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PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#26
(10-12-2019, 11:00 PM)Labster Wrote: I think we're getting away from the main point of this thread, which is that PG&E is chock full of utter assholes.

There was a software glitch in the recent shutdowns, too.  They told people to check the website for notification on when power would be shut down, then the website crashed.  For a long time.  The state government was forced to call in their own IT workers to get the website back up.  An hour after they left, it crashed again.  So no one knew when, or for how long, the outage would occur.

The second point in Southern California, we had some fires start too.  Edison shut off a few neighborhoods, no big deal, but were able to communicate clearly when, and for how long.  PG&E, well, they shut down whole counties at a time.  California only has 58 counties.  Why so unsubtle?  Well it turns out that they don't really have an electric grid, so much as a hub and spoke system.  SDG&E has the same problem in the late nineties when they were responsible for a fire, and started building redundant systems and burying their lines.

Anyone in the industry should have seen this coming.  It was obvious how to defend against wildfire conditions.  But what did PG&E do?  Nothing, because they're assholes.  Why spend on infrastructure now, when we can retire with more money in our pockets and leave it to the next generation to fix.  Instead, they banked on administrative capture and the government bailing them out, because they were too big to fail.  And when that didn't happen, there was nothing left to be done but inflict pain on the customers until they get the bailout they so obviously deserve.

This led to enough pain for the state to activate its emergency center at level 2, the same level as after the Ridgecrest quake.

Microgrids for redundancy is a really good idea, as it's also more efficient.  It would also be a good idea to connect across different U.S. grids at a few sites, something like Japan does at the frequency meridian, so that emergency power can be transferred.  But this latest thing is a man-made disaster from beginning to end.  And although we can blame climate change on all of us, the real monsters were PG&E all along, profiteering instead of investing in a stable utility for the future.  Supply-side economics only works when businesses invest in infrastructure, not just extract all the value out of the people for their own yachts.  Seriously, total assholes.

What really sucks is that once the polar icecaps do go away and the sea levels rise, it probably won't take PG&E out of the running.  Though SMUD will go bye-bye as the entire Central Valley becomes an inland sea by way of the California Delta.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#27
Not gonna happen.  It's simply too easy to build a dike to close the Golden Gate.  It might be possible to build a dike further inland but you're gonna want to check it on the SF Bay Model before building.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#28
Another option that a lot of people ignore is switching the energy grid to a mixed system, with nuclear energy and renewable energy sources mixed in. Make no mistake, I'm not blind to the fact that nuclear energy has its issues, but unless we manage to solve every problem with energy storage and generation it looks to be the most effective for certain roles on the energy grid.

And it's quite likely that we are never going to be quite rid of fossil/oil based fuels. There are a number of roles where chemical energy storage like that simply performs vastly better than electrical energy storage.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#29
Thank you Hazard, you make my argument much more succinctly than i could
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#30
I like nuclear energy.

It's fucking cool. It's cracking the very stuiff of creation itself and hewing raw energy from the very structure of the cosmos.

Anyway, when it comes to nuclear energy, I find a paraphrase of an old quote appropriate.

We have a responsibility unlike any other in the history of mankind - we have our fears which may become reality - and we have climate change, which is reality.

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#31
I'm actually a fan of nuclear. Please identify sites with low to no seismicity and easy access to water for coolant in California, and I'd be happy to start pushing a nuclear project.

I've been telling people that for over a decade and I'm still waiting.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#32
Well youi can just build the damn thing toi withstand an Earthquake. That said I don't know anything about Californian geology beyond the fact that it shakes a lot. But they can build them in Japan without issue. Fukushima happened because someone thought the basement was the best place for an emergency generator at a coastal power station that was in a Tsunami risk area. Another power station, much closer to the epicentre, and subject to much higher waves - survived and kept operating, even providing enouigh power to be used as a shelter for locals.

There's also the simple reality that - when lives are counted - it may be worth accepting the risk of a Chernobyl by building simpler, cheaper, less reliable reactors, compared to the costs of climate change.

Radiation is just a damned scary boogeyman.

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#33
For that matter, Generation 4 nuclear reactors using fluoride salt based extremely high temperature liquid fuels or metal coolant in the primary (direct contact in the reactor) cooling loop would be vastly safer options compared to the current high pressure water or gas cooled reactors.

