Last Saturday was very hot and at about 6.30 pm a series of short blackouts occurred at my home in Wollondilly shire on the outskirts of Sydney. I happened to have a power meter connected at the time and watched as the voltage dropped from around 230 slowly to 208 at which level the power went off for a couple of seconds then restarted. The voltage went back to 230 or so then the process repeated . This went on for about half an hour. I switched off what I could but it is a pain having to reset all the clocks, redate the phone etc. The fridges weren't, to happy about it either. Non peak times the voltage goes up around 250 Maybe we are going to have to have a UPS set up in our homes with all the changes in the electricity arrangements!
Selective blackouts are the normal response to overloading like that.
Everyone cranks up their aircons at the same time, grid can't keep up, so it bombs a segment. It comes back online after awhile, assuming the d*****ad users would have turned off a few things, and the process starts over again.
When there is more load than you can supply, the only option is to cut power.
This is a no-excuse cheap-arse way to make an appliance. Any way to save a cent.
There are control boxes that sense brown or blackouts, and forcibly keep the fridge off for some time before trying again. If you power up an the wrong moment in the gas transition phase, it can damage the fridge.
Depends where you are. I'm in the thick of Sydney, so the likelyhood of power issues is less, but it's a growing problem.
Adelaide has this issue, and mainly because aircons have put a very short high load on the grid. To fix it, you need additional power generation plants to keep up to the demand. They have more social problem with power. Population has been really slow to grow, or stable, so new base power stations are out of the question.
Problem with catering for peak demand is, fourfold:
Peak power generation is expensive, because power needs to be ramped up and down rapidly, coal (cheap) can't be used. Peak power, because of its very intermittent usage, as well as being able to ramp power up and down rapidly, to have to be able to turn it off too. This leaves only a few options as far as generation goes. Of all those options left, all are frightfully expensive, AND are not well suited to huge amounts of power - we're not talking a few households here, it's an entire city, so solar and wind is out.
So you could either resolve all those issues, or, you can tell your idiot users to not use their aircons all at the same bloody time.
Giant UPS, with a battery bank made out of those massive telephone exchange batteries or similar. Let it recharge overnight on off-peak power.
Realistically, to run modern fluro/LED lighting for a couple of hours, you probably wouldn't need a really massive battery, but do this times 100,000 homes, it would make a big difference.
If they aren't already, they could use ripple control to cut off things like hot water systems, pool filters, possibly refrigerators for a short period. (Kill all the fridges connected to a particular substation for 15 min or so - then turn them off and turn off the next suburb and so on) Maybe have a thermostat fitted that detects if the temp gets so dangerously high that a health hazard could exist - and it will switch the power back on. Could also be programmed to lower the temp of the fridge to less than normal in advance of the "peak period", so it can stay off for longer at peak times without things spoiling ?
Make your next stove gas, or have the BBQ handy for when this sort of thing happens.
Lighting accounts for a small portion of power usage, that's why isn't the problem. Why do you think the government's incandescent ban was such a screwup? Not only would it not make a significant different, it will cost end users more.
They already do that now.
Again, some do that now, not only controlling the time of day of the runtime, the duration as well to maximise work with least energy.
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There would be a HUGE liability issue if that was done. But refrigeration isn't the problem either. It disappears into the base load, so it not a peak issue.
This is already done with large systems to save power, but it has nothing to do with peak intervals, it's only to save money to the company running the fridges. Again, its use averages out to continuous over 24 hours (along with everyone else) so there is no peak/off peak usage.
Are *YOU* going to be the one who tells people when they can and can't cook dinner?
So now your telling people not only WHEN to cook, but HOW to cook?
I agree with you, but we know that under the current regime in Canberra, and states privatising power, that the problems will just continue and worsen. The public (who are incredibly gullible) must bear a lot of the blame for this as for years have happily bought into environmental and other frauds, and have not been vigilant in this, or in choosing and holding to account their state and federal governments, voted over and over for fuckheads, state govt (QLD at least) we have had the most incompetent and backward government in living memory as far as infrastructure is concerned and from what I have read in the news over time NSW hasnt been much better.
These problems with the power will not be fixed in the short term, and are likely to only get worse and worse - until we start getting a program to build more power stations to fix the problem, and even if this were to start tomorrow, it would take a long time for them to come on line.
This is typical of countries/states that are in serious decline or collapse, the first thing that goes is reliable electricity according to a guy I worked with who had lived and worked over the years in a lot of these places when they ran into trouble. This of course wrecks the economy further, as manufacturing and business cannot function properly without reliable power, not to mention transport, where electric trains stop, you cannot refuel cars, and traffic lights dont work.
As to the other posters:
John Tserkezis
Im not dictating anything, im suggesting these things voluntarily as a way for the average person to get around the problem and to try and live a normal life without the hassles. As for gas stoves, it doesnt matter what the authorites do with the power, as long as your gas cylinder is full, you can cook either on your gas stove or BBQ. Gas for cooking is a better alternative than running a generator for an electric stove, and as long as you can get gas refills or exchanges locally, there will be no problems.
Fot this reason, in Eastern Europe, you can buy combination gas/ electric stoves (their gas is piped in and is also unreliable like the electricity, though usually both don't go out at the same time) and since we seem to want to live that way here, maybe this will be a future product someone could market here when things get worse with the power :)
Bullshit, if I am willing to pay for a product then I expect to get it. If the providers want to sell me stuff I don't expect to have to see if they can provide it.
While you have that shit hanging over your head for the last decade or so, its not been practical to start a major project like power stations etc when you don't know where it will be at.
If indeed the libs do the right thing and scrap this tax, then that is another thing that has to be resolved before anything can be done. I would love to see those independents who were paid off for their vote be stripped of this money and jailed for bribery and fraud, but I doubt it would happen. Then again we saw it with Nuttall - so we can live in hope.
Just remembered, in the former USSR republics, this sort of thing happened more and more in the last decade of its existance, to the point where the state electrical manufacturing company "electronika" produced these "stabilisers" which from memory had 2 power transformers and a large inductor (no solid state parts) - in order to keep the mains at a stable 220v.
I did take a pic, of the device and the schematic for it if anyone is particularly excited about it.
Saturable reactor transformers ( Stabilac ) have been around for years. Virtually every lab I ever worked in in any industrial plant had one in the '50s - '70s, just to keep the lab supply happy when the industrial sections put huge demands on the mains.
Big lumps of iron and copper, but simple and almost never fail.
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Regards,
Adrian Jansen adrianjansen at internode dot on dot net
Note reply address is invalid, convert address above to machine form.
I'll give you a heads up, NO power sytation has every been buiklt in australia with out some back room assurity. This time is no different. bottom line is no states want more new power stations as that would reduce the price they can get for their old clunkers when they finally get around to selling them off.
You must have had the blinkers on all your life to not realise this sort of deal with independents/minor parties has been part of the Australian political landscape since its inception. Your last sentence really shoots yourself in the foot.
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