too much wind power

[we_are_toast]

Re: too much wind power

There are existing technical solutions that are much more elegant. The folks who design and sell industrial and automotive data buses have done a ton of good work and developed standards and devices for such things. One key element I'm thinking about is the concept of the "device model" for things connected in a network.

The machine can tell the network what it is and how it works so the controller or peer can interact in a sensible way. A presure sensor can, by it's device model, let the rest of the network know that all it can do is report the pressure when requested. A million dollar labeling machine can tell the network that it is more sophisticated and able to take many commands about how it should be labeling and can report many things about what it is doing.

Using these existing schemes, the utility can control devices in your house and you can set permission levels and set limits on their behavior. You could choose to deny all access to the utility, or only let the utility delay your clothes dryer for a brief while, or set the refridgerator to stay on always.

The details are pretty overwhelming but the system can work in a very elegant and common-sense way. Most likely the data will ride on top of the power over the lines, or perhaps come in through cable or telephone lines.

This is a very nice description of the potential of a smart grid. Actually, I don't really see this as overwhelming. There really wouldn't be that much variation in the types of devices that the utilities would want to control. There may be hundreds of thousands of similar devices, and the polling of these devices could be seconds or minutes rather than microseconds, well within the capabilities of even todays modest computers. Computer clusters and distributed computing systems can be found at almost any university, science lab, or large Corp. with these types of capabilities right now. Hell, I'll bet Apple could create an "App for that" in no time!

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: too much wind power

..nd the polling of these devices could be seconds or minutes rather than microseconds, well within the capabilities of even todays modest computers...

Yes. Most of the popular control data bus architectures (profi bus, mod bus, IEEE14xx) were original intended to be nearly real-time systems for industrial machines or for automobile systems like driver's door switch panels. A person's house on the grid can be very slow to update and still get the job done nicely with stored info at both ends that is a few days old. Therfore issues of bandwidth and latency are greatly reduced.

[c1ue]

Re: too much wind power

You take the concept too far. Customers will retain control, but be able to grant the utility control over some appliances to the utility in exchange for a lower rate.

You may think so, but ultimately the majority of electricity use in a home comes from a handful of devices: The air conditioner. The water heater. The lights. Appliances are 3rd in the list only in aggregate, and of the appliances the clothes dryer and the refrigerator are the biggest ones.

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_pie

energy star household power use.png

Not seeing a whole lot of potential slack to play with here.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: too much wind power

smart grid is very much happening as we speak. millions of these things are getting installed right now.

c1ue, you're missng the most important component, the reason this whole thing is being done really - electric vehicles.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: too much wind power

What a drab and dull existence you propose. What constitutes a "useful amount" of social resources spent on entertainment?

You're telling me that you are in favor of taking away my crab legs, scallops, essentially all fruits, and essentially all drinks (alcoholic or otherwise). Excuse me, but that truly is undesirable and grotesque. That's an abomination to humanity. I don't want to live a brutal, short, tribal existence, nor should I be forced to by "well-meaning" people such as yourself, nor will I ever.

Drab? Not at all. I windsurf every day, I mountain climb, hike, I write, I create, I teach, I learn - nothing is drab about my existence.

Instead of making your life about consuming, try to make your life about creating.

If we remove a few billion people from our planet, I guess we can all live like unthinking, rapacious kings then.

You'd also live a much much longer life, filled with less carcinogens and stress.

And there is no reason medical science can not continue or be performed .. in fact, I think Cuba is a great model. Everyone should become doctors.

[Starving Steve]

Re: too much wind power

smart grid is very much happening as we speak. millions of these things are getting installed right now.

c1ue, you're missng the most important component, the reason this whole thing is being done really - electric vehicles.

