Sure, whatever is good to adapt quickly still, try to have a transition strategy for the long term if the short-term, best bang for the buck strategy isn't optimal in the mid-term or long term. I like what you suggest and I wasn't aware that it was the "The general approach". Thanks!
The only thing that makes me smile a bit is: "The investment is likely a lot less than one might think". It always is before you actually try to make realistic estimates and even then, many projects still nowadays cost 5 to 10 times what they were estimated at.
Anyway, it all boils down to the cost, can you make a ballpark estimate on how much it would cost to update a sub-station deserving 100,000 people like you mentioned in your model?
Very nice post! +1 informative! For example, I never heard about DC making "trees grow toward one of the wires" before:)
What I envision is a grid that would supply whatever it can to many small distribution centers that would themselves have capacity to regulate power for local usage to a much further extend that what they do now. DC seems more intuitive for me for that "future unsynchronized raw power distribution grid" but AC might do as well, I don't know for sure at this point.
Whatever DC or AC, the distribution grid shouldn't have to give guaranteed with regards to voltage (or frequency stability in case of AC) and the burden to regulate the power for local needs would be pushed towards local distribution station. The grid should only transfer raw energy.
Sure! You synchronize to the grid trivially when you are a small source and the grid frequency is maintained by a relative small amount of big generators acting as the stable reference and representing, say 95% of the power supply.
It becomes harder when there is mostly only smaller source varying in output a lot (wind, solar) representing say 60% of the grid contribution and that's what we are moving towards. Each source now have a potential impact on the overall grid frequency. Where is your stable reference then?
As long as there is say, no more than 10% of wind and solar, it is easy to use the stable generator as reference but the more you get smaller output varying DC sources, the more impact they have on the frequency of the grid itself, thus on the reference.
My microwave oven does that too -- meaning, it switches direction each time I run it -- but I think it's a mechanical thing.
Hehe... thanks for replying!
I have just tested my microwave and it is completely random like when you do heads or tails, e.g. you can have h-h-t-h-t-t-t-h but it tends towards 50%/50% in the long run. It doesn't "switches direction each time I run it":(
Test your microwave again and report back! You will need to do like 10-20 tries to really make sure...:)
Is it technically feasible?: Of course it is! It would cost money although and the electric companies are trying to lower their costs as much as possible.
Currently the synchronization is done naturally due to the properties of inter-connected generators. To implement what you are suggesting we would need a completely new infrastructure with ntp or the like connected hardware everywhere and that would never be as precise, easy and natural as the inter-connected generators which naturally and automatically keep in sync.
Only being a little out of sync (a few millisec, a few milliHz) when a generator joins the grid can have bad consequences and break the generator. Making a generator join the grid is a critical step but afterwards, it keeps in sync by itself. Having a generator join the grid is already hard enough with hardware similar to what you are suggesting probably being used, imagine relying on it 24/7. What happens when the "sync network" goes down, etc.?
Who knows? Maybe Edison was right after all, especially if you think about newer DC power lines that looses less energy in transport. The power grids may eventually be completely revamped but in the mean time, it does seem like we will have to cope with a loss of frequency stability in order to use more renewable energy sources.
In case some don't know, on a typical electric grid, all generators rotate at exactly the same speed, the "weaker" (not "smaller") ones getting energy from the others to maintain the same speed and vise-versa so everything automatically balance without any fancy circuitry required to achieve that. There is only 2 or 3 grids in North-America spanning at least between US and Canada with each and every generator producing exactly 60Hz, perfectly in sync with all the others on the same grid.
Hehe! It will make the strobe light on the turntable lie too so you would only be able to notice with your ears!
Seriously, the grid will still maintain a decently constant frequency so you shouldn't notice anything when playing a record. You may loose/gain a few seconds a day although, it might add up or cancel after a month or so.
Currently, power grids adjust their frequency every day so even after a year without a power outage, your grid frequency driven clock should be precise to the second at least.
I could see it doing that 50% of the time depending on which side of the cycle it falls when power comes back but every time is definitely weird! Are you sure it was always doing this?
I have a microwave/convection oven like that: 50% of the time the inner plate will rotate clockwise, 50% counter-clock wise. It is designed like that from the factory since it doesn't really matter which way it rotates.
This seems to nail it pretty well, I remember 3-phase motors systematically turning backward when the phases were inverted. How your friend's clock could invert rotation systematically every time is rather puzzling although : https://www.quora.com/What-det...
True, as you said, electric companies would adjust cycles once a day to maintain precise time for their electrical grid attached clock based on a number of cycles per day like 60*86400 to maintain daily. So, much more precise than a cheap oscillator.
