East Coast outage?

Iljitsch van Beijnum iljitsch at muada.com
Fri Aug 15 22:25:14 UTC 2003


On vrijdag, aug 15, 2003, at 23:58 Europe/Amsterdam, alex at yuriev.com 
wrote:

> Amount of energy generated must be balanced with the amount of energy 
> used
> at any time. Otherwise Bad Things (tm) will happen. The shutown of the 
> grid is a very good thing compared to what it would have been had it 
> not
> shutdown.

It seems to me that the power guys are still living somewhere in the 
last century. Is it really impossible to absorb power spikes? We can go 
from utility to battery or the other way around in milliseconds, so it 
should be possible to activate something that can absorb a short spike 
much the same way. Balancing intermediate-term generation/usage 
mismatches should be possible by simply communicating with users. There 
is lots of stuff out there that switches on and off periodically (all 
kinds of cooling systems, battery charging, lights), so let it switch 
on or off for a few minutes when the power network needs it to.

I think the idea that the power should be always present and always 
reliable is actually harmful, as it doesn't provide for any "congestion 
contnrol" by bringing the users into the loop.




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