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Science

Power Plants On Rails for California 561

Posted by chrisd from the bringing-the-mountain-to-mohammad dept.
SoCalChris writes "According to this article on Wired.com, the Sierra Railroad is planning to use diesel train locomotives to produce power for California. Each of the 48 engines are expected to produce 2.1 megawatts of power for a thousand hours each year. Another key advantage to this plan is that since the "PowerTrains" are mobile, they can be taken to the areas that need power the most, so it doesn't have to be routed across the state through our power grid."
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Power Plants On Rails for California More

Power Plants On Rails for California

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  • Obviously (Score:5, Funny)

    by ksheff ( 2406 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @10:49PM (#3819675) Homepage

    They need something mobile to counter the rolling blackouts.

  • These devices were not designed to produce electricity, were they?
    Seems to me this is a desperate attempt to look like they are doing something about the problem, but in fact are creating additional inefficiencies in the system, which can only come back to bite them in the ass later.
    • Even my 2 year-old-son knows that these engines are called "Diesel Electrics" (well, he calls them 'dieselectrics', but you get the idea). Those diesel engines are running an electrical generator that provides electrical power to motor the train.

    • Re:This has to be inefficient (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Of course they werent.
      They are extremly inefficient, and burn DIESEL!
      what the hell are these people thinking.
      Is your need for air conditioning SO great that you have to have 48 diesel engines running YEAR ROUND and polluting the earth to ONLY produce 2.1 megawatts each? thats enough for a small city, but at what cost!.
      Hydroelectric dams have been around for AGES, why are you still burning DIESEL with prices as high as they already are?
      • An interesting fact about diesel... it doesn't have to come from petroleum. It can be made from vegetable oil combined with alcohol [nyserda.org].

      • They are extremly inefficient, and burn DIESEL!

        When tuned properly, a diesel engine is just as clean as gasoline. Plus diesel is more efficient, so you get more power per gallon. (Diesel powered small cars get much better mileage than their gas counterparts)

        Is your need for air conditioning SO great that you have to have 48 diesel engines running YEAR ROUND and polluting the earth to ONLY produce 2.1 megawatts each?

        It will only produce as much pollution as a few semi trucks put together.

    • Re:This has to be inefficient (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Diesel engines on trains are designed to do only one thing, produce electricity to drive DCtraction motors. They are actually portable power plants to begin with. This is a novel idea indeed
    • Diesel locomotives are essentially big generators. They generate a large current which drives an electric motor. If I remember correctly they can go in either direction with equal power simply by reversing polarity.

      Don't know if this is a great solution but locomotives definitely can produce lots of electric power.

    • Re:This has to be inefficient (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dmadole ( 528015 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @11:01PM (#3819751)

      Yes, they were designed to produce electricity. Modern diesel locomotives do not couple the diesel engines directly to the drive wheels, but rather use them to turn generators. The electricity produced is then used to run electric motors that power the drive wheels.

      It may seem inefficient, but you've got to remember how powerful a locomotive is. Starting a train moving from a dead stop is just not practical using a conventional clutch and transmission. The motor and generator combination provides the same ability to start from a dead stop smoothly and transform torque/speed ratios with fewer moving parts, and much less wear on parts.

      And in fact, the motor and generator are not much worse efficiency-wise than the friction losses in the transmission would be. These things are designed for efficiency.

      Of course, they don't natively produce power compatable with the power grid, but as the article says, that's easy (and also pretty efficient) to convert with interters.

      • It's probably more efficient. They run the diesels at a constant RPM where they are generating the most horsepower. The electric motors also have much more torque and are relatively easy to replace according to a brother that works for Union Pacific.

      • Another reason.. (Score:3, Informative)

        by mindstrm ( 20013 )
        Diesel engines (and gas engines) have an optimum RPM, where they are the most efficient.

        In something that is fuel/electric hybrid, you can use the fuel section at an optimal way to produce power, and then regulate the electric how you want.

        Same thing goes on I think in like an M1 tank.. a gas turbine (jet) engine runs at constant speed producing power.
      • Here's a quick way of looking at it--

        A diesel engine has no torque at 0 rpm (that's why an electric motor is used to start it, and why it idles)

        An electric motor typically has maximum torque at 0 rpm - coils can reach their full field strength and waste no time (due to inductance, di/dt=V/L [sweethaven.com]) switching the current in them.
    • These devices were not designed to produce electricity, were they?
      Actually they are - they are diesel-electric locomotives. A diesel engine drives a generator, which drives a large electric motor, and allows the locomotive to move along without the need to change gears while having the engine running at an efficient speed. It's important to be able to increase speed gradually when you are pulling a few thousand tonnes.

