The Glade 4.0
https://gladerebooted.net/

CA, AZ, NM Blackouts
https://gladerebooted.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7107		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  NephyrS [ Thu Sep 08, 2011 9:35 pm ]
Post subject:  CA, AZ, NM Blackouts
Here's hoping none of our board residents are caught in the heat with no power.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/755 ... utage.html
Author:  Lex Luthor [ Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:58 pm ]
Post subject: 
Hopefully they will have kept their Greater Lightstone for this situation.
Author:  Aethien [ Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:20 pm ]
Post subject: 
I'm thinking Lenas ... Not me, thankfully. Probably a set of cousins (with 4 kids!) that I have down in San Clemente, too.

I wondered today about brownouts and such, given the heat and probably power consumption. Not sure if this was directly related, though.
Author:  FarSky [ Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:21 pm ]
Post subject: 
Eep. Be well, all.
Author:  Rorinthas [ Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re:
Lex Luthor wrote:
Hopefully they will have kept their Greater Lightstone for this situation.

For get that.. just turn the gamma up.
Author:  darksiege [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:03 am ]
Post subject: 
I was talking to one of our customers this evening... ALL of San Diego was out of power.

So chances are Lenas got screwed, and not in a happy way. I do hope he is doing okay though.
Author:  Micheal [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:05 am ]
Post subject: 
And San Diego will have a baby boom in about nine months. Will we have a little Lenasito then?
Author:  Corolinth [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 9:44 am ]
Post subject:  Re:
For the most part, it sounds like everything worked out the way it was supposed to. There was a faulty piece of equipment that was being replaced, something happened to trip a safety protocol, and the whole plant just shut down. Two plants elsewhere in the network detected that disturbance, which tripped safety protocols to shut down those plants as well.

Blackouts suck, but faulty equipment can be replaced properly and machines can be turned back on. If the plant has a major catastrophe, you get the same blackout plus a death toll.
Author:  Diamondeye [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 9:48 am ]
Post subject:  Re: CA, AZ, NM Blackouts
I'm no expert on the electrical grid, but to my knowledge almost all of it is "just in time" power that is generated and delivered; during periods of less demand no power is stored. It would be nice if we could update the grid to store power which might help with times like this, in addition not to stressing generation so much at peak times.
Author:  Arathain Kelvar [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 11:08 am ]
Post subject: 
So some employee goofed and 5 million people lost power. Bad day at work. The really, really, shitty thing is that someone will die over this. I hope he deals with that ok.
Author:  Lenas [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 11:39 am ]
Post subject: 
Hehe, yes the outage hit us for about 7 hours. Didn't matter to me, just went home from work, got started on the beers before they warmed up, and played chess most of the night.
Author:  Corolinth [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: CA, AZ, NM Blackouts
We already do store excess grid energy. That's actually what happens to old APC units and old car batteries. There are huge problems with this, and it's really not as simple as simply updating the grid to store energy.

For starters, we need to go over some terminology. We've been using the word power thus far when we actually mean to say energy. That's fine for casual conversation between lay persons, but I can't do that if I'm going to address the subject of why we dont appear to store energy for emergency blackouts.

Energy, not power, is what your electrical devices use and consume in order to run. When we plug a device into the wall so that it can receive "juice," the juice we are talking about is energy. Power is the speed at which the device receives and uses that energy. We try to describe things in terms of power, because these devices run over a certain length of time.

Power tells us how fast our customers are using energy, and in turn, how fast we need to generate it and transfer it. When we send you a bill each month, it's for how much energy hounded up. Energy can be stored, but power can not, although power can tell us how fast we can store energy.

Energy comes in many different forms. Some forms of energy are easy to store, like mechanical energy. If I want to store mechanical energy, all I need to do is carry a ball to the roof. If I want to get that energy back, I drop the ball. Electrical energy is very hard to store, almost impossible at times, but it's very easy to transport long distances. Ideally, what we want to do is convert other forms of energy to electrical energy so that it can be sent somewhere. We do this by putting dropping water off a cliff to turn a giant wheel, by burning coal, or by banging radioactive materials together. It's hard to send a river to someone's house, but you can send the river's energy through a copper wire.

The problem is, the only way we really have to store electrical energy is inside a battery (as chemical energy). Batteries suck. We like to think we've made enormous leaps in battery technology in recent years with the ten hour laptop batteries and such, but batteries are absolute ****. Priced per joule of energy, batteries are retarded expensive.

For home use like a TV remote, a battery is fine. It's less ideal for a grid application. You have to keep in mind that these grids are powering more than just the lights in your homes and offices. They also power heavy machinery. They power hospitals, which require as much energy as entire neighborhoods. There are individual machines that, due to their operation, draw as much daily energy as your entire house. Your house may spike higher at certain times when your refrigerator and air conditioner kick on at thet same time, but these industrial machines are running nonstop all day.

