In sci.physics, Anthony Cerrato
<
[email protected]>
wrote
"The Ghost In The Machine"
In sci.physics, Mark Thorson
<
[email protected]>
wrote
Now that the blackout has shaken the public's faith in
the electric power industry, we have an opportunity
to make much-needed large-scale changes in how
electricity is distributed.
[snippage]
I'll admit I like the general idea of a 400 Hz system
but the hum from such a system may get very irritating
(60 Hz hum is irritating enough but at least it's
a low hum). Think of the tone from a 440 Hz tuning
fork to get a general idea; you'd hear that *everywhere*.
(Presumably the Air Force, however, might have some
ideas on how to mitigate that problem. The 60 Hz hum
one hears is primarily from harmonics.)
Besides all the other problems, sounds like a recipe for
mass population deafness--the long-term medical costs to
society might be stupendous!
Why not just solve all the
problems by building a decent transmission system with
_proper_ protocols? Time to stop being penny-wise and pound
foolish-at least wrt quality of life -- someone recently
said we are the only superpower in the world with a third
world power grid system --let's add a few more backup
generation plants at critical nodes to help the network out
too (all new funding for all this crap is presently tied up
in political squabbles I believe.) We can fix the
system--have Big Blue et al. design the network and
failsafes this time--
All of Big Blue's protocols, good as IBM is, aren't going to
help a system which has no reserve power. Other posters
have already pointed this out; we ship our power over
long distances already (which doesn't help) and the current
blackout was apparently caused by a failure which eventually
led to the unexpected reversal of huge energy flows over key
wires somewhere in the general area (the Ohio line failures
were merely a trigger), presumably causing various breaker
trips and system shutdowns over a matter of less than
a second -- including nuclear power plants, presuambly as
a safety precaution. (I surmise the cadmium damper rods
were shoved in by an emergency solenoid. Of course now
the reactor needs to be nudged carefully back into life,
lest it blow up or melt down. And there has to be load
on the reactor matching its power output. I don't know
how much "give" or buffering there is in a typical
reactor system.)
It's useful to remember how fast electricity flows.
The Earth has an approximate circumference of 40,000 km.
Light travels at 300,000 km/s. These events apparently
transpired in mere tens of milliseconds, despite spreading
out over two time zones (roughly 15 degrees) -- well beyond
man's ability to control directly.
I'll admit I'd like to see some localization of the
problem, possibly by building low-cost solar solutions
on everyone's roof. The problem is, that's not always
possible, especially for office skyscrapers. (I live
in a 2-floor condo, which means I have roof area
covering 4 units. What happens to the other 4?)
I suppose one could attempt to put solar cells on the
windows but one then runs into a variant of the square-cube
problem.
Nor is current electrical solar-cell technology all that
cheap to manufacture. It's basically glass, which needs
to be melted.
in this new age of "the rise of the
machines" have the computers help us instead of hurt us with
protocols designed by smart folks instead of Dumbos--uh,
wasn't all this math and stuff worked out in the 5 decades
of math and physics since the '50s...even without
computers...go back to the game thy etc. lit. or ask that
genius who won the Economics Nobel; he'll work it all out.
And if we have to pay some small price to constantly
maintain a slightly higher power generation capacity so be
it--it will be worth it, particularly when the terrorists
come to call now that they know our vulnerabilities! We have
the technology and a workable current system--we can rebuild
it even better! ...tonyC
The market may work, but we may have to nudge it.
The market ideal, perhaps, would have Premium Power
Companies(tm) guaranteeing 24/7/365 power for those that
pay for it. These power companies would be insured, and
possibly sell insurance. (A little more than "Satisfaction
Guaranteed or your money back" may be needed here; a
fair amount of semiconductor industry can be ruined by a
prolonged outage.)
The rest of us might limp along on the current system,
although there are some issues; suppose, for example,
that the market decides that 12 hours a day (2 on, 2 off)
in a predictable, established pattern is good enough?
Say, one gets power from 7:17 AM to 9:17 AM, then cuts
out until 11:17 AM (not enough to spoil food with good
refrigeration), goes back on, cuts out again at 1:17
PM, etc. This may actually not work very well in light
of consumption patterns (not much goes on while one's
sleeping beyond powering a few electric clocks and keeping
that food cold) but it's a thought, and not a nice one.
(There are also issues on how the power is switched;
presumably this is computer-controlled -- but those computers
better have the usual backups.)
After-market units could be sold warning of an imminent
power outage, in that case; these might be a small
wall-mountable device. "You have 5 minutes left."
"You have 2 minutes left." "You have 30 seconds left."
"5...4...3...2...1...*blink*" (Or one might simply "watch
the clock" as it ticks down towards the next planned
outage.) The units might have rechargable batteries
(not unlike office emergency lighting) and a very tiny
trickle of power might remain in the lines, mostly to
convey information on the power system and when one's power
is expected to come back on. This trickle would be not
unlike TCP/IP protocols over a standard computer network,
which carry a minute amount of power to deliver information.
Of course standard computer networks don't have to worry
about isolating themselves from hundreds of amps of 110
VAC, either. The protocols also have to contend with
step-up and step-down transformers at substations, either
by bypassing them entirely through some sort of isolator
or by amplifying the signal with power from somewhere,
after it goes through the transformer. The information
need not be gigabytes/s so a 60 Hz reference carrier
with modulation may be useful. Of course it would be
a rather slow modulation; standard AM stations have 10
kHz bandwidth at about 600 kHz (at the low frequency end;
the actual band ranges from about 530 to 1700 kHz, IINM),
for example; one might get the ability to transmit within
a 1 Hz bandwidth if one uses similar bandwidth ratios.
It really depends on the Q of the transformers, methinks.
Or one could just buy a good fuel-cell generator.
GE (or Plug Power) apparently is planning one, as an
after-market unit; plug it in to the outside wiring of
one's house and hook it up to a natural gas pipeline, and
you have your very own power plant (and are now of course
beholden to one's natural gas supplier, as opposed to one's
electrical supplier). It's reasonably clean, AIUI, and I
like the idea of shifting the problem nearer the customer.
I"ll admit to some curiosity as to what the polluntants
are, and we do have a natural gas shortage right now, AIUI.
Commercial units may also be available Real Soon Now.
Presumably they're testing the marketing waters; it's
not available yet. Sort of like "Ginger" (aka Segway),
only far less mysteriously marketed.
One could envision a large number of plans -- all of them
more or less based on the premise that reliability is a
commodity, bought and sold in the usual fashion. Natural
gas refrigerators can also be an option. (The compressor
is driven by a motor; who cares what powers that motor?
It might be a dual-power motor but that's not quite as
efficient; the problem is that the electrical elements are
idle during natural gas and the pistons -- presumably it's
a piston engine -- would be idle during electrical power.
Fortunately, it's only a problem during motor startup;
unfortunately, that refrigerator motor starts up a number
of times, in a consumer unit, per day. Some commercial
units already have this option, AIUI.)
Is this the direction we're going? It's an intriguing
one and would foster quite a bit of conservation, but I
can't say I like it.
[.sigsnip]