Electricity Apocalypse Soon? 576
mindriot writes "Heise's awarded online magazine Telepolis has published a nice article (English / German) discussing the ongoing series of power blackouts (after the U.S. blackout, London, Scandinavia, and other incidents, the most recent victim being Italy). 'The blackouts bare the Achilles Heel of our "information society" ,' the article states, and sees the recent events as a precursor to a possible massive on-line blackout. As society becomes more and more dependent on information and power networks, the failure of a single wire or the interruption of a satellite uplink can become a major issue and form a great vulnerability. As the article explains, market liberalization, globalization and plain ignorance could endanger our infrastructure to a very discomforting extent." Free markets cause power blackouts?
NIMBY (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is simply one of NIMBY. We need to build more transmission lines, but nobody wants the lines in *their* backyard. It's going to give them brain cancer; give their children leukemia; impede their views; reduce the value of their homes; destroy the last known habitat of the seven-toed porcupine.
Sometimes I really wonder if democracy is a good idea.
Deepness in the Sky (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really funny how the end-of-civilisation scenarios mentioned in the book become reality. In particular, this is a case of his over-efficiency scenario: as the automation and control systems become more efficient, the margin for error gets narrower, until even a minor glitch can escalate to affect a large proportion of the planet. This happens in part because no single person fully understands the structure of the control mechanisms, so the catastrophic scenarios can't be predicted.
(the other scenario I remembered was ubiquitous law enforcement. Things like RFID tags, smart dust, and ubiquitous surveilance are all becoming possible)
That said, I don't think we're going to have the end of the world. But there will have to be some fundamental changes in the way we design and use the technology.
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Of course. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course. Free markets seek to maximize profits. In a sector where the barriers to entry are quite high, companies are much more able to increase price by lowering demand. It's one thing if the product in question is a luxury item, it's entirely another if it's an absolute necessity.
To put it more simply, they can charge us more money for the same amount of electricity if electricity is seen as something scarce. If electricity is seen as something that there is an abundance of, then they can't charge us as much.
Speaking of "Free Markets" in the sense of electricity isn't quite the same as speaking of free markets in terms of something like, say, cabbage. In my city of 0.5 million people, there are at least 0.4 million people capable of producing and selling cabbage. So, if the price of cabbage went up dramatically, you'd see people planting cabbage and selling it at lower prices. The barriers to entry (seed, land, water) are very common and cheap. Competition works for the consumers.
Now, if Scottish Power, which owns the local electric monopoly (company) were allowed to do what they wish with prices, of course they'd jack them up. But purchasing a large generator, becoming a public utility, going through the red-tape, putting up bonds, etc. is a long, expensive, and difficult process. In other words, the barriers to entry are much higher, so far, far fewer people would be able to provide an alternative to Scottish Power. That means, of course, that while it's not a true monopoly, Scottish power would have the ability to squeeze more money out of us for no other reason that "We can, so we will."
When options and alternatives are available, competition from free markets works. However, until sufficient options and alternatives exist to create competition, a deregulated market is essentially a government-created monopoly. ("You have no competitors, and provide an essential service? Well, then, feel free to rake the serfs over the coals at your leisure.")
steve
The London Blackout.... (Score:2, Interesting)
It was a power failure on a significant part of the London Underground (the underground train system).
The article furthers this misconception by compairing the London blackout the the blacking out of the US Eastern seaboard, which borders on the sensational. At no point does it tell you what actually blacked out.
Blackouts like the one that occured in Italy, and I *think*, but could well be wrong,the one in the US involve the logistics of brokering power between neighbouring countries. The London Underground blackout has nothing to do with this, it was a failure of part of a utility service, and was contained within that utility.
It annoyed the hell out of me that even here in London they reported a "London Blackout!" over the top of footage of a brightly lit evening street focusing on an entrance to a tube station (lit) with a flashing emergency sign (powered by electric not hampster power).