      However, the locomotives made to move, and are not as efficient as a fixed diesel generator of the same size. They are nowhere near as efficient as a small unit in a tiny coal/oil burning steam power plant (and for such things bigger and hotter is better) but have the advantage that you don't have to wait three years for a turbine to be built. You can just park them in the right place and wire them up in days.

      Let's not even consider nukes in this discussion - do you know how long it takes to built those plants or how much it costs? (let alone other problems). It looks very much like extra capacity was needed a decade ago, and waiting another decade for a very expensive solution may not be a good idea. It's just as well that people in the USA are used to "brownouts" by now.

  • it sounds like RTS games DO have a purpose. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @10:53PM (#3819704) Journal
    Why does it sound like California's energy plan is some crazed mixture of Sim City and an RTS?

    "Quick Bob, move those two engines to San Jose quick."

    "No, wait, power outage in Anahiem. Undo, undo!"

    "I can't move it fast enough!"

    "Lasso all the Amtracks and use your hotkeys!!!!"

    Look at all of the valuable life skills computer games teach us! :)

  • Ice Storm (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @10:54PM (#3819711)
    I live in Montreal, and during the 1999 Ice Storm that knocked out power to almost 300,000 people many communities that had access to the railway used diesel train locomotives to produce electricity for there area.

    • Re:Ice Storm (Score:5, Interesting)

      by aron_wallaker ( 93905 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @11:11PM (#3819800)
      IBM has a chip packaging plant in Bromont, Quebec. As part of their disaster recovery planning they had an agreement to lease a locomotive in case of a prolonged power outage - especially in the winter when cold temperatures could damage the equipment. So the ice storm hits, knocks out power and phone lines all over the place, their locomotive shows up and they connect it to run power into the chip plant - not to try to run the plant mind you, just to keep it heated....except once they got that accomplished they realized they had enough excess energy to run the grid for most of the town. (!)

      You want good will from local government/townspeople ? Try heating their houses for a couple of weeks in the middle of winter. :)

  • Or they could build nuclear plants (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @10:56PM (#3819722) Homepage Journal
    Despite the doom and gloom prophecies of the anti-nuke crowd, nuclear power generation has proved itself the least environmentally impacting electricity generating method time and again. Canada and France (while certainly not governmental systems to model) have come up with a system of genericized nuclear breeder facilities that provide clean, cheap power to their respective countries.

    It's sad that Germany has made the decision to kill more birds and disrupt weather patterns with their latest misguided policies. And it's sad that the radical left in California has blocked nuclear power plant construction in their state.

    A diesel train to generate electricity? Why not just legalize tobacco again and ruin everyone's lungs?
    • This is designed to meet localized short-term increases in demand and, as such, is very well designed and fairly enviromentally friendly. Nobody wants to put a nuclear reactor on a train - that would be foolish. Is this Perfect - No. But don't go baggering them, at least they are trying to learn if biodiesel is OK to use and such. Would you rather that they build a coal plant?

      BTW, yes nuclear power rocks - too bad a plant built starting today wouldn't get finished by the end of the decade baring radical swings in public opinion.
      • Actually- I believe I heard this idea floated during the power crisis here last summer- there were tentative plans to park a nuclear submarine in a harbor and run power cables from its reactor to help meet demand during peak hours. I think this is a much better idea than putting a nuclear reactor on a train, since we already have years of experience with nuclear reactors in submarines. Also, there is a train track near my backyard.

    • Many people think that only Luddites could oppose more nuclear power because they're afraid of technology. I'm not afraid of technology, I'm afraid of the ineffectiveness of a handfull donut-eating security guards at each of hundreds of sites. Carefully read this [thebulletin.org] and this [thebulletin.org] and then think again about your plan to save a few German birds.
    • Nuclear waste is as much a problem as air pollution. And with more Nuclear Power Plants in operation it will continue to be a problem. Radioactive byproducts are not something that can be easily overlooked. Ask the people of Nevada about the Yukka Mtn Project.

      The key is to conserve energy and to invest in NEW technologies. Learn to use our sources of energy more efficiently with less pollution. The dangers inherent in nuclear energy plus the radiocative waste breeder plants produce make Nuclear Power repellent.

      info on [sierraclub.org]
      nuclear waste and the Yukka Mountain NWD
      • They cannot be overlooked, or ignored, certainly. But that's a GOOD thing.

        It's easy to ignore the waste from a coal plant, or a diesel plant. We don't even KNOW the full environmental impact of these things.

        The point is, with nuclear, at least we can bottle the waste and keep tabs on it.

        • The point is, with nuclear, at least we can bottle the waste and keep tabs on it.
          ... until we can have a surface-to-orbit transport safe/effective/cheap enough to lift the waste to orbit, then, presto, send the whole kit and kaboodle into the Sun.

    • Or not. (Score:3, Informative)

      by BernardMarx ( 576104 )
      nuclear power generation has proved itself the least environmentally impacting electricity generating method time and again...


