What's the Big Deal With Load Leveling?

[Bret Cahill]

You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a
problem. Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect. What's
the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??


Bret Cahill

 

[fungus]

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:52:17 AM UTC+2, Bret Cahill wrote:

You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem. Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect. What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??

The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

 

[Bret Cahill]

You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem.  Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect.  What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??

The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

This is where it would make sense for utilities to put radio switches
on compressors -- at least refrigerator compressors. A refrigerator
will stay cold several hours without power. When they try that with
AC compressors they overwhelm the emergency rooms with the elderly on
hot days.

And that's just on the load end. Supposing the wind dies and clouds
cover the sun at the same time?

Anyway the problem is anticipating big high frequency transients, load
and supply.

You can go big with pumped storage or you can go fast with flywheels
with all the in between methods falling on a straight line, but big
_and_ fast ain't gonna happen.

At least not without better materials.


Bret Cahill




..

 

On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:55:36 -0700 (PDT), fungus <tooby@artlum.com>
wrote:

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:52:17 AM UTC+2, Bret Cahill wrote:
You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem. Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect. What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??


The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

That same logic applies to the telephone system during major sporting
events - the traffic peaks between quarters and during halftime in the
various bowl games.

 

[Tom Biasi]

On 9/16/2012 3:22 PM, news@jecarter.us wrote:

On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:55:36 -0700 (PDT), fungus <tooby@artlum.com
wrote:

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:52:17 AM UTC+2, Bret Cahill wrote:
You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem. Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect. What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??


The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

That same logic applies to the telephone system during major sporting
events - the traffic peaks between quarters and during halftime in the
various bowl games.

A.T.T. monitors the news for events that would cause a large influx of
phone calls to an area.They block incoming and allow outgoing. I have
seen this in their master control center. Very impressive.

Tom

 

[Michael Black]

On Sun, 16 Sep 2012, news@jecarter.us wrote:

On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:55:36 -0700 (PDT), fungus <tooby@artlum.com
wrote:

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:52:17 AM UTC+2, Bret Cahill wrote:
You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem. Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect. What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??


The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

That same logic applies to the telephone system during major sporting
events - the traffic peaks between quarters and during halftime in the
various bowl games.

It's not really a "technical issue", it's social.

Anything, highways, public transport, electrical power, servers for
popular websites, they have to choose between "reasonable" and handling
peak. If they choose "peak" then a lot of the time, it's underused, in
effect money wasted. Highways only get jammed during commuter hours, same
with public transport, the rest of the day much of lies idle. People get
up in the morning, demand power, then go off for the day, the only balance
is that the place of work uses power during the day. Then they get home
and want that power again, all at about the same time. Everhone gets to
the grocery store about the same time after work, the store either has
long lines or lots of cashes, yet during the rest of the day, they lay
idle (at least they can hire accordingly, but either they have extra cash
registers sitting idle during much of the time, or they don't have enough
during peak time).


If you've got electrical power, if you can sell to another time zone then
that evens things out. But the only way to be efficient with public
transport, or highways, is to spread the users around, put incentives for
people to travel during off-peak or give incentives to businesses to have
varying hours so "rush hour" isn't such a large peak. THey can't do much
about people needing the stove and heat when they get home from work, but
if they can encourage people to do the laundry off-peak or whatever, then
the peaks dont' get so large in comparison with the lulls.

Michael

 

[Cydrome Leader]

Tom Biasi <tombiasi@optonline.net> wrote:

On 9/16/2012 3:22 PM, news@jecarter.us wrote:
On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:55:36 -0700 (PDT), fungus <tooby@artlum.com
wrote:

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:52:17 AM UTC+2, Bret Cahill wrote:
You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem. Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect. What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??


The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

That same logic applies to the telephone system during major sporting
events - the traffic peaks between quarters and during halftime in the
various bowl games.


A.T.T. monitors the news for events that would cause a large influx of
phone calls to an area.They block incoming and allow outgoing. I have
seen this in their master control center. Very impressive.