Thirty minutes to charge the car after just one-hundred miles of driving. That is 30 minutes standing around and doing nothing while your EV takes a charge, and that is in a warm climate. Try driving your new electric car in a Canadian winter, maybe in Winnipeg. That would be three minutes of driving, and your car goes dead in December or January. You walk home in 40 below zero C. ( -40F ), that is, if you get home..... Cold and darkness are a fatal combination, and no-one counts wind chill in Canada as temperature. (The wind chill is a bonus; it's measured in watts per square centimetre.)

But the Obama bunch insists that the EV has a future, so they are backing GM and its new Chevy Volt with TARP funds etc. ( You can't make this stuff up! )

[blazespinnaker]

Re: too much wind power

Sometimes government is the solution. Sometimes it isn't.

In this case, I think government is playing a role in trying to get EVs going without having to push carbon taxes really high and cause pain. Maybe it's not possible, maybe the only way is to enforce carbon taxes.

[Rajiv]

Re: too much wind power

And indeed - as I noted the only way a 'smart meter' can actually control demand is if the utility turns off power to houses.

What will happen is what happens everyday in India -- you have a battery backup system for your essential uses (primarily lighting, efficient refrigeration and net/computing)

See - Household Backup Power

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Garage Doors

[blazespinnaker]

Re: too much wind power

one of the biggest wins from the smart grid that people are seeing right now is the transparency of what takes how much power. As people realize how much energy lights take, in actual dollars on their screen, they start turning them off.

The problem was before the smart grid, people couldn't make that connection, so they didn't really know.

Getting people to use power at night will be trivial, just charge them less during the night.

[c1ue]

Re: too much wind power

c1ue, you're missng the most important component, the reason this whole thing is being done really - electric vehicles.

The reality is electric vehicles consume far more energy over their dust to dust lifetime than a gasoline vehicle.

Examine the lifetime and manufacturing energy profile of lithium ion batteries; the average Prius driven by an American at 15000 miles/year will not last out the full 10 year supposed rating.

http://priuschat.com/news/2010-prius...-hour-recharge

The specs are finally out! The important ones: The Prius PHV will be able to reach max speeds of 60 miles per hour in electric-only mode (EV). When fully charged it will be able to travel up to 13 miles in EV mode. It can be recharged in approximately three hours from a standard 110V electrical outlet or one and a half hours at a 220V outlet.

Hmm, 13*365 = 4745 miles. So the average American would need to charge up 3 times a day = 11000 charging cycles in 10 years. Not seeing much slack there at all for these to serve as 'mobile batteries', furthermore no lithium battery in existence will retain much charge after over 10000 charging cycles even in a laboratory.

Secondly high gasoline prices in Europe haven't contributed to electric vehicle use; electric vehicles in Europe are exceedingly rare. Instead, they drive small, or diesel, or both.

Electric vehicles in the US exist primarily due to marketing and cheap electricity - but massive alternative energy subsidies will paradoxically remove the cheap electricity part.

Furthermore the idea that electric vehicles will serve as a mobile reserve - again more ridiculous crap. Unless there is a legal and electro-mechanical mechanism for preventing maximum charging - i.e. forcing everyone to plug into a 'smart' charger with the utility controlling the knob, the base idea simply won't work.

The base idea also won't work since weather doesn't operate in an alternating fashion. High winds don't alternate daily with no winds. Sunny days don't alternate with cloudy days.

This reality means that solar and wind power will have multiple days/weeks of high generation randomly alternating with similar periods of low generation.

How will even the utility be able to predict this given weather models are 100% unreliable past 3 days?

Technotopian crap.

The real solution? A small and light electric vehicle whose battery is charged by a small diesel engine.

[Ghent12]

Re: too much wind power

Drab? Not at all. I windsurf every day, I mountain climb, hike, I write, I create, I teach, I learn - nothing is drab about my existence.

Instead of making your life about consuming, try to make your life about creating.

If we remove a few billion people from our planet, I guess we can all live like unthinking, rapacious kings then.

You'd also live a much much longer life, filled with less carcinogens and stress.

