Power Outages and Demand
Posted by Heading Out on July 23, 2006 - 5:06pm
It has been suggested, given the demands for electricity around the country, and the outages that are occuring for various reasons (St Louis and NYC being the two most obvious, although neither were due directly to demand apparently), that we get all the information together in a single thread. (It also might help those of us planning to go somewhere if we know that there won't be power when we get there). So, gentle folk, can we collect the stories here ?
UPDATE: 10:18 pm EST Courtesy of step back the California ISO is predicting a peak demand tomorrow of 52,336 megawatts, which is higher than Friday’s record 49,036 megawatts, as cyclelicious tells us. And as our Alpha Male just noted, Santa Rosa just had a power loss. (From comments brought forward).
“What people need to hear loud and clear is that we're running out of energy in America.”
—George W. Bush, May 2001
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Just laying in bed (keeping cool) listening to my new radio (battery operated rechargeable) and picking up some of the talk here and there..... cops are busy, and at a large outdoor concert here, Music Matrix I think, they're talking about the heat quite a bit.
Good for you man!! Isn't it great being first??
==AC
"Given the right leadership and sufficient external threat, the primary product of such spirituality may be extraordinary social cohesion.
...Almost every leader of note has, either consciously or unconsciously, fished these murky waters at some time or other.
Their reward is a united people armed with humanity's shining Excalibur. To unsheathe this magic blade, such visionary leaders must first win over the populace with the primal fairy tale, which invariably contains two ingredients;
1.) A Monster-preferably one who speaks an alien tongue, prays to heathen gods, wears peculiar clothing, and/or has different-colored skin.
2.) A Miracle-earned only by sacrifice, but culminating in triumph for the home team and a nasty end for the Monster.
This tired old routine has worked its magic with astonishing regularity since the dawn of history, and no one with fully functioning DNA seems wholly immune to the lure of it. Its genetic nature shines through the grisly statistics that follow every major conflict, especially those that incorporate genocidal slaughter."
~Reg Morrison, 1999 "The Spirit in the Gene, Humanity's Proud Illusion and the Laws of Nature"
Most natable news is alot of drownings :(. Alot of people in the water.
Wife says traffic is horible. ? what do you do drive around with the A/C on.????? JC go to the store and pretend you are trying to decide what kind of ice cream you want.
Powerdown will kill alot of people, no doubt.
I don't have a bike right now, I need to look for a good one. If I had one I'd ride it to the library and "cool out" there, since I don't, I guess I'll putt over in the Prius.
More on the radio intel - people going out to buy fans and "none to be had", lots of large co's it seems trying their best to cut down energy usage by cutting back on lights, opening/closing doors, etc.
Fleam,
It's Sunday.
Here is the California ISO chart
Tomorrow businesses will be adding to demand
Every Office building needs A/C
Today was Easy Day for PG&E
Tomorrow, demand may exceed supply
I kept thinking, the super heated temperatures, due to climate change caused by exorbitant fossil fuel use, were being addresses by the exorbitant use of fossil fuels to cool things down. Heading back home the temperature was 108 F in Grants Pass at 1 pm. Its always wonderful to hit the coast where today the temperature dropped 40 degrees in less than 40 miles.
I don't know how climate change will impact us here in Costa Rica. The seasons, such as they are, seem to have shifted some in the past couple of years. My landlord is worried about it. The dependable rainy season seems to be starting later and ending earlier, with rainy periods during the historically dry times and dry periods during the historically rainy times, but they say we still get about nine feet of rain a year, although I haven't measured it. There are so many micro-climates in Costa Rica that you can travel 10 kms and be in a totally different environment. The Tapanti National Park, for example, is only about 10 kms down the road from us. It is the third wettest place in the world and gets nearly three times the rainfall we get.
But thank god we don't get the heat the US is having. We are in a valley but still at 1051m above sea level. Our temps rarely get to the mid 80s and only occasionally do they fall into the low 50s/high 40s. It's the perfect temp year-round, and surprisingly, it does not feel very humid either, no where near as humid as FL or NO or even Norhtern AL felt to me. Perfect sleeping weather. If we decide, however, that we miss being sticky and miserable, we are only four hours from either coast by bus.