There are lessons that might be learnt in the ways countries broker power between each other, but we have to be careful not to roll everything into this... stuff breaks. Always has, always will. Stuff breaking isn't a new phenomena of the modern age, it's been breaking for a long time.
Lack of redundancy (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with the London blackout was a lack of redundant generating/distributing structure. Ironically, Transport for London had only very recently had a large ceremony in which they switched off the generator that had been powering the Tube, DLR, etc. These train networks were switched over to the national grid. Because of this, when two small (and easily repairable) failures in the distribution network occurred and the Grid provision to London and the south-east was interrupted, the trains and stations were rendered inactive. Only recently they would have been able to carry on unaffected thanks to their own generator, which the Mayor of London (Red Ken Livingstone) had insisted should continue suplying TfL.
So is a free market to blame? The problem here was a lack of redundant equipment, which was definitely a cost-saving exercise. But whether the costs are reduced in order to increase profit, or in order to reduce the tax burden, is insignificant in context. So no, in the case of the London blackout a free market wasn't the cause of the problems.
Is it just me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it that many of these countries have not had significant blackouts for years, decades even, and then they all have signigicant blackouts within the same six month period?
Personally I find it really hard to believe that, for instance, a falling tree branch somewhere in the mountains managed to down just the right powerline to cause a blackout in the whole of Italy. It just doesn't ring true to me. This is critical infrastructure for christsakes! Governments know where the weaknesses are and have all kinds of plans in place to prevent this type of thing happening in case of war. (My father used to be on some of the comittees that put these plans together in the UK. They know where the weaknesses in infrastructure are.)
So I find it really difficult to believe that there have been small incidents that just so happened to have hit the critical spot to take out large sections of the powergrids in a number of different countries all within a few months. Somethings going on here. What is it? I can only speculate:
1) These are actually well planned terrorist attacks which are hushed up because politically Bush/Blair etc. need to be seen to be "winning the war on terrorism", and so we the general public don't get to know about them. (Notice that the blackouts affected NY, London and Italy - all of which supported the Iraq war?)
2) There is some kind of power (pun not intended) game going on between different governments.
3) The utility companies are doing this on purpose in order to get more tax dollars invested in their industries.
(Some people are going to respond that I am paranoid and need a tinfoil hat. You might be right. But personally I think the current mentality of completely dismissing offhand anything that suggests governments or corporations can act in an underhand manner on a coordinated scale is unhealthy - these things should get discussed, otherwise people in power will start to think they can get away with crazy things just because nobody would believe they would do it!)
Re:Important not to jump to conclusions (Score:4, Interesting)
OTOH, I raise issue with your discussion of the CO2 emissions involved in erecting wind farms. I've been reading up about the construction of wind farms (they plan to build one in Portland Harbour - I live in Weymouth[*]) and accept the ~84Gg CO2 figure you give. Remember though, that wind farms only need to be built once during their career. Think of how much CO2 a coal-fired station - which has an efficiency of about 29%[@] puts out over its whole career, including constructing the huge concrete cooling towers. Wind still wins.
Also, wind farms are generally nicer-looking. Down in the West Country (and over in Holland, FWIW) they're minor tourist attractions.
[*]They're using a few big masts instead of a lot of small ones; the test station is 30m (~100ft) tall.
[@]Nuclear power stations are less efficient than this - about 23% - because of the complexity of handling the fuel after it's been used.
Re:Important not to jump to conclusions (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, each turbine (there will be 30 or so in total) requires a 400 cubic metre concrete foundation. Now, 1cu.m. of concrete weighs 7 tonnes. Making 1 tonne of concrete releases 1 tonne of carbon dioxide (damn slashcode, no sub tag). That means that casting each foundation will release 2,800 tonnes of CO2 (again, imagine the "2" subscripted), a total of 84,000 tonnes of CO2. That doesn't include the exhaust gases from the machinery used to dig the founds. And that's only for the founds, never mind the cast concrete masts that will be built.