Because those things? Those are literal bombs the moment the containment vessel breaches, double digits atmospheric pressure at minimum gets quite violent when it can escape to a lower pressure environment, which is what happened in both Chernobyl and Fukushima.

While a salt reactor can't melt down (it's already molten and any sensible design will have a properly engineered tub to catch the highly radioactive salt when the drain plug is pulled) and a metal cooled reactor has insanely high maximum operating temperatures. The USA had a NaK alloy cooled test reactor, and with the right mixture of the alloy that's liquid at room temperature while the boiling temperature physically couldn't be reached even with every control rod removed and the cooling shut off. They tried that.

And all that while both salt reactors and metal cooled reactors operate at atmospheric pressure, so they don't explode into a contaminated mist that can wreck the containment building.


Labster, I'm with Dartz. You don't need a low seismicity location in California. You need a reactor and housing that can take an earthquake (a well understood science by now) and keep passive containment even when the cooling loop is lost. I mean, with that metal cooled reactor all you need to do is make sure that the metal coolant doesn't drain out of the reactor vessel. It may not do a whole lot of cooling as a result, but when the reactor throttles itself down as temperature rises that's not much of a problem, just stuff every control rod back in and let the reactor sit there and cool down over the following weeks as the reaction products decay.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#34
(10-13-2019, 02:57 PM)Labster Wrote: I'm actually a fan of nuclear.  Please identify sites with low to no seismicity and easy access to water for coolant in California, and I'd be happy to start pushing a nuclear project.

I've been telling people that for over a decade and I'm still waiting.

If I'm reading figure 5 in this California Department of Conservation report correctly and remembering the publicly-available specifications correctly, pretty much anywhere on a lakeshore and within 50 miles of I-5 from Redding to Sacramento looks to have low enough seismicity for a CANDU-style reactor.

Again, if I'm reading the maps and remembering the specs correctly.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#35
I know you guys HATE John Ringo, but do any of you know if the pebble bed reactors that the used in the last two books actually exist? Typically they would be smaller units, but using those in or instead of substations to run micro-grids would probably be a workable plan.

Of course then every substation would need a security contingent, but, jobs, ya know.
Wolf wins every fight but the one where he dies, fangs locked around the throat of his opponent. 
Currently writing BROBd

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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#36
Yes, they are real.
-- Bob

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber.  I have been 
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#37
I love the idea of nuclear plants providing primary power for power grids. There are so many ways to skin this cat with all the difference reactor designs - Pebble Beds, CANDU, the new MKER...

MKER is interesting because it is derived from the RBMK reactor which means that it has the advantages of using light-water for the primary coolant loop, requires only a very low enrichment of fuel (2.4%), and can have individual fuel rods swapped out (even during operation) which improves burn-up of the fuel.

The improved design is much safer than the RBMK as they've made it inherent in the design of the reactor for a positive void coefficient to not be possible. This, along with other safety improvements and being much more powerful make it look like a promising design.

And on the renewable energy side of things, you can use wind turbines to "charge" a pumped storage hydroelectric plant, socking extra energy away for peak demand times or provide for sudden and unexpected surges.

Also good for peak periods would be solar - it's a foregone conclusion that the brighter the sun shines, the hotter it gets in your house, so why not put that bright ball of burning gasses to work?

Odd idea: shading suburban homes with large nylon sun screens. Because in many places your shade trees can't shade the house itself, and this day and age you don't want a tree that close anyhow.

Or, if you REALLY wanna get your green-freak on, you can get the frames they use for those sheet metal prefab building kits, put the frame over your house, and then mount the solar cells on the rafters. You'll have much more square footage for solar cells and keep your house cooler by having them shade the house.

Another interesting idea that's been getting bandied about is to create a standard for a DC electrical circuit in your home in addition to the AC circuit. This would make it easier to power DC appliances like home electronics and save energy by eliminating the need for all those additional AC/DC adapters. Large scale inverters have come a long way and are very efficient now. If the home DC circuit is buffered by a small bank of supercapcitors, then the home inverter can shut itself off entirely when it's not needed.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#38
Wait, who hates John Ringo? As long as he's got a co-author to keep the gratuitous body counts down, his stuff is mostly fine. I'm not always convinced the societies he writes about would work like he thinks, but that's sci-fi all over.

