Hope everyone is OK. I lived in NYC for the 1965 and 1977 ones.


Be safe,

Don

Don Cooper wrote:

Hope everyone is OK. I lived in NYC for the 1965 and 1977 ones.

Be safe,

Don

Anybody lose anything when the lights went out?

--Dale

i knew this was comming a long time ago. im a electrician. so many people take
power for granted.
vk

"BESTnewEnglandDJ" wrote in message
...
i knew this was comming a long time ago. im a electrician. so many people
take
power for granted.
vk

I remember something similar happening a few years ago that affected several
states in the southwest US ( about a week before the sci-fi move
Independence Day came out, prompting me to muse that it might be a real
alien invasion or a publicity stunt for the movie ). Supposedly they traced
the cause to an oak tree branch touching a power line???

Could you explain how this sort of multi-state outage can even happen? If
it's really that fragile of a system it seems like it wouldn't take much of
a natural disaster or terrorist strike to put the whole of North America in
darkness.


Best wishes for a safe return to electric power to everyone affected by the
blackout.

John L Rice

AN

BESTnewEnglandDJ wrote:

i knew this was comming a long time ago. im a electrician. so many people take
power for granted.
vk

John L Rice wrote:

snip
Could you explain how this sort of multi-state outage can even happen? If
it's really that fragile of a system it seems like it wouldn't take much of
a natural disaster or terrorist strike to put the whole of North America in
darkness.

I highly recommend this book:

_Brittle Power, Energy Strategy for National Security_
Amory B. Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins
Brick House Publishing Company
ISBN 0-931790-28-X

This first came out in 1982, has a foreword by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer
and R. James Woolsey, more typos than The Hulk has warts, but lays out
what a mess is our power grid from a security standpoint. I promise that
you will find the information startling and appalling, and that
contemporary investigation will reveal little has changed except the
load on the grid and the amount of power we can feed into it.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

Bryson wrote:

They can't hear you, Don.


It's just like Wolf Blitzer's repeated warnings about the dangers of
using candles. At least we have archives.


Don

Jay Kadis wrote:

It didn't even take a UFO this time.

And of course, we don't know what did it, but we already know it ain't
"terrism". I will now go caress my security blanket.

--
ha

I spent about five years working for a power company, and my father
spent his entire career at one, so I have a slightly different view than
some...

the great blackout in the winter of 1965 was caused by a transmission
line sagging further than expected under an extremely heavy power load.
What should have been a simple outage in a rural area tripped systems
connected to the affected area, and we ended up with a great example of
the good old dominoe effectG.

Since that time a great deal has been done to try to minimize the
possibility of a repeat, believe it or not!

But then came public sentiment against both new generation facilities
and new transmission facilities... all the while demand for power was
increasing. The company I worked for had several "mine mouth" coal fired
plants, located about as far from civilization as you could want. They
also owned an infamous nuclear plant located more or less in the heart
of a populated area. And they owned a lot of transmission lines.

When the company pointed out that they needed either more plants or more
transmission lines the public was quite clear... they didn't want that
stuff in their back yards... but of course they still wanted more power.

Not entirely unlike the situation where people want tax cuts and more
services!

What frightened me though, was the effect all of this had on the public
utility management. The first effect was that the folks who had come up
through the ranks started to lose most of their influence. While once
upon a time the officers of a power company had power company
experience, all of the sudden the companies were looking outside their
industry for leaders. And while this is not always a bad idea, new blood
can bring in new ideas, in this case the new ideas didn't really fall
into line with the charter for a public utility. (The fact that this was
all in preparation for the unregulated power industry was really lost on
most of us... we simply could not imagine that such a thing would come
to pass... ah hindsight!)

But the really scary part was the change in attitude amongst the midddle
management team that really ran the day to day operations. When I
started the predominant attitude was that they were there to guarantee
that everyone had an abundance of clean, safe power. As time passed they
seemed to lose sight of this. I remember very clearly the director of
dispatch, who basically controls the grid, grumbling one day about
public opinion... we were in the middle of a pretty big heat wave, and
we were instructing out industrial customers to shed their loads, and he
pointed out that the best thing that could happen was rolling
black-outs, because then maybe the public would get the message.

This represented a 180 degress change for him. Just the previous winter,
when we were fighting overloads during a cold streak (cold weather was
always a bigger problem than hot weather), this guy spent about 36 hours
straight through in the dispatch center with the transmission and
distribution engineers figuring out ways to manage the load so that
there were no outages. The T&D guys worked in shifts, but the dispatch
boss left the room only for potty breaks. It was, in his mind, his job
to protect the grid. And he did.