And there is no reason medical science can not continue or be performed .. in fact, I think Cuba is a great model. Everyone should become doctors.

Aha, so all I need to do to live an undrab existence is to live near the coast (and near a mountain range). Of course, we wouldn't be able to windsurf--too wasteful of resources to produce the equipment. Similarly for mountain climbing; it takes too many resources to maintain the rescue resources present.

Of course, I don't live near a coast, nor near a mountain range. Your wishful thinking is not thinking about everyone. The fact that you believe Cuba is a great model is quite striking, as is your belief that everyone should become doctors. So everyone should spend about thirty years in school, globally? Aren't you aware that specialization makes the world sustainable and efficient?

[c1ue]

Re: too much wind power

By the way, the electric vehicle vs. gasoline vehicle - even Li-Ion vs. SLA (sealed lead acid) question isn't an academic experience.

As I've noted previously - as part of the capital investment for my company, I purchased a Goped ESR 750 EX SLA.

The machine cost $750, normal list price is around $1050.

With the SLA, I had a range of about 8 miles. The entire device weighed 59 pounds.

The 8 mile range was simply insufficient for me so I upgraded to a 32 AH Li-ion.

This gave me a range of about 28 miles (3.5x) but at an additional cost of $2149.

Contrast this to a normal gasoline powered Goped:
http://www.gomeyer.com/rc-cars-scoot...oter-p-31.html

GSR Cruiser Goped - Motorized Gas Powered Scooter

$782.88

Est. Fuel Econ. (mpg)

100mpg

(Note: 1 gallon gas tank, but user must mix a small amount of oil into gasoline)

Propane powered: http://www.gomeyer.com/rc-cars-scoot...ter-p-881.html

GSR Pro-Ped Sport PROPANE POWERED GOPED SCOOTER

$692.25

Range 20 Miles (Constant full throttle, 160 lbs rider on flat level ground)

There you have it.

	Li-Ion 32 AH	SLA	Gasoline	Propane
Range	28	8	100	20
Weight	49	59	35	25.5
Cost	$3200	$1050	$780	$680

All the same maker, so a fairly close apples to apples comparison.

The only reason I went electric is because it is far easier to transport the electric models on public transportation, and equally so for flying to the various cities I'm working on.

A big chunk of the Prius' performance is actually due to it being a very small and relatively light car.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: too much wind power

You may think so, but ultimately the majority of electricity use in a home comes from a handful of devices: The air conditioner. The water heater. The lights. Appliances are 3rd in the list only in aggregate, and of the appliances the clothes dryer and the refrigerator are the biggest ones.

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_pie

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3485[/ATTACH]

Not seeing a whole lot of potential slack to play with here.

You are absolutely correct.

Still there is great value in being able to manipulate even a few percent of the load to avoid starting another fossil generator to serve a peak just above your main coal-fired machine's output, or to avoid ignoring suddenly available alternative power that can serve a load if you could call it on-line.

For large national grids, small adjustments at the margins are worth pursuing.

[Ghent12]

Re: too much wind power

For large national grids, small adjustments at the margins are worth pursuing.

I would appreciate some literature covering this topic specifically, if anyone can offer it.

[c1ue]

Re: too much wind power

You are absolutely correct.

Still there is great value in being able to manipulate even a few percent of the load to avoid starting another fossil generator to serve a peak just above your main coal-fired machine's output, or to avoid ignoring suddenly available alternative power that can serve a load if you could call it on-line.

For large national grids, small adjustments at the margins are worth pursuing.

There is value - the question is if the massive investment as well as loss of control is justified by this value.

On this, I do not know the answer - but I do know that no one else does either.

Anytime I see a proposal to do something based on a rationale as opposed to a real analysis, all the warning hairs stand up.

As I've mentioned many times before - the cost of such proposals isn't free. The same pool of money could equally be used to upgrade existing transmission lines or any number of other activities which directly translate into present day energy and/or cost savings.