An important thing to note is that with wind turbines, there can be other problems too. Such as the fact that, for example, the beat frequencies from the wind farm's turbines can travel for hundreds of miles. (I heard of one such case in Washington state, but can't find a reference right now).
Nuclear isn't bad. Fusion, however, would be better
Re:So, what do YOU propose? (Score:3, Interesting)
What is needed is the ability to store energy during off times. A good example is useing Boeings idea of a heated salt-based sterling engine to store and generate electricity.
In fact, I would love to see small companies started up that has the sole approach of storing electricity generated at off-hours, which is normally charged at lesser rate. They would then release during the daytime at the higher rate. The difference being the business.
By starting businesses doing just this, we could stabilize the alternative energy and increase the power plants utilization.
Also, these would be able to be used in times of emergencies.
It's the combination of nationalism and capitalism (Score:5, Interesting)
It has long been accepted and promoted by internationally minded people within the electrical utilities that power could be shared internationally in a global HVDC grid that would be both technically and economically superior to the primitive, isolated systems that predominate today.
The obstacles have nothing to do with technical or efficiency problems. Quite the contrary, the proposed system would be technically superior in the sense of being less prone to blackouts and without a doubt would lower electricity prices globally.
The problems arise when some countries have a slavish, not conicidentally religous fervor for "free markets" while others take a progressive attitude. This leads to a form of international competition that is not productive at all in the sense of the over-used market metaphor. This is highly destructive competion of the cold war sort in which destruction of the "enemy" at all costs displaces the goal of efficiency.
Free markets? (Score:5, Interesting)
The energy industry was underinvested for more than 15 years now, but we still had no major blackouts (other than customers disconnected for not paying their bills). The United Energy System is being reformed now to make it attractive for investors. I don't know if the positive effect of much needed investment will be offset by poor reliability, but I hope that remaining government regulation and "traditions" of the industry will help us avoid freemarket-style blackouts.
Re:Important not to jump to conclusions (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact the nearest thing I've seen to a "battery" for generation was in Scotland, where they have a system that can use excess power to pump water uphill, then use it for hydroelectric generation when required. You do need very special geography, but the ingredients - concrete and water - aren't very noxious.
Re:Such Chicken Little nonsense I have never read (Score:4, Interesting)
Being prepared helps an awful lot.
In 1990 we had two weeks with roads blocked and blackouts in many parts of France due to heavy snowfalls (1 meter where I lived) but given that the part where I live is used to snow we didn't have any major problem (a few generators made the rounds to keep the freezers cold enough); we used candles and made our own butter (the cows have to be milked daily to avoid getting them sick but there was no electricity to keep the milk turning so the cream came to the top and we made butter the old fashioned way) and lived a lot like they did in the past and rather enjoyed it (especially given that we got two weeks free of school
Shit happens, you just have to be plan for it as much as reasonably possible and be psychologically prepared and try to enjoy it as a rare experience rather than panic and mess things even further.
Re:Important not to jump to conclusions (Score:3, Interesting)
Distributed Power Systems+ plus+ (Score:2, Interesting)
Humm, seems to me that the root of the problem is that the general public, business, and industry is dependant on "the grid"(like duh). What I mean is each of us is dependant on power generation and delivery systems which are out of our individule control.(ok, so)...
Please keep in mind that had we spoke in person you would not have had the opportunity to observe my poor spelling, it's my message and not my grammer that you aught pay attention to.
To demonstrate, smaller co-op type wind farms [awea.org] would place more of the power generation in closer proximity to the loads. Reducing vulnerability to falures at the generation sources and transmission grid(s). They would provide jobs in construction and maintainance, and stabalize prices for power from a near-constant, free, renewable, and clean source.