Apparently, it is much more harder to maintain the correct number of cycles a day with DC sources like some wind and solar. Wind turbine outputting AC have a technical challenge with regards to keeping a constant rotation speed so the AC ones often have their AC output converted to DC then back to AC again to feed the grid.
In case some don't know, on a typical electric grid, all generators rotate at exactly the same speed, the "weaker" (not "smaller") ones getting energy from the others to maintain the same speed and vise-versa so everything automatically balance without any fancy circuitry required to achieve that. There is only 2 or 3 grids in North-America spanning at least between US and Canada with each and every generator producing exactly 60Hz, perfectly in sync with all the others on the same grid.
Anyway, with a larger part of electricity coming from renewable sources that are not "in sync" with the grid, maintaining a constant cycle becomes much more problematic so electric companies have asked governments to be relieved from that duty. It is coming to USA too.
Hehe, of course, unicode doesn't "run" strictly speaking, please read what I just replied above.
Furthermore, the systems I was talking about happily run UTF-8 compatible web application like Slashdot could be. There is no need to run my root shell with UTF-8 support although for my use cases so why should I enable UTF-8 support for my root shell and daemons? Why should I make UTF-8 system wide default?
It means that the system can do UTF-8 but it uses LANG=en_US by default and it expects its configuration files to be en_US.
I don`t trust Unicode to run natively on any systems that I manage. Of course, those systems support Unicode at the application level if needed although.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for your reply,
Sure, whatever is good to adapt quickly still, try to have a transition strategy for the long term if the short-term, best bang for the buck strategy isn't optimal in the mid-term or long term. I like what you suggest and I wasn't aware that it was the "The general approach". Thanks!
The only thing that makes me smile a bit is: "The investment is likely a lot less than one might think". It always is before you actually try to make realistic estimates and even then, many projects still nowadays cost 5 to 10 times what they were estimated at.
Anyway, it all boils down to the cost, can you make a ballpark estimate on how much it would cost to update a sub-station deserving 100,000 people like you mentioned in your model?
Cheers,
So, it is kind of a Unicode hack?
Unicode wasn't allowed initially in domain names if I recall correctly.
Well, I posted something similar yesterday:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
I guess my point was that massive investments will be needed to revamp the grid if we are serious about using wind and solar.
Very nice post! +1 informative! For example, I never heard about DC making "trees grow toward one of the wires" before :)
What I envision is a grid that would supply whatever it can to many small distribution centers that would themselves have capacity to regulate power for local usage to a much further extend that what they do now. DC seems more intuitive for me for that "future unsynchronized raw power distribution grid" but AC might do as well, I don't know for sure at this point.
Whatever DC or AC, the distribution grid shouldn't have to give guaranteed with regards to voltage (or frequency stability in case of AC) and the burden to regulate the power for local needs would be pushed towards local distribution station. The grid should only transfer raw energy.
Cheers,
Sure! You synchronize to the grid trivially when you are a small source and the grid frequency is maintained by a relative small amount of big generators acting as the stable reference and representing, say 95% of the power supply.
It becomes harder when there is mostly only smaller source varying in output a lot (wind, solar) representing say 60% of the grid contribution and that's what we are moving towards. Each source now have a potential impact on the overall grid frequency. Where is your stable reference then?
As long as there is say, no more than 10% of wind and solar, it is easy to use the stable generator as reference but the more you get smaller output varying DC sources, the more impact they have on the frequency of the grid itself, thus on the reference.
Mostly true but you try to avoid the "loud BANG" with nowadays giant size turbine. They don't like it that much! :)
This even contain your lamp example as a reference to the old way to do it:
https://cdn.selinc.com/assets/...
Smaller generator are easier to synchronize simply because they have less inertia.
My microwave oven does that too -- meaning, it switches direction each time I run it -- but I think it's a mechanical thing.
Hehe... thanks for replying!
I have just tested my microwave and it is completely random like when you do heads or tails, e.g. you can have h-h-t-h-t-t-t-h but it tends towards 50%/50% in the long run. It doesn't "switches direction each time I run it" :(
Test your microwave again and report back! You will need to do like 10-20 tries to really make sure... :)
hehehe...
Is it technically feasible?: Of course it is! It would cost money although and the electric companies are trying to lower their costs as much as possible.
https://phys.org/news/2011-06-...
Currently the synchronization is done naturally due to the properties of inter-connected generators. To implement what you are suggesting we would need a completely new infrastructure with ntp or the like connected hardware everywhere and that would never be as precise, easy and natural as the inter-connected generators which naturally and automatically keep in sync.
