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.'"
Smart Grid is a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
The utilities want the government to foot the bill for them to have modern telemetry as well as a bunch of routine maintenance type of stuff - old transformers rebuilt, etc - stuff that improves their old, core business. Stuff that they've been miserably slacking on for the last 20 years order to pocket more short term profits while their infrastructure rots.
The Big Lie is that this modernization supposedly needs to be done in order for green energy technologies (eg grid interactive solar) to work, when in fact, nothing could be further than the truth. Grid-interactive systems actually RELIEVE load on the grid, and they do it especially at peak hours when AC loads kick in. And it works just great on the plain old dumb grid we have today. They might feel threatened because local generation obviously reduces the amount of energy sold, but it also makes that energy cheaper to sell and distribute because it smooths out the peak loads and reduces average current on long-distance transmission lines.
But the power company has this line that it's making the grid "congested" as if the electrons are trying to go in **ZOMG!** both directions or something! It's a crock of shit - propaganda and political games to try and fleece us of money that should otherwise be spent on deploying modern technologies. Not saying the grid doesn't have its place, on the contrary: grid-interactive is a very elegant solution. But the supposed smart-grid is being pushed in a very underhanded way and it's not at all what people think it is.
El Reg piece (Score:4, Insightful)
It was both (Score:5, Insightful)
He spent buzillions out of pocket to buy the windchargers, some non trivial amount. Yes, the water delivery right of way issue is also involved, but he also has the water that needs delivering some day.
My guess is eventually they will relent when they really *need* the water in those metro regions, and it will just be more expensive then. His was a damn good idea, replace the natgas used for electricity plants with the wind power. The natgas then can be diverted and goes to fuel fleet vehicles, to keep the conversion costs down (all the same model, etc). The natgas is cheaper to run the vehicles on. Oil cash doesn't have to be exported out of the US so it saves on balance of payment issues. win/win/win/win overall.
Ya, he stood to make some serious dollars on the deal, but so effin what?? Where's the beef there, you work for free or don't expect a return on a lot of investment? Bigass huge projects that succeed *tend to make some bigass dollars*. That's just reality, no different from anything else like that in our world.
He's an old guy, been in the energy biz for a long time, and I saw his plan as something he really thought about, came up with a two birds with one stone deal that would work, FOUR birds really, and he wanted it for a legacy contribution as well. The latter is a guess but bet I am right on that one.
Any random young guy can be scary smart, but it takes an older guy who started out scary smart to see all the angles, because you only get that with a ton of real world experience.
He really does not "need" the money at his level and age. Like Gates going off developing medicine action for africa, something to do while you are already rich, and it is in his level of proven expertise.
As to the water, the southwest is in for real long term drought according to the bulk of the climate guessers, while at the same time demands keep going up. We WILL be building more water transfer pipelines, either now while it is cheaper, or later on when it is way more expensive. No "ifs" about it at all, it is GOING to happen because it needs to happen.
Running the new water pipelines from the same areas roughly where the new electricity (which we will also be needing shortly) will be coming from on the same right of way *made sense*. Doing it in two different right of ways at two different times when they start and stop at the same places roughly is way stupid and short sighted.
Way stupid, and way shortsighted. Those boneheads jumped the shark by not doing it all now while materials are cheaper and there's a glut of non working unemployed construction labor out there. They got handed an incredible deal and blew it!
I give the dude props, he has a logical and well thought out long view, not that lame "this quarter" view or "this election cycle" view that most businesses and politicians have and that we all suffer from constantly.
Re:All one needs... (Score:3, Insightful)
The ship, or boat, is no problem at all. A tugboat and a garbage scow will accomodate a scud missile - you don't need anything massively huge, like the USS Enterprise. Some private yachts are big enough for the purposes being discussed here. Stability isn't a big issue here, where the goal is to lob a package somewhere/anywhere near a city. Of course, a larger, more stable weapons platform would be desirable, but people work with what is available.
The launcher isn't that big a deal. Iraq has a surplus at the moment. The thing is only truck sized, weighs less than 20 tons, easily portable. The missile isn't hard to get, either.