      Why not just legalize tobacco again and ruin everyone's lungs?
      Uhh... so what are you smoking?

      Nuclear Energy: 30,000 tons [uiuc.edu] of radioactive waste per year, not to mention releasing more into the atmosphere. [radiation.org]

      Solar Energy: No waste.

      Wind Energy: No waste.

      Not only that, solar [realgoods.com] and wind [realgoods.com] are cheap enough for an individual to buy.

      Hmmm... expensive, carcinogenic energy; or affordable, clean, sustainable energy.
      The choice is yours.
      • First, the site you are linking to (30,000 tons) states quite clearly how LITTLE waste this is compared to other things. Keep in mind it's contained waste... not like coal. Got numbers on how much waste comes from coal generation? I bet it's a lot more.

        Oh yeah. Also.
        All of the nuclear waste generated since the first nuclear plant was put into operation would only cover a football field five yards deep!

        You have to rememver how dense nuclear waste is.

      • Re:Or not. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bruce Perens ( 3872 )
        Photovoltaic (solar) electric generation produces a lot of waste - it's so inefficient that you may never recover the energy used to manufacture the equipment, and the equipment itself is the waste, along with whatever waste was created in producing it.

        Bruce

    • Without government insurance guarentees (subsidies) nuclear power would not be economically viable. Already the cost of decomission makes it so that when my dad was looking for long term stocks for the conservative holdings part of his portfolio he searched for a power provider with no exposure to nuclear power because the cost to decomission a plant might eat more than 50% of the revenue the plant produced over decades. Now as far as environmental effects in the short term you are correct that nuclear power is the cleanest however long term disposal impacts are yet to be measured. Also all that it takes is one mistake and nuclear can leave an area uninhabitable for centuries, Chernoble isn't expected to pose a non serious health risk for at least 300 years! Don't say it could never happen here, three mile island was within minutes of a runaway reaction and a power plant here in Ohio had the reactor cap almost eaten through by boric acid.
    • I don't know about France, but Canada's nuclear power program has not worked out very well from a fiscal point of view. Due to high costs and mismanagment, Canada's nuclear power plants are not cost affective. Most of the nukes are in Ontario, owned by the provncial government. Most have been shut down, and there are NO plans to build more. They are just too expensive to build and operate.

      Most new generation in Canada will be Hydro (big dams) or combined cycle gas turbines. In British Columbia a coastal wave pilot plant is going to be built 'soon'. There is also talk of using coal, but the Greens are dead set against that.

    • Despite the stone-dead ignorance of the pro-nuke crowd, there is no energy supply problem anywhere in the US. We waste most of the energy we produce today, and we have the technology to reduce our energy consumption by an order of magnitude. When our demand problem is fixed, supply from wind and solar are simple. When you call for nukes, just remember you're proposing building power plants so we can keep millions of vcr's blinking "12:00" 24 hours a day, and so we can cool the attics of idiots who put dark shingles on their roofs (collecting solar energy exactly where it's not wanted).

      Until our demand problem is fixed, even nukes are at best a stop-gap solution -- and one that creates a mess that no one can clean up.

    • its BIODIESEL by the way (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Juln ( 41313 )
      Did anyobdy read the article besides me? it says in the second line or so that these will be biodiesel burning: Moreover, the company is going to fuel them with 100-percent biodiesel, a cleaner-burning vegetable oil equivalent of the familiar petroleum product. The California Consumer Power and Conservation Financing Authority has signed on to buy the locomotive project's electrical output for five years as part of the agency's plan to buy 250 megawatts of environmentally benign, or "green," electricity per year.
      Sorrry if reading the article doesn't into your political view.
      By the way, as soon as you can describe what to do with material that is extremely dangerous to life for a few hundred thousand years, I'd be happy to endorse more nuclear plants! Untilthen burning vegetable oil sounds like a good idea.
      Whynot legalize hemp again and NOT ruin everybody's lungs... sorry, couldn't resist.
      • Am I the only one who doesn't think it's very swift to burn food to produce electric power?

        Bruce

        • Am I the only one who doesn't think it's very swift to burn food to produce electric power?

          Burning food for power is a 100% natural process - animals have been doing it for milions of years now.

          Man has been doing it for milenia too - oil lamps anybody.

          Energy is energy - it really doesn't mater if it comes in an eatable package or not.
    • There needs to be a "-1 Shill" moderation. Nuclear power is not the solution to anything on earth.
    • Very good points above.

      California has a larger problem that people want to believe, and a few locos now and again won't make a difference in the long run (except for global warming). What they need to do is build more power plants, and get over with the electricity problem.

      Nuclear is also my favored solution here, although fundamentalist groups (discussion below) will argue that it's unsafe/unclean and spread FUD. Fossil fuels (oil, coal) are doomed in a few decades because of the pollution they produce. Clean energy such as wind or solar, isn't ready or stable enough for prime time. Hydro plants are limited and there are only so many dams you can build on any given river.

