“I think Microsoft should stay with its father.” - Francis J. Beckwith, PhD, Trinity International University, 4/26/00

This looks like more hysteria to me, remember back in 96 or so when the internet was going to bring down the phone networks?

Any why is anyone using 120V still (or worse, Japan using 100V)? I think 240V has proven not to be any more dangerous in the household.

Sure people will have to use converters and such for a while. It'll be a pain at first. A new outlet shape to prevent old stuff from plugging into new higher voltage outlets. But through attrition, old stuff will slowly disappear and in the long run we'll all be better off.

Maybe the world should go to a single new standard, say, 440V @ 100Hz?

The NRC grants 30 year licenses after which the reactor is supposed to be decommisioned -- all fuel is removed, the core is drained and the containment building housing the core is filled with cement.

Creating wonderful rock-climbing monuments all over the free-world...

To the best of my knowledge, the choice of 60Hz had multiple factors, but there was no big "switch" from 50 Hz to 60. There are some old systems in the local steel mills which still use 25Hz power, but nothing that runs at 50Hz. Increasing the system frequency requires re-engineering (and most likely replacing) all of the power plant equipment in the country. It's also a bad idea because it would increase the energy coupled to the environment in terms of stray electromagnetic fields, which already play havoc with underground pipes, and which may contribute to cancer, leukemia, etc. (The last point is highly debated lately).

Increasing the voltage in the home requires replacing all the home wiring in the US, for zero benefit, the problem is the big lines, not your house. Higher voltage in the home is an increased hazard, I've survived a few hits of 110 accidentally encountered, I would not have been so lucky had there been 440 volts available to push current through me.

The standard is set, messing with it won't help the supposed problem pointed out in the article.

--Mike--

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Protest the MPAA! Boycott Mission Impossible 2! More details here.

Er, no. "A hell of a lot of amps" will kill you at any voltage, if it goes through your body. It only takes something like 100 milliamps to kill you. As long as you're not grounded, you can grab a 100 kV line no problem, because no current is flowing.

However; more voltage implies more current given the same resistance (Ohm's law). So, a shock (the current) from a 240 V outlet will be twice as bad as from a 120 V line.

Anyway.

standard house current 120 volts is enough to mess you up but not kill you

There's an "urban myth" of a guy stealing power by placing several large coils in his back yard under a primary transfer line... The power company eventaully sued him.

That's no myth.

Where I live there is a great deal of snomobiling and one of the shacks near here had the entire shack lit from a coil of wire wrapped 'round a PVC pipe and put in a tree near a high tension line. They weren't drawing mega amps or anything, just enough for about six 100W light bulbs. The power company found it but nothing bad happnened, just a warning. It was used for a public "building" and hardly any power was drawn. Hell I bet the inspector used the shack himself while out on his sled. :-)

While it is possible to do this, you have a very poor transformer in action and you need to get quite close to the lines. Three phase power lines don't "leak" much because the lines all magnetically cancel each other out and there isn't much left to induce unless you're up close to the line, but that's not safe in the first place. :-)

--Mike--

Wattage (AC or DC) basically is voltage time current (amps)

(AC has some extra nicities like pahase relationships thrown in, but the basic idea still applies)

This means Twice the voltage times half the current give you the same total power, never mind that once the electricity enters your box, it is converted back into DC, and still has the same power requirements it always had.

so the suggestion is based on a incomplete understanding of the basics of electricity and power transmision. admittedly, not an intuitive topic, but still the idea is flawed. [sigh]

The potatoes sound like a much better bet.

Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich (among countless other experts) predicted a huge famine. He stated "The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years."

Life magazine reported "Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support ... the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution... by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earch by one half..."

Doesn't seem like much has changed since then and now except the exact nature of the impending disaster.

Never ascribe to maliciousness that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

In fact, the increased complexity often works counter to that end.

Indeed. Think of cable tv -- i can now choose from two providers, but both have horrible customer service and the same bad QOS.

In electricty, so much of the cost is wrapped up in the transmission and infrastructure that it's difficult to save much money. You can pay more to have renewable energy, but that's about it.

But with natural gas, on the other hand, you can save a lot. I'm not sure why -- this could be due to lower maintainence costs of the infrastructure. anyone?