Rather than investing in more Dirty Coal fireing plants that rob us all of our non-renewable natural resources; Instead of pushing the envelope with contriversal nuclear power, how about simply start utilizing our existing fision reactor, The Sun, in more direct methods? Such as Solar, which is about as direct as you can get at ~20% effeciency. Wind is probably the best solution powered near-directly by the sun aswell. Hydro-electric is already being extensively utilized, relying on the evaporative powers of the sun to circulate water to the highest peaks. If you think about it, coal and oil resources are also powered by the sun, which grew the plants that eventually turned into "fosil"-fuels. I wonder just how effecient this very-non-direct use of sunlight is. My guess, about 0.02% or less. Even Solar power starts to look a whole lot better put this way.
Or how about smarter tansportation that would actually Help correct this and many other problems that we are currently facing (Oil dependency, pollution, corruption, wars)... This T-Zero [acpropulsion.com] and other Electric Vehicles could aid grid overloading, utilize nightly power over-production [radix.net] provide clean reliable and FUN [acpropulsion.com]daily transportation producing zero emmissions and using zero oil. period. Check out their White Papers. and What's New area (especially the ev-based vehicle-to-grid demonstration project) [acpropulsion.com]! I know it's a little pricy, how about the GM EV1 [power.net] with an MSRP of less than $40K, in low volume production (Oh ya, if it had ever been for sale). There we go, More Jobs again... And Imagin how the cost would come down if we built 100,000 of them here at home.
And for all of you that are going to diss on electric cars, keep in mind that you know nothing about them. They have power and range, and are very effecient at 80% to 90% from the outlet. Batteries are recyclable and safe.
Hybrids are not Electric cars. Gas cars are brute force machines, their ICE's only push, Friction breaks slow them down. Hybrids are the "Missing Links". They Push just the same, but are capable of "Recycling Kinetic Energy", however all power originates from the gassoline. EV's are the Answer, The Push even harder, Regenerate Better, use about 1/4 the energy, and produce Zero Emissions. Infinite MPG.
To Bring this full circle, I can make my own electricity, and more of us should. It shines down on us each day and blows above our homes durring each of our lifetimes. Build something usefull to our children, not more problems.
L8r
Ryan
Re:It's the combination of nationalism and capital (Score:2, Interesting)
17 shutdown nuclear plants in Japan (Score:2, Interesting)
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/e ast/06/ 17/tokyo.scandal/
We recently had a good example of this in Japan. The local energy concern (Tepco) covered up serious faults in it's nuclear plants over a period of 10 years or so. All 17 of it's nuclear reactors which supply Tokyo were taken offline for safety inspections and old fossil fuel ones were brought back online (yay environment, just think of how many old ones have to come back to replace 40% of the lost nuclear capability).
In any case, there was a big push for energy conservation because they were afraid of blackouts and the resulting economic chaos that would plague and already troubled fiscal situation (10 year depression). We had disaster recovery plans at my firm if it went bad and there was a web site for how likely a blackout was, that's how bad it was.
So why did they hide multiple cracks in the reactors, or rig a measuring instrument to give falsified data or any of the other things in the big list of infractions? I really can't see any reason other than to protect the bottom line.
There's this idea that corporations do this because they are all evil, or greedy or wicked. Sometimes this is true (Enron). It also seems likely that when this sort of common manager first finds out about stuff like this, they are stunned by the potential impact it could have on the company and, more importantly, their jobs. The are frightened by it, go into denial and look for a cheap and easy solution for a problem that, surely (hoping...), is no big deal. Everything's fixed, and they go back to their old life. Happens again in another plant, but hey, we fixed it last time so no problem. After a while it just becomes normal. Our little corporate secret. Nothing to see here, wink wink.
This is not to say that they are not also motivated by the enormous fiscal pressure to increase profits at the behest of the investors. It's never said that way of course. It's usually, "I'm really getting a lot of pressure to improve productivity and reduce operating costs by 4%". And when you're being whipped to reduce operational expenditures, it becomes pretty hard to suggest that you shutdown a reactor for 8 months while a multi-million dollar repair job is getting done. It's the right thing to do, but also the hard one (isn't that typical).
