286 comments on DrumBeat: March 27, 2008
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286 comments on DrumBeat: March 27, 2008
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One more incident to add to the irony file… Last night as I was reading the TOD, an SUV careened out of control and smashed into the power pole at the foot of my driveway plunging my home into darkness; thankfully the driver wasn’t seriously hurt, but I suspect the vehicle is a total write-off. This is a secondary pole that supports the line that feeds both my home and my neighbour (my neighbour’s home was unaffected). The pole is cracked and leaning badly and will need to be replaced; so too my entrance mast, as the upper portion is bent and detached.
The good news is that Nova Scotia Power has temporarily restored my service as I wait for an electrician to replace the mast and meter base. The other good news is that the lineman replaced the original feed with a heavier gage conductor that will allow me to upgrade to a 200-amp service at some future date – this is something I’ve wanted to do for sometime but have held off due to the high cost; now with the insurance company footing the bill for the new line and mast, all I need to do is replace the main panel.
The other interesting thing is that I’m told the line that serves our two homes is grossly undersized and that much of the insulation has melted away because of this (my neighbour’s home is electrically heated). The lineman was quite shocked at its poor condition.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned our main line operates at 2,200-volts and I had an opportunity to ask why. The technician said the utility would like to upgrade our street due to the excessively high line losses, but can’t move to a higher voltage without trimming the trees and there are some powerful folks who have thwarted this (every other street in this neighbourhood operates at 14.4); another example of bad politics trumping good engineering.
Cheers,
Paul
another example of bad politics trumping good engineering.
What would be a mechanism that could change this ?
Do you really want a mechanism to trump that little iota of local control - even if it is likely only exercised as a veto?
I have seen, more than once, where it's turned out to be very wise that a homeowner has had really BIG rocks, posts, etc around their house. It's to keep the cars from trying their best to go right through. What are known as "big ass" boulders, posts, etc have saved many lives, for those engaging in the practice of sitting in their living room, sleeping, etc in an environment where out-of-control cars are far more of a danger - even in your house! - than earthquakes, terrorist attack, lightning, meteors, or any of the other BS people in suburbia worry about.
Nice to hear the driver wasn't badly hurt, now maybe he'll consider the wise alternative, the bus.
Do you really want mob control of our infrastructure?
I think a better idea would be to put 'breakers' on the lines that supply the lower voltage lines. Maybe when they keep popping their breakers they will learn that their infrastructure needs to be upgraded.
I was watching the Charlie Ross show yesterday with the head of Shell America on it. He was saying that the pipelines in the Northeast haven't been upgraded in 30 years. (He also said we haven't build a new refinery in 30 years which is know is technically correct but we have done massive upgrades to the ones we have)
No new refineries in 30 years, and specifically the last seven, is the best economic and political evidence of peak oil.
If the oil majors really wanted and needed a new refinery, they would have seen a historic opportunity to push it though the Bush administration.
299 days, 1 hour and 56 minutes is simply not enough time, the door is closed.
It's the best evidence that we had massive overinvestment in refineries 1970s and 1980s and when the oil bubble collapsed it didn't make sense to build refineries.
Th US has a trading system in place for sulphur dioxide emission. This trading system has a tendency to favor existing installations over new build installations. So 'repairing' or 'refitting' an existing intsllation is chaeper than building a new one if one wants more capacity. And before you ask, refineries are major sulphur emitters.
Interesting tie to this - On the watt podcast #75 they discuss how the coal power plant reduction happened.
Lower heat content, lower sulfur coal was shipped in VS using 'local' higher heat, higher sulfur coal.
Thus lower sulfur emitted, higher CO2 emissions.
WHEEE!
Now I'll bet they wish they installed scrubbers (or whatever it is that captures the sulfur), and had "waste" sulfur to sell. Last I heard it was something like $900/ton.
No new refineries in 30 years? Existing refineries have been expanded as this is less costly than applying for environmental permits to build new ones. New refineries were being built overseas also. If you believe in peak oil you will find that a time is coming when there will be enough refineries, but not enough oil to refine.
Hello Rainsong,
Good points--I agree, but also without FFs, there additionally won't be much recovered sulfur for processing I-NPK and all the other critical uses of sulfur and sulfuric acid [not much is mined anymore]:
Powerpoint PDF on Sulphur:
http://www.choa.ab.ca/documents/Apr12TL-ppt.ppt
Recall that Gazprom wants to raise sulfur prices Sevenfold in 2008:
http://www.meed.com/petrochemicals/news/2008/02/maaden_to_dominate_ferti...