      Clean fuels or energy (natural gas, hydrogen, ..) are probably the more environment-friendly alternative, but we can't use them with a good enough cost/efficiency ratio for producing energy.

      The state could simply ask people to take measures to reduce electricity consumption, but that won't work. How how many of you REALLY want to switch off their TV / computers / lights when not used ?

  • Great Scott! (Score:4, Funny)

    by soulsteal ( 104635 ) <soulsteal@@@3l337...org> on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @10:56PM (#3819727) Homepage
    expected to produce 2.1 megawatts of power for a thousand hours each year. Another key advantage to this plan is that since the "PowerTrains" are mobile, they can be taken to the areas that need power the most

    But if the trains should hit precisely 88 miles per hour, they'll disappear into the space-time continuum!

    Oh wait... 2.1 mega watts....

  • Any chance we can get that biodiesel fuel to work on cars?...McDonald's could finance the effort due to the increased business it will get.
    • In some parts of the world (Argentina, for example) diesel is as common or more common in automobiles as gasoline. Its actually quite effective - modern technology has improved it such that the engines are less noisy, and diesel is in general more efficient then conventional gas. It does however cause greater wear, hence greater repair costs. Biodiesel cars are both feasible and a handful are in existence.
  • It's only about 100 MW total. A fullblown power station produces at least 10 times that much. The capacity could help in some emergencies but mainly it's an uneconomical way of making electricity turned suddenly profitable by Enron-spawned manipulated price increases.
    • Actually, it's not really uneconomical to make power that way. Because the power is thus localized, and not bought from other plants, you save a substantial amount of money.

      Base load power is always cheap (the steady stuff, like hydroelectric and nuclear), but any power above that is always a lot of money, since it's all about supply and demand.

      I work in a nuclear power plant, and our cost per kilowatt is peanuts. But we cannot supply the whole province (I live in Ontario) with nuclear power alone. Cheap power like ours supply about 50% of the province. Outside of that, we have to run the expensive fossil fuel plants. And if we can't make 100% of the power needed, there's either going to be brown-outs, or we have to buy power from elsewhere. And that's where the MASSIVE energy costs are from. It is said that 90% of the cost of electricity is from that extra 10% needed that is brought in from elsewhere.

      So if they can localize the production of power, without having to have it brought in from out of state, California stands to save quite a bit, even if it's just 100MW.

  • Information for the uninformed: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson.psg@com> on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @11:06PM (#3819778)
    These trains were built to produce electricity. In fact, all modern locomotives are. the engines are designed to do one thing and one thing only: generate electricity. there are electric motors that do the pushing.

    My father was an engineer for Burlington Northern before Santa Fe merged with them, and i remember as a child, going to the engine plant, and actually being INSIDE an engine cylinder - they're massive!

    When i asked my dad why they were so big, he said "they need to be, they run all the time and it takes a lot of electricity to pull a train." being a smart lad of 8, i asked "don't the engines push the wheels?" through a lengthy discussion that i repeated with him over the years to get more detail, i learned that the engines produce electricity and the wheels are driven by electric motors.

    It turns out that this is more efficient, in money, fuel effeciency, and repair time (imagine replacing the drive train if it were not electrically driven). all you do is replace a motor, instead of a drive shaft and/or transmission. (simplified explanation, of course)

    It makes perfect sense for them to do this. Resourcefullness demonstrated brilliantly!

    Naikrovek
    • It is also better to generate power with the engine and use electric motors for the wheels because of torque. If you applied all the torque of such a large engine to the wheels of a stationary train, the wheels would spin and the train wouldn't move. By generating electricity, they can feed a smaller current to the motors to start out with a small torque to get the train moving and then increase.
      • diesel engines have terrible power bands -- whilst a average automobile engine can produce useable torque between 500-6000 RPM; big diesel engines only do so between ~100 - 600? (the numbers escape me -- but the spirit is the same) -- hence to be able to produce reasonable torque between rest and cruising speed, you need something like around 80 different gear ratios. for everyone who does not drive stick and have NO idea what gear ratios are... erm... cars usually have ~3-6 different ratios. the transmission would be HUGE! and the loss phemomenal

        furthermore -- when the train is at rest -- remember that the engine only produce torque around 100 rpm -- this means you need some serious clutch plate to be able to handle that much torque. in the end motors are much better because they have a flat (pretty much) torque band (until drop off at high RPMs -- but that's above cruising speed anyhow).

        the other great they they can do easily with a motor is braking -- when you applies the brakes the electricity flows from the motor(s) and through a large resistor mesh (generally a couple ohms), this mesh will heat up and there is a fan on top of the train spcifically used to cool this mesh. realld neat stuff.

        for a lot more info check out here: sorry it's late and i don't want to deal with tags -- so copy and paste: http://www.howstuffworks.com/diesel-locomotive.htm
    • The real reason for diesel-electric locomotives is that a mechanical drive would require "a clutch the size of Cleveland", plus a shiftable transmission of awesome size. And you still wouldn't get all-wheel drive.

