Regardless of how you produce the electricity the most economically efficient answer to the inherent problems of peaks, troughs, bursts and breakdowns is a large well managed grid with built in generation/transmission redundancy and plenty of pump storage capacity.
Actually, the most economically efficient solution is to eliminate the peaks and troughs. Pumped energy storage has at best a.95^2*.985^2 efficiency (pump efficiency times motor efficiency) or 87.5%. (That is assuming around 10,000HP system; at 500HP you would be about 78%.) That compares pretty reasonably to the sodium-sulfur batteries (87%). In contrast, there is only about a 7-10% penalty for thermal storage (chilled water).
Do agree that the transmission systems need to be in place to make things work properly though.
Wind forecasts 24-hours out are fairly accurate. It is trivial to regulate maximum turbine output based on scheduled wind and a tolerance factor. The challenge is you need to maintain spinning reserve in other resources that can accommodate that tolerance... which can easily be solved economically by requiring wind operators to hedge generation variability by supporting spinning reserve plants.
The problem is that the wind providers are trying to maximize output without compensating for under-delivering.
We are legally required to keep every file for 7 years from project completion. We will never erase anything, because even after that timeframe your ability to defend yourself from lawsuit is much better if you have everything....and we aren't even in a high risk business for lawsuits!
We could easily archive 70% of our data, but there really isn't an incentive as last years' data is 20% smaller than this years', and the pattern always continues.
Southern California Edison requires two ventilating pylons for each manhole. They are much bigger than you might expect, and need to be spaced apart. It greatly increases planning complexity.
Methane build-up is only one cause though. Venting that causes...odors... that people tend to not want to be near. The more common cause is failure of oil-filled equipment ranging from link switches to transformers to oil-insulated cables. When these go you need someplace for the explosion to expand to... or you will destroy everything in the manhole.
This is an interesting solution to the problem, but I have trouble understanding how it is more effective than root-cause analysis and post-incident review of data they already have. It isn't like the combination of factors is the problem... more like aging and over-burdened equipment that should already be on a predictive-maintenance plan.
All I can say is it is sure nicer to have a 3:30am sunrise and 10:30pm sunset than a 10:30am sunrise and 3:30pm sunset! I don't know how Swedes deal with the annual variation.
I also don't understand some of my sister-in-law's quirks... Solar powered garden lights and lighting candles at 9:00 outside even though we will finish almost before sunset, and easily before "dusk".
The language is hard, if not impossible to master as an English speaker. There is one sports commentator that moved from England ~20 years ago, and people still laugh at his accent.
I was about 80-90% satisfied at launch; I could use my bluetooth keyboard from my ancient Palm, take it with me as a laptop substitute when traveling for work or personal, and in a crunch write a report in the notepad app and e-mail it to a co-worker to format and PDF. Now, I'm closer to 95% satisfied after getting a spreadsheet/word processor app and a few other gems.
What I hate is the absurd organization and search capability of the AppStore. Yes, I know about 3rd party tracking/review sites, yes, I am willing to waste hours searching... and ultimately, yes, I am willing to pay $5-10 to try something that may not meet my expectations.
But, I am quickly getting to the point where expensive ($30-80) apps have reviews that state they don't live up to stated functionality, and it is becoming impossible to really experiment with different use-cases.
By far though, I get more satisfaction using the device as a content-creation vehicle rather than a consumption device. Consumption is lost on the ads that cannot be blocked that in turn screw up the page formatting.
(Oh, and it pisses the living sh!t out of me that Slashdot jumps down half a page when you expand a comment!)
Because the other cell phone companies think it is "competition" with their expensive licensed frequencies. They want sell you a femtocell that has significantly less value that helps keep you locked into their system.
T-Mo doesn't want to invest in full coverage, so UMA is a great idea for them.
UMA should also do better at firewall and NAT traversal.
No, Black Start capability is not a function of the fuel, it is a function of the design. A gas-fired turbine plant needs reciprocating engines (typically diesel) to start compressors, circulate water and steam, and controls to be capable of a black start. Even the diesel generator needs power to start... usually batteries.
Since these things add cost, many facilities require grid power for startup.
After the blackouts in the NE several years back, more facilities have been providing black-start capability, but by no means all.
The NG plants that are idled are single stage systems. More and more dual stage HRSG plants are being built because gas is so cheap, and costs can easily be hedged to manage future costs.
What I find more interesting for natural gas are the MW scale fuel cell systems that can add distributed generation capacity to the grid. We are seeing higher efficiency and only low-grade waste heat now.
Exactly; the miscarriage here is that you get slapped with an ETF for being in a place without reception. Covering the depreciated hardware subsidy is one thing, but the idea that you can charge someone extra for the cost of acquiring a new customer is absurd.
One of my clients has automated scripts that zip any file over 20k. Every spreadsheet gets zipped... not being able to access the archives is quite a PITA.
The more detail you have on component usage, the more effective of a solution you can make. If you have 20 dryers running at once across different homes, cycle the heat on and off every minute and you save some energy....But, if you also control the heat level with the internal humidity and exhaust vent humidity, you might be able to optimize heat a little more. Same thing with the tumbler speed; maybe you can somehow optimize that based on how heavily loaded the dryer is. Parametric optimization takes a lot of work, but can easily give you the same results with 10% less energy consumed.