He retired not to long after his outburst, his heart just wasn't in it.
And while he was replaced by an engineer he "groomed", the writing was
on the wall.

The power grid is a truly amazing contraption... if you work with it you
can not help but marvel at it as you pass under transmission lines. But
it was built without a lot of thought to securing it, because when it
was built we still believed that terrorists would never act on our soil.

It will be a huge task to secure it, so the industry spends most of it's
security efforts making sure things like yesterdays cascading blackout
can't happen. Clearly they have a little work left to do.

And it isn't because they don't try... Niagra Mohawk, where a lot of
fingers are pointed right now, was one of the most state of the art
operations in the country when I worked in the industry. That was a long
time ago now, so I don't know what impact the changes in the industry
have had on them, but they weren't slouches.

Finally, the system that protects the grids did not fail completely. The
group that manages the grid in Pennsylvania was able to halt the
cascading effect at their borders, which is a good sign.

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:
John L Rice wrote:

snip

Could you explain how this sort of multi-state outage can even happen? If
it's really that fragile of a system it seems like it wouldn't take much of
a natural disaster or terrorist strike to put the whole of North America in
darkness.


I highly recommend this book:

_Brittle Power, Energy Strategy for National Security_
Amory B. Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins
Brick House Publishing Company
ISBN 0-931790-28-X

This first came out in 1982, has a foreword by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer
and R. James Woolsey, more typos than The Hulk has warts, but lays out
what a mess is our power grid from a security standpoint. I promise that
you will find the information startling and appalling, and that
contemporary investigation will reveal little has changed except the
load on the grid and the amount of power we can feed into it.

Bill Thompson wrote:

I spent about five years working for a power company, and my father
spent his entire career at one

--snip excellent recap of the situation then and now --

Change a few words here and there and you have another accurate
narrative about the telecom 'grid' and how it and its management have
changed.



Thanks...

John L Rice wrote:

"BESTnewEnglandDJ" wrote in message
...
i knew this was comming a long time ago. im a electrician. so many people
take
power for granted.
vk

I remember something similar happening a few years ago that affected several
states in the southwest US ( about a week before the sci-fi move
Independence Day came out, prompting me to muse that it might be a real
alien invasion or a publicity stunt for the movie ). Supposedly they traced
the cause to an oak tree branch touching a power line???

Could you explain how this sort of multi-state outage can even happen? If
it's really that fragile of a system it seems like it wouldn't take much of
a natural disaster or terrorist strike to put the whole of North America in
darkness.

Best wishes for a safe return to electric power to everyone affected by the
blackout.

John L Rice


Whatever caused this particular outage. ( It will be something stupid, like a
lightning strike on a transmission line, or an failed component in a generator
plant. ) The root cause it the huge amount of power we use in urban society,
and the immense distances that the power has to travel from generator to
consumer. There is very little margin, and the huge costs of building more
generator plants, transmission lines, etc. especially in these days of NIMBY
and the eco-luddites, work against the power companies building spare
capacity.

--Dale

( Hmmmm.... NIMBY and the eco-luddites. Sounds like a bad band name. )

(LeBaron & Alrich) writes:

And of course, we don't know what did it, but we already know it ain't
"terrism". I will now go caress my security blanket.

I heard on faux news that it was a capitalist attack on our power grid.
U.S. Customs are now "detaining" all suspected capitalists attempting
to cross over from Canada.

Could you explain how this sort of multi-state outage can even happen? If
it's really that fragile of a system it seems like it wouldn't take much of
a natural disaster or terrorist strike to put the whole of North America in
darkness.

PRI's 'Marketplace', an avowedly pro-business syndicated radio show, pretty
squarely laid the blame on utility deregulation today. They say the move away
from smaller independent local municipal-run utilities toward big conglomerate
for-profit energy providers has significantly weakened the robustness of the
infrastructure. Check out this morning's show for a better nuts & bolts
explanation.


Scott Fraser

On 2003-08-14 said:
Could you explain how this sort of
multi-state outage can even happen? If it's really that fragile of
a system it seems like it wouldn't take much of a natural disaster
or terrorist strike to put the whole of North America in darkness.

