Dark City, San Francisco? 504
tavern writes: "San Francisco is going to start rolling blackouts today! I can see the headlines for the Onion tomorrow, 'United States Declared a 3rd World Nation'" The article reads like something out of Atlas Shrugged -- parts shortages and clogged intakes for power plants' cooling water are contributing to the energy strain. However, from this piece, it seems like the (intentional) blackouts remain potential rather than actual. Can anyone out thataway comment on the power situation as it affects you? (I'd be out buying a UPS right now ...)
Re:Fuck you, California, (Fuck you right back) (Score:2)
In Orlando, the strippers can't even strip.
(they tried to skirt that law by exploiting the "artistic performance" loophole, so at all the strip joints, for a while last year, every Thursday was "Shakespeare night". I shit you not.)
Re:What about a Fiero? (Score:2)
What about a Fiero? They only made em from 84-88.
Or the incredibly fast Buick Regal T-type and Buick Grand National. Those were made from 197x to 1987. Those are arguably the last true musclecars.
3.8L SFI Turbo V6. Very clean burning, and some of them get 25-30 MPG. Not bad for the size of them, or how fast they are.
Many consider them a collector's item. They're also a great body to build replica's of other cars onto. (e.g., there are "lamborghini" conversion kits for Fieros).Highly. The Fiero is an insanely cool car. But, you know, most people think that they're front wheel drive, or that they're cheap plastic, or that they're dangerous, or that they're poorly built. Or they get scared of the fact that the gas tank sits between the driver and passenger.
In fact, Fieros are groundbreaking in many respects. They're the first mass-produced plastic-bodied car, a role model for the Saturn and the Pontiac TransSport/Montana/Lumina APV. They've got amazing brakes, rear wheel drive, four wheel independent suspension with double A-arms up front, a weight ratio of 49/51 rear, and they were the most crash-safe vehicle when they came out (35 MPH front impact).
And the gas tank couldn't be in a safer place: by the time the gas tank ruptures, you'd be dead from the impact anyway.
While they had design problems - mostly due to the fact that they're really an economy car, not a sports car, and they don't stand up well to the hard driving most of them experience - they're a great little car. And a milestone in American automobiles.
BTW, how do new cars get to survive long enough to be someday considered "vintage" if they all go into the crusher in 10 years?Well, the guy to whom you're replying said it himself. He's painted a broad stroke (with the exception of RX-7s and Porsches, of course) that there were no cars worth saving since 1980.
Of course, that's absolute bullcrap.
How about a Dodge Omni GLH, which is a 4-door Dodge Omni hatchback with a 2.2L or 2.5L turbocharged motor built by Shelby? How about the Mustang 5.0 of the '80s? How about the Cordoba and Mirada personal luxury cars? How about the first K-cars as (slow-moving and mundane) museum pieces? Hell, in 20 years, people will be collecting the very first minivans and SUVs. I guarantee it.
And does the cot off date for "vintage" and for "smog test exemptions" advance each year?No, actually, it seems to go *back* every year. It starts in 1966 now, though *everything* must pass a basic standard (ie. no blue smoke, no obvious problems) before that. It's gonna be really interesting if they try to hook a Ford Model T or something like that up to a tailpipe sniffer - those had driver-operated ignition timing, so it will depend on the skill of the guy testing the car.
It's completely ridiculous, since these things don't account for any percentage of the total miles travelled in any given year.
Re:FUCK YOU UNINFORMED IDIOT (Score:2)
This is a LIE. There is no good reason for California to need to import electricity at all, since we have a lot of oil, gas, and hydro resources here in state, and plenty of places to put power plants. The problem is that environmental rules have made it impossible to build nuclear power plants at all since Diablo Canyon, and almost impossible to build power plants at all, because there's always some pseudo-environmental group of NIMBYs who can clog up the approval process enough to make any project uneconomic.
Meanwhile, it's a bunch of stupid liberal (but I'm being redundant) economic regulations built into something the liberals called deregulation that have caused the immediate crisis.
California's environmental regulations provide much more benefit to lawyers than to the environment. Most other western states have much simpler systems, where taking a shit doesn't require permits from 5 different agencies with mutually incompatible requirements, and manage to obtain virtually the same results, except for the increase in legal fees that California has "enjoyed".
Re:Law Against 17"+ Monitors. (Score:2)
oh yeah, and rust is mainly a problem in the snow belt because of the unnecessary practice of salting roads. Sand? Cinders?
I agree. I hate salt, it's nasty. Sand would be great, except that it doesn't dissolve like salt does, so when it gets washed into sewers, it clogs them. That's the primary reason why sand isn't used.
Salt kills plants and trees,And the sand that makes it out of sewers gets into streams and collects on the streambed, which kills all the aquatic plants.
it's non-renewable, it essentially DOUBLES the cost of car ownership for people living in areas where roads are salted (cars last on average half to a third as long as they would otherwise for a given climate). There are alternatives that are safer, cheaper, and more environmentally sound, but the politicians are too wrapped up. It was actually an argument FOR salt to say that it increased economic activity by dissolving people's cars, and giving detroit auto workers jobs.I've never heard of an ice melter that's as good as salt for less money. It sucks, I agree, but unless someone wants to open up the budgets a bit, we're stuck with it.
The Province of Ontario was looking to ditch salt because of its hidden costs: damage to pavement and cement. It causes millions of dollars of damage to bridges and stuff every year. Until the purse strings are opened a bit more, we're stuck with it.
Until then, I keep the welder handy so that I can weld in new patch panels on my daily driver, and I powerwash then Tremclad the underside every autumn.
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
Re:What are contingency plans of big tech companie (Score:2)
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
Uh, well we have. Technology hasn't advanced enough to make solar practical (like destroying desert eco systems by covering them with solar collectors is anymore friendly), California has hundreds of motionless windmills in the altamonts, (we tried, we really did!). Let's see. Geothermal. I'm willing to give it a try. Ship us a volcano and we'll hook it up. Tidal power. Now this hasn't been tried on a large scale, true, but whether it's successful or not, the marine life is going to want to have a word with you.
I'm not a nuclear avocate (yet) but I get tired of people assuming those in favor of nuclear power are not ecologically conscious or informed.
J
More background info (Score:2)
There is a lot of good detail, background and opinion on this whole debacle in the discussion over on kuro5hin.org [kuro5hin.org] about this issue. I'm still not sure who started it all though.
Re:Thank a Texan or Okie for this (Score:2)
-russ
Re:Dumbass Regulators (Score:2)
Free market and de-regulation are in no way synonymous. Deregulation was an attempt to replace the government monopolized power production in CA with a free market system. An attempt that failed thanks to the machinations of several powerful energy companies which hijacked the plan and replaced the government monopoly with their own. They then went on to schedule "scheduled matinence" at peak months of consumption to drive up the wholesale price and pad their profits. Thankfully the CA Attorney General is currently investigating these alleged acts of collusion.
The private sector only constitutes a free market when there are multiple players in the industry. An industry dominated by one or two entities (as the CA wholesale electricity market is) can not operate as a free market. In those situations a deregulated market is simply less free than a regulated market. A fact that right wing ideolouges (such as the CA GOP that created this fiasco) who don't understand the term "free market" choose to ignore.
I have a solution to California's power problem! (Score:2)
We also know that Americans continue to grow obese [psu.edu] at an alarming rate, and that sedentary individuals such as computer operators and programmers are particularly prone to gaining unwanted weight.
Ladies and gentlemen, you can solve BOTH of these crippling problems with one fantastic new product from Preposterous Corporation!
The Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) is a specially modified stationary bicycle with an attached generator that produces electrical power as you pedal! Just hook the Power-Cycle(TM) to your desktop computer and voila -- not only can you burn calories and keep fit while working, you can help to reduce California's energy crisis by becoming an environmentally-friendly "human power plant"!
The Power-Cycle(TM) features a real-time display that shows how much power you are delivering to your system. Like a mountain bike, it offers 24 gears, so you can optimize your pedaling rate to your computer's energy needs. Planning to start a floating-point intensive calculation that you will make your Pentium III consume an extra 20 watts? Just upshift to a higher gear so you get more current with each turn of the crank!
The Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) even includes a built-in 100 kVA uninterruptible power supply that charges as you pedal, so that your computer won't run out of power and crash if you need to step away for a moment to use the restroom. Trust us, the Preposterous Corporation has thought of everything!
