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Smart Grids: Stupid Idea
 W = I2R (Ohm's Law):  Why "Smart Grids" are a bad idea.
 

(Right) Classic Ohm's Law Chart.  Use it to find unknown electrical values.

 
Why "Smart Grids" are a bad idea.
Part 1      Smart Grids are a bad idea.
Part 2      How one well-placed small H-EMP nuclear bomb can destroy the grids of the United States, Canada, and Mexico in a flash.
Part 3      Starving ourselves strong: Energy Efficiency and Conservation have earlier and more dangerous limits than you may think.
Part 4    Everyone wants to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

http://www.bellona.org/ccs/index_html  Russian-Norwegian web page covering Clean Coal Technology (With a rabid antinuclear, pro-renewables slant).
 

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Part 1:  Energy efficiency and starving ourselves strong.  Ohm's Law.  Smart grids are a stupid trap. 
Sun Wakes from Slumber .pdf     Space Weather Primer at NOAA web site.
Based on the survey results, Guthridge said, "Smart grid-enabled programs aimed at the mass market are probably a waste of money."

Ohm's Law
 SMART GRIDS: A rubber crutch for America's renewable-debilitated electricity system.
Are "Smart Grids" really such a smart idea for YOU?
 I am not a fan of the Smart Grid. To me, those are code words to perform demand management in order not to build the plants and infrastructure necessary
to maintain a robust electrical system.  It will enable power companies to become as predatory as our financial services sector.

Wind and solar are dumb energy ideas.  Smart Grids will place the average citizen at a severe disadvantage.  Two or more dumb ideas do not make something smart.  Smart grids cannot possibly make such dumb ideas any smarter.  Do you really want the power company/Government to have the power to turn your household appliances on and off to suit the will of the wind? 
I didn't think so.   Smart Meter and Slot Machine Security .pdf

 (Left) United States electrical grid.  Click for larger image.

Smart Grids for hamster-power green energy.
Most of the people advocating Windmills, Solar Power, and Smart Grids are pig-ignorant about electricity and grids.
 This advertisement is dangerously misleading.  (1.2 meg wmv)       The reality.  (3.2 meg wmv)

 

     

Geomagnetic Storms Can Threaten Electric Power Grids.  Recall the "Northern Lights"?  When the Earth's magnetic field captures ionized particles carried by the solar wind, geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) can flow through the power system, entering and exiting the many grounding points on a transmission network.  Systems in the upper latitudes of North America are at increased risk because auroral activity and its effects center on the magnetic poles, and the Earth's magnetic north pole is tilted toward North America.   

The U.S. electric system includes over 6,000 generating units, more than 800,000 kilometers of bulk transmission lines, approximately 12,000 major substations, and innumerable lower-voltage distribution transformers. All can serve as potential GIC entry points from their respective ground connections. This enormous network is controlled regionally by more than 100 separate control centers that coordinate responsibilities jointly for the impacts upon real-time network operations.  From:   http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/eiskappenman.html 

W = I2R,  W = EI,  or W = E2/R    Any way you figure it
Ohm's law says long transmission lines are a dumb idea.

Why are we even considering Smart Grids?  One reason wind isn't working out well is that the best wind is in the Midwest and the country's population centers are located on the east, Gulf, and west coasts.  Very long distance electricity transmission lines are being sold to the electrically naive as ideal the solution to the problem. 

Transmission line limitations.  Like all things electrical, electricity transmission is subject to Ohm's law, in most basic form: E = IR, or, voltage (in Volts) = current (in Amperes) (times) resistance (in Ohms).  Every foot of wire has an Ohmic value, so the longer the wire, the more Ohms resistance the the Voltage has to overcome.  Think friction in a pipe.  The energy consumed in overcoming the friction is absorbed by the environment as heat.

In the world of electrical engineers, transmission lines are usually thought of in terms of kiloVolts needed to push the electricity through the wire's resistance and the GigaWatts of electricity to be pushed.  The adjacent table shows how many miles can be traversed without uneconomical losses.  765 Volts and about 4 GW have been about as high as they have been able to push technology for the last 100 years.  While desperate measures on the west coast have done a little better than that at a lot greater cost, California still looses 7% of its electricity to line losses.

As you might observe, the amount of electricity that can be transmitted without excessive losses diminishes rapidly with distance.  Assuming the best wind region in the United States is a north-south line going through T. Boone Pickens' stomping grounds, Amarillo, Texas, it is 1,080 miles to Los Angles and over 1,500 miles to New York City.  Can you find those distances on that table?  I didn't think so.

The world's record holder as of 2010: "The Yunnan-Guangdong UHVDC system covers a transmission distance close to 1,500 kilometers (932 miles). The new ultra-high voltage level of 800 kV offers global transmission operators economical low-loss bulk power transmission over even longer distances. Distances of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) and even more are feasible now with UHVDC technology of this kind: At a transmission capacity of 5000 MW losses are as low as around 2% per 1000 kilometers, plus less than 1.5% losses for both converter stations at the sending and receiving end of the transmission line." - - Green Car Congress

Smart Grids appear to be a dumb idea for the average home owner who likes to have control over his own house.  It's basically a scheme to cut your power first when the wind dies unless you pay a premium for your electricity.  Think California's rolling blackouts.  Ain't those marketing folks wonderful?  Makes you wonder who the State Utilities Commission thinks they are supposed to be looking out for.  Will this also mean you will be able to get premium water with fewer germs?  Or flush your toilets more than once a day?