No electrical problems in CR yet. There are three small diesel powered electric generator stations in country but most of our electric is generated by mini- and micr-hydro plants with only a couple of big dams in the country, plus there are also a few wind farms. My electric bill is about 8 cents/kwh for the regular service and 13 cents/kwh for my 220.
You might want to make sure you live > 20m above sea level.
Apparently they have over two dozen parallel feeders on the medium voltage circuit. A couple went out and instead of load shedding immediately, they let in run. Enough to damage the wirubg on teh other circuits. I would be willing to bet that they are WAY behind in their tighten downs and other routine maintanence. (Tighten downs eliminate loose, high resistance connections).
And our social-science academics, in their disconnection from reality, still keep wondering why a lot of Americans abhor big cities!
http://knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_4856543,00.html
No notable outages in northern Alabama. Although power reliability has always been bad where I live. I gave up setting my VCR clock 10 years ago.
Can't seem to find a web site that show real time data for the TVA.
As the Knoxnews story quoted by Bitteroldcoot predicted, the weekend in the Ohio Valley and Tennessee River Valley has turned out beautiful and cool, finally giving some relief and comfort to us.
Here in Central Kentucky, I decided last week to see if I could weather the summer the way I did in the old days as a child in this same neighborhood, and not turn on the air conditioning at all.
So far victory! And I was actually surprised that it was not unbearable....uncomfortable yes, but not unbearable. Of course, I knew it should not have been unbearable. From 1965 to 1973, I went to elementary and Junior High School not a full two blocks from where I now sit typing, and we never had air conditioning, including some assorted summer school classes, and I grew up on within a half block of here, and did not live in an air conditioned home until 1977, the year I graduated high school....not at all out of the ordinary in those days, many of my neighbors did not have it either....when someone got "central air" the kids on the block would visit the kids there and "try it out", and come home with rave reviews of how "cold" it was in so and so's house! Such was a consumption revolution made.
Even with no air conditioning, I still consumed some $38 dollars of electric power on the month, mainly with electric stove and range, washing machine, and a deep freeze.
My pride was great in having made it without AC, and saved so much money but of course, there was a lesson to be learned about real design and intelligence coming to me.
I live in an old frame house built in 1955.
A friend of mine showed me his electric bill. I had been to his house on several occasions, once around the 4th of July, and had to compliment the comfort of nice air conditioned home while there, as cool as he wanted it to be. He pointed out that back in the 1990's when the home was built, he was encouraged to install a "Geothermal furnace" as the utility called it, a ground coupled heat pump" which uses the ground tempeture in both winter and summer to climate control the home, with the HVAC always working from a ground temp of nice spring like 56F degrees.
The opposite of me, he NEVER turns his climate control off.
He too, was under $40 dollars on the month on his electric bill.
I drove home to my hot house, and on the way looked at the new development neighborhoods, being built in Hardin and Meade County KY, that were built in a hurry, no time to waste on that "ground coupled crap" (one of the contractors I spoke to uses that phrase) with the central air unit sitting unassisted out in the July sun, one of the biggest housing booms our area has known in decades.
We will live, the owners will live with that consumption for another half a century, the rest of most of our lives, and NEVER KNOW the opportunity we missed. I go on my computer, and glance over the NPC (National Petroleum Council) Report of 2003 indicating that without massive export of American money and an almost emergency push on building facilities to gain access to LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) we simply will fall short of the amount needed and suffer radical price swings, loss of American jobs and economic power, and possible spot shortages which could even be life threatening if they occur at the wrong times.
It is possible to be brought almost to tears by the sheer sheer lack of intelligence in the way America does business, the absolute waste of opportunities.
This is not, as some like to say, a problem of "physics" or "overshoot", not yet anyway....it is a problem of madness.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
Anyone see anything about natgas supplies vs. this heat wave? I haven't. Gotta wonder, and I also wonder how this hot summer may impact the supplies for next winter.
"Nuthin' left to do but Smile, Smile, Smile..."
The weather in Texas is the usual July hot, dry and nasty. The best part about it is that the weather keeps Californians from moving here.
"I'd sell my house for a huge profit and move inland if it wasn't for the fabulous weather here," said she. "At least our housing prices keep all the Texans out."
Maybe this makes me a Commie Rat, but at least under price controls we could drill a well and predict cash flow.
Speaking of failures in the power grid, it' time for another natural gas post, I think. I've got the work of Andy Weissman in mind. There is stuff that is more current than what I linked to here. Do you know his work?