Order your Preposterous Power-Cycle(TM) now, and lose weight while you save the environment! Operators are standing by!
And, if you order now, we'll even include a Preposterous Potato Battery [biglobe.ne.jp] absolutely free!
Don't wait -- CALL NOW!
*--Potato Not Included
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
I was not stating that Nuclear power was the answer, just that it was AN answer, and probably better than any of those you listed. Did you know, that using conventional wind power arrays, over 1/2 OF THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES would have to be covered to produce enough power?
The word Nuclear brings up too many negative feelings in most people. These feelings HAVE KILLED VIRTUALLY ALL WORTH-WHILE RESEARCH IN FUSION IN THE UNITED STATES. There are some researchers in Canada, and France working on stuff that may make a fully functional fusion power plant possible in the next 20 years(there are some US researchers working on this also, but not as many as Canada and France have looking at it). I doubt there will ever be one constructed in CA.
Enviromentalists are generally so full of it, that they can't see their left shoe from their right. Take Hydro-Electric power. Yes, this was once praised by enviromentalists, till it caused the NEAR EXTINCTION OF SEVERAL TYPES OF FISH. Do you favor the complete distruction of an ecosystem for a few KW of power? There are several promising avenues of power research going on right now, including Orbiting solar arrays, and nuclear fusion. But DESTROYING THE LAND is not the way to go.
Admittanly, there are a few good places where geothermal, wind, and solar power could work. But the true keys here are: superconducter research, nuclear research, orbital research, and conservation research.
Re:Law Against 17"+ Monitors. (Score:2)
Pretty much any car made after 1980 shouldn't be included in the loophole though. Anyone who wants to restore a car made after 1980 ought to have their head examined, because they're all crap (not IMO - it's just a fact). (except maybe Mazda RX-7, or any Porsche).
Re:Law Against 17"+ Monitors. (Score:2)
Sand? Cinders?
Salt kills plants and trees, it's non-renewable, it essentially DOUBLES the cost of car ownership for people living in areas where roads are salted (cars last on average half to a third as long as they would otherwise for a given climate). There are alternatives that are safer, cheaper, and more environmentally sound, but the politicians are too wrapped up. It was actually an argument FOR salt to say that it increased economic activity by dissolving people's cars, and giving detroit auto workers jobs.
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
Re:Update: No rolling blackouts (Score:2)
Re:Law Against 17"+ Monitors. (Score:2)
It's also a PROVEN FACT (wish I had a link) that a person who owns a car that is 30 years old is saving energy; instead of buying a new car every 2 to 5 years, keeping the old car running keeps the auto industry from building a new car, and all the energy consumption and pollution that entails.
nuff said - crushing the old cars would be a STUPID law. I know a person (www.kgcna.org) who owns a 1958 VW Karmann Ghia, that, though the car is exempt from emissions, has no catalytic converter, no fuel injection, mechanical ignition system, STILL passes modern California emissions.
It's not OLD cars that cause pollution, it's OLD cars that are not properly maintained (-er, and the huge oversized monster fucking gas guzzling drag racing muscle cars from the 1970's).
Re:Sanctimonious California (Score:2)
That's why we have tort law. If I trash your back yard, you can sue me. Simple as that. So stop complaining, and (if folks are really f*cking up your land) start suing.
Comment removed (Score:5)
*UPDATE* Stepdown from Stage Three! (Score:3)
UPDATE: The California Independent System Operator has downgraded Thursday's Stage Three power emergency to a Stage Two emergency, ending the threat of rolling blackouts across the Bay Area.
Cal ISO spokesman Patrick Dorinson said that the combination of conservation and added power buys during the day has enabled the ISO, which oversees California's power grid, to avoid proceeding from a Stage Three Electrical Emergency issued at 9:30 a.m. today to the more drastic step of a rolling blackout order.
--
Update: No rolling blackouts (Score:5)
Dumbass Regulators (Score:5)
Look at what has happened to natural gas in the Midwest. My gas bill was over $400 this month because the price has quadrupled. But I don't have to worry about running out of gas. Supply and demand balances everything out. If gas rates were frozen at old low levels, no one would conserve - voluntarily - and we'd have rolling service interruptions too.
Put the blame 100% on the California legislature for passing this botchwork law.
Nothing happened ... tonight (Score:2)
The "situation" was fixed by an emergency purchase of some large number of megawatts from out of state.
Here's [sfgate.com] an article from the local rag. It'll be interesting to see what happens next time. I'd love the city to go dark, even if it meant a spendy cab ride (I normally take the local LRT home.)
Nice bonus: paranoia at work lead to all of the development servers being shut down. Counter-Strike all afternoon!
jfb
Re:What about a Fiero? (Score:2)
Except the 5.0 Mustang, whose memory is now totally tainted by the turd they stamp the Mustang badge on today.
You said it best, the Fiero is an economy car. It WOULD have been cool if it wasn't a cheap piece of plastic junk. How does one restore a Fiero anyway? You can pound out dents and weld in replacement panels in sheet metal. Fieros will just dust away once all the OEM plastic panels dry up.
And as far as the grand national goes, that 3.8l Buick engine was one of the least reliable engines GM ever produced. Also one of the most used. Wonder why GM (Chevy/Buick/Olds) is no longer #1? I blame that engine.
In 30 years, when I see someone park a fully-restored Aztec at a classic car show, I will laugh my ass off - it's a worthless piece of crap now, and 30 years does not make a car a classic.
Said socalized and meant socialized (Score:2)
Let's see...
- Government mandates that PG&E sell off their generating capacaty.
- Government creates a bureau that buys and sells electricity.
- Government mandates that they sell electricity at a fixed price.
- Government mandates that they buy electricity at whatever the generating companies ask.
- Government puts the cut-off switch in the hands of said bureau.
Sounds like central planning to me.
"A free market is a great idea. We should try it some time."
Sounds like central planning to me.
Not really news (Score:2)
All the dire conclusions as to why though are by and large nonsense. The priamry reasons are two fold:
(1) Its been a cold winter and northern california uses a LOT of electric heat (very inefficient).
(2) Our winter month power needs are met in a large part by power bought from Washington. Its been hellishly cold in Washington this year and they haven't had much to sell us.
The whole "we're goign broke" thing is a seperate issue raised by the power utilities (as much as they'd like to tie them together) and its not 100% clear its even true.
Yes the prodcuers have raised prices way up BUT many of the smot major producers are owned by the same holding companies as the utilities. So while their utilities are losing money, their power plants are raking it in. The ACTUAL amount of money being made or lost is pretty much hidden.
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:2)
He didn't get impeached because he got a blowjob in the Oval Office. He got impeached because he lied under oath, encouraged subordinates do the same thing, and obstructed justice among other things. Go re-read Starr's report and this time skip to the last section where he outlined the laws broken. Thank you for reinforcing my opinion that all leftists are sex-obsessed idiots.
Deregulation and Bad Economics (Score:2)
It comes down to, essentially, a truly awful economic decision and a great deal of FUD spread by (who else?) the power companies and the media.
Deregulation started in 1995, when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) [ca.gov] in San Francisco started studying the possibility. Other states (most notably New Jersey/Delaware/Pennsylvania/Maryland, which forms one power region) had managed to successfully deregulate power, so California figured it was a Good Thing (TM).
The bad economics come in when you realize that it was only the wholesale market that was deregulated, but that Southern California Edison (SCE) [sce.com] and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) [pge.com] were under a CPUC-imposed rate freeze, which meant they could not raise their rates.
Added to this was a requirement that Edison, at least (I'm not sure about PG&E), was forced to divest itself of its power plants. These power plants were bought up by companies that were essentially startups. The new generators of electricity raised the price of electricity, and SCE and PG&E were stuck.
It amounts to a larger version of the rent control in my hometown of Santa Monica - costs may rise but the end-users pay a fixed rate set by the government.
An interesting side note for those who care to research further - San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) [sdge.com] was under no such rate freeze, and prices, predictably, tripled this summer. SDG&E, you notice, is not facing bankruptcy, because they are free to raise their rates.
As for the environmental "cartel" whining about nuclear power, it was my last knowledge that both Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant north of San Luis Obispo and San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS, aka "the iron tits" due to their unfortunate shape) were both running (with some exceptions due to kelp in the intake at DCNPP).
The cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Glendale, Riverside, and San Bernadino (among others) are NOT affected, no matter what FUD you may see in the national media, because they have municipal utilities which have long-term contracts and were never regulated (the CPUC has no authority over municipal utilities).
You can check the status of the grid at the California Independent System Operator [caiso.com]'s website, but it may be down (slashdotted without ever being posted on slashdot, imagine!) We have had no rotating outages yet. Let's hope the broken system gets fixed soon.
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:2)
we never shot uranium core bulletts.
You've got to be kidding. It's been widely known that the US and other countries use depleted uranium rounds for years. Their extra mass helps make them good anti-tank rounds for the A-10, for example.
Re:You Republican whore..... (Score:2)
I have taken the tour. The building is most impressive. Nothing is going to break or collapse, even in a very strong quake. Then my wife took a geology course at the local community college. The one fault that caused the controversey isn't the only local fault. There are several others. Most of them minor. We're a fairly geolocially stable region here, (compared to the rest of California).
Anyway, the plant is going to be shut down in something like 2012. That's a buttload of money to spend on a plant that only operates for like 20 years. Couldn't they have found someplace else?
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:2)
Re:Law Against 17"+ Monitors. (Score:3)
The flaw in this analogy is obvious. Electrical energy is a resource that can be produced in practically limitless amounts, given the right technology.
No, it isn't. If it's practically limitless, why are the rolling blackouts in California an issue?
However you make electricity, you still make noxious waste, whether it be spent radioactive fuel rods, or dead fish from the hydroelectric dam, or greenhouse gases from a fossil fuel plant.
A photovoltaic cell (solar) requires more energy to manufacture than it will produce over its entire life.
The silver bullet that will eradicate all of the problems with electrical consumption (harnessed fusion) is even further off than zero emissions cars.
So, your thinking and your understanding of the world is flawed. You don't think about where the electricity comes from.
Therefore, if you can have such luxuries as you >17" monitor, I'll have my 1974 model car.
Clean air isn't something we can create (at least, not yet) - it is by definition a lack of pollutants. Therefore, the best way to make more energy is to generate more, the best way to make more clean air is to pollute less.Of course! It's so easy to do! I'm a good person, I can run my big and inefficient 17" monitor because they can always generate more power, even though that power is derived from [insert ecological threat here]!
You make no sense.
What you're basically telling me is that *you* can have *your* inefficient big monitor, and *I* can't have my allegedly inefficient old car?
Of course, energy conservation is important, too; a ban on old refrigerators might be a good idea, it's just not practical to enforce.Sure! I have a 1956 QuikFrez. Nice fridge, though it can't keep ice cream worth a damn.
Where'd I get it? When I first moved out on my own, I was driving past an appliance shop and I spotted it sitting by the scrap metal bins. I managed to get it into the back of my old Chevette and tied it into place. Bringing it home, I found that the compressor was bad.
I shrugged my shoulders, drained the freon (a friend of mine bought it off me), and pulled the fridge to pieces. New insulation. New magnetic door seal gasket, custom made for me. New paint job, Honda's white paint. New thermostat. New compressor, with R134a (ozone safe) freon.
Now, are you going to take that away from me because it's an old fridge? Because it really isn't. It's a new fridge that happens to be in an old cabinet.
Cars, on the other hand, have to be individually licensed, so inspecting them for emissions is more than practical.Electric bills have to be paid individually, so going into peoples' houses to look for energy-wasting old fridges and 17" monitors is more than practical. Maybe they can save us a whole lot of trouble and look for subversive materials while they're there, you know, like the copy of Socialist Worker that you keep on your coffee table?
I find the hatred for environmental legislation that some people exhibit to be profoundly disturbing.I find the willingness to give up your basic rights to privacy, possession and maintenance of those things that you've bought or built to be frightening.
Of course I'm pro-capitalist and pro-industrySure you are.
but people's health and quality of life have to be maintained.Think about it this way:
If my old fridge were so inefficient, how many years would it take for a new fridge to pay for itself with the electrical savings? My electric bill gives me a vested interest in making sure that my appliances are efficient. (Why do you think I spent over $300 for a *good* compressor for that fridge and then hours cutting appliance-grade styrofoam to shape to fit into its curved top? I could have repaired the old one and left the original fiberglass insulation in there.)
If you want to splurge with a 17" monitor, I'll splurge with my old car.
This doesn't mean a ban on industry, just the diversion of some resources into minimizing the impact on the air and water.Too often, these things are unrealistic or just simply stupidly planned.
For example, if you're running a power plant that's been operational for 30 years, because the power plant is old, it doesn't have to meet modern emissions standards. It would be rather unfair to have to make the owner spend $10 million for an unforseen upgrade.
Now, if you're considering replacing that power plant because you want something that's going to give you more power for every ton of coal that you burn, and yet you have to spend $10 million in pollution controls that your old plant didn't have to have, how long will it take you to recoup that $10 million in additional energy efficiency? Probably longer than your shareholders want.
So, if there were no rule, the upgrade would have happened, and the power plant would produce x more kWh of electricity for every ton of coal burned. More electricity produced from each ton of coal means that less coal is required to meet demand, and therefore less emissions occur.
However, because there was a rule, the power plant bumps along as it did, inefficient as before, because the cost of new pollution controls makes it impractical in any business sense, burning more coal than it needs to, and therefore producing more nasty by-products.
Before catalytic converters were added to cars, cars did have more emissions of unburnt gasoline (hydrocarbons) than they have now. But sulphur dioxide was absolutely unheard of in car exhaust.
So, all the tree huggers whined, and the EPA demanded that cataclysmic converters be added to cars. Gas mileage went down, because the engine has to push exhaust gases past this new restriction in the exhaust pipe. And while unpleasant smelling but relatively harmless HC was removed from the exhaust, the small amounts of sulphur in the fuel were catalyzed into sulphur dioxide, which promptly floats up into the clouds to combine with water and form acid rain.
Good job, environmentalists. See what happens when you don't ask a scientist before you start writing your Congressman?
Today, cataclysmic converters are de rigeur, despite their gas mileage (which means more emissions!) penalty and the sulphuric acid which falls from the sky and kills lakes and forests.
Here's what I'm saying: everyone has a vested interest in energy efficiency. Businesses, individuals, environmentalists. Restrictions and laws that are designed to help more often than not end up creating their own problems which impede the normal tendency of the marketplace to improve products and services.
However, anytime any government gets involved in anything, it gets screwed up. It's been proven time and time again. The places where the governments are most intrusive are also the poorest, dirtiest places on earth. Look at India as an example. I understand their parliament debated for months as to whether they should allow Coca-Cola to be sold there - all the while people are starving to death.
Car companies switched to electronic ignition from Kettering points back in the 1970s because the market demanded better drivability and gas mileage, and technology made the price reasonable. Likewise, modern fuel injection systems and overhead cams would have been adopted for market reasons, without government intervention. When gasoline is burned at its stoichiometric optimum of 14.7:1, it produces the most power with the least emissions. Power translates to engine efficiency and therefore gas mileage; emissions reductions go hand in hand with that.
It gets worse. It's arguable that the current SUV craze is based on government-legislated Corporate Average Fuel Economy laws. After all, the Feds told the car companies that all their carlines had to have an average fuel consumption. Over the years, this was increased and increased and increased. Cars like the Caprice Classic, Impala and Crown Victoria are being squeezed out.
And yet, the market shows that some people still want a big and heavy car. Ask an SUV owner why they like their SUV; weight is a recurring theme.
So, because trucks are exempt from CAFE rules, the car companies started to build big land yachts that are technically trucks. The SUV was born. 4x4 isn't even the prime motivator anymore. Look at how many Blazers, Durangos, Explorers - hell, even Jeeps, are 2WD.
The buyer wants a big, heavy car, but can't get one. So, instead, he buys the next best thing. He buys a station wagon with leather seats that has been built onto a truck frame. Sure, because of its huge frontal area and the excess weight of a frame that was designed for carrying around sheets of drywall, it consumes twice the gas of the Caprice Classic that he wanted. But since the Caprice is discontinued, he bought the next best thing.
Neat, huh?
I've heard that CAFE will soon start to be applied to a manufacturer's truck lines, too. I assure you, this will backfire, too. I don't know how, I can't predict it. But mark my words, and remember them ten years from now: I guarantee that somehow the market will again turn environmentalist rules against the environmentalists.