      Hydraulic transmissions, which are variable-displacement pumps driving hydraulic motors, are sometimes used for low-speed switch engines, but there's a vibration problem with hydraulic transmissions that's kept them as slow-speed devices. (I once worked in a hydraulic R&D facility, which built, among other things, prototype locomotive transmissions.)

      But electric motors can produce full torque at zero speed. So they're just what you need to start up a freight train. A variable-speed electrical drive in locomotive size was a problem for a long time. Until about 1950, all you could do is switch windings into various combinations of parallel and series. Later, ignitrons (the big mercury-vapor member of the gas-discharge triode tube family) were tried. It took a while for semiconductors to work up to handling megawatts. BART was the first railroad with semiconductor motor drives, and they burned out giant triacs regularly for years.

      The latest generation of locomotives finally does it right - the motors are synchronous AC three-phase motors driven by variable-frequency inverters in a closed-loop system. This synchronizes all the motors on all the axles (the motors are down in the trucks, near the wheels), which provides synchronized all-wheel drive. Synching all the wheels nearly doubled drawbar pull (the locomotive spec that matters), and the limits of couplers have now been reached.

      Despite this, using spare diesel engines to generate power is a basically dumb idea except in emergencies. The efficiency isn't that good and diesels pollute more than any of the other popular forms of power generation.

  • alternative fuels like biodiesel ... but can also be made from other vegetable oils, animal fat and discarded cooking grease.

    Cool, so now McDonald's can now change their signs to:

    "Over 6 billion served...
    And over 100,000 homes fueled"
  • I live in close proximity to the Caltrain tracks. There are times when the freight trains that run at night are loud, but bearable.

    The problem is that these locomotives will likely be put in areas where "public resistance" is weakest. Industrial areas? Cool. Out in the boonies? Even better.

    But someday, I'm going to need power to my local grid and some big ass (yet cool looking) locomotive is going to park by my house running at full steam (heh) for a few days.

    That might suck. I frankly won't care (gotta keep my UPS battery charged) but the cranky neighborhood association will.

    • Oh that's easy to take care of. They'll just blow the air horn every now and then. By comparison, the roaring diesels will sound like the soft purr of a kitten.

      Sorry, I just got back from San Diego where the trains come right past the nice hotels and blow their horns at 1 AM, or 2 AM, or even 3 AM. WHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!. WHAA WHAA WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!! Man, I can't imagine some folks pay a million bucks literally to sleep next to that crap. But I digress...
  • "Another key advantage to this plan is that since the "PowerTrains" are mobile, they can be taken to the areas that need power the most, so it doesn't have to be routed across the state through our power grid."

    Don't underestimate the usefulness of being able to move the move the trains around the power grid. There is significant work going on right now with minimising lossed on the power grid from transformer inefficiencies, line resistance, power thieves, metering errors, etc. These losses are hard to quantify in the real world but someone has to pay for them.

    Often the power company will figure out the overall losses for the system and then divide that cost up equally among the users of the grid. The problem is that people close to the power plant get hosed because the pay for losses that happen further into the system then they are, so essentially they are paying for power they do not use. Being able to do this will help appease those customers who are close to the power plants because the trains can be moved to the other end of the grid to minimise losses.

    On a related note, the only countries that I know of where there are real government-legislated economic incentives to minimise such losses are Australia, Spain, and one of Finland or Norway, I can't remember which. (As a silly north american, I tend to confuse the two.) These places are where much the real work in reducing losses is coming from.

    • the only countries that I know of where there are real government-legislated economic incentives to minimise such losses are Australia
      Not any more, we scrapped it in 1997 to follow the Californian model (I kid you not) due to "competition policy." It is an extremely weird situation, since government bodies run all power stations that can get electrons to capital cities, and power is sold on paper from places the current cannot come from. The economies of scale vanised, and for some reason all of the local monopolies started spending lots of money on advertising and dubious real estate ventures.

  • Cockjockery (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @11:41PM (#3819960)
    Some people bash California as being a bunch of ignorant liberal fucks. This is only partially true. There's a magical land in this very state where the water runs pure and the electricity comes cheap and the migrant workers, well, they are neither heard nor seen. This magical land is called Sacremento. From this shining beacon of cockjockery shines the shiny light of dumbfuckery. See up in Sac Town where all the tough choices are made they're insulated from the rest of the state's problems.