I hadn't particularly noted his by-line before and see that he has written on LNG in the past, but I did not see anything recent. OGJ has just come out with a new set of info on LNG (not on the website last time I checked). I saw (as I skimmed my way forward through the past week's comments - only half-way there yet) that there is now some concern about Mexican supplies of Natural gas and LNG as Cantarell falters. As the next month plays out natural gas is something that should be watched, since this is where much of the new power construction has been.
America, a country without a coherent energy policy. A country going down in flames (no pun intended). As far as I can see, the US natural gas policy is pray for another warm winter.
Einstein said there were only two infinite things, the Universe and human stupidity. He wasn't so sure about the Universe. And he really didn't get to know Americans well enough hanging around at Princeton. We can be counted on to do the right thing after we've exhausted all the other possibilities. By then, it will be too late.
He is immensely informed, but his idea of a Powerpoint presentation is to talk through about 30% of his slides before running out of time. I'm sure that he's very busy running his NG hedge fund as commodities bump along, since I haven't seen an update recently.
Look at Qatargas.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0710/p02s01-usec.html
Apropos looking for coal, I recall seeing a statement from some graduate students here that there was immense amounts of coal under the north sea. I don't know how reliable that research was, and I doubt we will ever get to the point that that coal will be profitable, anyway.
There's a decent interview at GPM http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/709 with Jeff Goodell, author of "Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future" re: the status of coal and the entrenched Coal Industry in the US.
Heading out, I noticed that the gentleman you reference also references the NPC (National Petroleum Council Report that I hace often made reference to:
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=556
In my own study, I use The Hirsch Report, Matt Simmons presentations on his website and his book "Twilight In The Desert", Darley's "High Noon For Natural Gas" (despite reservations on that one, still a good overview), and every more authoritive to me, The NPC Report on natural gas, and an important report that ASPO did on the Tar Sands as my core bibliography. All the rest are mostly panic mongers. The facts in the above listed material is more than enough to spook you without anybody else running around screaming, and they have the factual numbers on their side.
The natural gas issue is still with us, but the mild winter created a situation that made it look like it has "solved itself". The problem with that is that the low gas prices reduces the willingness of investors to put money into "long lead time" projects such as LNG terminals, contracts and shipping, and needed pipeline projects plus the effort to liberate stranded gas. All well and fine right now, but then when we have a massively cold winter some two or three years down the road, the needed natural gas infrastructure will not be there, and this is infrastructure that takes 5 plus years to build. We could be setting ourselves up for a catastrophic situation.
Interest in efficiency of use and conservation of natural gas has likewise gone down. The method of reducing natural gas consumption for heating and air conditioning is about 3 feet below us, almost everywhere in America, in the form of geothermal heat pumps. If you add in widespread use in the South and the sunbelt of solar hot water, natural gas demand could be shaved by more that enough to match supply and demand, and possibly even free some gas and LPG Propane up for transporation use in an efficient manner.
The next step, of course, is wide spread adaption of solar electric and solar thermal, again, the methods are already well known, and improving daily:
http://www.ecotopia.com/ases/SolarToday/DawnOfTheSolarEra.pdf
http://www.ecotopia.com/ases/SolarToday/
The coversion is coming because it MUST come. It will be the biggest change in a single century since the birth of the Industrial Revolution. It is already underway. But, the unanswered question is can it happen fast enough to avert great suffering. That is our choice.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
During demand-induced outages, heat records are also being broken around the state of California. It's all connnected.
Been on the grid most of the day rather than the PV system so we can irrigate. It was 98 yesterday and 97 today. It's been like this for a couple of weeks which is unusual for our area.
Todd
Depends where you are. 15 miles south, on the other side of town, and a few thousand feet lower, it was 110 yesterday, 111 the day before. Just as hot as Ukiah. Only hit 105 today.
When I hear people use the term "unusual", it is usually in the tone that this too will pass, nothing to fear here, move on. In the same breath today, I heard the same person say she commuted 180 miles per day. She was from California and said it with a smile and didn't seem to be complaining. I guess that's the new normal.
I guess I'm just complaining but we probably have already reached overshoot, that the accumulation of greenhouses gases and their attendant positive feedback effects has pretty much locked our fate for the next century. If we radically changed right now, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad.