-- "Your lack of faith is disturbing." -- Darth Vader

Here in Illinois, ComEd has been overbuilt by a large margin (or merely conserative, if you ask me), and have already handled loads (back in the 90's) that supposed watchdog groups said wouldn't happen until until the year 2017. It was fun to watch the system generation numbers go past 17 Gigawatts. ;-)

The Y2K hucksters had me almost convinced... but not this time. The sky isn't falling.

--Mike--

"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - The Brain

I haven't kept up with recent developments, but when last I knew the situation well, they made a lot of money selling their excess capacity to other utilities who didn't predict the trends as well as they had. I'm fairly certain they're on the ball, and can keep the 'trons flowing.

--Mike--

This sort of thing just goes to show why the whole concept of a public utility is severely outdated and needs to be replaced. Government interventionalism worked back in the days of building an infrastructure, but it invariably fails when it comes to maintaining and expanding a service.

Privatised utilities can offer a far superior service to consumers given the competition built into the free market socioeconomic model, and the privatisation of utilities in countries like the UK has been an unqualified success for both consumers and utilities, allowing people to choose exaclty who offers the best deals on their gas, electricity and so on.

What America needs is to have more privitised utilities - look at the success we've had with our health service, it is the envy of the world with the best equipped hospitals to be found anywhere. Surely it is obvious that this success could be used elsewhere, such as in an ailing electrical market.

Of course, the only real danger here is that the Government will attempt to privatise the industry whilst remaining in control of it through legislation and "industry watchdogs", stifling the benefits that privitisation should bring. As I'm sure all libertarians out there would agree, that would not be a good thing at all for anyone.

No - the power grid belongs to National Grid. Power generation is done by National Power and Powergen, and maybe others, who sell the power to National Grid. Delivery to the customer is typically handled by the local electricity company, though the customer may actually pay a different electricity company (or other companies who sell electricity, such as British Gas).

A similar system is in place for the gas supply. The infrastructure is owned by Transco (formerly part of British Gas), but the gas is sold by various companies, including British Gas, and electricity companies.

Sadly I've no mod points, but this is brilliant
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Cheers

Jon

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Protest the MPAA! Boycott Mission Impossible 2! More details here.

The reason we have the 11th in life expectancy are multifold.

• we put our elderly into homes and they die of boredom.
• people sit in front of a tv when they get home instead of staying active.
• Fast food.

within those three points, you can see that the healthcare already has it's hands full. No wonder heart diseas is so pevalent in this country.

A large number of utilities are moving toward power brokerage in their business focus, and away from power generation.

As the industry is being deregulated, there is more money to be made buying surplus power (really, the RIGHTS to power, at a time when there is a surplus) and then re-selling it on the spot-priced market (at a time when there is a defecit of power). Think: Electricity day-trading; Power arbitrage.

Existing power utilities are dropping expensive upkeep on older generating plants, and just letting the plant run down until they officially "sunset" it. Actually, many of them are for sale right now! As the CNET article mentioned, they aren't building new generating plants.

And just as we are seeing with telcos, there are more and more 3rd parties and middle-men moving in to make money on "market inefficiencies". They aren't creating new power, only buying existing power at a lower cost and re-selling it at a higher cost. If the consumer and the broker are the ones reaping the financial reward of this more efficient market, then the generating utilities are the ones who are paying for it. In this case, it IS a zero-sum game.

Here is where a comparison to telcos falls apart. Ameritech likes brokers because if demand increases, they can just build new facilities to meet the demand. Brokers help them sell MORE service. (Don't even get me into a discussion about the quality of service 3rd parties typically provide.) People don't protest the construction of a new phone switching station in their neighborhood. Hell, most folks don't even KNOW what that boxy building with no windows behind the supermarket IS. Not so with coal/oil/trash-burning power plants. Or a new dam on the river that will make a lake out of a couple of small towns. Or a nuke plant.

Virginia Power doesn't like brokers. They want to BE a broker. The costs of being a generator are just too great, especialy now in a broker's market where wholesale power margins are too tight. Better to slowly abandon the facilities and make money from pushing paper.