Yeah, it's really impressive when their worthless, delapidated network
can't handle known amounts of voice traffic without having to be shut
down.

Hell, they're virtually blocking all calls all the time anyways. It's like
they stole the Nextel runbooks and just replaced the idiotic "locating
subscriber" message with silence or an instantly dropped call.

It's about a 25% chance a call won't even ring on their bogus com-bloc GSM
network.

 

[Bret Cahill]

You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem.  Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect.  What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??

The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

That same logic applies to the telephone system during major sporting
events - the traffic peaks between quarters and during halftime in the
various bowl games.

A.T.T. monitors the news for events that would cause a large influx of
phone calls to an area.They block incoming and allow outgoing. I have
seen this in their master control center. Very impressive.

Yeah, it's really impressive when their worthless, delapidated network
can't handle known amounts of voice traffic without having to be shut
down.

Hell, they're virtually blocking all calls all the time anyways. It's like
they stole the Nextel runbooks and just replaced the idiotic "locating
subscriber" message with silence or an instantly dropped call.

It's about a 25% chance a call won't even ring on their bogus com-bloc GSM
network.

That just happened a couple hours ago, both land line & cell phones.
It wouldn't be such a problem if there was "no ring" box to check on
the web page.


Bret Cahill

 

[Cydrome Leader]

Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cahill@yahoo.com> wrote:

You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem. ?Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect. ?What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??

The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

That same logic applies to the telephone system during major sporting
events - the traffic peaks between quarters and during halftime in the
various bowl games.

A.T.T. monitors the news for events that would cause a large influx of
phone calls to an area.They block incoming and allow outgoing. I have
seen this in their master control center. Very impressive.

Yeah, it's really impressive when their worthless, delapidated network
can't handle known amounts of voice traffic without having to be shut
down.

Hell, they're virtually blocking all calls all the time anyways. It's like
they stole the Nextel runbooks and just replaced the idiotic "locating
subscriber" message with silence or an instantly dropped call.

It's about a 25% chance a call won't even ring on their bogus com-bloc GSM
network.

That just happened a couple hours ago, both land line & cell phones.
It wouldn't be such a problem if there was "no ring" box to check on
the web page.


Bret Cahill

I've wondered what actually happens with those calls that never complete or
do anything. What's really happening there, other than the billing system
no doubt comes up with charges for some sort of activity.

 

[Tom Biasi]

On 9/24/2012 10:45 PM, Cydrome Leader wrote:

Tom Biasi <tombiasi@optonline.net> wrote:
On 9/16/2012 3:22 PM, news@jecarter.us wrote:
On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 01:55:36 -0700 (PDT), fungus <tooby@artlum.com
wrote:

On Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:52:17 AM UTC+2, Bret Cahill wrote:
You'd thing the info age would have made load leveling less of a

problem. Instead it seems to have had the opposite effect. What's

the problem now and why wasn't it a problem before??


The problem is people have more electronic
devices in their homes and consume more
electricity.

Combine that with the fact that most people
have the same sort of daily schedule and
it causes big peaks/drops in demand.

Power stations even have to watch TV because
when the adverts come on in a popular program
a million people will go and open their
fridge door at the same time and/or fire up
the microwave oven.

That same logic applies to the telephone system during major sporting
events - the traffic peaks between quarters and during halftime in the
various bowl games.


A.T.T. monitors the news for events that would cause a large influx of
phone calls to an area.They block incoming and allow outgoing. I have
seen this in their master control center. Very impressive.

Yeah, it's really impressive when their worthless, delapidated network
can't handle known amounts of voice traffic without having to be shut
down.

Hell, they're virtually blocking all calls all the time anyways. It's like
they stole the Nextel runbooks and just replaced the idiotic "locating
subscriber" message with silence or an instantly dropped call.

It's about a 25% chance a call won't even ring on their bogus com-bloc GSM
network.


I wasn't talking about cell phones. This was a good while back when ATT

was the only game in town.