By the time you realize the super tanker is going to hit the iceberg it is too late. We are probably in that mode now. It wasn't too late 30 years ago, but we're just starting to listen because the heat is making it increasingly difficult to be in denial or ignorance.
Our rate per Kwh, not including taxes and other surcharges, billed to the consumer is 4.6 cents, but a visit to the utility website showed that at peak they were in fact paying about 15 cents for the hydro on the market. I really want demand based billing via smart meters to start knocking this down!
Anyway the UPS that backs up my computers was showing a bunch of micro-brownouts, not enough to flicker the lights or reset the clock on the micrwave oven but > 5 volt drops from ideal voltage. I think the grid was groaning under the strain.
The Ontario government has been raising electricity rates recently - 4.6 cents/kWh is out of date by a couple of years. The energy charge is now 5.8 cents/kWh for the first 600 kWh in summer (for the first 1000 kWh in winter) and 6.7 cents/kWh for everything over that. Before May 1st it was 5.0 cents/kWh for the first 750 kWh all year round and 5.8 cents/kWh after that. The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) will be revising the rates again in the fall.
So far this summer prices have been much lower than at this time last year. Additional nuclear supply has been refurbished and brought back on line (600MW) and demand has been lower due to cooler temperatures so far.
4.82¢/kWh
but that's wholesale I guess, which was what I was going on...
I keep wondering what landmark will once and for all define climate change? A US city getting wiped off the map (sorry Alan)? Arctic sea ice melting so everyone can go on a summer midnight cruise to the North Pole? The English using AC? Maybe the Greenlanders growing corn for ethanol?
We had some spot outages here in Minneeapolis today. This seems to be a regular summer occurance, though.
It is 89/32 here and no as humid as it was a few days ago.
So far we get off pretty easy.
I'll call my brother in CA, though -- it sounds miserable out there.
I wonder if PEW research will do a new study of attitudes about global climate change?
78 F at 6:30 PM. 70 F dew point; high for day of 80 F.
Hotter 'n Hell here in the Asphalt Wonderland, currently 108 at 4pm, but we have had much higher temps earlier in the week. No brownouts or blackouts in the Phx area as far as I can tell.
Does anybody have any knowledge if global warming gases released during the heat season is worse for the ecosystem than the same volume release during the cold season?
Is more energy burned nationwide for A/C cooling than for winter heating? These would be interesting statistics to consider.
My guess A/C burns more total energy because of electrical line losses and worse mechanical efficiency versus a non-mechanical NGas Heater, or a glowing electric heat element. A lot of AZ houses have an electric heat pump cycle--during the winter the A/C unit reverses itself to pump heat into the house-- this strikes me as not very efficient compared to the one-step process of burning NG.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Apparently uprated from 1,000 MW net/ 1065 MW gross to 1,134 MW net /1,200 MW gross.
http://www.nuclear.com/n-plants/Browns_Ferry/Browns_Ferry_news.html
Yes, it includes FB #1 at 90% capacity factor. At least 3 new starts annually from 2010 just to keep output constant.
http://www.nei.org/documents/TVA_ABWR_Feasibility_Study_Summary_2005.pdf
Did TVA have other plans for pumped storage ? Raccoon Mt could not handle 17 nukes !
Has to do with plant respiration. Most of the land mass is in the Northern Hemisphere, so CO2 tracks our growing season.....
The data show both a cyclic behavior and a linear trend. The cyclic behavior corresponds to a yearly cycle of increasing atmospheric CO2 from late fall to spring, with a maximum in May, and then decreasing atmospheric CO2 from spring to late fall, with a minimum in October. The simple interpretation is that carbon dioxide is "scrubbed" or removed from the northern hemisphere atmosphere during the spring-summer growing cycle, when green plants suck up CO2 during photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is then released during fall and winter, when plants die and rot.
http://seattlecentral.edu/qelp/sets/016/016.html
Properly installed ground source heat pumps even work great in the frozen north of Minnesota.
Do you ever wonder if the Canadians laugh like heck at us when we talk about the "frozen north of Minnesota" ?
With the rising price of Natural Gas and Propane it may be a lot cheaper to heat with electrically operated ground source heat pump than a standard gas furnace.
