[NCLUG] Re: "Green" power

[S. Luke Jones]

On Sep 13, 2008, at 12:29 PM, danbob wrote:
> Just as a point of order, Sean, the average utility grid losses as  
> heat
> in the USA are 9.5 percent, between the power plant and your electric
> meter. So "almost 100% efficient" is not correct, and that 9.5% is
> heating the great outdoors.
> DAN FINK


Do you know how much of that is due to "heating up the wires" at night  
for lack of anything else to do with the power?

As I remember, many utilities offer power at negative cost for large  
industries that can commit to using a lot of power at night. Another  
solution is to use power to pump water upstream back up behind a dam  
(treating a reservoir as a battery) (with attendant accelerated  
erosion in the river downstream from the dam). This seems  
counterintuitive, but is the result of generation in large plants like  
Rawhide that take two weeks to spin up or down, but use in small  
appliances like air conditioners, clothes driers, and ... energy-star  
computers that people put to sleep when they're not in use.

Any discussion of electricity conservation is -- well, not  
meaningless, but pretty shallow -- if it doesn't consider baseload  
generation and time-of-day factors.

S. Luke Jones - slukejones at gmail.com