July, 1998 was hot summer. A number of power companies had plants out of service for maintenance (and Y2K remediation). Demand shot up with the temperature. Electricity that had been previously trading on the spot market at around $0.03 to $0.05 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) soared to $7.00 per kWh. That's an increase of greater than 14,000 percent! Illinova Power (Illinois) lost an entire year's worth of profits in one week. FirstEnergy (an energy trader with no generators of their own) was also harmed because other power-generation companies defaulted on their delivery contracts. (Source: New York Times, July 7, 1998 "Demand Surge Costs Utilities Huge Loses on Open Market". Archived article for $2.50)

Here's a fictional example to show how unregulated markets can hurt consumers:

PowerCo operates two 500MW plants (Alpha and Beta) near the City of Ciudad. There is a transmission line into Ciudad; it has a 100MW capacity. Ciudad can use it to import power from elsewhere on the grid to supplement what it can buy from PowerCo. This helps out on hot summers. Ciudad has a fairly consistent demand for 1000MW.

The current price for elextricity is $0.05 per kWh. Both plants are operating at capacity; Ciudad isn't importing any power over the transmission line. Each plant costs $20,000/hour to run at maximum capacity, but at $0.05/kWh, they are each pulling in $25,000, so PowerCo is making $10,000/hour profit. So far, things are hunky-dory.

Beta plant breaks down. Ciudad is now buying 500MW from PowerCo (getting it from Alpha), and supplementing that with 100MW from the transmission line. Ciudad is still 400MW short, and will probably send kids home from school and give city workers the day off, plus a few regional brown-outs to conserve power. It costs PowerCo $5,000/hour to pay the interest and salaries for Beta, even when it is broken. The shortage of available power raises demand for electricity and with it, the price.

Here is a quick table of power prices and the amount of profit PowerCo makes with Beta shut down:
Price - $/kWh   Profit - $/hour
  $ 0.05           $ 0
  $ 0.075          $ 12,500
  $ 0.10           $ 25,000
How soon do you think PowerCo is going to repair the broken Beta plant? Anyone with an MBA will tell you that the goal is to maximize profits, not sales.

This kind of scenario was prevented when power utilities were regulated for the public good. PUCO's required that utilities supply all the power that the public demands, fixing sales volume. They also fixed price and profit levels. Not so in this (admittedly simplistic) completely open-market model.

All of that was a long-winded way for asserting this:

In the current climate, there is little business incentive to increase the supply of power. It is too expensive to build and run generators. They are dirty, and people do not want them built near them. The expense to make them cleaner is far too great to appeal to most power companies in an unregulated industry. The demand is increasing; there is no question about that. With supply and demand out of balance, prices (and profits) will increase. Power brokerage is where the money is. Existing power companies' move away from generation toward brokerage will decrease the supply.

Watch for more blackouts!

There is some fear-mongering here. The fact is that there is plenty of electricity in most markets throughout the year. It's only peak demand periods, like we get in cities during a heat wave, that overload the system.

The article is correct about the price of energy increasing exponentially during these peak demand conditions. That is why many small private power companies are building gas turbine plants which can be started in about 20 minutes to meet peak demand. These micro-plants are idle most of the time, because they are less efficient than conventional plants and therefore unprofitable to operate when the price of electricity is at a normal level. But at peak demand, the price increases by one or two orders of magnitude, and these microplants become very lucrative.

These microplants are being built as fast as good locations can be found. The developers are targeting locations that can serve the largest peak demand nodes. Better than any government regulations, private industry is going to supply the electricity that we need. It may be a few more years before the capacity is there to prevent blackouts altogether, but the power industry is working very hard to solve this problem.

Incidentally, the increase in demand from computers is not seasonal, so it isn't contributing significantly to this problem. The power industry has expanded capacity gradually over the past 100 years to keep pace with steady demand. Unlike having your AC or lighting down for a few hours once a year, however, companies can't afford to have their computers go down, but they are not causing the power problem, they just feel the effects.

"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
-Richard P. Feynman

I'm not positive, but I'd bet utilities have insurance for this type of thing. In any case, the high costs represent a free exchange in a fair market, which the utility can capitalize over the rest of the year. The utility doesn't suddenly bill people for 10x what they usually pay for electricity.