I have switched the house (3 years ago) to burning wood pellets/corn as propane has reached an unaffordable level for full time heating. I use the high efficiency propane furnace as an energency backup system now. Going to switch the workshop over to wood pellets this winter. Not as convient or comfortable, but more affordable.
I looked at the tables a few years ago; and for cooling, ground loop was barely more energy efficient (questionable) but much more complex and expensive to operate.
Ground loop heat pumps were superb for heating, but that is trivial in New Orleans. And ground conditions work against ground loop as well. Air source heat pumps work great at 47 F, which is where much of the heating is needed.
A brief background: degree in Physics (Manchester 1972)... taught mathematics in Middle East for many years. Been following Alternative Technology issues for 30 years now (since visiting the Centre for Alt Tech in Machynlleth, Wales in 1976).
Now located Kelowna, BC. Three years ago... I built a 4,000 ft2 "geothermal" house (as they like to call them here)... heat pump with 5 x 200ft deep heat source. Expensive up-front cost... but running costs negligible... (& it does the pool too!!)
Designed house myself for max winter passive input/summer shading... and got some pretty good insulation... plus high end windows etc. Didn't get everything I would have liked (insulated slab/thermal mass??...PV roof??) due to local code limitations etc.
Point being that with good design & insulation... heating-cooling loads are very low...such that internal area/volumes (we have lots of high ceilings) can be larger than normal... allowing quality living space...
We've had 37oC last few days... but that's not unusual for summer here. Usually turn AC on 3pm - 8pm... with setting at 25oC... then open doors etc overnight... I would estimate that AC kicks in for 5 mins in every 20...
Winter can be -20oC... but again comfort levels easy maintained... with just the heat pump (why did I put those two "for-aesthetic-effect" gas fires in??)
Anyway, "geothermal"... is very much in vogue here for individual new houses & condo developments...
How far are you from the new "run of the river" hydropower plant which was recently opened?
Being so Internet based, I'm rather ignorant of local politics etc... & all those 3x a week freebie newspapers just go straight in the trash...
So I wasn't even aware of Kelowna's run-of river micro-hydro. I just googled it and found that Fortis are doing a number of schemes in BC. Exact location not mentioned tho'... and I can't imagine where it might be...
What is more I learned that our Glenmore landfill site, just 2 miles away... is now doing landfill gas power generation...What a forward looking town I live in!!
Not really... it is still car-addicted... and increasingly McMansioned... coming soon on every available pristine hillside... lots of retirement money coming in for our 15 golf courses??
Still it is idyllic with its own micro-climate and in the heart of BC wine country... 100k people now...I was just thinking the other day what population it might sustain post-PO!! (and there would be lots of wine to get the few of "us" through the winter!!
Regards...
So now I have a little game to play. Put a pipe down the well with a small pump to circulate water up to a car radiator under the kitchen sink. The water then goes up thru the radiator and then back down the well after a fan blows some coolth into the kitchen: water boosted if needed by a jet ejector to get it all started. The pump and fan together take less than 100 watts ac. The kitchen sinks toward too cool, the wife starts to notice, I turn off the pump and fan, The wife starts to get somewhat uncool, I turn on the pump and fan, and so on.
This is what folks around here call an appalachian fix- Make do with whatcha got.
Yes, I did get the water tested. Man said it was ok, nothing but a few dead snakes and beetles- slow poison, been drinking it for near 50 yrs.
And this was just from a few thunderstorms...
On a more energy related note: How inefficient is it to have 40+ rooms each with window A/C units versus 80+ people sharing a central system?
It's 6:15 pm. If the power's not back up by 8:00 Pm, I'm assumming this it the "trigger event" and will begin marauding. There's lots of hippies over in Sebastopol with lush gardens, solar panels who insist on taking no defensive measures. Of course I'm not match for the local street gangs. Mmmmm. . . maybe I should just stay here and hide.
BTW, can anybody explain why I'm even able to get on the net on a 56K line if the power is down? I've always wondered how that works. In fact one of the reasons I kept my modem line ($10/month from netzero) is I read modems stay operational during blackouts.
In an emergency, the public are well known for all getting on the phone and playing "Let's Crash The Phone System" - they have an excellent record of success.
I've been expecting the power to go down myself, but it's cooling now in silicon valley, and as mentioned, the real power suckage will be tomorrow.