    Using diesel electric locomotive engines to boost a local power station has cool geek factor to it but it is a stupid and short term fix for a very serious long term problem. The descision to deregulate power is a failed experiment yet our plucky leadership in Sac Town don't see it that way, they're rather spend billions dollars bailing out these failed and failing utility companies and their shit management. It is sad watching this all happen. It doesn't matter how you vote locally either, the State Assembly doesn't do anything to curb the jackassery coming from the Governor's office.

    What the state needs is regulated and less externally dependant electrical power. The state has been growing temendously in the past 20 years but hasn't seen the construction of a single new power plant, nuclear or otherwise. The population in the bay area has boomed as well as the populations of San Diego and Orange counties. A lot of people are moving into Riverside and San Bernadino counties out towards the deserts where they run their air conditioner 24/7 and water their lawns in the middle of the day because they don't know how to live in a desert. These sort of people are a huge strain on the power grid in Southern California and makes the boards of SoCal Edision cream their pants. Running a couple trains down there during the summer to give some extra go juice to people does not solve the problem. Nevada has its own burgeoning population in and around Las Vegas they've got to provide power and water for, they aren't going to able to export power to California for too much longer.

    The state needs more eletrical plants. There are plenty of clean-ish power plant designs in common use around the world that the state could use for a basis for new plants. It is getting ridiculous that these retarded stopgap measures are being suggested and implimented when the real solution is so clear cut. There's plenty of plants that can be upgraded to use cleaner technology while at the same time increasing their output. It'd be a much better use than billion dollar bonds being spent to cover the cost of crooked deregulated utility companies.

    • First of all, it's "Sacramento." If you're going to talk about it, spell it right. Second off, I don't know where you're getting the idea that electricity is cheap in Sacramento. My SMUD bill (yes, I live here. I'm 2 blocks from the Capitol building.) is most certainly not cheap. Have you noticed all of the idiot protesters outside that vote DOWN power plants? How about the Sierra Club? The "NIMBY" folks? Deregulation has ceased to exist. It's over.

      Also, there have been quite a few power plants built. In fact, SMUD has one on McClellan Air Force Base that just opened up about a year ago. Where the hell did you get the idea that not a single new power plant has been built?

      Insulated from the state problems.. hardly. I walk downtown every single day and see our state problems right in front of me. The politicians walk around and see the same exact problems. Whether they do anything about it is another story.

      • I live in another California city where the utilities are municipally owned. Our bills may not be low by any means but even at their peak of the rolling blackouts and overhyped crisis we didn't have it as bad as SCE and PG customers. SCE customers' baseline rate (which SCE is not very up front with) is double what you or I are paying for our base rate. Both PG and SCE have done their best to screw not only their customers but the entire state over with their underhanded power trading practices.

        I don't why I said no new power plants have been built, I meant only nuclear plants. There's been something like 13 built in the state this year which amounts to something around 2,000MW of capacity. The lack of nuclear plants was my point, end to end they are much cleaner than coal or oil plants and have a much better track record. New reactor and plant designs have shrunk the size and cost down quite a bit as well as increased the safety margins. The NIMBY folks and Sierra Club terrorists are screwing all of us over blocking these plants.

        I say Sac is isolated from the state's problems not to suggest you don't have your share of bums or crime. The legistlation and state government in general is just far removed from anywhere their descisions directly affect. Absurd logging restrictions kill small towns in the northern half of the state while mismanagement of utilities has caused loads of problems in the southern half. Its sad watching this power crap happen because it is causing businesses to avoid staying or moving here.
    • The descision to deregulate power is a failed experiment yet our plucky leadership in Sac Town don't see it that way, they're rather spend billions dollars bailing out these failed and failing utility companies and their shit management. It is sad watching this all happen.

      California never really deregulated the electric power industry, instead they screwed with the market under the guise of deregualtion. For exmple, they:

      Capped prices to business users and mandated price cuts to rersidential users (10% - the pols loved to trumpet that), while,

      Forbidding companies from entering into long term supply contracts, instead they were forced to by on the spot (right now) or day ahead markets, and,

      Did this in a state where the reserve margin (power production capacity above demand) was shrinking and where the ability to move power ointo the state and from the north to the south was severely constrained, and finally,

      Forced utilities to meet all demand, no matter what their cost of power was.

      So , you've got a place where prices don't rise no matter how much I use and my supplier is forced to buy power at any cost, and its not easy to get more in so supply can keep up with demand at a reasonable price - and people are surprised at what happened? Any power generator in their right mind would look at the market and figure out how to get the highest price for its dollars, the state of CA's desires for cheap power be damned.

      What I find funny about all this was people pointed this out before deregulation took hold - but the politicians/utilities/consumer activists all jumped on the bandwagon because they all thought they'd get what they wanted - votes/greater profits/lower prices.

