power to the internet

Fri Dec 27 01:26:13 UTC 2019

Hi Brandon,

I agree with lots of what you wrote, here's some more thoughts....

tl;dr

Batteries from cars will fix your issues along with smart guys just 
wanting to get the job done.

WHO AM I?!

I am a coms tech.  I have been on this list for ~20 years.

My job is simply to look at the environment and make coms appear.

My job is not to blame others, question politics or argue ethics.

MY POWER, MY RULES, MY RIGHTS

I have two Nissan LEAF with the 24Kwh battery, both at 10 of 12 bars of 
original battery capacity, roughly 8.5 years old.  This gives each car 
roughly 110km (65 mile) of range between charges. Both are 6 months into 
a 5 year payment plan.

"My job is simply to look at the environment and make coms appear. "

So, looking at my actual environment, I know that I'm going to end up 
with two 15kwh batteries in about 8 years and two 15kwh generators (yes, 
the motors in those things put out about 15kwh under breaking).

Ok, so I'm not going to personally convert these into anything at 57 
(I'm 49 now), but some young up and coming (Mr 12, sitting in my living 
room, playing with his Christmas presents, perhaps) will.

MY POWER

In buying these two cars, I was wanting to address the 'demand side' of 
my energy question.  Now I have a decent amount of demand, I'm going to 
put PV on my roof this year.

My utility company will buy power back from me at about 15% of what I 
pay retail, so selling them power makes no sense.

My best friend has just completed a 7kwh in solar installation to power 
is 210 tank gold fish facility.  He's currently exporting power and now 
looking at storage solutions.

We're 'early adoptors', so you can look to us to see where the trend is 
going.

MY RULES

My other mate asked our utility for power to his new home and they said 
"Yes sir, half a years wages plus a monthly contribution to the up keep 
for the brand new plant you're paying for up front." I'm sure it comes 
as no surprise, he said "no thanks" and then built a whole off grid 
system including a 6kwh diesel generator. (He is also a coms tech, 20 
years older than I am, though not on this list).

MY RIGHTS

My country lets me do most of the electrical work on my own home up to 
the power board as long as I follow the rules.

I can generate power, I can export power, I can store power.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Just like the US, my community has people who will sit and blame 
government, will blame the power company, will blame their local elected 
members, will drag us all into court, will blame the boomers.

But also like the US my community also has people who are coms techs who 
just look at the space, see what's going on and build accordinly.

TRANSITION IS A PROBLEM TO SOLVE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

As many of you are picking up, we're in a transitional time.  The US 
utilities know this and they're scared to invest, and for good reason, 
some have been very burnt in the past.

NOT ENOUGH COPPER!!!!  "COMS WILL DIE"

I remember ~20 years ago, reading posts about how there isn't enough 
copper to supply the growing demand in lines.  Now today I'm reading 
about how you have abundant abandoned copper as DSLAMs are moved closer 
to the edge.

Power is the same in my view.  We're going to see local edge generation, 
storage and change of use (I have all LED lighting, TV's that use a 
fraction of the power they used to, but two electric cars).

Your US power will stop browning out when you put storage in the network 
and can drop the peek load.  But you're going to have to drive Mrs Brown 
to make that personal investment, and she won't until it starts to hurt.

The utility will under ground lines when it can see a clearer picture 
for the future.  It will take coms with it (FTTH).  It won't until the 
situation smacks the political space so hard that regulation is sorted 
so it can be happy with investment (in NZ we had to get down this path - 
this is quite a good read, the incumbent - 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_New_Zealand ).

RANDOM FYI

As I type this, I have over 8 layer 1 networks I can use at my house...

* ENABLED - FTTH
* VODAFONE - HFC
* CHORUS - FTTN/POTS
* VODAFONE - 4/5G
* SPARK - 4G
* 2DEGREES - 4G
* CCC - private council network
* YOURNET - my own private WISP network
* OTHER WISP - there's half a dozen that I can see with a quick scan 
from hills about 8km away

BUT THIS WAS ABOUT POWER FOR OUR EXISTING COMS, NOT THE WHOLE NEIGHBOURHOOD!

Many of you are thinking in a silo.  You live in a community and you're 
not acting like it.

Fix the power problems for the community rather than just trying to care 
only for your little nest.  As some of you have pointed out, you're 
lugging gas to generators, connecting trucks with inverters just to keep 
the coms going in case there's a 911 call required, without thinking 
that in the even of such, the emergency service won't be able to get to 
Mrs Brown because the streets are blocked by your trucks all connected 
to random coms gear.

The irony is that people will die when Mr Brown comes running from his 
house, asks you to take his wife to the hospital but you won't because 
your job is to keep the coms up so he can call the right service provider.

I read the comments here and see many of you have completely lost focus 
on life and our role in the coms space...

WHO AM I?!

I am a coms tech.  I have been on this list for ~20 years.

My job is simply to look at the enviornment and make coms appear.

My job is not to blame others, question politics or argue ethics.

...but my job is also to be part of the community we live in.  :)

On 27/12/2019 12:37 pm, Brandon Butterworth wrote:
> On Thu Dec 26, 2019 at 11:20:01AM -0800, Michael Thomas wrote:
>> I just looked up Telsa's battery packs and they seem to be between
>> 60-100kwh. Our daily use is about 30kwh in the fall, so it's only 2-3
>> days. Admittedly we can turn off the hot tub, water heater, etc to
>> stretch it out. And of course, that means that you can't drive it... The
>> one thing that would be for everybody's good is using them during peak
>> hours. If you work normal hours, then that only gets part of the peak
>> load, unfortunately.
> Many with a tesla (or three) are likely to get some local PV/wind
> generation to charge them (more so if the outages become a regular
> event). Then the base load doesn't matter and they can still drive
> some of them while the others charge. Some may just use their EV as
> a battery that has other uses when the power isn't out and not care
> they can't use it for both. There are plenty of projects working on
> this distributed storage/generation model.
>
>> But of course this has nothing to do with the network power problem. I
>> assume they won't be parking a Tesla next to a CMTS headend.
> Proliferation of local generation and storage may have a lot of impact
> on network expectations. Last mile that assumes when the cab loses
> power then the consumers have too will have to update their assumptions.
> The consumers running on local power are able to carry on as normal
> and expect network to carry on too.
>
> Architectures with lots of distributed small active plant may be
> harder hit trying to add generation than those with passive plant
> and few active nodes.
>
> brandon