I was just in the library hanging out, place was jammed. Some people are at least smart enough to not run up their own bill when they can go there, tons of Asians and Indians but then that library always has tons, but let's put it this way, it wasn't full affluent white people. Less than average number of the pale folks, I think sunday is soccer day for the kids or the day to do something that involves the SUV. I was glad to see the homeless folks getting some respite from the heat.
Almost all traditional central offices run most of their equipment off of 48 VDC battery banks; commercial power is used to keep the batteries charged. If commercial power fails, almost all central offices are equipped with large backup generators. Those used to be diesel, although I believe that many have changed to compressed natural gas. In many states, such backup systems are a legal requirement for anyone doing wireline telephony -- the regulators insist that 911 work even when commercial power is out. When cable companies started getting into the telephony business in the 1990s, one of the biggest decisions each had to make was whether to provide power over the coax or to use batteries at the subscriber location.
Many of the big ISPs have similar backup arrangements. I'm not sure what kind of "worst case" outage they plan for -- when I started work at Bell Labs back in the 1970s, central offices typically had enough fuel on hand for at least a day, and arrangements for refueling fairly soon. I know there were cases when a central office ran off the generator for over a week. IIRC, there was an ISP in New Orleans after Katrina that ran for at least three days off of their backup generator.
In an emergency, text messages get through when voice does not. Good to remember !
Mayor Nagin could only communicate with intermittent Blackberry and courier for several days after Katrina.
I'm curious though as to why if you have a battery backup there, that the cable modem (I'm guessing that's your other connection) won't work. I would imagine the cable company to have backup power (who could live without cable!) so it should still be communicating with your cable modem (if you have it plugged into your battery backup system).
the spot price of electricity trippled in the UK
apparantly it was all the fridges and freezers + office AC working on over time during the hot weather
and yes, we are burning oil to help match demand :p
Last year Matthew Simmons summed up his prophetic vision for 2006, as usual, in a single powerpoint bullet:
"Expect to see brownouts/blackouts in periods of abnormal weather."
So it is written.
Distribution transformers have been popping all over town. High ambient temperatures, high loads, and low voltage (drawing more current increasing internal heating) all are factors. Half my street was out and I heard another transformer pop in the distance Saturday night. Show some gratitude for the PG&E crews working around the clock, in the heat, to restore power.
I hate to admit this but this is one scary scenario.
As to new nuclear plants, we're SWAMPED with requests for proposals. We're positioned as the only model offered that has already been built, has prior regulatory approval, and has full sets of engineering documents. Consequently, we can bring our reactors on-line years ahead of other vendors.
(P.S. I have an "outside temperature" meter on my car. Some places along 17 Northbound I was clocking 115 deg F. Talk about that hot market in Silicon Valley. Yaowzah!)
This solves siting issues. Example, Riverbend was licenssed for two nukes, one operating, foundation only for second one.
So another type reactor (see Arkansas 1 & 2) can be licensed there with a minimum of hassle, even if it is a bit larger.
Also, transmission was planned, and often built, for both units. (Transmission is a VERY long lead time item, almost as long as NRC). Nukes without transmission are almost worthless.
Existing infrastructure (mainly nuke rated personnel) can be more efficiently spread over two or three (or eight, see Canada) reactors than one reactor. I doubt that reactors built 30 years apart will share many spares (nuke grade loctite perhaps and other minor items).
Just out of curiousity, are there any plans for 3 or 4 reactor sites ? (say 1 old, 2 new ?)
Palo Verde has 3 and room for 2 more.
Crystal River has 2 natural gas, one nuke, and one (maybe 2?) coal. Talk is about one more nuke.
Existing sites are far preferred and I know of no serious greenfield sites off the top of my head (there's that boondoggle in North Texas though.)
It is a big advantage to have multiple units of the same design. However, we're always diddling with components so that older stuff is brought up to current design. Anyone want a 30 year old plant process computer?
A big example of common components is motor-operated valves, Limitorques. Same basic design since the 1930's but the details are always changing. Every plant uses lots of Limitorques and/or Rotorks.
As an example of a pain in the patootie, consider Waterford. Three reactors, three vendors.
"The Devil Wears Prada" was cute enough - the girls liked it. We had prepaid tickets but couldn't find a seat - I literally sat on the stairs.
The Oakridge transformer must have been a GE design: The I-melt 1000 (ha ha).