Anyway, having built in USB power jacks along with standard power outlets is nice in theory - those little always-in-the-wall power bricks really do represent a surprising amount of drain over the long term - but while losing a volt or so between the breaker box and the wall to the wiring or the number of things currently plugged in isn't much to nominally 120v systems (which often run as low as 110v if you actually stick a meter on it in practise) it's enough to make you cell phone only read half charged due to being proportionately much greater for a 5v system and battery power curves. Having the 120v AC to 5v DC conversion happen at each outlet just removes the ability to unplug the power bricks you aren't currently using, so that's actively counterproductive.
--
‎noli esse culus
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#39
I think the idea with "DC circuit in houses" was to have a single conversion that was then spread around the house (or through the neighborhood), and a great reduction in the need for AC outlets in general. After all, now that LED lighting is getting widespread? The only real need for 120V for most people is in the kitchen (fridge, stove, dishwasher) and laundry. It's only still got an uphill climb because of the twin problems of retrofitting homes, and that for some people, they can either see the flicker and spectrum gaps in LED lighting, or worse, feel vaguely ill when exposed to it, either by placebo effect or because we don't 100% understand the human body and how it reacts to light.

The "conversion at each point with no option to shut it off when not used" is the biggest reason I haven't attempted to install those USB charging outlets around the house.
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#40
As well as the home office and/or living room. Computers and televisions draw a fair amount of power themselves.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#41
Most converters to step down DC voltage are about as efficient as the AC/DC plugs you’re already using. And running 5V DC around the house would waste a lot of power. It’s an interesting concept but there aren’t a lot of gains to be made by switching to DC.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#42
Also, when working with DC your choice is a single voltage level, so either everything you are using can handle whatever voltage you've got in your DC circuit, or you need to transform it again.

And that's just another step causing transmission losses. AC has its flaws, but there's a reason people went with AC for transmission over distance.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#43
Okay, this may be a game-changer.

The US Navy's applied for a patent for a fusion reactor. And not just some monster Tokamak-like thing, but a unit that's apparently small and light enough to power an airplane.

I've browsed the patent, and it's unclear to me whether this is a working technology or just a patent on an innovative design that has yet to pan out. But it's a hell of an idea, and if it works, you can be sure Big Oil is going to be screaming to outlaw it. Which might make it a very good thing that the Navy is behind it.
-- Bob

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber.  I have been 
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#44
DC is far more dangerous.

If you make the circuit you can't release the cable. Your death will be silent - but not because it's painless. You will die while it fries you inside.

DC circuits are harder to break - being more prone to hot arcing and keeping the current flowing. DC isolators and circuit breakers are a lot safer. Not to mention a lot of AC power safety comes from the ability to rapidly interrupt the AC current if any imbalance between live and neutral - oir any stray earth current - is detected.

I've gotten a jag or two off mains live and it's uncomfortable - but I'm a lot more careful working with big DC voltages. 300VDC that you can't shut off is 'fun'. Just be damned sure you're not making that circuit.

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
Reply
RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#45
I'll believe it when it gets out of the lab and into production Bob.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#46
RE: Shutting off power for conservation.... You guys must have really skimmed over what I wrote.

You can set an inverter to power-off under certain conditions. RVs have this kind of setup. It's nothing new, maybe a little bit fancy, but otherwise very doable. Using a supercapacitor bank to allow the inverter to cycle on and off in turns is very doable as well. In fact, given how quickly supercapacitors charge up and how much charge they can hold, this may be the method you'd want because it'll reduce your inverter's run time to just a few hours a day.

Regarding voltages.... You act as if a lot of home electronics don't already have transformers in them, or as part of their adapter-cords. Those funny black boxes that get warm to the touch are not only rectifying the AC current into a smooth DC current, but they're also stepping the power up or down through a transformer as needed.

That said, we can have a DC circuit with high volts, but very low amps since it's usually the amperage that's fatal. Think along the lines of the sort of current tasers use. Getting zapped by it would be unpleasant, but at least it won't kill you.

Also, who is to say that you can't create a digitally managed breaker? In fact, I think this is a safety feature in modern house/RV inverters - if the system detects a sudden load, like the kind someone getting electrocuted might put onto the system, it will automatically open that circuit.

