Electronic Armageddon, and No Electricity Either 158
Smart grid technology is a hot issue on Capitol Hill, but some are raising questions about the idea. In recent days we've discussed the smart grid's potential exposure to worm attacks, consumers' unreadiness for the idea, and whether the whole concept may need a rethink. A Congressional hearing on Thursday surfaced another reason for caution: the smart grid's vulnerability to EMP. "Electromagnetic Pulse" refers to the damage caused in electrical circuits and systems when a nuclear explosive goes off nearby. The electric grid as it's currently constituted is vulnerable to EMP; the further down the road we go towards a smart grid, the more vulnerable it will become. "It makes a great equalizer for small nations looking to stand up to military Goliaths, argues Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (Rep.-Md.), a former research scientist and engineer who has worked in the past on projects for NASA and the military. All one needs to wreak some serious EMP damage, he charges, is a sea-worthy steamer, $100,000 to buy a scud-missile launcher, and a crude nuclear weapon. Then fling the device high into the air and detonate its warhead. Such a system might not paralyze the entire United States, he concedes. 'But you could shut down all of New England. And if you missed by 100 miles, it's as good as a bulls eye.'"
electromagnetic pulse bomb (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_bomb [wikipedia.org] It's scary brilliant how they convert explosive energy to electromagnetic. It's also far easier to build than any nuclear device.
Re:Smart Grid is a scam (Score:3, Informative)
Not exactly. Pickens scrapped his windmill plans in texas (or some southern state) because theres no way to get the electricity produced to where its needed. Thus, a new grid is needed for green energy
Re:Smart Grid is a scam (Score:3, Informative)
Pickens didn't really give a hoot about the electricity, he wanted the right of way for the power lines so that he could build a pipeline to get all the water he owns to the major metros where he wants to sell it. "Green Energy" was a screen.
Re:Smart Grid is a scam (Score:3, Informative)
15 watts with a power factor of .5 does not mean 30 watts.
it means 15 watts and 25.9 var.
Q = P x (tan(arccos(pf))
S = P +jQ
so S = 15 +j 25.9 = 30 at 60 degrees kVA.
15 watts at 110V with a power factor of 1, single phase
P=IV*cos theta I=.136A
15 watts at 110v with a power factor of .5, I = .27A but you are still only using 15 watts and you are still (as a residential customer) only billed for 15 watts.
That's the deal with power factor; more current for the same power means the infrastructure has to be able to deliver the current required for the apparent power (S in kVA) and not just the real power (P in kW).
Re:Smart Grid is a scam (Score:3, Informative)
(I am an electrical engineer, although I don't work in power transmission)
It's not bullshit. As others have said, it's not 30 watts burned, it's 30 watts transmitted. One way to understand this is to imagine what would happen if you hooked an ideal capacitor up to an AC power line. The alternating current would charge and discharge the capacitor, moving energy back and forth. This is called imaginary power. No energy is lost -- only resistive loads dissipate power. However, the capacitive load isn't free for two reasons:
1. The transmission infrastructure still has to handle the current, which means you need bigger transformers and stuff.
2. The circuit isn't really ideal. Some energy is lost due to resistance in the lines, etc.
Power factor is a way of measuring how much of your power usage is resistive vs. capacitive or inductive. Heavy powers users like industrial facilities are charged for their power factor. Homes are not. The GP's concern is that if the whole country switches over to using CFLs we'll need more grid capacity to handle the difference in power factor.
Boy that's just all sorts of wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
I actually worked with nascent smart grid technologies in the late 1990s. We wrote energy monitoring software for mid-size and larger enterprises. They have time of use rates and so understanding how to do peak shaving was very beneficial to them and they would wind up investing considerably to bring their demand down. These systems are usually pairs with SCADA systems that intimately wire up their processes and with all of that comes a certain amount of redundancy. The thing is though, if the control systems were to go offline, they could certainly still continue.
The question is put, do you need to have telemetry on residences? I would say the answer is no. Well in the late 1990s a load recorder by itself would set you back about a $1000 and then you needed either a network jack and a phone line to talk. I would be shocked if the same hardware could not be put together for a fraction of that, and I'd bet that a utility could get a smart meter at the residence for not that expensive in hardware cost. The real cost is the labor of the electrician to install it. This is a skilled job and its going to take some money to pay some guy to be out there for an afternoon wiring up a load recorder at your house. Then from there, the load recorder would have to attach to your communications infrastructure, and what might that be? Well, it could piggy back your internet by being its own wireless, it could plug into your POTS, it could have its own cell line (and boy that would drive costs up). The central software to manage all of that is there.
And so, after the utility spends millions of bucks installing all these meters on residences, what will they find? They already -KNOW- that the number 1 predictor of consumer electrical demand is the degree day. Seriously, go have a look at the temperature curve for the last 90 days, and compare that to the spot energy price for the last 90 days. They are going to be almost identically the same shape...
One has to wonder, if there is not a simpler way to get consumers to peak shave. Perhaps the easiest thing might be to have a collective energy bonus. Basically, if the utility does not have to fire up its oil units on it a hot day, and can avoid running spinning reserves, there's a certain amount of give back they can profitably put on the table to get people to not use so much power. So what they could do during summer months is basically calculate a collective credit, where, if a region meets a certain usage reduction goal, everyone gets some amount of credit back on their bill. From there consumers could, instead of spending energy dollars on metering, could spend things on actually valuable peak shaving products, which no doubt the utility and its local energy services partners would be more than happy to sell, to make this an economical deal for everyone. With a collective energy bonus, you get most of the benefits of a peak shaved grid, but without having to actually build one.