This pressure, it seems to me, derives in large part from the stupidly unreasonable, but pervasive idea that investors have that their stocks ought to go up in value every year. Forever. It's *not* OK to get big and profitable and stay that way year after year, but you have to keep becoming more profitable. Well you can only squeeze so much until you start squeezing things and doing things that you probably shouldn't. It's funny, we (society, not necessarily you the reader) bitch alot about corporate evils and so forth, but if our stock doesn't go up, we're all pissed about it and put more pressure on the companies (or our fund manager who does it for us with a lot more clout), who guess what, resort to more and more extreme measures to give us what we want.
One might say, "But I don't have enough shares to put pressure on anyone". Sure you do, many institutional traders know that if they don't perform well, you and several million others just like you (not to mention those pesky rich people) will pull out if they think they can do better elsewhere. Why stay in this fund which does 2% when that other guy's fund get 7%? So the institutional investor wants to keep his job and puts big pressure on the company to perform well and be more profitable, using the big collection of little moneys he got from ordinary investors.
Add globalization into the mix and you have a really fun situation, with lots of powerful, hyper-competitive global companies duking it out for every last dollar, because all of them are under this huge pressure to perform (in that impossible ever growing way). And since all of them are somewhat lean to begin with, is it any wonder they start
We do have an efficient way of storing power (Score:3, Interesting)
The technique's being used effectively by the Solar II experimental station in California.
http://rhlx01.rz.fht-esslingen.de/projects/alt_
Re:Hydrogen Fuel Cells (Score:2, Interesting)
As I recall, these would be about the size of a refrigerator and use natural gas in a pollution free process to generate electricity. I was extremely interested at the time, and I read about it on GE's website, but I haven't heard anything since.
Of course, the problem is that we'll still be consuming natural gas. I use natural gas for heating, so if the gas line gets cut then I won't have electricity for electric heaters or natural gas for my furnace. I suppose it would be effective to have an amount stored on site - a big tank, just in case, or better - a way to have it pumped into the tank and used from the tank, like a hot water heater stores water or a capacitor stores a charge.
It'd be nice to get pricing on what one of these would cost and the lifespan to see if it would be worth the investment.
Now, imagine a beowolf cluster of these... no, really... imagine everyone hooked to the grid pumping back excesses, which would give you a credit and help the electric company not have to build new coal/oil/nuclear plants. Then when you need to draw more current than your unit generates, you could use your "credit". I know there are people with windmills who do something similar.
But I'll believe it when I can buy a piece of paper to play movies on. Just another exciting development that is taking too long to bring to market.
Just make blackouts cost (Score:5, Interesting)
Power Distribution Tax (Score:3, Interesting)
Nordpool = evil (Score:3, Interesting)
you just described a transmission problem... (Score:4, Interesting)
which means it's a... wait for it.... transmission problem.
if the problem is that there is dramatically more power on the line now than 50 years ago, and the transmission lines are failing - it's a transmission problem by definition.
a generation problem only includes failures to generate enough electricity. If you have rolling brownouts or blackouts because there isn't enough power to meet demand, that's a generation problem.
But that isn't whats been happening. during the US/Canada blackout, all plants were online (excepting the nuke plants which were shut down by procedure when the grid was dead).
NIMBY is stressing transmission and leading to serious quantities of waste as energy is lost on the line.
people don't want fossil plants, they don't want nuke plants, heck even the proposed wind farm on the nantucket sound is being blocked by the very politicians that play to a 'green' constituency.
This attitude is creating problems we can no longer pretend don't exist. Before we only had to suffer the energy wasted from unnecessary transmission distances. Now we have to suffer the fragility of the entire distribution system.
the -solution- is indeed a generation solution. It's to educate and inform communities that local municipality-run utilities are the only way to go. dependence on basics like power and water from another locale is dangerous, expensive and wasteful.
while my lights were out last month, my buddy's never were. I was sleeping on his couch, enjoying the AC while 50 million people floundered in the heat and hoarded water, because his city had the foresight to have local municpal power generation.
the 'correct' solution is hardly likely however.
my recommendation for dealing with reality is: get as 'off the grid' as possible, because it will only get worse.
