. The new motors will pay for themselves in a few years with lower energy bills.
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.
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.
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.
Snake oil as far as everyone there is concerned. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/...
... so I'm leaning towards a "no" answer.
Not even close. Transmission lines are about 90-95% efficient.
Grids on the other hand have on top of that: multiple stages of transformers, switch rooms, losses through reactive power, losses due to harmonics, slow reaction to load changes and shifts, not to mention major losses due to backfeeding from end users generation like solar through systems that were designed to be efficient feeding the other direction.
The answer is still no, but that's because they're playing buzzword bingo rather than just calling it an intelligent control system. Not everything needs "an OS" or "AI".