-------------------------
...Costs in Russia, a key rival, are set to escalate dramatically, with Gazprom set to raise sulphur prices more than sevenfold in 2008. Maaden, in contrast, will have access to cheap local sulphur.
"Maaden's sulphur will be cheaper than most," says Barrie Bain, director of Fertecon, a UK-based fertiliser consultancy. "But the phosphate rock will be expensive compared with Morocco and US producers who have their own rock. It depends on how Maaden accounts for the capital cost."
----------------------------
The postPeak battle to be a price-maker vs a price-taker is on! If I was an FF-exporter: I could further juice my profits by removing the sulphur first to later sell to constrained importers at a high profit. Why let the importing refineries make the sulfur bucks$$ when they refine the crude?
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Recall my often posted phrase:
Sitting in the dark is pure luxury compared to starvation.
Another way to rephrase it is:
Taking away a person's gasoline or electro-juice just pisses them off, but take away their food or their NPK-ability to grow food--now your talking CONTROL.
Consider how easy it was to control Tadeusz Borowski, #119198:
http://dieoff.com/page226.htm
---------------------------------
THIS WAY FOR THE GAS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
....Around here whoever has grub, has power.
---------------------------------
The new standard for local utility distribution voltage is 27,600 Volts (27.6 kV). Most utilities are upgrading to this voltage.
Old systems have a real mix; 13.8 4.4 etc. Line losses are proportional to the square of the line current. Double the current, quadruple the line losses. Upgrading a distribution system is not an easy task. That entails replacement of thousands of poles, lightning arrestors, transformers, autoreclosures, SCADA switches.
Distribution systems already have "breakers" installed throughout to protect equipment. They are in the form of substation circuit breakers, distribution line autoreclosures, and fusing at customer step-down transformers.
C'mon, where's the free marketeers ?
Shoot the Bastards in the Head............But seriously Sheeple, in the coming Fast Future, the politicians will stand and Fiddle while Rome burns. Listen to what is being said in the current Pigfest for the White House....
BZ
Hi RBM,
I confess I'm a bit torn by this. One of the things that very much attracted me to this street were the mature trees and the very dense canopy that stretches across the winding roadway. That said, the city is planning to install sidewalks so many of these trees will be removed, or at least the ones along my portion -- I expect the more affluent homeowners further down the road will be "spared".
Cheers,
Paul
The trees are worth more than the power lines or the sidewalks.
Hi Twilight,
I tend to agree. Whilst I appreciate the importance of pedestrian safety, I would hate to see trees lost to make way for a sidewalk. In terms of trimming for power lines, I just don't know; I guess it would depend on how much of the canopy would be affected.
With respect to democracy in action, it's more likely that one or two voices are being heard. Perhaps I’m too cynical, but I'm thinking one may be the guy with the 10,000 sq. ft. "guest house" equipped with a three story waterfall (I kid you not). BTW, wealth does not guarantee good taste... that place is butt ugly.
Cheers,
Paul
Got a picture for us to laugh at?
Hi free,
This Google map is out of date (a lot more has happened since then), but it's the property with the multiple boat slips. This person owns all of the homes at the tip of this land except for one (a little old lady refuses to sell), as well as the island where he maintains a second guest house.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_fi...
If time permits I'll take a picture from across the basin later today. Of course, you probably won't be able to make out the "His and Her" Hummers.
Cheers,
Paul
IS burying (as in digging down) an upgraded power service an (expensive) option?
Pete
Hi Pete,
Sadly, prohibitively expensive (solid bedrock) and trenching would mean digging up a portion of the driveway and cutting through a retailing wall. If money were no object....
[My insurance company just reminded me of my $500.00 deductable....] :-(
Cheers,
Paul
Yeesh! Talk about excess. Must be Dick Cheney's secret hideout (and thus the owner is his secret identity).
Hi Free,
As promised, a picture of said house taken from across the Basin (believe me, the front side is no less flattering... =:-O
Note the roofline of the building to the immediate right of the power pole with the matching roof tile that transitions to glass.... that would be a three story "tiny some'em" he built on top of what appears to be gravel fill in the Google shot. From all accounts, this is still very much a "work-in-progress", so we're told there's a lot more yet to come.