And since when did anyone have a "right" to drive? By democratic legislation, cars have always had to be roadworthy, safe, and operated by a governmentally licensed driver.When on the road, yes. However, your simple right to possession takes over when it's parked in your driveway. Possession is 9/10 of the law.
If you want to say that a car has to be registered as your possession while it's parked in your driveway and not being driven, I'd suggest that my next step is to ask when I have to register my other possessions, like my computer, my kitchen knives, my TV set, my telephone, etc. with the government authorities. After all, all of these devices either consume precious energy or can be used in subversive and dangerous ways.
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:2)
I'd like to point out that these problems didn't appear when ecological protections were passed, only after deregulation. Can't have conservatives blaming their economic policies or (gasp!) admitting that they screwed up.
The only areas in California that weren't threatened with rolling blackouts or large rate increases were cities with municipal utilities. Strange how they came through unscathed, isn't it...
Aw, we love you too.
Just because our state has all of the hot girls in bikinis (we loan 'em to Hawaii occasionally) is no reason to get snippy.
Seriously, the energy commission that engineered deregulation was bought and paid for by the power companies, so they could sell off their old and decrepit power plants to new companies for cash. However, during all of the buying and selling, none of them really thought about having to provide power. Not that it really hurts them: they get to raise rates without having to generate any more electricity. All income, no expenses--now that's a business model!
The point is kind of moot however, because the rolling blackouts never happened (a massive rate hike is underway however).
---
I'm high on Elf Life [elflife.com]!
Re:Sanctimonious California (Score:2)
Re:You have no idea what your talking about. (Score:2)
I'm not sure I understand--let me try to summarize this. You're saying, "solar is very cost-effective, it just costs more". WTF? Have you no economic sense whatsoever? By the same token, generators run by people on hamster wheels are cost-effective.
Here's the REAL reason why Cali gets blackouts (Score:5)
Stupid Intel chips use too much power.
If all the hot Silicon Valley companies would switch to PowerPC chips, power consumption would go way down. :-)
Fuck you, California (Score:2)
When will you figure out that nuclear and hydro are about as good as it gets? Most of our power is hydro, which is cheap and clean... You guys could buy some CanDu nuclear reactors off us--they're quite safe. Worst case accident, the reactor overheats, the heavy water (which is the moderator) boils off, and the reaction stops because it's no longer moderated. No Chernobyls, no Three Mile Islands, no fuss, no muss.
California would be a really great state if you could only get rid of those wackos making the stupid laws...
Evironmentalists Fallout (Score:2)
Re:What about a Fiero? (Score:2)
Heh. What about the cars that, BY DESIGN, had an oil resevoir on the top of the engine and just let it all slowly drip out the bottom? Hey! The dirt road absorbed that!
For sure! Kept down the dust!
Back when I was a kid at the cottage my parents rented, the highway department used to actually go through and oil the dirt road with used motor oil.
Just up the bank from a lake, at that. (Lac Cameron, Laurentian Mountains, southwestern Quebec, Canada)
That was about 1983-1984. Horrible as it sounds, at the time, this was thought to be a perfectly acceptable practice.
Fortunately, used motor oil is now quite a valuable commodity. It's readily recycled into new motor and machine oil, so it doesn't get dumped very often.
How to Thwart Police Radar (Score:2)
You forgot the "stealth" factor with respect to photo speed radar guns. The hood reflected incoming radiowaves up, while the radiator coils below the hood were slanted and reflected the radiowaves down into the ground. So almost nothing reflects back to the radar gun!
Yeah, all one would need to do for complete stealth would be to hang a CD from the rear view mirror to deflect a laser speed trap. [sigh]
First off, radar waves are a kind of radio wave, in a band called "Microwave", because the wavelength is so short. They're highly directional, like light; but they pass through, and are reflected by, the same things as ordinary radio waves. Radar speed traps usually run in X-band, which is about 12GHz, and is usually generated with a Gunn diode with a 1/2 wave antenna poking into a piece of waveguide.
In a Fiero, the hood - the *whole* hood - is plastic. Microwave energy will go right through it, hit the firewall behind, and bounce back to the gun. The Doppler effect (the same thing that makes a train whistle appear to change in pitch as it goes past you) is read by a computer which then calculates your speed and puts it on the display (and therefore onto the impending speeding ticket).
Yes, the radiator - which is aluminum, and is angled at about 35-40 degrees forward - will reflect some of the energy toward the ground. But there'll be more than enough coming off the car's steel unibody for the cop to get a good read off you.
And, no, the CD hanging from the rear view mirror doesn't stealth you from laser speed guns, despite the urban legend that every Home Boyzzz in a chainsaw-mufflered Integra seems to believe.
Here's what you do if you want to avoid police radar: don't drive like an idiot. Speed limits are in place because many people aren't capable of driving faster than the speed limit on a given stretch of road. Actually, most people around here are probably marginally capable of a given speed limit at best.
And if you must drive like an idiot, use brains. Look around the electronics surplus places for an old X-band magnetron. You don't need precision, you need one that fires. That's all. Probably your best bet for finding one is scrapped marine radar equipment.
Then, you need a slotted antenna, and a right angled waveguide bend. Make sure that you put choke to flat as you're assembling it, and make sure all the surfaces are clean. You want the magnetron behind your radiator support and the antenna's slots facing the road in front of you. Put a big piece of heatshrink tubing over the slotted antenna to keep crap out of it. Relax, the heatshrink is transparent to microwave energy.
Now, you need a radar detector (hide it but install it carefully) and a 12 volt strobe light. And a DC regulator that suits the filament voltage of your magnetron.
Hook the voltage regulator up so that the magnetron's filament on whenever the ignition is on. Hook the strobe light's high voltage output across the magnetron's pulse leads (usually both the filament leads referenced to ground). Hook the strobe light up so that it starts firing when the radar detector detects something. Hide the whole arrangement so that it's invisible. The radar detector is legal, the rest of this is a big FCC fine if the cop wants to push it.
What happens?
The magnetron is a tube. Most marine magnetrons are rated between 2.5kW and 25kW of output power at 12GHz. Note that this is for a very short duty cycle pulsetrain. (In radar terms, this is the "trigger" pulse.) Now, like most tubes, the filament takes a few seconds to heat up, so you want this warm whenever the ignition is on.
In driving, with the magnetron already nice and warm, the radar detector working, if a cop points a radar gun at you, the radar detector will turn on the strobe light circuit. However, instead of the strobe light, the strobe circuit pulses the magnetron and makes it fire. Net power output? Can't tell you, but you can calculate it from the strobe circuit's output voltage, capacitor ratings and the magnetron type you scored. Basically, though, it's gonna be short pulses of a *hell* of a lot more than the 100mW or so that the radar gun is firing at you. Peak power at the top of the pulses would probably be in the range of a kilowatt. RMS power probably under 5 watts. Way more than enough.
You will foul the gun's receiver section. In fact, you could theoretically damage it.
As for risks involved, you're running an unlicensed transmitter. You can be fined by the FCC for that. Health and safety? Don't stand in front of it when it's firing. No, it won't give you cancer, it's not ionizing radiation, but, like a microwave oven, the burn hurts *a lot*. Be careful of the high voltages you're using to pulse the magnetron.
Credentials for telling you this? Take a look at my User Info here. Yeah, I work for Litton Marine Systems. Yeah, I do all sorts of really weird things for them, from computers to designing radar equipment. And yeah, I built one of these, and while I've tested it with a police radar gun, I've never had the balls to install it in a car. Oh, and yeah, I had a 1985 Fiero 2M4 SE, 5-speed transmission; bought it for $350 bucks and rebuilt the motor, replaced the clutch and changed all 6 balljoints in the suspension myself. I know those cars quite intimately.
As for thwarting a laser speed trap? Get out the sandblaster and frost your windshield. Then paint the whole car, windows included, with flat black paint. I think this system may have adverse side effects, but it would work.
Re:This is nothing new. (Score:5)
Rolling blackouts do not happen in all major metropolitan areas.
They don't happen in London.
They don't happen in Birmingham.
They don't happen in Manchester.
Oh, you mean all AMERICAN metropolitan areas?