Um, it's called dominoes. ONe major powerplant goes offline for some
reason. the grid can't use its capabilities. everybody's still
drawing the same amount of juice for the air conditioners; washers;
dryers; Tv/radio transmitters; etc. etc. THe load falls on those
remaining. Another one goes down because it can't meet the demand,
and on and on and ...

wHich is why my ham radio station runs on some float charged gel cell
batteries.

REgards,




Richard Webb
Electric Spider Productions
replace anything before the @ symbol with elspider for real email.


--



Amazing how much tape is on a 10" reel, when it's not, isn't it?

Hi Kurt,

Sadly I am all to well aware of that. I worked on the fringe of the
Telco industry for 12 years, and watched what was once a truly amazing
structure crumble!

The real crime though, imnoso, was the loss of Bell Labs. That was so
shortsighted as to be criminal!

Bill

Kurt Albershardt wrote:
Bill Thompson wrote:

I spent about five years working for a power company, and my father
spent his entire career at one

--snip excellent recap of the situation then and now --


Change a few words here and there and you have another accurate
narrative about the telecom 'grid' and how it and its management have
changed.



Thanks...

especially in these days of NIMBY
and the eco-luddites,

More cluelessness blaming the environmentally aware. The truth is that the
"eco-luddites" have maintained all along that the cure for this is small
decentralized local power generating ability through alternative sources.

Scott Fraser

ScotFraser wrote:

especially in these days of NIMBY and the eco-luddites

More cluelessness blaming the environmentally aware. The truth is that the
"eco-luddites" have maintained all along that the cure for this is small
decentralized local power generating ability through alternative sources.

The utilities like the idea of distributed generation, too--but in their
version the distributed generators live in your neighborhood but are
still owned by the utility. Read up a bit on the laundry list of dirty
tricks and backroom deals the utilities have pulled (and continue to
pull) with net metering.

IOUs have caused a world of grief over the past couple of decades.
Anyone else notice that the municipal utilities were suffering a bit
less during all the CA power shenanigans awhile back? LADWP and SMUD
customers were the lucky ones.

ScotFraser wrote:

especially in these days of NIMBY
and the eco-luddites,

More cluelessness blaming the environmentally aware. The truth is that the
"eco-luddites" have maintained all along that the cure for this is small
decentralized local power generating ability through alternative sources.

And reduction of demand. We're not far from the point at which more
cannot be delivered. We better start thinking about this.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

ScotFraser wrote:

especially in these days of NIMBY
and the eco-luddites,

More cluelessness blaming the environmentally aware. The truth is that the
"eco-luddites" have maintained all along that the cure for this is small
decentralized local power generating ability through alternative sources.

Scott Fraser

Well, the most recent ongoing example of NIMBY eco-luddites up here
around Boston is the opposition to the wind farm offshore of Martha's
Vineyard. Totally clean power, Built on a barely submerged hazard to
navigation several miles away from the island. The real reason is that
the folks on the island feel that the towers will spoil their view, and since
they have money, lawyers, and the liberal left, they are trotting out all
the usual eco-luddite mantras, slightly snipped and molded to fit this
particular situation. *feh*
For an older local example, the Seabrook, NH power plant. Direct
legal costs added up to something like 15% of the total plant cost. Indirect
costs, basically rebuilding things to meet the latest court order, and the
costs of stopping and starting construction dozens of times made the plant
construction cost more than double.
Most of these people mean well, and have a surface understanding of
some of the issues, but their understanding is systematically been
propagandized by extremists. Scientific thought and logical thinking get
replaced by sound bites and articles of faith that are never questioned by
the faithful. ANyone who questions these base beliefs is labeled an
"industry shill" and driven away by the horde with fingers in their ears
chanting their slogans. Joe Stalin had a name for these kinds of folks.
He called them useful idiots.

--Dale

In article Bill Thompson
writes:
Jay Kadis wrote:

In article Bill Thompson
writes:

Hi Kurt,

Sadly I am all to well aware of that. I worked on the fringe of the
Telco industry for 12 years, and watched what was once a truly amazing
structure crumble!

The real crime though, imnoso, was the loss of Bell Labs. That was so
shortsighted as to be criminal!

Bill



Bell Labs loss was our gain: Max Mathews and John Pierce.

Indeed... the Max's and John's of the world were going to find a home...
but where will the next Max or John come from???

Bill

Maybe from CCRMA. But it's getting more difficult to be a Renaissance man like
they were.

