Nah nah, you have to look at it on the larger scale. For one thing, he's only following Thomas Jefferson, "do as I say, not as I do", which surely should be a most patriotic, American approach to begin with.
Now, you've got to figure that, if his efforts can starve more than ten poor households out of existence, then their energy consumption more than compensates for his own, and he has therefore made a net benefit in reducing energy consumption. See how that works? ;-)
Tim
-- Deep Fryer: A very philosophical monk. Website @
No, Jim. Since all the Mexicans are leaving Mexcio, build them across our southern border. Or use Sloman's back yard and an undersea HV DC cable. Then it won't matter if it goes into meltdown. There isn't one damn thing in that area worth saving, anyway.
--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.
Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
When I was a kid, we had "dumb" electric meters, one for the water heater and one for the rest of the house. But we had "smart" rates. If we let the power company set the water heater meter so that it was cut off during peak load times, we got a break on the rate.
I think that a lot of this should be done by providing rates dependent on the aggregate amount of juice used. If rates were higher during the day, *everyone* would be cutting back on electricity use during the day.
I don't see how the "smart" load controls can do a good job. For all practical purposes this is exactly the same as a rolling blackout, just spread out rather than being focused on a specific area. If my AC is running 80% of the day to keep the house cool and the meter cuts "levels" it for an hour, that just means it will run continuously for the rest of the day playing catchup raising the peak load the rest of the day. This would cause other houses to be "leveled" which will raise the peak load the rest of the day, resulting in more "leveling"... You see where this is going. Load leveling won't reduce peaks without having an effect on the average temperature in the places being cooled... unless there is some means of leveling over a 24 hour period which requires energy storage.
The point of using the hybrid batteries for this is that they are actually well suited to night time charging since that is when they are not otherwise used and as long as you aren't running them, they represent untapped power generation. This is a useful way to level the load over a 24 hour period.
My concern about using the hybrids this way is that the batteries will wear out earlier and these are some seriously expensive batteries. But that is the point of paying the consumer for his storage of energy. Since this is all done with rate changes between day and night, the consumer will be the one paying and power usage will also be moderated during the day.
Someone said you have to "dehumidify" during the day... maybe you do to some degree, but if you aren't in the house, there is very little moisture entering it. It is when you open the doors that most of the moisture enters the house. That can be removed at night when you need to cool the house. The "smart" controls need to be able to turn the AC way back when you are not there and then return the house to the conditions you want *before* you return home. So they need to be controlled from your cell phone or from your work computer. A simple timer just doesn't cut it for many of us not on a timetable.
Remove the (political) restrictions on waste reprocessing. To keep the high level product out of terrorist hands, put the gov't in charge of it instead of the lowest bidder. This would probably be a contractor facility located in the middle of a military base.
The end waste product would be a much lower volume than what we bury today. That can be glassified and stored in a relatively small volume.
Don't find some desolate place in the middle of Nevada to bury it and forget it. Build a 'temple' right in the middle of a major metropolitan area. It'll be right there, where people can see it, remember why it was build and keep alive the knowledge of why future generations must keep the facility in good repair.
--
Paul Hovnanian paul@hovnanian.com
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Have gnu, will travel.
Just switching to hybrids won't do any significant good, especially now that Detroit is selling bigger, heavier, more powerful hybrids that still use about the same amount of energy to get from point A to B. Even the Toyota Prius is becoming less efficient because they have added more horsepower and weight. A real contribution will be made by driving smaller vehicles with less power, and driving them more conservatively. If a significant number of people switched to more efficient vehicles for daily use, and/or changed their driving habits, demand for gasoline would drop enough to cause a surplus, and prices will immediately drop. If it happened quickly enough, it would create a storage crisis, as the refineries keep pumping, ships keep coming into port, and tanker trucks fill up, expecting to fill up tanks at gas stations. The strategic reserves are already near capacity, and there is very little individual storage capacity, so even if prices would drop to $2, there would be no place to put the excess gasoline. But it probably "ain't gonna happen".
A large part of "the oil problem" is the falling dollar and the resulting market instability.
It'll all be fixed when crude is priced in Euros. But then central banks won't need dollar reserves. The exchange rates will collapse and you and I won't be able to raise the money to buy new tires for the old pickup truck, let alone a brand new hybrid car.