See: http://www.datafilehost.com/download-fab6ce28.html
Best hopes for more cute little Cape Cods.
Cheers,
Paul
Too big for chickens and too small for cows, eh? I agree, tasteless and ugly. No offense to barns intended.
Don't worry, if barns are offended, they're offended by that house, not your comments.
Yuk - trees are more beautiful than that too. Even ugly trees.
You got end customer distribution on poles with uninsulated wires?
That is a lot of repairwork after a storm.
Hi MR,
Well, they are fully insulated but this one is undersized for two homes, one of which is all electric and so it had deteriorated badly. I'm guessing it would be rated for 100-amps and between us our panels would total 300-amps. I know NSP replaced the leg from this secondary pole to my mast with a notably thicker cable so that I could upgrade to a 200-amp service; what connects this y-joint to the transformer on the opposite side of the street is identical to what had originally run to my house.
Cheers,
Paul
You want/need a 200Amp supply? REALLY? Even at 110v that's still 22kW - how can you need that much? You obviously don't use electricity for heating from your comment about your neighbour, so where is all that energy going to go? Unless you've got an obscenely big house, surely a bit of energy conservation would pay great dividends? Sorry if I've got something wrong here...
If it were me, I might like one of those tankless electric water heaters. Here in Ontario, the electricity is about $0.05 (+0.05 legacy charges, etc), and comes from hydroelectric. It would probably cut my electricity bill by $20/month or so. Continuously keeping water hot is a waste. Still, during the few minutes per day they are on, those heaters take a lot of power.
Hi JW,
Will you be using most of your hot water during off-peak hours? If not, you're going to be dinged pretty damn hard once you're switched to TOU rates (all Ontario residents will be converted within the next couple years).
Cheers,
Paul
Generally, my peak use would be 8am (mid-peak), so I guess instead of the 10c I estimated, I might be paying about 12c/kwH. Now, given some off the top-of-my-head reasoning, I need to heat 130cm x 65 cm x 20cm of water (less than 200 liters) of water about 30c (15c to 45c) = 6e+6 calories = about 25e+6J. About 1.7kwH of electricity for one bath, say 20 cents. Maybe $6.00 per month once they put in the Time of Use rates. Now, standby use might be $50 - $100 per year? I wasn't able to find that, so maybe I'd only save that. Still, it doesn't matter whether you use the electricity in one shot at time of use, or slowly to bulk heat the water; the issue is that standby cost. $50 - $100 year isn't a lot, but it is something, and the other benefit is 4 square feet of living space in my condo.
http://www.hydroonenetworks.com/en/community/projects/smart_meters/faqs_...
Hi JW,
Other than the issue related to foot print, you might still be ahead with a conventional water heater under time control. A newer 180-litre tank with an EF of 0.92 or better would "leak" roughly 50-watts of heat or roughly 438 kWh per year. If your condo is electrically heated, you could pretty much slice that in half as these loses would simply offset what would normally be provided by your baseboard heaters (obviously less if your unit is heated with a heat pump or natural gas). During the summer months, we might assume each kWh of waste heat generates 0.3 kWh of a/c demand. Also, I'm fairly sure the energy component of Hydro One's off-peak rate is 3 cents per kWh, whereas the mid-peak is 7 cents, or more than double.
If I didn't have to head off to bed, I'd would spit the numbers through Quattro Pro.
Cheers,
Paul
A better direction, if feasible for you, is to store hot water from a solar hot water heating system. Or purchase a heat pump hot water heater instead if you are currently heating your water with electricity.
Hi nc,
No, I can understand your confusion. I'd like to have the flexibility of using either fuel oil or electricity depending upon their respective price and, if things go south, availability. I will be installing an electric hot water tank next month and at some point I'd like to add a second ductless heat pump to serve my lower level and possibly a small electric boiler beyond that. Alternatively, Nova Scotia Power offers inexpensive off-peak power to customers with electric thermal storage (ETS) units. At $0.053 per kWh, that's less than half the cost of home heating oil which is currently running between $0.12 to $0.13 per kWh(e) at 82% AFUE. A pony panel in the laundry room will allow me to feed the water heater, but everything else would require a service upgrade.
Cheers,
Paul