-Jay
--
x------- Jay Kadis ------- x---- Jay's Attic Studio ----x
x Lecturer, Audio Engineer x Dexter Records x
x CCRMA, Stanford University x http://www.offbeats.com/ x
x-------- http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/~jay/ ----------x

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:

ScotFraser wrote:

especially in these days of NIMBY
and the eco-luddites,

More cluelessness blaming the environmentally aware. The truth is that the
"eco-luddites" have maintained all along that the cure for this is small
decentralized local power generating ability through alternative sources.

And reduction of demand. We're not far from the point at which more
cannot be delivered. We better start thinking about this.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

Yeah, but this does not show up in price at all. Until
we get it in the wallet, there is no problem. And I'm
still unsure if there really is one or not - it's too
hot a potato to get good stats about.

--
Les Cargill

wrote:
Just try selling a little bit of excess capacity from your small wind
farm back to the grid. hmmmm I have a buddy back in Iowa where I
lived told me some horror stories 'bout that one.

I really should know better by now...

there are two sides to every coin... co-generation, the name commonly
applied to folks trying to sell a little energy back to the grid suffers
from one glaring problem... these small providers are not required to be
on-line, they aren't even required to let the utility know when they are
going off-line (at least that's how it works in PA.)

So utilities try to weed out the lunatics early on in the process, since
the further along one gets in the process the harder it is to stop. And
their methods probably wouldn't make the average person happy.

But it has to be this way because the loss of generation, even from a
small wind farm or hydro plant can cause disturbances in the grid. You'd
be surprised at just how little it takes to shift from stable to
unstable operation, especially under high load conditions. It doesn't
take much.

We had a hospital that operated a steam generator of the laundry steam.
I don't remember the exact capacity, but it didn't generate a whole lot
of power, and they used most of what they generated. So when they
dropped off line, which they did with some regularity, not only was
there a loss of generation, but there was an increase in load.

And you could see it on the meters in dispatch... every time.

When the folks operating small generation sources agree to play under
the same rules that the utilities have to play under I think arguments
against co-generation will decrease.

Bill

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:

And reduction of demand. We're not far from the point at which more
cannot be delivered. We better start thinking about this.

Well, we have to do something... either increase supply, decrease
demand, or accept the consequences of burying our heads in the sand.

Sadly there are a lot of folks out claiming there is no problem other
than the greedy capitalists trying to wring every last cent from the system.

When power generation was regulated there weren't a lot of folks trying
to wring anything out of it... the stocks were generally considered safe
for widows and orphans!

And, if additional generation was required to meet demand the utility
was required to find a way to meet that demand. Now that the generators
are no longer regulated they don't have to build a plant until they know
it will make a profit, and a big one at that!

Meanwhile, the utilities still have tariffs defining how they will
deliver power to homes and businesses in a safe and cost effective manner.

Go figure...

Dale Farmer wrote:

Well, the most recent ongoing example of NIMBY eco-luddites up here
around Boston is the opposition to the wind farm offshore of Martha's
Vineyard. Totally clean power, Built on a barely submerged hazard to
navigation several miles away from the island. The real reason is that
the folks on the island feel that the towers will spoil their view, and since
they have money, lawyers, and the liberal left, they are trotting out all
the usual eco-luddite mantras, slightly snipped and molded to fit this
particular situation. *feh*

I hadn't heard that tale... sheesh!

For an older local example, the Seabrook, NH power plant. Direct
legal costs added up to something like 15% of the total plant cost. Indirect
costs, basically rebuilding things to meet the latest court order, and the
costs of stopping and starting construction dozens of times made the plant
construction cost more than double.

That one however is in the textbooks... along with most nuclear plants
built towards the end of the era.

Most of these people mean well, and have a surface understanding of
some of the issues, but their understanding is systematically been
propagandized by extremists. Scientific thought and logical thinking get
replaced by sound bites and articles of faith that are never questioned by
the faithful. ANyone who questions these base beliefs is labeled an
"industry shill" and driven away by the horde with fingers in their ears
chanting their slogans. Joe Stalin had a name for these kinds of folks.
He called them useful idiots.

A very balanced observation... doesn't really belong in a thread about
public policy and energy now does itG???

Bill

Jay Kadis wrote:

Maybe from CCRMA. But it's getting more difficult to be a Renaissance man like
they were.

Well from what I know about CCRMA, they do a real good job of fostering
a research environment... but they'll never have the bucks that Bell
Labs had. Bell Labs were the last of the research for the sake of
research facilities in this country, and they accomplished quite a bit.

