Massive Power Outage

Captain Kwok · #1 August 17th, 2003, 02:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mathias_Ice:
I assume you are typing this up from your solar powered PC so as not to be wasting power that should be going to the ambulance station or telephone switch. I'd hate to see a human life lost because you were using up that valuable electricity in such a greedy fashion as posting a message on the internet.

Not quite what I meant!!!

I was actually referring to the fact yesterday that when their was only 50-60% of the electricity available and many people had been without power in their neighbourhoods for over a day that those who had power did not listen to requests to reduce their consumption so that people without power might get a chance to get some and perhaps save their food in the refrigerator etc.

I'm not trying to be self-righteous nor do I want to a Sub-Saharan nomad, but I do make some efforts to reduce my consumption. Until better infrastructure is in place, it's important to conserve to prevent brownouts, higher energy costs, pollution, etc.

I think many gov't institutions, industries, and big business could take measures that would reduce their energy usage and costs with no negative effect on their bottom line. They're the biggest offenders.

Mathias_Ice · #2 August 17th, 2003, 02:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
I think many gov't institutions, industries, and big business could take measures that would reduce their energy usage and costs with no negative effect on their bottom line. They're the biggest offenders.

I think the number I saw was corporations used about 40% of energy produced. You'd think they would be doing a fair job at conservation if for no other reason than to increase profits. Of course somewhere the cost/benefit ratio becomes the dominate factor. I see the gov't as being a prime place for us to conserve. I propose we get rid of about 90% of it as we really don't need it anyway.

I don't see the gov't conserving too much, let's face it, if they have a problem paying their light bill, they know where to get more money.

Thermodyne · #3 August 17th, 2003, 03:53 AM

http://globalsecurity.org/eye/black-...p_comp-nyc.htm

Click on the arrows to see before and after

Suicide Junkie · #4 August 17th, 2003, 05:23 AM

You know what those pictures say to me?

"Dude! That's a LOT OF CARS!"

DavidG · #5 August 17th, 2003, 06:04 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:

quote:
Originally posted by Mathias_Ice:
I assume you are typing this up from your solar powered PC so as not to be wasting power that should be going to the ambulance station or telephone switch. I'd hate to see a human life lost because you were using up that valuable electricity in such a greedy fashion as posting a message on the internet.

Not quite what I meant!!!

I was actually referring to the fact yesterday that when their was only 50-60% of the electricity available and many people had been without power in their neighbourhoods for over a day that those who had power did not listen to requests to reduce their consumption so that people without power might get a chance to get some and perhaps save their food in the refrigerator etc.

I think the real problem is that few people believe this is true for 2 reasons I think.

Reason 1. A politician (Ernie Eves our premier) told us to do this. Does anyone believe anything a politician says or think they know what their talking about (see my previous post re the mayor of NY) It's even harder to believe the premier when he declares a state of emergency and that non essential workers should stay home and then the local governments are announcing they 'expect ALL their employees to come to work'. Who do you believe??

Reason #2: Does anyone really understand how the power grid works? If I really believed that turning this computer off would allow Mr Jones to have his power back I would do it in a second. I think the media coverage pretty much tells us they don't know how the system works and few seem too. They tell us things like 20 power stations were 'knocked out'. What the hell does this mean??? If this came from the Pentagon and they were taking about stations in Iraq it would be pretty clear. How they were 'knocked out' here is certainly not.

Suicide Junkie · #6 August 17th, 2003, 06:44 AM

Perhaps if they said:
We currently have only X MegaWatts of power... that's Y KiloWatts per household in the affected area.

Here's a list of common household items and the power they use up. Are you using more than your share?
Then end with something like: If you were to turn off three lightbulbs, then the Joneses would have enough to get their freezer back on.

Captain Kwok · #7 August 17th, 2003, 06:55 AM

I think the reasoning behind it is, if you cut your power down to 50-60% of your normal use and most people did this - then the electrical demand would drop enough to allow more grids to be turned on. Of course, people are like "what blackout?" as soon as they get their power back on and could care less - I had people next door running 2 air conditioners for a 700-sq ft apartment!

Even worse was seeing some commercial signs downtown flashing away (did you even see Times Sq in NY - lights out for a lot of people - and they got their stupid ad signs flashing away?!).

There is a lot of wasted power out there. For example, the shopping center beside my apartment has a huge parking lot that is never more than 30% full at peak. At night, they have a whole set of lights (which shine into my window OFC) that they don't all need. They could easily go with half of them turned on and still have sufficient and safe lighting for their entire lot.

Anyways, it's late, but I would really like to see more renewable forms of energy being developed. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of putting a few solar panels & storage battery on traffic lights for these situations. At least it could provide enough power to operate the signals on most days, plus store enough energy to go through most of the night...