The waste isn't that they "produce too much power;" they can only produce what can be used and need to carefully balance production with usage.
The main source of waste is when the grid is loaded at its peak; transformers and transmission lines all have significantly higher losses as load increases. Anything that can be done to flatten daily (and seasonal) demand thus helps to reduce parasitic losses.
Ultimately, I think distributed generation, be it residential rooftop solar or a hospital co-generation plant, is going to make more of a dent in parasitic losses than forcing people to run their dryers at night...
Accurate accounting of income is easy for a small/one-man show. Expensesare another matter altogether, which is what the US is moving to. If you have $200k in gross income and have non-trivial expenses, your average expense size might be $20, but inncomewould usually be one or two orders of magnitude higher.
We have a full-time book keeper and quarterly CPA reviews... But our expenses are tracked primarily by credit card statements. Individual transaction tracking would require us to spend 15% of our salaries on non-revenue producing people, which is unsustainable.
Good points; the iOS (hate the name!) development seems to favor the startup mentality rather than a corporate cycle. But, all this really means is you start with fewer monolithic projects, and chase larger projects as you gain experience with the process.
$1B in developer income to-date isn't enough for a $1MM project, but a $10k project can be viable, even with the extra 5% rejection risk.
This type of day-trading provides absolutely no value to the economy and should be regulated to death. Also, I have a hard time believing it would work in the long term, as the news is a lagging indicator 90+% of the time. It might work for shorting in that respect... but even that would be too late and high risk.
All these quant systems seem to do is increase volatility at the expense of the market establishing a general direction.
I'm all for an IRS withholding of 1% on sales of assets held less than a week, and I am a fairly active trader.
Spectrum is an artificial scarcity. While functions that can be wired should be, it is effective allocation and localization of spectrum that is needed to maximize effectiveness.
On the electricity analogy, you pay a fixed demand (bandwidth) charge, and variable costs for energy (total data). Fixed costs cover all...fixed costs, and the incremental charges cover...
AT&T has no incremental costs.
The funny thing is the telcos really shoot themselves with these decisions. Have they forgot their struggles not two years against wifi?!
Slashdot Mirror
iOS 4 has complex password support.
Actually, the most economically efficient solution is to eliminate the peaks and troughs. Pumped energy storage has at best a .95^2*.985^2 efficiency (pump efficiency times motor efficiency) or 87.5%. (That is assuming around 10,000HP system; at 500HP you would be about 78%.) That compares pretty reasonably to the sodium-sulfur batteries (87%). In contrast, there is only about a 7-10% penalty for thermal storage (chilled water).
Do agree that the transmission systems need to be in place to make things work properly though.
Wind forecasts 24-hours out are fairly accurate. It is trivial to regulate maximum turbine output based on scheduled wind and a tolerance factor. The challenge is you need to maintain spinning reserve in other resources that can accommodate that tolerance... which can easily be solved economically by requiring wind operators to hedge generation variability by supporting spinning reserve plants.
The problem is that the wind providers are trying to maximize output without compensating for under-delivering.
...well, everybody has access to the source code; just fix it yourself already!
We are legally required to keep every file for 7 years from project completion. We will never erase anything, because even after that timeframe your ability to defend yourself from lawsuit is much better if you have everything. ...and we aren't even in a high risk business for lawsuits!
We could easily archive 70% of our data, but there really isn't an incentive as last years' data is 20% smaller than this years', and the pattern always continues.
Southern California Edison requires two ventilating pylons for each manhole. They are much bigger than you might expect, and need to be spaced apart. It greatly increases planning complexity.
Methane build-up is only one cause though. Venting that causes ...odors... that people tend to not want to be near. The more common cause is failure of oil-filled equipment ranging from link switches to transformers to oil-insulated cables. When these go you need someplace for the explosion to expand to... or you will destroy everything in the manhole.
This is an interesting solution to the problem, but I have trouble understanding how it is more effective than root-cause analysis and post-incident review of data they already have. It isn't like the combination of factors is the problem... more like aging and over-burdened equipment that should already be on a predictive-maintenance plan.
But that does not cover citizens, hence the gripe. If you "look like an alien," you are considered to be one in the eyes of the AZ law.
All I can say is it is sure nicer to have a 3:30am sunrise and 10:30pm sunset than a 10:30am sunrise and 3:30pm sunset! I don't know how Swedes deal with the annual variation.
I also don't understand some of my sister-in-law's quirks... Solar powered garden lights and lighting candles at 9:00 outside even though we will finish almost before sunset, and easily before "dusk".
The language is hard, if not impossible to master as an English speaker. There is one sports commentator that moved from England ~20 years ago, and people still laugh at his accent.
I was about 80-90% satisfied at launch; I could use my bluetooth keyboard from my ancient Palm, take it with me as a laptop substitute when traveling for work or personal, and in a crunch write a report in the notepad app and e-mail it to a co-worker to format and PDF. Now, I'm closer to 95% satisfied after getting a spreadsheet/word processor app and a few other gems.