It is true that our long distance charges funded part of that research
(maybe even a large part as is often argued), but they also made a fair
penny licensing inventions that they didn't need, and they built a
marvelous telecommunications infrastructure in the process... not to
mention advances in sound for film which eventually led to our own
favorite industries. I think society as a whole benefitted much more
than the cost of long distance service under the evil monopoly!

"Don Cooper" wrote in message

Hope everyone is OK. I lived in NYC for the 1965 and 1977 ones.

It was mostly a lark. We had running water for the duration. It was an
unofficial day off. Traffic was very light, and most people just chilled,

However, it reflects very poorly on the management of our power grids. Once
upon a time I worked for a large gas utility, so no amount of incompetence
from utility managers can surprise me.

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:

More cluelessness blaming the environmentally aware. The truth is that the
"eco-luddites" have maintained all along that the cure for this is small
decentralized local power generating ability through alternative sources.


And reduction of demand. We're not far from the point at which more
cannot be delivered. We better start thinking about this.

My brother's solar powered house in Poway with his electric car is
looking a little smarter these days. He is probably laughing about all
this.

The oil companies bought the patents for the batteries for the electric
cars. You know they stopped making the electric cars?

I wonder if Arnoold thinks much about this as he is riding high up in
his SUV?

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 18:13:35 GMT, (LeBaron &
Alrich) wrote:

We better start thinking about this.

Hank, you're never going to get elected if you keep
talking like this. Ix-nay the Inking-thay.

Chris Hornbeck
http://www.votetoimpeach.org/

Kurt Albershardt wrote:

Anyone else notice that the municipal utilities were suffering a bit
less during all the CA power shenanigans awhile back? LADWP and SMUD
customers were the lucky ones.


Well then, vote for Arnoold, that's it, umm,

"Schwarzenegger and Lay

Independent candidate Arianna Huffington has criticized Schwarzenegger
for meeting with former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay in May 2001 in
Beverly Hills. The Los Angeles Times reported at the time that Lay gave
Schwarzenegger and other business and political leaders a four-page plan
detailing his solution to California's energy crisis.

"I don't remember the meeting," Schwarzenegger said Thursday."

How conveeen-ient, he don't remember.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/08/15/davis.recall.ap/index.html

Rob Adelman wrote:

Dale Farmer wrote:

the folks on the island feel that the towers will spoil their view, and since
they have money, lawyers, and the liberal left, they are trotting out all
the usual eco-luddite mantras, slightly snipped and molded to fit this

Huh? You are blaming the liberal left?

No, the liberal left is one of the tools on the NIMBYites in this case.

--Dale

"LeBaron & Alrich" wrote in message
.. .
John L Rice wrote:

snip
Could you explain how this sort of multi-state outage can even happen?
If
it's really that fragile of a system it seems like it wouldn't take much
of
a natural disaster or terrorist strike to put the whole of North America
in
darkness.

I highly recommend this book:

_Brittle Power, Energy Strategy for National Security_
Amory B. Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins
Brick House Publishing Company
ISBN 0-931790-28-X

This first came out in 1982, has a foreword by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer
and R. James Woolsey, more typos than The Hulk has warts, but lays out
what a mess is our power grid from a security standpoint. I promise that
you will find the information startling and appalling, and that
contemporary investigation will reveal little has changed except the
load on the grid and the amount of power we can feed into it.

--
hank alrich * secret mountain
audio recording * music production * sound reinforcement
"If laughter is the best medicine let's take a double dose"

Thank you Hank.

John L Rice

Thanks Bill, interesting stuff!

John L Rice


"Bill Thompson" wrote in message
...
I spent about five years working for a power company, and my father
spent his entire career at one, so I have a slightly different view than
some...

the great blackout in the winter of 1965 was caused by a transmission
line sagging further than expected under an extremely heavy power load.
What should have been a simple outage in a rural area tripped systems
connected to the affected area, and we ended up with a great example of
the good old dominoe effectG.

Since that time a great deal has been done to try to minimize the
possibility of a repeat, believe it or not!

But then came public sentiment against both new generation facilities
and new transmission facilities... all the while demand for power was
increasing. The company I worked for had several "mine mouth" coal fired
plants, located about as far from civilization as you could want. They
also owned an infamous nuclear plant located more or less in the heart
of a populated area. And they owned a lot of transmission lines.