      Maybe someone should ask Sen Steve Peace (D- El Cajon) how he feels about being the "Father of deregulation" in CA? Free clue - he's already said it ain't his or the legislature's fault - it's those big bad other guys who are to blame for taking advantage of the rules the legislature created.

  • Really nothing new... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig.hogger@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday July 03, 2002 @11:41PM (#3819963) Journal
    Back in the days where steam power was ***THE*** thing, steam locomotives were often used to replace or assist some plant's steam boiler while it was out of service... As many plants had sidings to bring-in railroad cars, it wasn't very hard to bring the hog near the plant building.

    But this was done recently for electric power; in 1998, a disastrous ice storm destroyed a fair portion of the electric distribution system in Québec; in a suburb of Montréal, diesel locomotives were lent to the city [optushome.com.au] to provide emergency power; they even ran the engines on the frozen street without any track at all!!! (other links here [thezone.net] and here [cnn.com]).

  • Merely a Drop in an Ocean (Score:4, Informative)

    by Pooua ( 265915 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @12:05AM (#3820062) Homepage
    Each of 48 trains would produce 2.1 MW of electricity, for a total of 100.8 Megawatts, for 1000 hours a year, amounts to 100.8 Gigawatt-hours a year.

    The State of California in 2001 produced 265059 Gigawatt-hours, or almost 3000 times more electric power than these trains are supposed to produce. Even solar energy contributes more to California; 638 GW-hours!

    California Gross System Electricity Production for 2001 [ca.gov]

  • Another key advantage to this plan is that since the "PowerTrains" are mobile, they can be taken to the areas that need power the most, so it doesn't have to be routed across the state through our power grid.

    Hmmm... I can picture an article in the early 1900s : "Advances of electricity transport! A new way of transporting energy is now available! No diesel locomotives are needed anymore to bring electricity across cities; it is now possible to use a nation-wide power grid, which should bring power almost instantly where it's needed!"

  • This idea isn't new (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SkyLeach ( 188871 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @12:10AM (#3820088) Homepage
    At Bob Jones University in Greenville SC they produce their own power from 2 diesel train engines and one diesel tugboat engine. They produce enough power to sell a good portion back to the local GTE affiliate and as an added bonus the water used to cool the engines is pumped through an underground network of steam pipes.

    You can take as long a hot shower there as you could possibly want :-).

    I know all this because I helped build a couple of the substations and did a lot of electrical repairs down in the steamtunnels under the school.

    Still have the mental note not to lean against a foil wrapped pipe while unscrewing a wet 110 outlet...

  • They're already expanding the program (Score:3, Insightful)

    by happyclam ( 564118 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @12:26AM (#3820156)

    Because everyone has complained about the current, stationary natural gas powerplants polluting the air, they will take them and put them on flatbed cars and drive them up and down the train tracks. This will have the double benefit of bailing out Amtrak and allowing the deisel generators to continue to belch out known harmful chemicals all day and all night, further allowing the government to completely ignore solar power.

    I just don't get why the state that has most of the Mojave Desert can't set up a decent solar energy system, at least for the bottom half of the state.

  • Energy efficiency? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @01:02AM (#3820281) Journal
    You would think that after the rolling black/brownouts they've experienced in the last year or so that Californians would be more conscientious of the need to conserve energy wherever possible.

    But, from what my friends in SF and LA tell me, the average Joe is still getting through as much power as before, if not more, despite the rise in the price of electricity.

    Any /. readers from California reading this who care to offer a first hand perspective? Are you using just as much energy as before the current crisis? Have you taken any measures to cut down on your consumption? What's your local government doing to promote energy efficiency?

    Some detailed on the ground information would be appreciated.
    • Any /. readers from California reading this who care to offer a first hand perspective?
      Just left California, fwiw...

      The shortage was artificial, caused mostly by Enron manipulating the market. I lived in Santa Clara, a city with a municipal electric utility and a municipal generator, and never once experienced a power cut, with minimal changes to my usage patterns, and paid consistently less than PG customers too. But the free market is blameless blah blah.

      The co-los in town had a lot of diesel generators in the parking lot, ready to provide some of their own power when the state wanted them off the grid for a little bit. Most large retail facilities in California and a few small ones did dim their interior lighting to save energy, and still do.

      -jhp

    • A Santa Cruz Perspective:

      Santa Cruz, in case you don't know, is famous for its outrageous rental prices, pot smoking hippies, and almost 80 percent engineering drop out rate.

      Personally, since last summer, I've been a little more conscientious-- Fluorescent bulbs, don't live in an area with a need for ac, but I'll do the dishes by hand during the day rather than run a load.

      However, many people don't, well, live in santa cruz. My home town is normally lit up brighter than...Nevermind. My family shuts off lights a little more, and fluorescent bulbs are in style now, but other than that I haven't noticed much difference. Frankly, noone I know was hit by a rolling blackout-- My home area has a Little Power Plant [pge.com], so that was never a problem, and in santa cruz, the longest non-centralized on UC Santa Cruz campus power outage was perhaps 30 minutes-- In an area way out in the middle of nowhere.