The high prices make it worthwhile for the small power developers to invest in building mini-plants. Without them, we'd have a lot more outages.

You're right about nuclear, but it'll never happen in the US. The French did nuclear right, but they seem to accept it over there. We build every plant unique, so the design and certification costs were outrageous. The French standardized and planned things much more effectively, but they're also nationalized.

"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
-Richard P. Feynman

Having some expertise on this matter, I'd like to clarify some of the information presented in this post

Privatised utilities can offer a far superior service to consumers given the competition built into the free market socioeconomic model, and the privatisation of utilities in countries like the UK has been an unqualified success for both consumers and utilities, allowing people to choose exaclty who offers the best deals on their gas, electricity and so on.

In the U.K., like in many European countries, the electric utilities were GOVERNMENT owned. In the U.S., most major utilities are already privately owned by investors. You can buy stock in many of these companies on the major exchanges. The main reason why Thatcher initiated U.K. privatization was to bust up the Coal Miner Union who were requiring U.K. owned electric generators to buy and use expensive (and environmentally unsound) U.K. coal for fuel stock. So it's difficult to say what degree of the success of U.K. is due to privatization and what degree to deregulation (not the same thing).

What America needs is to have more privitised utilities - look at the success we've had with our health service, it is the envy of the world with the best equipped hospitals to be found anywhere. Surely it is obvious that this success could be used elsewhere, such as in an ailing electrical market.

Already happening. At least 23 states have passed some measure of deregulation. For example, California (perhaps the state most affected and effecting the Silicon Revolution) has one of the most aggressive deregulation program with a competitive wholesale electricity market. One of the problems with the current electricity industry (mentioned in the article), large price spikes along the magnitude of $10000/MWh, is a result of deregulation ... under regulation, prices were effectively regulator capped and determined. Under deregulation, firms can try to exercise market power (see Microsoft).

That said, there's also the issue of whether competition leads to better reliability. Remember, firms are just as likely to cut corners in an effort to provide 'cheaper' electrcity as they are provide better 'quality' (reliable) electricity in a competitive market ...

I sincerely hope this is a joke.

Privatising an industry is great for lowering prices, but in the electricity industry this means slashing maintenance and capital budgets.

So if you want cheap power, fine - but don't expoect reliability when your power company lays off half it's workforce and outsources everything to save a few bucks. Try totally deregulating the industry and see how reliable your power supply is.

If you don't believe me do some research on Mercury Energy in New Zealand.

Government Energy Monopolies may be slow, costly and inefficient but at least they get the job done and are accountable to the consumers.

Ya...unfortuantely, some of us don't have that option. I agree that the idea of lower consumption devices is a sound one and should be taken seriously, but unfortunately a lot of the existing infrastructure will be too expensive to replace easily.

The work is time-critical and can't go down at all, and our storage must be available full time for the rest of our team to analyze and use. We don't - CAN'T - take chances with electricity, and besides having UPS's connected to all the major units, we have a diesel powered generator in the basement of the building, and 60 car batteries to back that up.

I'd have to say that although I agree that *eventually* things will have to change and either alternative fuel sources need to be optimized and improved, or current devices need to come down in power consumption requirements (preferably both), for the moment, a lot of companies don't have a choice when it comes to using staunch amounts of electricity.

I'm not questioning the competency of PowerPC chips for a moment. What I do need is a good, solid FORTRAN compiler, though. A lot of our work is done in FORTRAN, and basically that's the main factor in choosing our hardware - FORTRAN compiler availability and quality, and raw performance. Of course, at one stage, one of the directors wanted to standardise on Compaq's new Fortran compiler for Win32, so we tested an NT 4 Server, SP 4, Dual PII Xeon 400 (if I recall correctly), and the damn thing didn't run near as well as the Alpha boxen we had, at that stage older ones - we have newer ones now - so that was basically the end of the discussion. I'm dissapointed by Microsoft's and Compaq's (in regard to mainstream comupting integration, that is, I'm not questioning their brilliance in Alpha/Digital/FORTRAN areas) dedication to the Scientific community - especially Microsoft. When asked to choose between Tru64 and NT, there's just no comparison at this stage. We're still being pressurized into migrating our stuff to NT, but I don't think the scientific community will stand for it. As for the G4/G3 from Apple, how good is MacOS? I've never used it. I've read about the new OS X, it sounds pretty neat, if it gets released soon and decent FORTRAN compilers become available for it, I'll certainly take a look at it.