When the company pointed out that they needed either more plants or more
transmission lines the public was quite clear... they didn't want that
stuff in their back yards... but of course they still wanted more power.

Not entirely unlike the situation where people want tax cuts and more
services!

What frightened me though, was the effect all of this had on the public
utility management. The first effect was that the folks who had come up
through the ranks started to lose most of their influence. While once
upon a time the officers of a power company had power company
experience, all of the sudden the companies were looking outside their
industry for leaders. And while this is not always a bad idea, new blood
can bring in new ideas, in this case the new ideas didn't really fall
into line with the charter for a public utility. (The fact that this was
all in preparation for the unregulated power industry was really lost on
most of us... we simply could not imagine that such a thing would come
to pass... ah hindsight!)

But the really scary part was the change in attitude amongst the midddle
management team that really ran the day to day operations. When I
started the predominant attitude was that they were there to guarantee
that everyone had an abundance of clean, safe power. As time passed they
seemed to lose sight of this. I remember very clearly the director of
dispatch, who basically controls the grid, grumbling one day about
public opinion... we were in the middle of a pretty big heat wave, and
we were instructing out industrial customers to shed their loads, and he
pointed out that the best thing that could happen was rolling
black-outs, because then maybe the public would get the message.

This represented a 180 degress change for him. Just the previous winter,
when we were fighting overloads during a cold streak (cold weather was
always a bigger problem than hot weather), this guy spent about 36 hours
straight through in the dispatch center with the transmission and
distribution engineers figuring out ways to manage the load so that
there were no outages. The T&D guys worked in shifts, but the dispatch
boss left the room only for potty breaks. It was, in his mind, his job
to protect the grid. And he did.

He retired not to long after his outburst, his heart just wasn't in it.
And while he was replaced by an engineer he "groomed", the writing was
on the wall.

The power grid is a truly amazing contraption... if you work with it you
can not help but marvel at it as you pass under transmission lines. But
it was built without a lot of thought to securing it, because when it
was built we still believed that terrorists would never act on our soil.

It will be a huge task to secure it, so the industry spends most of it's
security efforts making sure things like yesterdays cascading blackout
can't happen. Clearly they have a little work left to do.

And it isn't because they don't try... Niagra Mohawk, where a lot of
fingers are pointed right now, was one of the most state of the art
operations in the country when I worked in the industry. That was a long
time ago now, so I don't know what impact the changes in the industry
have had on them, but they weren't slouches.

Finally, the system that protects the grids did not fail completely. The
group that manages the grid in Pennsylvania was able to halt the
cascading effect at their borders, which is a good sign.

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:
John L Rice wrote:

snip

Could you explain how this sort of multi-state outage can even happen?
If
it's really that fragile of a system it seems like it wouldn't take much
of
a natural disaster or terrorist strike to put the whole of North America
in
darkness.


I highly recommend this book:

_Brittle Power, Energy Strategy for National Security_
Amory B. Lovins & L. Hunter Lovins
Brick House Publishing Company
ISBN 0-931790-28-X

This first came out in 1982, has a foreword by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer
and R. James Woolsey, more typos than The Hulk has warts, but lays out
what a mess is our power grid from a security standpoint. I promise that
you will find the information startling and appalling, and that
contemporary investigation will reveal little has changed except the
load on the grid and the amount of power we can feed into it.

I dare all the sheep to elect Dubya again in '04.

"again"? Huh?

Dale Farmer wrote:

Anybody lose anything when the lights went out?

A fuse blew in one VCR; that's all here. Thanks for asking.

I'd just finished buying some equipment in lower Manhattan and was waiting
for the subway back home to Brooklyn when the power went out. The station
was evacuated in near-total darkness. All we knew at the time was that
there was a power outage in the lower Manhattan subway.

After it became clear that the problem was more widespread and would not
be solved very soon, I joined tens of thousands of other people walking
across the Brooklyn Bridge (with my 30+ pounds of equipment and a bottle
of water). It was a rather festive time, actually. People sat out on
the steps of their buildings and met and talked with one another.

I'd say, there should be one evening a month with no television. It's
amazing the degree to which our particular means of transportation and
communication isolate people and set us against each another.