Only being a little out of sync (a few millisec, a few milliHz) when a generator joins the grid can have bad consequences and break the generator. Making a generator join the grid is a critical step but afterwards, it keeps in sync by itself. Having a generator join the grid is already hard enough with hardware similar to what you are suggesting probably being used, imagine relying on it 24/7. What happens when the "sync network" goes down, etc.?
Who knows? Maybe Edison was right after all, especially if you think about newer DC power lines that looses less energy in transport. The power grids may eventually be completely revamped but in the mean time, it does seem like we will have to cope with a loss of frequency stability in order to use more renewable energy sources.
In case some don't know, on a typical electric grid, all generators rotate at exactly the same speed, the "weaker" (not "smaller") ones getting energy from the others to maintain the same speed and vise-versa so everything automatically balance without any fancy circuitry required to achieve that. There is only 2 or 3 grids in North-America spanning at least between US and Canada with each and every generator producing exactly 60Hz, perfectly in sync with all the others on the same grid.
Hehe! It will make the strobe light on the turntable lie too so you would only be able to notice with your ears!
Seriously, the grid will still maintain a decently constant frequency so you shouldn't notice anything when playing a record. You may loose/gain a few seconds a day although, it might add up or cancel after a month or so.
Currently, power grids adjust their frequency every day so even after a year without a power outage, your grid frequency driven clock should be precise to the second at least.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
I could see it doing that 50% of the time depending on which side of the cycle it falls when power comes back but every time is definitely weird! Are you sure it was always doing this?
I have a microwave/convection oven like that: 50% of the time the inner plate will rotate clockwise, 50% counter-clock wise. It is designed like that from the factory since it doesn't really matter which way it rotates.
This seems to nail it pretty well, I remember 3-phase motors systematically turning backward when the phases were inverted. How your friend's clock could invert rotation systematically every time is rather puzzling although :
https://www.quora.com/What-det...
True, as you said, electric companies would adjust cycles once a day to maintain precise time for their electrical grid attached clock based on a number of cycles per day like 60*86400 to maintain daily. So, much more precise than a cheap oscillator.
Apparently, it is much more harder to maintain the correct number of cycles a day with DC sources like some wind and solar. Wind turbine outputting AC have a technical challenge with regards to keeping a constant rotation speed so the AC ones often have their AC output converted to DC then back to AC again to feed the grid.
In case some don't know, on a typical electric grid, all generators rotate at exactly the same speed, the "weaker" (not "smaller") ones getting energy from the others to maintain the same speed and vise-versa so everything automatically balance without any fancy circuitry required to achieve that. There is only 2 or 3 grids in North-America spanning at least between US and Canada with each and every generator producing exactly 60Hz, perfectly in sync with all the others on the same grid.
Anyway, with a larger part of electricity coming from renewable sources that are not "in sync" with the grid, maintaining a constant cycle becomes much more problematic so electric companies have asked governments to be relieved from that duty. It is coming to USA too.
Exactly, it shouldn't be too hard to patch this even if this isn't done at the server level.
Given the size of the hole, I like to think that sysadmins and network admins should get sufficient pressure to patch this relatively quickly.
Those system are the steam powered version! Newer systems are obviously AI based.
View pictures of such digital systems here:
http://asiaprint.kz/index.php?...
Well they better hurry because those memcached servers are going to get patched one way or another.
Hehe, of course, unicode doesn't "run" strictly speaking, please read what I just replied above.
Furthermore, the systems I was talking about happily run UTF-8 compatible web application like Slashdot could be. There is no need to run my root shell with UTF-8 support although for my use cases so why should I enable UTF-8 support for my root shell and daemons? Why should I make UTF-8 system wide default?
It means that the system can do UTF-8 but it uses LANG=en_US by default and it expects its configuration files to be en_US.
See here for further details:
https://docs.slackware.com/sla...
It means that the system can do UTF-8 but it uses LANG=en_US by default and it expects its configuration files to be en_US.
See here for further details:
https://docs.slackware.com/sla...
Blaming your problems on the locations of the servers really doesn't hold water.
Holding water raises the chances of sinking a lot.
With all the SJW around these days, you might have a point.
I don`t trust Unicode to run natively on any systems that I manage. Of course, those systems support Unicode at the application level if needed although.
Same for me!
I even took my first bicycle ride of the year since it is amazingly warm up here in Alaska for this time of the year.
Funny, I haven`t seen that so called "beta" ever once in my life, Maybe I am on some kind of whitelist or something.
Anyway, what did it look like?
way to show those creimertards how to behave whipslash!
fuck you creimer!
ISO-8859-1 (latin charset) won`t help you much with Russian specific chars
whipslash for editor role please!