Power generation specs I see quoted

This may not really be a good quesion for this group since it is really about power generation on the utility level rather than about electronics but here goes since I am sure many of you will have some insight to this stuff...

Today's Boston Globe had an article about places like Fenway Park (Red Sox), the Fleet Center (Celtics & Bruins) and Gillette Stadium (Pats) and the amount of power they use during a game. The numbers under the photos gave stats like '3000 kilowatts used during a game, enough to power 2250 average homes'. So I am sitting there drinking my coffee and reading this and thinking to myself, self, this doesn't seem right since that is less than 1.5kW per home. A single hair dryer will draw more power than that.

But as it turns out, this appears to be a number that is often quoted for stating the generation capability of a power plant. 1MW for 750 homes. While I understand that not each and every home is going to be pulling as much as they can all the time, it does seem likely that a significant number of them would be needing more than a single hair dryer of power. At 3am, most home are not using much power, but at say

8pm, MOST of those 750 homes probably have the TV on, a half dozen or more lights on, fridge is running since it has been opened a lot for dinner, etc. Even if only half those 750 homes are using only 3kW, that is well over the 1MW capacity of the utility.

So my question is, how does this number hold up? Seems like yes it is possible that over the course of a day many homes will not be using that much, it seems as likely that many homes would be using a significant amount of electricity at the same time many times a day and you would have more brown outs and power failures than we have. So what is the deal?

PT

Reply to
PT
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Firstly, I cannot answer your real question without either doing some tedious research or making the same kind of off-the-cuff analysis you have. But since your post is lingering unanswered here, I will offer these few thoughts and suggestions.

  1. Getting one's view of reality from the Boston Globe or any other single member of the mainstream media is a formula for becoming misinformed and ignorant of events and situations you would want to know about. So, on that basis alone, I see no reason to worry about explaining a discrepency between what your common sense tells you and what that paper says. Reporters are notoriously loose with facts and numerical facts are often taken from one context and used in another with (one hopes) little idea of the resulting distortions.
  2. It is a near certainty that your power company knows the right number for houses in general and likely breaks them down somewhat further. You might be able, with a few phone calls or a visit to their website, be able to get the right number.
  3. You could ask your friends and neighbors what their electricity bills have been. That would quickly provide a quick sanity check on that suspect report.
  4. You could look at your own electricity bill and compare your level of consumption to what you know or surmise about other households, then make a straightforward calculation to derive your own number. I would tend to believe that over an unattributed number in a mainstream rag any day.

I, too, am skeptical of that number, both for its magnitude and from its source. It certainly does not comport with what my family uses or any of my neighbors, from what I can see. But it is not quite so low as to be patently ridiculous. (It is close, but maybe Bostonites are very good at the whole panoply of conservation tactics.)

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--Larry Brasfield
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Reply to
Larry Brasfield

Average usage is about 1000 KWhrs. My bill is about $120 and price is about $0.12 a KWhr. However, I have a 100 amp vreaker on my panel at

240V, so with everything on, I might be pulling 20KW. As you said things start browning out about 5 when everyong gets home, turns on the tv, stove, opens the fridge, lowers the ac, etc etc
Reply to
BobG

Power generation and distribution isn't quite as simple as just saying X Megawatts for Y homes. There are three different types of powerplants. Base load, intermediate load, and peaking plants. Base load plants are primarily (in the US anyway) composed of coal and nuclear plants that operate for as much of 24 hours a day as possible at as close to 100% capacity factor as possible. Base load plants are normally expensive to build, but are optimized for high thermal efficiency and consequently low fuel cost. Intermediate load plants typically operate somewhat less than 24 hours a day, but more than peaking plants. Peaking plants are not designed for high efficiency, they are designed for low capital cost. They are also designed to be turned on and off on short notice. These plants will typically operate for only a few hours a day, just during the peak consumption periods of the day. Oil (very expensive fuel cost), low thermal efficiency natural gas, and many hydroelectric generating stations are examples of peaking plants, at least in the US.

I assume that number quoted in your newspaper article was a long term average of sorts, but I don't know.

Reply to
Fritz Schlunder

homes'.

The thing being that you don't run it continuously. These thing are meaned out over time. The fridge and A/C are the heaviest draw and they are intermittent too, cutting in & out as the thermostat demands. If everybody's peak demand came at he same moment, yeah, there'd be a problem.

Reply to
JeffM

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