--
Paul Hovnanian paul@hovnanian.com
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Have gnu, will travel.
I live in an old house (ca 1962 with plenty of unintended ventilation) near Washington, DC with summer humidity of nearly 100 % and temps above 90F. Unless you are in the middle of the Everglades, you got nothing on us. The bottom line is that even leaky houses don't leak unless something is pushing the air. Humid weather seldom has significant winds and if you aren't home, no one is opening the doors. I have left my house closed up and the AC off for hours during the day. Other than the first hour that it takes to get the temp down to anything remotely reasonable, it is then fine.
That is the point. If the house is allowed to heat up during the day, it then takes less work to cool it down than it would to keep it cool all day. But no one wants to come home to a house that is 90F inside and wait for it to cool down. But if the AC is smart enough to actually "know" when you will be home, then it can cool it down to match your needs.
The idea of using a "smart" electric meter to achieve the same power reducing effect as rolling blackouts is bogus. AC, the primary power consumption, is duty cycle driven. The thermostat in your house is actually a duty cycle modulator to maintain a temperature. If the power company has control over it to cut it out for periods at peak usage, all that does is to make the AC run at a *higher* duty cycle the rest of the time. The only way they can actually save power is to reduce the periods that your AC is enabled to the point where the duty cycle is below where it can maintain the set temperature. Then the temperature inside will rise, because the power company is now regulating it, not your thermostat.
There was an interesting opinion article on this in the current issue of Scientific American. The author pointed out a lot of problems with reprocessing which include the fact that the power plants that use the reprocessed fuel are much more dangerous, so much that we scrapped plans for them many years ago. Also the construction costs for the reprocessing plants required is in the 100's of billions... and when was the last time something like this was built *on budget*?
The issue of storage is very under-researched in the sense that we only have data on how to store these materials for about 10% of the time required. After that it is up to the ingenuity of those who come after us to figure out. Is that the sort of legacy we want to leave behind? I don't want my generation to be responsible for a Nuclear "Love Canal".
That might sound like a reasonable idea, but in 1000 years, it may well result in the complete abandonment of the "major metropolitan" area. Or worse, it may end up the target of a terrorist attack resulting in the poisoning of millions.
Do you really think the energy problem can be solved so simply?
Yes. Controlling these devices is trivial compared to the power meter "network" though. BTW, the network is over-air RF. The other obvious advantage is billing. No more meter-readers to pay inflated union benefits to.
They do that too, though IIRC, they control the temperature "setback" (both for heat and AC). It's designed so any load can be controlled by the power company to do a "soft" load shed, though only the larger devices make sense. People may not like it but they don't like "hard" load shedding much either. OTOH, perhaps a few (million) more blackouts are needed to get people off their asses and fire their representatives. $4 (and up) gas may have a silver lining.
I didn't think an interview was a good place to discuss the security implications though. ;-)
There are *plenty* in Ohio too. Surprisingly, I never saw any illegals in VT, the whitest and farthest left state in the union (funny how that works). ;-)
Our power producer (Hydro One) is pushing a scheme where you install a (free) web-enabled thermostat so they can reduce peak demand by cranking down your A/C at peak periods. Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
--
"it\'s the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Some had two meters, one with a timer for the large load.
Nothing stopping that, though you need the smart meter.
Playing "catchup" is a misnomer. Setback thermostats do this now. Shedding just AC loads would keep the lighting on, and of course the all important TeeVee. Should help keep crime down. Blackouts in major cities aren't a good thing.
You want to *keep* the humidity down. You save money by lowering the temperature differential. You LOSE money by letting the humidity rise. Unless you're JT, humidity is more important than the temperature.
Actually I've noted that even air temperature is less important than how clear the sky is. The direct radiant heat seems to be the killer for electricity cost.
...Jim Thompson
-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at
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| 1962 | Does Shrillary fathom herself to be the next Manchurian Candidate?
On May 24, 11:12 pm, "Michael A. Terrell" wrote: [....]
You forgot to mension temperature cycling. In Florida, a very air tight house would still pump its self full of water in a few weeks from that. All of the wall spaces etc will be full of humid air in fairly short order after the house is built.
Some places they are talking about having the utility send signals around that tells the optional loads like water heaters to come on and off with a finer grain than just a fixed time. This allows the load to be made much more level.
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