Personally I find it bewildering that the US is unable to produce enough power to keep going. Even though the UK is not always able to meet peak demands, when we do have a shortfall we can cover the extra by using spare capacity from France. Who in turn can call on half of Europe.
If that can be done in Europe, where we don't even speak the same language, and have a history of hatred, xenophobia and kicking the French, I'm stunned that the US can't do the same.
~Cederic
Take a page from Japan (Score:2)
In Japan, they also are running out of power. To compensate, they literally are throwing solar panels on everyone's roof they can. These installations are done by the power company for free with the understanding that any excess electricity goes to their grid for free. Blocks upon blocks of houses have been equipped like this.
I wish I had a link to give out, but unfortunately I only know about this through seminars. Granted, solar panels are usually ugly (there are roof shingle versions, but they are expensive and output less power than the big ones), but would you rather be ugly with power, or beautiful without it?
Re:What are contingency plans of big tech companie (Score:2)
The new Sun campus in Santa Clara has huge Onan diesel generators outside each building. We got to test them during an outage last summer. The grid dropped, and the gen sets kicked in about 30 seconds later. UPS protected systems were fine, everything else died and had to be rebooted. When the grid came back, there was no noticeable cutover brown-out. All in all, it worked well. All our critical systems are protected by UPS's. I was working on a docked laptop at the time, and just had to wait for my monitor to power back up. The laptop ran off it's battery while the gen set started. :-)
Temkin
Bay Area becomes Dark City. (Score:2)
Now is the time (Score:2)
Definitely the wave of the future.
-
The IHA Forums [ihateapple.com]
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:2)
Georgia has a democratic governor and the Mayor of Atlanta has sued gun manufacturers for liability in the death of children shot by the weapons they made. Atlanta and the State of Georgia, are hardly some kind of liberal-free zone. CNN is a liberal news agency. Its creator, Ted Turner, is a liberal.
It's up to you to decide if the word liberal has negative connotations.
Re:Fuck you, California (Score:2)
California has a colossaly different eco-system, society, and economy than British Colombia. First off, the average person per square mile in BC is something like
As for the extinction of species, you need to do a little more geography. Your neighbors to the south have LA, San Francisco, San Diego, but last time I checked the rain forests that are being destroyed that are exctincting species is a little further south - like Brazil and other areas in that whole other continent (see Canadian Foreign Policy above). That makes this more of a 'Fuck you and your crack cocaine-based facts'.
Ah, slashdot (Score:5)
Here, though, we see what happens when it's a topic where people don't know much about. The volume is just as high, the opinions are just firm. But most people are just talking out their asses, and moderators are giving big points to Limbaugh-like rants without a scrap of fact in 'em.
Since this article already has enough opinion, I'll just stick to a few facts and some interesting links.
I live in San Francisco, so I've been following this closely. A very interesting site for the curious is the California Independent System Operator [caiso.com], an organization responsible for the long-distance high-voltage lines and the power that flows over them. They have a FAQ [caiso.com], a diagram that shows how the power flows [caiso.com], and an up-to-the-minute graph showing projected and actual power load [caiso.com]. (I say we all pick a time tomorrow to turn off everything and see if we can make the graph drop.)
Personally, I use 100% renewable power from utility.com [utility.com]. (I actually pay less than others, but I'd happily pay more for my green preferences.) They are certified by Green-e [green-e.org], a non-profit that verifies the power content. (The typical mix for California uses only 12% [ca.gov] renewables, with 20% coal, 20% large hydroelectric, 31% natural gas, and 16% nuclear. (Yes, large hydroelectric is counted separately; it's not considered very environmentally friendly these days.)
There are several good articles in the New York Times about all this, including one on following the money [nytimes.com]. There is also one on how Texas plans to do it differently [nytimes.com]. And as subscribers to The Economist [economist.com] know, California's deregulation was a pretty shoddy job compared to other utility deregulations around the world.
So those of you who lay the blame entirely on environmental regs from California's own special blend of fruits, nuts, and flakes should research a little further. You'll find a picture that's much more interesting and complex: political dithering, a lack of foresight, corporate greed, and plenty of plain old stupidity are involved.
Re:First thing, let's kill all the environmentalis (Score:2)
Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:2)
So, the utilities vigorously opposed the 1996 legislation, and the governer only signed it because his hand was forced by anti-business interests?
--
Major Clusterf*!*k... (Score:2)
The core of the problem is basic business stupidity. All the new electricity resellers are bound by price controls. The high cost of of fuel means that they now have to sell for less than it costs to produce.
Hence, blackouts. What a clusterf%!k!
Nothing new (Score:2)
So? Several years ago, when I lived in the Baltimore area, I remember having rolling blackouts during the hottest parts of the summer because people were using all the available energy on air conditioning.
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
Re:This is nothing new. (Score:3)
Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:5)
(1) no nuclear reactors (waste/safety issues)
(2) no coal fired power plants (air emissions issues)
(3) no diesel fired power plants (air emmissions again)
(4) no hydroelectric plants (harms [cuddly species of the day]'s habitat)
(5) in fact, no new power plants at all ("not in *my* backyard!")
(6) you shut down existing plants from (1), (2), (3), and (4)
(7) Solar and geothermal don't seem to work like you think... or at all (i.e., operate at a loss).
Well, congrats... your air and water still suck. Species are still going extinct. You put all your eggs on natural gas which is now drying up and prices skyrocketing, you're freezing your asses off and whining about power shortages, high prices, and rolling bloackouts.
And now you:
(1) want continued legislation to FORCE other states to sell power to CA companies headed into bankruptcy? (Who wants to sell to deadbeats?)
(2) Blame deregulation for the energy shortage! Can't have liberals blaming their eco legislation or (gasp!) call for repealing some of it.
(3) Don't give a flying fuck that other states have to pollute more to keep CA on electrical welfare?
Thoroughly, California made its own mess and ought to be forced to wallow in it. You're all screwed and it's your own fault.
What will you do? Here's my prediction: Democrats will do ***NOTHING***. They'll sit and endure the rolling blackouts and come up with bullshit to justify them to the people. They will wait for republicans to propose building more power plants, and repealing the legislation preventing their construction. They will quietly vote to approve these measures amid much muttering and while speaking against it or more likely, will simply abstain on eco-law repealing bills to give republicans a majority (among remaining legislators who actually vote) to let the bills pass. Then when anyone, ANYONE complains about air quality or water pollution or nuclear waste in California they will "blame republicans for rolling back all our hard work to protect your environment." Saying they never voted to support that legislation. Yeah right.
You want power? Then you have to get dirty *just* *like* *everyone* *else*. TANSTAAFL, you know?
IMO, Republicans ought to continue the staredown with democrats until they start repealing their own legislation. Make the basterds squirm and swallow their own bullshit pride. As for the populations without power? Well, at least they'll learn what voting for liberals results in (stone age living) and will know better and teach their kids better in the future.
Um, did I miss anything here?
Free tip for CA denizens: The Plan to steal your cars from you via smog regs is already well underway. Start fighting it now. Basically it combines (1) smog check rules DESIGNED TO FAIL A PERCENTAGE of cars (with an eventual goal of 97% of all cars over 10 years old) with (2) rules that make it ILLEGAL to keep an unregistered vechicle on your property. (1) + (2) = State power to STEAL YOUR CARS and crush them into cubes. See http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1223/sb42/smo gflyer_5.html [geocities.com] for more details.
Re:Major Clusterf*!*k... (Score:2)
One thing's for sure, whether for good or ill: the deregulation movement in the USA has been set back 50 years by what's been happening in California. This is the first argument that will be brought up by anyone who wants to block a bid for deregulation.
--
Anyone Remeber that GE Home Fuel Cell System? (Score:2)
It appears that GE removed the product description off of their page however. If anyone is able to find a mirror or more info on GE's site, just reply to this comment and attach it. It's a pretty neat system.
--Kumba
"And all this vegetable world appeared on my left foot, as a bright sandal formed immortal of precious stones and gold: I stooped down and bound it on to walk forward through eternity." --Milton 21:4-14 (Bruce Dickinson's The Chemical Wedding: The Alchemist)
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:2)
Maybe he is. It's not nice. But "not nice" doesn't mean "not true". Deal.
Paranoid conspiracy for the day: Gov. Davis has talked about using the power of eminent domain to seize generating assets. That's loony stuff.