The only real obstacle, is to get some weaponized fissionable material into a warhead that will fit on the scud, then control it. I recall that there were some briefcase nukes that came up missing in the old Soviet Union. Who has them? THAT is the scary part of this whole scenario - we don't know if the bad guys might have them.
A crude nuclear system? (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget the E bomb... How about we get a couple of guys with a pickup and a couple of hundred bucks of steel pipe from Home Depot... they drive around flinging the pipes into transformer substations....
"Security" is a lie. There's always a way around whatever protections you can put in place, and the false protection is often extremely expensive while the workaround is usually cheap.
Security Theater at it's finest...
Re:All one needs... (Score:3, Insightful)
I recall that there were some briefcase nukes that came up missing in the old Soviet Union.
You mean you recall hearing one of the myths about there being suitcase nukes. (read truth here)
The key flaw in the mythology is the "minor" flaw that fissionable material in a device that small would decompose in a matter of months. Even if there were such devices, their warheads would now be all but useless.
Still say it was (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that's your opinion and you are welcome to it, I just am of a differing opinion. He bought the windchargers, bunches of them, big ones, so it was both. Water was a huge part of it, and the first part of it, that I will grant readily, but the plan itself evolved.
And I've driven across Texas a few times..I think they have more than enough land for *both* a lot of windchargers and solar thermal farms! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
And either way, if you are talking electricity, you'd *still* need the right of ways to build new transmission towers and powerlines, wind or solar thermal or any other method, so that's a complete wash and a non issue. The windchargers are built or being built, they got contracted for and paid, they are going to go in someplace, either the Texans will get the juice or someone else will. Wind in large enough numbers and over a decent enough area can provide base load enough power, it's used all over now and is still, for the last buncha years running, the fastest method of new plants going in outside of the chinese coal burning plants (they are doing one new one per week average, that's why I think leaving them out of environmental treaties is lame and disingenuous and why even though I am pretty green I did not support Kyoto and I do not support the dems/obama "cap and trade" swindle stealth tax. the atmosphere has no boundaries).
And theoretically speaking, wind verus solar thermal,if a few or even few dozen of your 1-2 megawatt windchargers go down in your large farm of hundreds or thousands across many states, or the wind is not blowing there right now, no biggee, it's just not that much of a huge loss all things considered, but your 300 megawatt solar thermal plant, if that goes down..some huge city is sitting sweating in the dark, maybe for a long time.
Something to be said for *more points of production*.
All the various methods have benefits and tradeoffs and are part of the big energy mix we have. I want to get away from the "all or most of your eggs in one basket" approach we have been using. I like the "all of the above" method instead.
I have nothing against solar thermal. I like all forms of alternative energy and unlike 99% of all the slashdotters here who comment on energy topics I own both a solar PV rig and a windcharger. I just liked his plan because it was a credible quadruple play, one better than a hat trick. Yep, he stood to make a lot of money..all big energy (and water) projects when they are successful (built and running) make a lot of money. Because the world has an insatiable demand for more and more power and more and more water, to more and more places.
Personally I am in favor of a lot more smaller individual projects and a big decentralization effort (and re purpose a lot of closed rust belt factories to do this and put a lot of blue collar guys back to work), but I also recognize the need for centralized power delivery to provide juice for the cities primarily. The rural areas and suburbs could be well served with mass adoption of solar PV in a large number of areas for example, then no new big "plants" or new towers would be needed at all. And a *ton* of family farms could be doing some base model A large windcharger, provide all their own power most of the time plus sell any surplus. When and if I see a smallish home owner styled solar thermal rig (beyond a water heater into electricity production as part of the package, or just ground loop geothermal), I'd endorse that as well. I've seen several one-off prototypes, but nothing else. Might exist but I haven't seen it.
I like big power projects, mediums and small, all of the above. And I *really* endorse the idea of a huge national water pipeline grid, to move water around from where it is in excess to where it is in deficit. A lot of pipelines and hundreds of new deep reservoirs. *Really*, as in a big huge national "we need this yesterday" infrastructure project. Linking up already existing pipelines could help, then y