[RTC List] New record set yesterday for alternative energy generation

[JRT]

All,

First, a disclaimer:  I have no association with PG&E and my statements are
purely my own.

There is a website  http://www.caiso.com/  that shows a real-time graph of
the electricity consumption in California.
>From this graph, you can see that there is about a 2:1 difference between
max and min demand, peaking around mid-afternoon.
This behavior requires the electricity provider to bring generators on line
and take them off to meet the varying demand.
The least efficient, most polluting are last on, first off.

When the demand exceeds the supply, suppliers use techniques like
rotating-block-outages to prevent the grid from going down, thus creating a
total blackout. Unpleasant, but necessary.

I worked for the largest electricity consumer in Palo Alto for several
decades and we had an agreement with our supplier to shed loads on very
short notice to keep the demand from exceeding supply, and got a favorable
rate in return.  We made ice at night and used it to provide air
conditioning during the day. Our pricing for the month was based on our
highest consumption during that month, causing us to move some operations to
lower demand time periods, mostly, at night.

Watch this ISO graph this summer, and you will see the peak approach (and
possibly exceed) the supply on hot days (Humboldt excluded).

A "smart-grid" is a way to prevent demand from exceeding supply.
Pricing-based-on-demand is another way, but more burdensome on the lower
economic ladder. Time-of-use-metering can have a favorable benefit for the
consumer (lower cost) as well as the provider (balanced demand).

I have a solar PV system in my house, watch my consumption carefully, and as
a result, I have had no net consumption of electricity in the last nine
months. This is another way.

The fear of "big brother" having access to real-time data on what the
temperature is inside my house may be the price we pay for consuming so much
energy.

The real problem, is that we have been talking and complaining about energy
consumption, climate change, oil imports and such for at least 50 years,
that I know of, and have little to show for it.

Regards,
James Topping

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William Van Hefner" <vantek at humboldtonline.com>
To: <list at redwoodtech.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: [RTC List] New record set yesterday for alternative energy
generation


Dave,

If by "buildings", you are including "houses", I seriously doubt that idea
is going to fly. As the current PG&E test marketing has so vividly
demonstrated, very few Americans are willing to give up control of
something as personal as the temperature inside their own homes to a
computer device run by the government or some big utility company. I can't
say as I feel comfortable giving "big brother" access to real-time data on
what the temperature is inside my house, what time of day I am using which
appliances, etc., let alone giving them the power to control what I can an
can't use. It's just way too invasive for my taste, and most other utility
customers feel the same way. We now know that the government has been
covertly (and likely, illegally) tapping internal telephone calls in the
U.S. for reasons of "national security" through AT&T. How do we know that
our electrical usage information will not also be similarly monitored?

The utility companies love the whole "smart building" concept, because it
will allow them to instantly shut off people's electricity and gas for
non-payment. The savings in labor costs will be enormous. Just how many
families have taken PG&E up on their current offer to install these free
"climate control" regulators in their homes? Not many. You can bet that
any attempt to pass legislation forcing people to put these things in
their homes will meet with similar resistance. All homes have different
characteristics and I am the only one who knows what temperature I want my
home to be at. I don't want the government or the power company making the
decision for me.


-- 
William Van Hefner - President
Vantek Communications, Inc.
e-mail: editor at humboldtonline.com



On Thu, November 12, 2009 5:29 pm, Dave Thewlis wrote:
> There is a fair amount going on in what is being called the "smart
> grid".  The Obama Administration charged NIST several months ago to put
> together a standards roadmap for implementing the smart grid which will
> if followed through on have a major effect on energy consumption.  See
> http://www.nist.gov/smartgrid.  This is all hugely political of course
> because a lot of the vested interests in energy production aren't wildly
> excited about changing anything.  But it's got to happen.  The core of
> this is smart buildings which can manage power usage based on how they
> are going to be used on more or less a moment by moment basis (think
> hooking your scheduling system to the building's energy management
> system), requirement aggregation, dynamic requests and pricing.
> Something like 50% of the energy consumed in the U.S. today is consumed
> by buildings, and something like 50% of that is wasted because of the
> lack of dynamic adjustment.
>
> Dave Thewlis
>
> William Van Hefner wrote:
>> A topic that Larry briefly brought-up is at the real crux of the problem
>> when it comes to energy independence for the United States.
>> Infrastructure. We could potentially save many billions of dollars each
>> year by powering vehicles solely by electricity. The technology is there
>> today for cars that will fit the needs of most Americans without an
>> extra
>> 1,000 lbs of engine to carry around, like hybrids have to. The problem
>> is,
>> what would happen if even 10% of the people in this country bought one?
>> As
>> soon as everyone got home at night and plugged their cars in to
>> recharge,
>> our electrical grid would suffer a complete meltdown.
>>
>> The problem with wind, solar, hydro and most other "green" technology is
>> that energy generation is sporadic. Solar doesn't work at night. Wind
>> only
>> works when it's windy. Hydro only works when there is enough extra
>> water,
>> etc. All of today's modern generation facilities, whether they run on
>> natural gas, coal, nuclear, whatever... have one thing in common. They
>> can
>> all output a steady flow of electricity 24/7. Our nation's electrical
>> grid
>> is simply not built to handle large volumes of energy that are only
>> available "some" of the time. Unlike small home-based systems, the
>> nation's electrical grid has no "batteries" to store energy for later
>> use.
>> You would need a battery the size of the empire state building in order
>> to
>> provide enough back-up power for most parts of the country.
>>
>> Even if we had such as system, another part of the problem today is that
>> unless the location of these new power generation plants just happen to
>> be
>> in the same place as the old ones, major upgrades to infrastructure are
>> also going to be needed in order to get the power generated to where it
>> needs to go. In this regards, nuclear is much more of a "drop-in"
>> replacement as a power source. Our local power plant is an excellent
>> example of how interchangeable the technology is. Just don't build a
>> nuclear power plant on top of an earthquake fault!
>>
>> I think that the best shot we have right now at a new "green" source of
>> energy generation, which could output a steady source of power 24/7 and
>> could be built at the location of most existing power plants is fusion
>> generation. It's a lot closer than most people think. Try taking a look
>> at
>> https://lasers.llnl.gov/ for more info. It won't solve everything.
>> There's
>> still the problem of handling peak loads for things like electric cars,
>> but it's a big step in the right direction.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *Dave Thewlis, DCTA Inc.*
> +1 707 840 9391 (voice) · +1 707 498 2238 (mobile)
> http://www.dcta.com · dthewlis at dcta.com <mailto:dthewlis at dcta.com>
>



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