Yeh. Merryl Streep was good in Devil Wears Prada. Kind of long for me, but my girls liked it too.
So, I'm sitting there waiting for my saba shioyaki and me and this large guy are watching these unbelievably cute Japanese kids and their Mom get moved to a different table, and we get talking..... turns out Mr. Big is a worker on power plant equipment....... USA using some of this older stuff and it's no longer supported by the company so ppl who can maintain/fix it are in demand. Mr. Big went through Navy nuke training and then went into power plants, can work on this older Siemens stuff ..... don't need no stinkin' college degree. Nice guy, interesting information. This was a couple of weeks ago. Bet he's busy right now!
When an earthquake, an ice storm, a hurricane, a heat wave hits, every trained and able body the company can find are balls-to-wall for days on end, climbing poles, working around hot lines (ie "certain death") in the wind, the rain, in the blazing sun, in the dark of night.
It is one of the riskiest jobs, what with falls and electrocutions.
Yet my neighbor complained to me yesterday that the crew replacing the 500 lb pole transformer behind her home Sunday night at 3 am spoke too loudly.
My years at the power company taught me that the sense of "public service" is alive and well. We should be grateful.
After the 1998 ice storm in these parts the crews were out round the clock. The devastation was enormous - whole rows of towers turned into twisted wreckage by five solid days of heavy freezing rain.
Crews came in from all over the country to help out. They even managed to keep their sense of humour while working round the clock. I remember a newspaper photo of a Manitoba crew posing shirtless up a power pole (it was minus 20 Celsius) to show they weren't intimidated by 'mild' Ontario winters (minus 40, before taking the wind-chill into account, is not uncommon for a Winnipeg winter).
KLIV radio, AM-1590 is a good one for local silicon valley news BTW.
Guess I'd better get my post office trip for the day done while there's power. Plus, that gives me a reason to shut the #$%#$ laptop off.
In a democracy, ultimately it is you and I (assuming you vote too).
Hot weather on about July 15, 2006 caused overload transformer fire which wiped out electric power to Oak Hill.
No air conditioning which can be fatal in Austin.
:)
After 7 days ConEd finally got my power back on. Gotta say, as it was at 3am, they must have actually been working around the clock. I was stealing juice from the terrace lights of my building (2 of our 3 phases were working from Thurs on) but that didn't give me much... it did let me get my cell going again (my only phone) but Time Warner was
down for internet until now.
These guys kinda had their heads up their asses, the Red Cross mosied onto the scene on day 3 or 4, and there really wasn't much help. I gave emergency lights to my elderly neighbors 2 days ago, they were working with flashlights
for 4 days, and no one outside cared. I have no idea how this elderly couple would have made it through if they were on the 6th floor. When the power went, so did all outside sources of food - everything in all of the supermarkets was garbage by day 2, notwithstanding dry stuff, which quickly was bought. All of the restaurants shut down. Many of the
surrounding buildings over 6 stories no longer had water to run toilets, no elevators, and at that point I suppose that there was no hot water or trash compactor were minor annoyances... and along the way other things you'd need to improvise, like Home Depot, were also closed. After a bit all transactions were cash, and no cash machines
were working. A little taste of things to come.
And this was just a piece of Queens. Manhattan was a train ride away, but if this did happen on a larger scale, the trains also would not be running. Red Cross wouldn't even be able to get here in any meaningful way (local traffic
was in chaos from the lack of traffic lights and street lights.)
I'm going to take a totally wild and unsubstantiated guess here and say this was cause by some kind of electronic system management that took the place of the Homer Simpson who was supposed to have his finger on a switch to cut it all of before all of the secondary lines fried... so
it is not ridiculous to think that this could happen again, as these clueless assclowns don't know what they did to cause this (or really for that matter, the blackout of 2003).
The irony of course is that I have a 50 amp gen and a farm that I'm taking off grid in upstate NY in preparation for the end of oil, but I couldn't leave town because my dad was hospitalized with breathing problems when his AC shut down in the middle of the heat wave... no matter how well you plan, there's always something.
Sooner or later, we all need doctors, hospitals and other services from our "complex" civilization.
I think we discussed economic efficiency versus reliability elsewhere in this thread. ConEd is here to maximize its profits not to make life in NYC livable.
--an ex-NewYorker