Basically: No (Score:3, Interesting)
If you get crappy service, you take your business elsewhere, right? If you rent a car, but you find it breaks down all the time because the rental company skimps on maintenance, you go to a different company the next time. In the case of power or telephony, you can choose your carrier or supplier, but you cannot choose a company to deliver the service to your home: that takes place over the local loop... which has also been privatised but is effectively run as a monopoly. If that part of the service stinks, you are stuck. That is not a free market.
What happens in these circumstances is market failure; power grids and local telephony loops are difficult to provide as a truly competitive privatised service, while these same things can be run quite cheaply as a public utility. Even the worst of the free market zealots know that there are things that do not work well in a free market.
We see the same things happening in out country: the local loop, national power grid and national railways are being turned into private enterprise, not into companies operating in a free and competitive marketplace, but into monopolies. These companies raise prices, lower service levels and skip on maintenance, not because of the free market, but because of consumers have nowhere else to go. The telephone company is a good example: in areas where they still have a monopoly such as the local loop and voice telephony service, service has become crappy and prices are ridiculous. But in areas where there is some actual competition, like telephony equipment, long distance calls, GSM, and Internet, consumers see an ever-increasing range of services with prices that are a fraction of what they were under the state monopoly. The free market works, in many cases. Where it doesn't, look first for clues that the 'free market' in that case isn't so free after all.
Power blackouts were caused by inept attempts at privatisation, not by the free market. And no, they are not the same thing.
Re:Flourescent lamps suck build nukes (Score:3, Interesting)
Look around. I'm sure you'll be able to spot several rooftops that aren't doing much of anything. Now extrapolate that across the country. Are you still honestly going to try and tell me that there's not enough surface area for wind and solar to be viable? I think you know my response to that.
Before you go off on all the various other arguements against solar, you should know that I live in a solar home for 20 years. Most of the arguements against it that I see on
Finally, there's the "solar panels are only foo% efficient" arguement. Well, that seems to be plenty. We have less than 20ft^2 of panel, those panels are pushing 25 years in their current installation, and IIRC the weren't new when we bought them. They're still kicking out enough juice to power the house. With newer technologies, such as the shingle and sheet-roofing type panels which make it practical to use the entire surface area of the roof, and both of which are more efficient than the panels at my family home, I don't think the alleged lack of efficiency is more than a straw man, especially when you factor in the reduced line-loss due to the electricity being generated in the same location most of it is being used.
Oh yeah, and most of that power is generated during the "peak hours" when our current system is most strained.
Re:Free markets cause power blackouts? (Score:2, Interesting)
You try to obfuscate the issue by mixing in any facts which pop into your head and tossing out $10 words like "externality" and "path dependence". Your tactic is to confuse by cluttering the debate with distracting detail. The only relevent points you could raise in disagrement are those which contradict my own, and those you have failed to supply.
You are skeptical that alternatives to oil could be developed. And yet they already exist ! Fission, wind, solar. These are available commercially today. So your argument depends on the unlikelyhood of developeing what already exists. Lay off the crack, fuckwit.
Trying to to discredit a statement by labeling it "first year eco" is just you showing off a smarty-pants attitude. In fact what is taught in first year eco is correct. You contract nothing with that label. What is taught after first year eco refines, but does not negate what is taught in the first year. More complex analyeses refine the simpler analyses, addressing subtleties overlooked. Otherwise what would be the point of teaching first-year eco ? You think at the end of the year the lecturer announces "What I said was wrong because this is first year eco" Nope.
Stupid snobs like yourself should just shut up and stop wasting our time with your pathetic atttempts at reason. Moron. Its always necessary when rebutting an idiot such as yourself to accompany that with ad hominem attacks. You will not recognize reason and require other means of discouragement; Too unintelligent to know your own stupidity, you must be informed of it directly.