But what do you suppose happens when PG&E and Edison International go bankrupt (as a direct result of Davis' inaction)? If you're a creditor, maybe $0.10 on the dollar for the assets looks pretty good.
Davis "nationalizes" the assets for pennies on the dollar. Becuase there are more sheeple who'll think he's "saving them" than shareholders whom he'll have buggered with a megawatt-powered dildo.
Aaw... fuck if I care, I've got PCG and EIX put options. Already taken enough off the table to pay for my electric bill no matter what the liberals do.
That's the funny part about governments buggering shareholders to "save the people". The gummints get the votes. But there's always a buck to be made off the decline.
I'd still rather live in a state where enviro-w33nbag laws just allowed alternate power generators to fire 'em up and let 'em rip. Or better yet, where we had nuclear plants that produce zero emissions to begin with. But hey, if the enviro-freaks wanna slaughter my state's generators, the least I can do is pick up a few bucks from the corpse.
Wonder how many "poor people" have the same opportunity? (Ah, liberals, gotta love 'em for savin' the poor once again!)
Re:Dumbass Liberals (Score:2)
Oh I forgot, everyone pointing those facts is an anti-american green comie propagating false rumors. Everyone NEEDS a big SUV.
This is strange (Score:2)
Actually, bad weather leads to more electricity being produced, in our parts of the world. But then 55-60% from our power stems from hydro :>
Thanks for the interesting elaboration
Re:Home-energy systems? (Score:2)
And, well, this kind of resource wasn't available for 'decades', ultra efficient flywheels.
IIRC, it was Roseman Motors, or someone similar, doing research on ultra high speed ultra efficient flywheels?
You are a dork. Oh well.
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
This is nothing new. (Score:5)
I used to be the senior Unix admin for the largest nuclear power company in the US. Here's the abridged version of how these things happen:
1) There's a huge stock-market-like brokerage for energy across the USA.
2) Power companies are basically market players, betting on energy futures. They use data to predict the energy usage for a given day, and buy any they can't produce to cover the overage.
3) Power companies, like any other entity trying to predict a nonlinear chaotic system, fail miserably from time to time, and they end up eating into their reserves.
4) The power companies, in coordination with state and local governments, have contingency plans in place that ensure there's enough energy left in the reserves to maintain critical and emergency services, even though it may mean halting delivery to all other customers.
5) In the meantime, the brokers at the power companies frantically try to buy extra energy from the brokerages. But it's a free market, and last-minute ergs cost much, much more than those bought with foresight. Further, it's a finite resource...if there's bad weather regionally or nationwide, there might not _be_ any excess to buy. So you're stuck depleting your reserves, and hoping the hospitals, police, and other infrastructure components don't go dark longer than their backup systems can cover.
It's common. And it's going to get worse in all major metropolitan areas over the next 10-20 years. Get used to it.
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
Solar: And this helps you heat your home at night... how? (Note that we don't yet have superconducting storage batteries. Nor do we have cheap photovoltaics.) And this helps the Midwest and the North... how?
Wind: And you're saying that there's enough land mass for wind farms? And you're saying the same envirol00ns won't oppose the wind farms for the measurable impact they have on bird behavior? And this helps anyone living anywhere but the coastal mountains... how?
Geothermal: Nice idea, but not enough unless you're Iceland or Hawaii. (Come to think of it, all three put together aren't enough, but that's really the problem, ain't it?)
Nuclear: All the power you want, when you want it, 24/7/365. And unlike the preceding three, scalable.
Hate to break it to you, but there are real scalability problems with any zero-emission technology other than nuclear fission.
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
Battery Tricks - Power Failure Survival (Score:2)
I'd recommend wiring one of these to your UPS when expecting long blackouts. Its a 12V, 125Ah marine battery and each one added should provide several hours of entertainment and lighting when the grid's out.
For sure, that's a great idea.
However, you don't need to specify marine batteries: Around here, Wal*Mart sells deep cycle batteries primarily meant for electric trolling (fishing) motors. They're off the shelf, relatively cheap (<$100) and will happily power an appropriate UPS.
If you can't find that, you can use a car battery, if need be. But a car battery doesn't like to be completely discharged; the plates are designed for short-duty high current use (starting the engine).
Deep cycle = best bet. Car battery = in a pinch.
If your UPS's existing battery has 6 cells (12V), this will work. If your UPS battery has 12 cells (24V), you'll need to put two batteries in series. If you want more battery time, put two (or more) batteries in parallel. Any good auto parts store will sell the cables and battery terminal posts. If you're mixing batteries, it's a very good idea to make sure that the batteries you connect together are identical and charged to the same level. Otherwise, you get into situations where one battery charges another.
Generators optional.Your car is a great way of replenishing the batteries if you've got a long blackout. Just remember that your alternator is not designed for use as a battery charger: if the battery is really dead, it's best to wait until the power is back on and use the real charger. And if you've got a bunch of batteries in parallel and they're all low, charge them one at a time: Alternators can be expensive to replace.
Another suggestion, which I built for my parents who were affected by the Great Ottawa Ice Storm a few years ago. A car battery, a 1970s GM internal regulator alternator, a Briggs and Stratton gas engine and one of those Statpower AC inverters (500 watt rated) - all screwed to a board - were able to provide enough power for them to use lights (sparingly) and be able to watch TV and stuff.
Re:Heavens! (Score:2)
If it's extremely expensive to heat your home by gas, those who can no longer afford to use gas will switch to electricity or other sources. This is a Good Thing, because (if the market is untampered with) the relative prices of different means of heating accurately reflects their costs. That is to say, at such time as it becomes cheaper to heat a home with electricity, either:
Which is to say: If natural gas is so scarce or electricity so plentiful and efficient that natural gas is not the most cost-effective way to heat your home, then using natural gas to heat homes is either wasteful of an increasingly rare resource, or outdated in comparison to newer and more efficient methods. Making natural gas's prices artificially low encourages people to use this method, even if it's outdated or draining on limited resources.
And btw, I'm fully aware of the whole cold fusion research situation. I don't see what it has to do with this discussion.
Battery Safety Lesson (Score:3)
I wouldn't sit a car battery right on my carpet. At least get one of those plastic battery cases to contain any acit that might leak out (esp while charging the battery).
A fast food tray is enough. I occasionally bring a cold battery in from outside to charge it. Theoretically, acid shouldn't leak out while you're charging - if it does, you're charging it too hard and the escaping hydrogen is pushing the acid out of the cells where it spills to the floor.
Having said that, batteries aren't always perfectly sealed, even with the caps on the cells...
If you hear your battery making noises like a frothy bubbling sound, stop charging: you're overcharging it. Be careful that the switch on the charger is *below* the battery, because the frothy bubbling is lighter-than-air and extremely flammable hydrogen. Do not smoke near the battery.
Make sure that wherever it is that you're charging the battery, you've got it well ventilated. I always wear a pair of safety glasses and keep a box of baking soda around just in case the battery blows up. And it does happen. It looks like the Hindenburg, only smaller, and shooting hot sulphuric acid around.
When you're using the battery, you can worry a little less about ventilation: they only give it off when they're being charged.
Remember that a lead-acid battery, however inelegant and unrefined they may be, packs a hell of a lot of energy in a small space. You don't want to release that energy without being careful how it's controlled. A good car battery can make a 1/4" diameter screwdriver shank glow bright cherry red in under 5 seconds. And I've seen an engineer lose a finger because the iron pinky ring that engineers wear got shorted across a car battery. Red hot iron ring around a finger = amputated finger.
Be careful and respectful of the power of a battery.
Hey! (Score:2)
No halogens, half my house is 25W flourescent, I don't do Christmas lights, my computers are off at night when I'm not home, etc.
So, what's my next step? I still have to face the stupid power problems. What else can I do? I'm planning on replacing my windows with double paned low E versions, upgrading my ventilation with a HRV unit sometime. I can go as low as I want, but if that means everyone else starts to use it instead, I want a solution that helps to loosely couple me from the rest of the problems. A 24 hour energy cache would be marvelous, but I'm not sure that can even be accomplished!
So, what other suggestions do you have?
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Re:Comment (Score:2)
---
Re:Fuck you, California (Score:2)
Accually we do know what to do with the waste. However fear of normal nuclear plants may be less today, but fear of recycling the waste isn't going down. That waste is almost fully recycelable, if anyopne cares to do it.