There just aren't enough batteries to store the kind of energy we need. The power consumption throughout a city is just too high. We'd suck the batteries dry in minutes, and we're talking about a lot of batteries. Remember, batteries are expensive.

Another thing about batteries is that they drain constantly, even when not in use. In order for a battery to be any good in a power grid, it has to be constantly hooked up to the charge circuit when it's not in use. You can't charge it and set it aside, because it might drain all the way down before the next emergency. You have to keep it charging to make sure it's full when you need it. That ruins batteries real fast, and remember, batteries are expensive.

There's just no good way to store energy on this scale. We're talking about the energy requirements of multi-state regions. We still try, but storing energy for an emergency just isn't feasible. We haven't even touched on the fact that in order to store energy, you have to be producing a surplus - that in itself is no mean feat. Sometimes when you hit a slow cycle, the machines themselves need time to cool down and be checked for maintenance. It's possible that California just may not be able to produce surplus energy with the number of people they have using it up. The Midwest is different, there is a lot of empty space there.

The best mechanism for dealing with high loads and energy shortages is not to store energy for emergencies, but to call up another company three states away and see what they've got for you. Every grid in the United States and Canada is hooked up to one another in some fashion. That's our emergency plan. It isn't feasible to store energy in batteries, but it is feasible to build enough plants in the Midwest to supply all of North America with electricity.
Author:  Ladas [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 3:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: CA, AZ, NM Blackouts
Quote:
Another thing about batteries is that they drain constantly, even when not in use. In order for a battery to be any good in a power grid, it has to be constantly hooked up to the charge circuit when it's not in use. You can't charge it and set it aside, because it might drain all the way down before the next emergency. You have to keep it charging to make sure it's full when you need it. That ruins batteries real fast, and remember, batteries are expensive.

Everything in your post is correct, but the way this typically works on a smaller scale (buildings, server rooms, etc) is that supply goes to the batteries and demand is pulled from the batteries. This has the benefit of keeping the batteries constantly charged while providing a guaranteed downstream voltage for your equipment. We have a 3 phase supply to this building, and due to the constant brownouts and fluctuations in the supply (measured once at 128, then at 112 a month later... played havoc with our plotters/printers), we installed a Liebert system that does just as above.

It is expensive. We are in the process of replacing the batteries now after 4.75 years (stated lifespan of the batteries is 3-5 years) for a cost of ~$2,500 (weekend installation, materials, etc). This is also not a huge unit. It will supply our server rack for 2 hours in the event of power failure, or the entire computer network (cubicles, printers, etc) for about 30 minutes.
Author:  Corolinth [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 4:26 pm ]
Post subject: 
The batteries sound like they're primarily serving the same purpose as the capacitor in a DC power supply, with some added benefits. Utility companies use batteries like that as well, except that they'll use recycled car batteries that are essentially "dead" because they're under no delusions that they're going to run Oklahoma for two hours in an emergency.
Author:  Kaffis Mark V [ Fri Sep 09, 2011 9:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: CA, AZ, NM Blackouts
Ladas wrote:
It is expensive. We are in the process of replacing the batteries now after 4.75 years (stated lifespan of the batteries is 3-5 years) for a cost of ~$2,500 (weekend installation, materials, etc). This is also not a huge unit. It will supply our server rack for 2 hours in the event of power failure, or the entire computer network (cubicles, printers, etc) for about 30 minutes.

Just to give people an idea, here, about what Coro's talking about when he says even our new batteries are **** for energy density, ballpark the physical size of said unit. My guess is roughly the size of a filing cabinet? Maybe 2? (I'm not sure how big your server rack is/what's in it...)
Author:  Kairtane [ Sat Sep 10, 2011 9:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: CA, AZ, NM Blackouts
Kaffis Mark V wrote:
Ladas wrote:
It is expensive. We are in the process of replacing the batteries now after 4.75 years (stated lifespan of the batteries is 3-5 years) for a cost of ~$2,500 (weekend installation, materials, etc). This is also not a huge unit. It will supply our server rack for 2 hours in the event of power failure, or the entire computer network (cubicles, printers, etc) for about 30 minutes.

Just to give people an idea, here, about what Coro's talking about when he says even our new batteries are **** for energy density, ballpark the physical size of said unit. My guess is roughly the size of a filing cabinet? Maybe 2? (I'm not sure how big your server rack is/what's in it...)


We use 24 Volt DC power for microwave equipment where I work. It is connected to a 110 Volt AC power source, then to a DC inverter outputting 24 Volts to batteries, which then supply power to the equipment. The batteries and steel rack that holds them are about 5 feet high and 7 feet long.

These particular batteries are 2 Volts each, with 12 batteries connected in series creating 24 Volts. They last about 9 to 10 years.
Page 1 of 1 All times are UTC - 6 hours [ DST ]
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
https://www.phpbb.com/