What I hate is the absurd organization and search capability of the AppStore. Yes, I know about 3rd party tracking/review sites, yes, I am willing to waste hours searching... and ultimately, yes, I am willing to pay $5-10 to try something that may not meet my expectations.
But, I am quickly getting to the point where expensive ($30-80) apps have reviews that state they don't live up to stated functionality, and it is becoming impossible to really experiment with different use-cases.
By far though, I get more satisfaction using the device as a content-creation vehicle rather than a consumption device. Consumption is lost on the ads that cannot be blocked that in turn screw up the page formatting.
(Oh, and it pisses the living sh!t out of me that Slashdot jumps down half a page when you expand a comment!)
Because the other cell phone companies think it is "competition" with their expensive licensed frequencies. They want sell you a femtocell that has significantly less value that helps keep you locked into their system.
T-Mo doesn't want to invest in full coverage, so UMA is a great idea for them.
UMA should also do better at firewall and NAT traversal.
No, Black Start capability is not a function of the fuel, it is a function of the design. A gas-fired turbine plant needs reciprocating engines (typically diesel) to start compressors, circulate water and steam, and controls to be capable of a black start. Even the diesel generator needs power to start... usually batteries.
Since these things add cost, many facilities require grid power for startup.
After the blackouts in the NE several years back, more facilities have been providing black-start capability, but by no means all.
The NG plants that are idled are single stage systems. More and more dual stage HRSG plants are being built because gas is so cheap, and costs can easily be hedged to manage future costs.
What I find more interesting for natural gas are the MW scale fuel cell systems that can add distributed generation capacity to the grid. We are seeing higher efficiency and only low-grade waste heat now.
Exactly; the miscarriage here is that you get slapped with an ETF for being in a place without reception. Covering the depreciated hardware subsidy is one thing, but the idea that you can charge someone extra for the cost of acquiring a new customer is absurd.
For a second there, I thought you were saying 'Don't caves typically have drawings?'
OSI Network model. Separate the physical layer from the application layers and everything in between.
One of my clients has automated scripts that zip any file over 20k. Every spreadsheet gets zipped... not being able to access the archives is quite a PITA.
Can you copy-and-paste the 14-digit conference code + security code now? That's the one that kills me.
C'mon, it isn't the king, it's the heir apparent, Crown Prince Somdet Phra Boromma-orasathirat Chao Fa Maha Vajiralongkorn Sayammakutratchakuman
The more detail you have on component usage, the more effective of a solution you can make. If you have 20 dryers running at once across different homes, cycle the heat on and off every minute and you save some energy. ...But, if you also control the heat level with the internal humidity and exhaust vent humidity, you might be able to optimize heat a little more. Same thing with the tumbler speed; maybe you can somehow optimize that based on how heavily loaded the dryer is. Parametric optimization takes a lot of work, but can easily give you the same results with 10% less energy consumed.
The waste isn't that they "produce too much power;" they can only produce what can be used and need to carefully balance production with usage.
The main source of waste is when the grid is loaded at its peak; transformers and transmission lines all have significantly higher losses as load increases. Anything that can be done to flatten daily (and seasonal) demand thus helps to reduce parasitic losses.
Ultimately, I think distributed generation, be it residential rooftop solar or a hospital co-generation plant, is going to make more of a dent in parasitic losses than forcing people to run their dryers at night...
Accurate accounting of income is easy for a small/one-man show. Expensesare another matter altogether, which is what the US is moving to. If you have $200k in gross income and have non-trivial expenses, your average expense size might be $20, but inncomewould usually be one or two orders of magnitude higher.
We have a full-time book keeper and quarterly CPA reviews... But our expenses are tracked primarily by credit card statements. Individual transaction tracking would require us to spend 15% of our salaries on non-revenue producing people, which is unsustainable.
Good points; the iOS (hate the name!) development seems to favor the startup mentality rather than a corporate cycle. But, all this really means is you start with fewer monolithic projects, and chase larger projects as you gain experience with the process.
$1B in developer income to-date isn't enough for a $1MM project, but a $10k project can be viable, even with the extra 5% rejection risk.
This type of day-trading provides absolutely no value to the economy and should be regulated to death. Also, I have a hard time believing it would work in the long term, as the news is a lagging indicator 90+% of the time. It might work for shorting in that respect... but even that would be too late and high risk.
All these quant systems seem to do is increase volatility at the expense of the market establishing a general direction.
I'm all for an IRS withholding of 1% on sales of assets held less than a week, and I am a fairly active trader.
Spectrum is an artificial scarcity. While functions that can be wired should be, it is effective allocation and localization of spectrum that is needed to maximize effectiveness.
On the electricity analogy, you pay a fixed demand (bandwidth) charge, and variable costs for energy (total data). Fixed costs cover all ...fixed costs, and the incremental charges cover...
AT&T has no incremental costs.
The funny thing is the telcos really shoot themselves with these decisions. Have they forgot their struggles not two years against wifi?!
What surprises me is when Google shows me 20 miles out at sea... I'm close to the beach... but definitely on dry land.
Other than that, it seems to be very reliable, as in down to 30' accuracy.