Also, more home appliances are switching over to DC internals - in particular, the newer and more efficient refrigerators use DC electronics and motors.

So it's all just a matter of setting up the standard. USB-C can figure heavily into this as a Power Delivery port can supply a maximum of 100 watts of power, but ultimately the home circuit will need a higher voltage with USB-C outlets relegated to having their own transformers... preferably with each one having an auto-off switch that activates when there's nothing drawing current.... but that, too, can be integrated into the inverter's monitoring system and therefore be centrally controlled.

Hell, having USB-C as part of your electrical system will mean that you now have a hard-wired system for transferring data. Given that the new 3.1 standard can supply bandwidth at rates of 10Gbps, it can easily supplant Ethernet. And 100 watts is more than plenty to power most household electronics, with the exception of sound systems and high-performance desktop PCs (workstations and gaming rigs).

No, really. This is actually pretty damn cool. Most LED TVs in the 32" range use no more than 55 watts. An Xbox One S will use between 35 to 90 watts. A PS4 Slim rates at 55 to 110 watts. But the Nintendo Switch takes the cake at a mere 10 to 18 watts.

Just imagine that your home had a USB 3.1 hub built into the wall where your entertainment system goes, and each port on it is a Power Delivery port rated at 100w each. You could plug everything in using just one USB-C cable each, and that would be that. They get power, and the devices all talk to each other through the USB-C connections. No more HDMI or DVI cables or fiber optics. Just one cable, each device, into the wall.

It does not get any better than that unless we get some REALLY cool shit going like safe and efficient broadcast energy combined with something like Bluetooth for HD audio and sound.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#47
Considering the horror stories earlier in this thread about how PG&E managed to mess up the AC grid, do you really want to give them a shot at DC as well?
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#48
As much as I believe that PG&E are total assholes and that their assholery knows no bounds, in home is never managed by the central utility. We've been talking about running residential solar directly to residential DC appliances.
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#49
Really, if you have a solar power system that's tied into the local grid, just about everything is there already. Except that the kind of integrated use of USB 3.1 I brought up isn't present - that would have to be something that's kitbashed together. But the technology is there.

Honestly, with the way I've been seeing USB charging ports popping up everywhere there's a 120v AC outlet, I think it'd be only a matter of time before it happens.
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RE: PG&E will shut off power for nearly 800,000 customers starting Wednesday
#50
Something I came across that I thought I should drop in here since it's relevant and all.

You may recall that I've brought up the idea of absorption chiller systems (e.g.: just like those propane powered freezers in RVs) using evacuated tube solar collectors as the heat source (which can gather quite a bit of thermal energy even on a cloudy and chilly day).

Apparently, this tech is actually quite mature.  Like in the same timeframe Skylab and Space Shuttle.  Nothing new-fangled about it at all.

And apparently the US Federal Government was looking into the feasibility of it.  I can do no better than to quote from one of the last sections in the document.

4.5  RECOMMENDED DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS OF A RESIDENTIAL SOLAR ABSORPTION CHILLER SYSTEM
The simulation studies examining the performance of the solar operated absorption chiller in various operating configurations reveal no "add on" equipment which is economically viable in improving the performance in residential operation.  The simplest design, and there-fore the least capital intensive, fortunately is the most economically viable.  A complete design schematic for a residential solar operated air conditioning system and its specifications are shown in Figures 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.6.3, 4.6.4, and Table 4.6.1. This design specification may be used to build a technically sound solar operated air conditioning system.  The economic characteristics of the system, however, must be determined by other means.

I'm pretty sure that whatever those economic characteristics are, they can be vastly improved upon by using photovoltaic cells to power the various blowers and pumps such a system would need.  You can see the rest of the document here, which comes in that nice, tidy, and easy-on-the-eyes double-line spacing government tech-pub look: https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6742944

This is actually already going places.  There's a Chinese manufacturer that has, for some years now, been building "slim" units that don't store chilled water.  And they only use electricity to operate the pumps and blowers, but since there's no need for compression, they're very efficient.  And here in the US, there is a company in North Carolina that can equip homes with a hybrid system that is not only incredibly efficient, but the government will also give tax credits to cover two-thirds of the cost to purchase and install said system.  (Though I think they only use the evacuated tube collectors to replace your heating elements... I could be wrong, though.)




I'll check in again sometime later next week.
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