--best regards

In article ,
Dale Farmer wrote:

Whatever caused this particular outage. ( It will be something stupid, like a
lightning strike on a transmission line, or an failed component in a generator
plant. ) The root cause it the huge amount of power we use in urban society,
and the immense distances that the power has to travel from generator to
consumer. There is very little margin, and the huge costs of building more
generator plants, transmission lines, etc. especially in these days of NIMBY
and the eco-luddites, work against the power companies building spare
capacity.

--Dale

( Hmmmm.... NIMBY and the eco-luddites. Sounds like a bad band name. )


Not quite. It will be the combination of at least two "something stupids".
You don't drop 61 GW of load on a single contingency.

rec.audio.pro

Just keep repeating that to yourself.

Well, the most recent ongoing example of NIMBY eco-luddites up here
around Boston is the opposition to the wind farm offshore of Martha's
Vineyard. Totally clean power, Built on a barely submerged hazard to
navigation several miles away from the island. The real reason is that
the folks on the island feel that the towers will spoil their view, and since
they have money, lawyers, and the liberal left, they are trotting out all
the usual eco-luddite mantras, slightly snipped and molded to fit this
particular situation.

What any of these rich folks opposing wind power have to do with what you label
the liberal left is beyond me.
Scott Fraser

Bill Thompson wrote:

there are two sides to every coin... co-generation, the name commonly
applied to folks trying to sell a little energy back to the grid suffers
from one glaring problem... these small providers are not required to be
on-line, they aren't even required to let the utility know when they are
going off-line (at least that's how it works in PA.)

But it has to be this way because the loss of generation, even from a
small wind farm or hydro plant can cause disturbances in the grid. You'd
be surprised at just how little it takes to shift from stable to
unstable operation, especially under high load conditions. It doesn't
take much.

When the folks operating small generation sources agree to play under
the same rules that the utilities have to play under I think arguments
against co-generation will decrease.


Wouldn't it make more sense to encourage a much larger number of
co-generators so that their individual starts and stops would be
averaged out by all the others? With enough small generators, we
wouldn't BE running close to capacity all the time and if those
generators were distributed with the population it would solve a lot of
our transmission difficulties and inefficiencies at the same time.
This doesn'y happen with a few dozen co-generators, but it could happen
with a few THOUSAND co-generators in any given area. Am I wrong?

ulysses

Darrell Klein wrote:

I dare all the sheep to elect Dubya again in '04.

"again"? Huh?


Right, as the bumper stickers say, "Let's not elect him in '04 either."

ulysses

I think it's time for us (people) to start looking at how we can solve
the problem for ourselves rather than trying to get industry to
regulate itself, or worse yet get government to do it. I can think of
all sorts of ways I can reduce my consumption of electricity, and I can
also think of plenty of ways to get the electricity I do use from
someplace other than "The Grid." I think I've changed my mind about
leaving the studio equipment on all the time. This is as good a reason
as anything else. I've gotten a lot better about shutting down my
computer when I'm not using it, too. I've done the math and now I know
how much cheaper it is to use those small fluorescents as a replacement
for incandescent bulbs. They're NOT noisy OR ugly. The only catch is
the extra junk you throw in the trash when they burn out. But they
last a year instead of a month. There have been some HUGE advancements
in efficiency in recent years, including lighting, batteries,
computers, displays (TFTs use WAY less power than CRTs), refrigeration,
etc. We should be able to decrease rather than increase our
consumption, if we actually make an effort.

What's I'd LIKE to see is people using their treadmills and excercise
bikes and Nordik-Traks to charge their laptops or even run their
refrigerators. I'd like to see a gigantic flywheel in everybody's
garage that would stor energy from every available source: Wind,
solar, childrens' hyperactivity, wind-up cranks, weights on chains
(like a big cuckoo clock) etc. I bet that with the right equipment,
the average home could be powered by the family living in it. This
sort of thing would be easy to phase in incrementally because you can
always use a little mains power on the side.

Of course, it's 97 degrees outside and I do have the AC cranked up
today.

ulysses


Rob Adelman wrote:

LeBaron & Alrich wrote:

More cluelessness blaming the environmentally aware. The truth is that the
"eco-luddites" have maintained all along that the cure for this is small
decentralized local power generating ability through alternative sources.


And reduction of demand. We're not far from the point at which more
cannot be delivered. We better start thinking about this.

My brother's solar powered house in Poway with his electric car is
looking a little smarter these days. He is probably laughing about all
this.

The oil companies bought the patents for the batteries for the electric
cars. You know they stopped making the electric cars?

I wonder if Arnoold thinks much about this as he is riding high up in
his SUV?