The US military recycles all their nuclear waste, but it is illegal for non-military waste to be used for military purposes. Likewise the French recycle all their waste and don't have a problem. (I think only the US has a waste problem)
Realtime stats here (Score:2)
Re:Here's the REAL reason why Cali gets blackouts (Score:2)
Five minutes of blackout (well, 5 minutes beyond what their backup generators can bear) at Intel's fab oughta do the trick ;-)
Re:Dumbass Regulators (Score:2)
From this http://www.local.org/californ.html [local.org] (emphasis mine) - Oh, yeah. That was written in 1996, between the time the legislation was passed and the time it was signed.
Then there's this report [ucan.org], apparently dating to just before the legislation took effect in early 1998 (subtitled "Offering the Worst of What Competition Has to Offer Small Customers") - Then there's this piece from a Greenpeace consultant [thenation.com], which Netscape's show page info dates to before December '98 - And here's another oldie (Oct '98) from Salon [salon.com] -
The above are small excerpts from full-sized articles; you may want to read them in full if you are interested in the history of this mess. I found them by googling for AB1890, and preferentially read the older ones that turned up.
And yes, you're right: the CA legislature did screw up. But they're hardly the only ones who supported the deal and are now avidly trying to find someone else to blame.
--
Battery power (Score:2)
Re:Heavens! (Score:2)
No it doesn't... it reflects the cost of production/extraction, not the cost to mankind as a whole when the environment is destroyed. That's were regulation and the governement come into play, as only them can fix the price of environement degradation (but it seems it doesn't do so in many country unfortunately).
If environmental cost was reflected into petrol prices, we would all use hydrogen/air presure/whatever-energy cars instead of relying on gas to go around. And all power plant would run on nuclear too (because let's face it, it's much easier to dispose of a few radioactive waste than of billions of tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere)
Re:Home-energy systems? (Score:2)
Yes, but not yet.
If we can mass-produce high-temperature superconducting wire, we can build your idealized energy storage device.
For large enough tanks of liquid nitrogen, I think we may actually be at that point - there are a couple of superconductor firms that are building prototypes of "generators" that are basically trailer-truck-sized tanks of superconducting coils. Load 'em up with power when it's cheap. Sit 'em in the yard, bleeding a small amount of current out of 'em to run the motors that keep the LN3 cool until a $DISASTER strikes. Drive 'em to the disaster site and plug 'em in.
(Of course, if there's ever a coolant leak while the things are fully-charged, get the hell outa dodge...)
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:2)
Let's try implementing things like solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power on a large scale before we conclude nuclear fission is environmentally friendly.
Did you READ what he wrote? (Score:2)
So will electric car sales no longer be mandatory? (Score:3)
Auto makers will be heavily fined if they don't meet the minimum percentage; however, I find it hard to believe that people are going to run out to buy electric cars if they won't be able to charge them whenever they need to(which will be quite often due to the limited range).
Re:This is nothing new. (Score:2)
On a related note, 115F really _is_ too hot.
Offer consumers choice, like in the Netherlands... (Score:2)
If you sign a contract with the utility company for 'natuurstroom' ('natural power'), they do not rewire your house so that the power actually comes from windmills etc. Instead, they guarantee that they will add to the amount of your power consumption in environmentally friendly power generation capacity in one form or another. Where I live (in the 'polder' (reclaimed land)) this probably means wind generators. Elsewhere, it might means a tidal power plant, etc.
Of course, you have to trust the utility to actually make good on their promises. The contract you sign is co-signed by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund), who are supposed to be a 'trusted third party' to alleviate any doubts you may have about the utility company (which is, after all, a purely commercial entity in The Netherlands...).
Maybe a system like this would work for environmentally-conscious California as well?
Re:Dont' shut down the city of the geeks. (Score:2)
They live in other areas of the valley, where that much money will get you a 1,000 sq. ft. apartment, with only a 1-2 year waiting list.
SF's nothing but web hacks and other New Media types. The engineers, admins, architects, and designers are on the Peninsula and in East and South Bay.
...and when the media says "SF", they mean "SF Bay Area". That includes
Re:Fuck you, California (Score:2)
Recycle? Into what? France has tried to use it in what's called 'surgenerators'. *Extremely* costly, dangerous, it's being dismantled after having cost billions of $$$.
There's no easy way to get rid of nuclear waste; the doable thing is to put them in a place far far away. Expensive, and you have to keep in mind that those wastes are still going to be dangeous in thousands of years. Who knows what's going to happen in the mean time? (Think, earthquake).
--
Obviously not driving electric cars. (Score:3)
(Yeah yeah, actually I think electric and hybrid vehicles are pretty cool... it's just that we'd be completely hozed, as opposed to just somewhat screwed, if the "targets" for ZEVs had actually been met...)
Re:You Republican whore..... (Score:2)
give me a break (Score:4)
Well, congrats... your air and water still suck. Species are still going extinct. You put all your eggs on natural gas which is now drying up and prices skyrocketing,
Typical anti-environmentalist propaganda. Because a few environmental regulations that managed to squeeze by intense corporate lobbying and Republican opposition don't suddenly solve all the environmental problems in the world they should be repealed? Here's a question; what would the air quality be like without these emissions laws? Of course, the typical right-wing reaction to environmental problems has always been to a) spread FUD and personal attacks, and b) ignore the problem (what pollution?). They ignore the science, they ignore quality of life issues, all in an insane attempt to squeeze out a little bit more money for the corporations. The right has no environmental policy other than to pretend it doesn't exist. And natural gas is drying up? How come I haven't seen headlines to that effect? It would be a news item a lot more significant than California's energy shortages.
you're freezing your asses off and whining about power shortages, high prices, and rolling bloackouts.
Freezing? Yes, we all know what a tundra California is. And anyone "whining" about high prices has been doing it for a while, since the end-user pricing is set by the government.
(2) Blame deregulation for the energy shortage! Can't have liberals blaming their eco legislation or (gasp!) call for repealing some of it.
The "deregulation" involved freeing up the price utility companies pay the power generators; the cost to the end user is fixed by the government. Something which the utility companies fought for so they wouldn't have to risk actually seeing their prices go down to competition. Kind of backfired on them; they figured they'd make out better in the end if they didn't have to lower prices, and gambled that they wouldn't have the price they pay for the energy themselves shoot up. Of course the ultimate origin of the energy shortage is simply the fact that too many people are using it; logical thing would be to (gasp!) limit use, and since nobody seems to be too interested in doing that it has to be forced (i.e. blackouts). The bizarre thing is that companies who will obsess over every little expense their business runs up see nothing wrong in leaving the lights, air conditioning, and computers on all night when nobody's there.
Free tip for CA denizens: The Plan to steal your cars from you via smog regs is already well underway. Start fighting it now. Basically it combines (1) smog check rules DESIGNED TO FAIL A PERCENTAGE of cars (with an eventual goal of 97% of all cars over 10 years old) with (2) rules that make it ILLEGAL to keep an unregistered vechicle on your property. (1) + (2) = State power to STEAL YOUR CARS and crush them into cubes.
Are those capitalized words supposed to inspire shock and a surge of emotion? There is a terrible air pollution problem in California; the emissions standards are designed to alleviate this. Very few older cars may be able to pass these inspections. Whether your car's driving on your property or on the highways, it's still polluting a common resource; the air we breathe. Or would you accept it if someone moves next door to you and starts burning huge piles of tires 24 hours a day (why not? it's on his property!)
In the end, as much as the right tries to make it all sound like some secret conspiracy, auto emissions standards in California didn't just appear out of nowhere; they've been a topic of conversation for years, and the voters of California chose their representatives. This isn't some shadowy liberal plan; the majority of people there decided they wanted a cleaner environment, so they voted that way.
--
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:4)
Of course it may be true that the air is still dirty in an absolute sense, but that does not mean that the pollution regulation has been a failure. Air quality (at least in Southern California) has gotten dramatically better, as anyone who has either A) examined any statistics about air quality or B) actually lived there for an extended period can tell you. But I guess that people like you who favor pollution can't possibly grasp the idea that Californians as a group both understand the consequences of and are willing to pay the costs of our expensive anti-pollution legislation. That would destroy your idea that anyone should be allowed to pollute to their hearts' content without consequence.
