East Coast outage?

Fri Aug 15 23:08:08 UTC 2003

> 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.

No, the problem is that by the time your users receive that information and
act upon it, you will either get a blackout (braker) or a blow up
(transformers becoming brakers).

The reason it takes long to restore the power is that to restore the power
to section "A" one needs to deliver the amount nearly equal to what the
section "A" needs at that specific time and that is a lot of calculatins.

Alex