      Basically, it didn't do much other than remind me that as a college student, I really can't afford the cost of keeping my computers on 24/7 anymore. It now gets turned off, and it seems to save me quite a bit of money.

      So, I guess the answer to your questions are, the energy I use is less because it costs 70% more. I turn off lights more often, read by the window more often, and use fluorescent lights. Local govt. isn't doing jack shit to promote energy efficiency, except playing the same annoying commercial every three minutes on the best radio station here [ksjo.com].

      Oh, yeah, and I stopped working for the lumber lobby, and started working for a nature conservancy. /ex

    • Re:Energy efficiency? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JohnsonWax ( 195390 ) on Thursday July 04, 2002 @03:12AM (#3820732)
      I'm in SoCal, and there are a number of people/groups making a concerted effort to reduce power usage. I've reduced power usage in my office by about 25%. Little things - lower power computers and LCDs (long live energy efficient PowerPC), lighting changes (often no lights during summer), having printers and copiers go to standby quickly. They add up, and don't significantly impact the office function.

      Local government does nothing to promote energy efficiency. There's no incentive for them to do so. State does a little, but it's pointless, IMO.

      Some things that they could do:

      1) Solar panels on public buildings. We get 300 days/year of sunshine. Public schools have enormous surface areas and use virtually zero electricity in summer, which could be sold back to the grid. At the current power prices, the ROI wouldn't take long.

      2) Fuel cell generators. Due to air quality regulations, California refines a lot of it's own gasoline. The many byproducts of that refining can be used to generate electricity using fuel cells.

      3) Provide tax incentives to conserve electricity. The incentive here is through higher electricity costs, but that's a cost not immediately felt. Rebates on more efficient appliances would help encourage people at the time that they purchase to choose a better option. Incentives for home solar units would be good. Those died out with Carter.

      The problem is really a cultural one. People in this state take conspicuous consumption to new levels and yet put the green face forward. Giant SUVs, giant TVs, giant refrigerators, and on and on. It's almost a contest to see who can consume the most resources and at the same time bitch and moan about how wasteful the other guy is, or how bad a power plant is for the environment. I'm originally from New York, so I love mass transit, I'm used to goddamn small homes, and walking is a way of life. Even here I sometimes go 8 weeks without gassing up the car (12 gal tank).

      I think this state needs a serious priority adjustment. The best thing for all involved would be $5/gal gas, and $300/mo electricity bills. It's not that people should have to spend huge amounts of money, rather, they should consciously consider their actions that will prevent that from happening. It's often surprisingly simple to cut your gasoline and electricity consumption by 25% or 50%, you just need to be motivated to do it. Seriously, my neighbor drives to his mailbox - 100 feet away. It sounds like a comical CA stereotype, but it's true more than you want to know.

      Gas and electricity here are cheap. Even at it's peak $2.20 per gallon, gas is far, far less than every other person here pays for water or coffee - usually $2 per shot. Electricity bills are routinely $30-$60/month. When your house costs $400K-$500K, an extra $20/mo is hardly even noticeable. $500/mo would get peoples attention, though. And $200 at the gas station would as well. Even at the peak of the gas price run-up last summer, SUV purchases climbed. An extra $25 at the pump just isn't enough to impact a $45,000 purchase.
  • It seems to me that in an energy crisis... (pick one)
    • OPEC raises the price of oil to pressure the U.S. to leave Arafat/Hussein in power
    • we can't get to Canada's giant oil reserve because it's frozen solid and no one wants to risk trying to artificially "defrost" a few billion gallons of it
    • some unscrupulous energy corporation hoards oil to drive prices up
    • something else
    ...California is still screwed.

    Wouldn't it be quicker just to build traditional power plants somewhere in the state and transfer power to needy locations as necessary? Doesn't electricity travel faster than a speeding locomotive? This seems comparable to the Postal Service announcing that you can now print out your emails and mail them to recipients using a special stamp.

    A real newsworthy breakthrough would be the announcement that they're going to build a giant solar energy collector in the desert along Interstate 10. It's not like there's any shortage of space... there are approximately 2 towns in the couple hundred miles between Palm Springs and the Arizona border.

  • And here is an interesting article [howstuffworks.com] explaining more in depth about how diesel-electric locomotives work, and once you read this you will understand more of why this isn't nearly as innefficient as it sounds.
  • My father is retired from the Railroad and I remember him telling me one year that for one reason or another (don't recall those details, but if you like I could make them up), the office building in the yard had to cut back on it's electrical use. So they pulled two engines off of some side tracks, pulled them right up next to the building and had the electricians wire them up to the office. They ran them that way for several months.

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