Gee, a system that allows power producers to charge essentially unlimited prices but doesn't allow the resellers to pass the costs on to consumers (and doesn't allow long term contracts to prevent price gouging during peak consumption periods) couldn't have anything to do with the resellers going bankrupt could it? No, the fault must be exclusively with environmental regulations, since you don't like them. Damn the facts, full speed ahead.
Well, guess what. You're wrong. California's Democratic administration has reversed the policy of the previous Republican one and started giving approval for new power plant construction already. But don't worry and let silly things like facts get in the way of your rants. Go ahead and imagine what's happening instead of bothering to do any research to find out. You wouldn't want inconvenient data to interfere with your theories.
Re:UPS (Score:2)
I never realized how unstable my neighborhood power was until I bought a UPS. I bought it due to frequent thunderstorm blackouts, and it's only good for about 5 minutes. But it beeps whenever it cuts in, and tips me off to micro-brownouts that don't even make the lights flicker.
I get them like clockwork on summer mornings, a little earlier each day as it gets hotter, presumably indicating when enough air conditioners are on to make the reserve capacity have to kick in. But I get them lots of other random times, too.
--
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:4)
I would like to know where all those whining enviornmentalists agaist nuclear power are now... IN THE DARK!!
Not necessarily a bad place to be. One of the results of the famous New York City blackout of a few decades ago was the ludicrous hike in that city's birth rate 9 months later
Course, we're talking about San Francisco, here, which is a completely different basket of fruit.
--
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:4)
Re:Hey California, blame all your eco legislation. (Score:3)
The point is, when you drive your car, you damage *my* air supply, *my* environment etc.. So you're infringing *my* property rights. I [should] have a right to stop you doing that, or at least a say.
Re:give me a break (Score:3)
Over here in Eurpoe, we've had emissions control for years now. The Government occasionally runs ads encouraging people to use less energy. And shock horror the majority of people I know support environmental regulations
Why? Because we appreciate that there are finite amounts of resources, and that we have to manage not squander them. I'm fed up of hearing from Americans how bad environmental regulations are because "they hurt our bottom line." Another piece of myth designed by right wing Conservatives who are too afraid of change.
Car sales are still doing well, few people object to having to ditch the old cars (many of which are far more dangerous, less fuel efficient, have fewer features, and require lots of expensive maintenance anyway) and recycling initiatives are growing. Hardly the "Corporate Nightmare" the Conservatives would have you believe.
Re:This is nothing new. (Score:3)
Yep, I'd say that explains why London doesn't have rolling blackouts. Well, that and the fact that it is possible to have sensible regulations, something which many
All figures from http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Law Against 17"+ Monitors. (Score:3)
There is a terrible air pollution problem in California; the emissions standards are designed to alleviate this.
There is a terrible energy crisis in California. What I propose is designed to alleviate this. Read on.
Very few older cars may be able to pass these inspections.Very few 17" or greater monitors use as little energy as a 15" monitor.
Whether your car's driving on your property or on the highways, it's still polluting a common resource; the air we breathe.Whether your monitor is being used to surf the web or for kernel-bashing, it's still using excess energy on a common resource, the electrical grid.
Therefore, I propose that we have a law that bans people from being able to connect to the Internet if they have a monitor bigger than 15".
Further, as the next phase of the program, I propose that if we *see* a 17" or bigger monitor in someone's home, we remove it from their property because destroying these energy wasting and inefficient big monitors will serve the greater good.
Scared yet? This is *exactly* what is done to those of us who love and cherish old cars. Even if you have no interest in old cars, you've got to realize what a profound and dangerous reduction in personal freedoms this is.
I'm all for clean air. That's why I maintain my vehicles well. Old vehicles don't count for a huge percentage of the miles travelled. Old age, wear and accidents control the quantities of old vehicles on the road quite effectively as it is, and without an erosion of your freedom or mine.
Re:Where are the Enviromentalists now?? (Score:3)
First you have waste disposal, which is a much nicer problem with nuclear power plants than with say coal. Nuclear plants produce less waste and conveniently locate it in one place so that it can be properly managed. Coal plants, in contrast, spew their waste all over the place. The waste from a coal plant is a much _larger_ problem but one that's easier to ignore. And no matter what ignorant environmentalists would like you to believe, nuclear waste isn't inherently any worse, or more dangerous, than other kinds of toxic waste that we have to deal with all the time. The solution is to lock it up in the ground in an appropriate place, and there are lots of areas that are appropriate. The problem is entirely political; people don't mind so much a toxic chemical waste dump, but they're afraid of a nuclear one because of the word "nuclear". And for some reason I don't understand, they'd rather breathe toxic waste every day than have it locked up in the ground where it MIGHT, *possibly*,
one day, leak out and harm the water quality in the area (as if nobody would notice, and as if there aren't ways of resolving that).
As for newer, cleaner plants, the political problem there is that you end up with a lot more material that could be used to make nuclear weapons. It's as simple as that... fuel and waste from a conventional plant are almost totally useless in weapons production, and the modern reactors would produce some amounts of material that would potentially be useful for making bombs. Not that there is really much of anyone who has a real use for a nuclear weapon and doesn't already have it.
Thank you for your time.
Sanity Please (Score:5)
Uhm, gee sparky, lets do the math. Is anyone suprised that there might be a problem with atitudes like those above? Lets try to be a LITTLE bit sensible. AND by the way, the CA power situation was PARTIALLY deregualted. So saying that the free market is the problem is not entirely correct, saying that deregualtion is the problem is not entirely correct. Sayint that stupidity and ingnorance is the problem would be correct.
Dark City SF - It happened a couple of years ago (Score:3)
I was working from home that day and discovered that my ISDN line didn't work (used that at the time for telecommuting); but this happened frequently on my block (unreliable power [sfgate.com]) so I figured I'd just go to the office. I went out to the car, and when I discovered that the electric buses didn't work, and the streetlights were out, it became obvious that nobody was going anywhere. My neighborhood coffee shop ran out of hot coffee very quickly, as EVERYONE needed some [sfgate.com], and so I distinctly remember carrying home pre-ground french roast to make with my stovetop espresso maker.
It turned out that PG&E (that poor, suffering company in the news these days) had massively fucked up a maintenance job: [sfgate.com]
The problem, utility officials said, originated with a PG&E construction crew error during the installation of a new transformer at the San Mateo substation. The crew violated procedures and neglected to remove a safety ground wire before re-energizing that portion of the substation.
When the switch was thrown, electricity bypassed four 115,000-volt lines that supply power to the Peninsula and San Francisco and instead plowed into the ground.
Fortunately the circuit breakers did their thing and prevented all sorts of chaos (other than power loss) on the power grid. But PG&E certainly did not make a good impression that day!
Dumbass Lame Duck Politicians (Score:5)
The Republican-controlled state legislature AND governor's mansion have since been replaced with Democrat-controlled legislature and governor. When the legislation to deregulate passed, the GOP knew the writing was on the wall.
I hate to tell you this, but we knew not to trust the bastards, and they got us in the end. Blame that CA state GOP, not the voters.
This should help deployment of solar power. (Score:5)
To compare the cost of a solar power system (or wind or water power) to grid power:
- Design a system adequate for your needs.
- Compute its lifetime.
- Compute its cost, including purchase price, consumables, and maintainence costs over its lifetime.
- Compute the monthly payment if you took out a loan for that amount, running the lifetime of the system. (Don't forget tax credits and mortgage tax breaks if you finance it as part of your house.)
- Compute your average monthly number of kilowatt-hours generated.
- Divide the monthly payment by the monthly kilowatt-hours. This is your cost per kilowatt-hour.
The cost per kilowatt-hour of solar photovoltaic systems has been getting close to the crossover with respect to grid power. For some applications (like country houses or small-loads like illuminated billboards and traffic signs) where the instalation and fixed-costs of grid power are high it's already crossed over - which is why you see so many panels these days. It also beats diesel generators for portable power now.
A big enough jump in the grid's generation cost (such as the one in California, thanks to their shiny new centrally-planned socialized electric system) might push it over even for urban residences.
And California is a good spot for solar. At the latitude of the SF Bay area, for instance, insolation is about 5 solar hours per day. Once you're east of the coastal range (unless you're just downwind of a gap in it or on the west side of a still higher mountain) there's little daytime fog or cloud cover.