Oh, right. Sorry. I'm an being an idiot today :) The "root" servers eh? RS/6000s :) Hehe. Sure, I guess it's worth a look, but I think the main reason we haven't had to explore other options is because Compaq's support is so good, the people on the Digital FORTRAN team are superb in the support department, and we generally have had a lot of success and a great relationship with them. I think a lot of people in the field were getting nervous around '98 when Digital was bought out, but Compaq has done brilliantly, IMO, and a lot of the scientific community out there seem to agree with me.

The biggest problem is the persistant NIMBY (Not in my backyard) attitude of people. There is no way you are going to be able to build a new power plant in city limits. People will protest no matter how good it may be for others. This means the power plants have to be built relatively far away increasing losses through transmission and the chance of outages.

Secondly other types of large scale power projects, for instance nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams, are almost impossible to build because of enviornmental/political reasons. No matter how clean nuclear power may be (you have to remember that Chernoble was a horrible design along with inept staff) provided it's well run (look at the system France uses and the Candu reactors used in Canada) political reasons have killed almost all new reactor projects.

This leaves a whole lot of alternative power. But even then people don't like the idea of wind power, too noisy, and would probably protest against solar a bit too. (uses up a lot of space and doesn't look very good) And then you have the fact that wind and solar are relatively expensive and unreliable. There are efforts in place to promote them, in some places you can pay extra money to have your electricity generated from alternative power sources, but those efforts will need to be scaled up a lot before they are realistic alternatives. Of course with the fuss over nuclear and hydroelectric alternative power may be a very realistic alternative...

ESM - Simple, easy, system monitoring for Linux/UNIX

That would probably work. There would be a big outcry from a minority of people, IE enviormentalists, who can't stand to have their objectives hindered by any means. But I think overall it would be pretty easy to bribe a population given enough money. The problem is the money... Even $1000 a household will still add up to millions. And that may still be less then the amount that you can expect property values to drop... And by paying people anything you're basically admitting that nuclear power is dangerous and you need to compensate the population. This may be a short-term gain but a long-term loss as in the future people will *demand* their bribes.

Life is far easier in SimCity. You don't have to care about the short-term feelings of your population.

ESM - Simple, easy, system monitoring for Linux/UNIX

ESM - Simple, easy, system monitoring for Linux/UNIX

Of course, once the power need it too high for the microwave dish, then you can use fusion power, which is much cleaner than nuclear power which polutes the surrounding air. And fusion plants have no disasters associated with them.

Man, SimCity cities are so much easier than real life... you can just shut off the newspaper and ignore public opinions...

Besides, it's just a game (a really fun game) - in the license, they have a clause that they aren't liable for anyone thinking they're smarter than they really are...

Over here (in France) you get the water naturally cooled down on a long canal before it can go back in the river and the hot water is used to have exotic (for here) animals like crocodiles.

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Viking Penguin (1995)

Compuware Cleveland E-Commerce development team.

The Candu and French reactors are relatively standardized for starters. Secondly those major leaks aren't very dangerous to anyone but those working in the plant. Thirdly my source on this is someone who works in a US reactor and knows first hand how dangerous they are compared to the Candu and French reactors.

ESM - Simple, easy, system monitoring for Linux/UNIX

Also, perhaps if solar cells soak up the energy that the ground and atmosphere would have otherwise soaked up, perhaps we'll provide some global cooling to offset the global warming?

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/ "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" - Nick Lowe

The only problem that I have with solar power is that while the energy source itself is clean, the process to make solar cells is very expensive and harmful to the environment in itself. I don't remember the exact figures, but it takes something like 10 years of clean energy production for a solar cell to "make up" for the environmental damage caused during its production.

In case it is not blatantly obvious, I am not an engineer. Someone with hard numbers back me up (or even better, contradict me!) here.