Ever hear of the Trojan Horse?

If you have a cell phone, you already know how network grids make it easy for these guys to get into your credit card:

Concord, Massachusetts, Smart Grid Could Be Functional Next Year.
The Concord (MA) Journal (7/1/10, Ball) reports, "Smart Grid could be up and running in Concord by this time next year, Light Plant Director Dave Wood told the Board of Selectmen," noting that "the Light Plant has put out four bids - two for materials, one for fiber electronics and one for construction services - and all responses have been 'well within our budgets.'" Wood said that "the Smart Grid will come online in sections." The Light Plant wants "to use Smart Grid to better manage peak demand, improve monitoring and supervisory control of Concord's electric grid and help users improve energy conservation and usage through Smart devices and remote control of central air conditioning."
 

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Part 2:  H-EMP

      How one small nuclear bomb in the right place can destroy
 all the grids and cars of United States, Canada, and Mexico.
 Solar Weather Storming Forward .pdf

Remember?  Your car also has computers and wires longer than 3 feet.

Military first strike would target Smart Grids to paralyze the country.  In addition to geomagnetically induced failures, Smart Grids are extremely vulnerable to EMP attack.  H-EMP stands for "High altitude-Electromagnetic Pulse" from an atomic bomb.  Exploding a single, tiny atomic bomb 300 miles up in space over the center of the U.S. will take the entire country out - cell phones, computers, cars, and all.  The longer the wire, the greater the damage.  While the military can build EMP resistant electronic gear by minimizing naturally occurring antenna lengths in their wiring and using special solid state components, optical communications fibers are the only long distance communication method naturally immune to EMP.

  (Wikipedia Image)

Please read the linked Wikipedia page to get an idea of how stupid the "Smart Grid" idea is.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

Just one tiny nuclear bomb 300 miles above Kansas City.  Ever wonder why our leaders hyper-ventilate every time North Korea or Iran says "Boo"?

 Check out National Geographic channel's "Electronic Armageddon."    Electromagnetic Pulse Blackout .pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phasor_measurement_unit  About GPS clocked synchrophasors.  Do you really want your electricity to depend on them?  Synchrophasor data could be used to allow power flow up to a line's dynamic limit instead of to its worst case limit.  The author advocates local power generation with tie-lines instead.

NASA Developing "Solar Shield" For Power Grids.
Popular Science (10/29/2010, Dillow) reports, "NASA is now in the process of creating a 'Solar Shield' that should be able to minimize the damage to power grids caused by electromagnetic disturbances in the atmosphere and ground caused by foul weather on the sun." Solar storms caused by coronal mass ejection (CMEs) can create "geomagnetically induced current" (GIC) that can "cripple" power grids. NASA spacecraft "would track the CME across the sky," gathering "data on the storm's speed, magnetic field, and density that is fed into computer models at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center." NASA would calculate which grids would be affected allowing utilities to "temporarily" pull them offline so more damage does not occur. "Solar Shield is experimental at this point, and its hard to know how successful it will be, mainly because it hasn't had the trial by fire it needs to see if it works."
 

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Part  3:  Hyper-energy efficiency and starving ourselves strong.  Energy Efficiency and Conservation have earlier limits than you think.

Hyper-efficiency: Starving ourselves strong
Energy Efficiency and Conservation have earlier limits than you think.
Factoid: Climate change has already arrived.  We are going to need more, not less, energy of all kinds to survive and overcome it.
 Without ample cheap energy our technologies become unaccessible.  We can't starve ourselves strong. 

Ultra-efficiency and conservation have real limits that will eventually get you into real trouble.     

Up to a point, energy efficiency makes excellent sense.  Beyond that, your systems become fragile and your situation becomes precarious - a trap - severely limiting your ability to survive unanticipated emergencies.  These dangers can be very subtle.

Recent example: To reduce in-flight fuel consumption, our commercial airplanes are no longer carrying the 45 minute fuel reserve that has, over the years, served as a prudent measure in the event the destination airfield becomes unexpectedly unusable due to some event - such as another airplane crashing on it's runway.

Nature is effective, not efficient.  Efficiency usually has little value beyond sufficiency. 

 (Author's graphic - Getting a very high mileage car saves very little fuel.) 
http://www.NobodysFuel.com/  "Energy supply is more important than climate change."

 

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Part  4:  Everyone wants to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics. 

  Second Law of Thermodynamics

Everyone wants to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

The Hard Truth about Thermal Energy. 

The energy market is the market for HEAT.  So, thermal is what it's all about.

A fact or "Law" of thermodynamics:  You cannot get all the energy out that you put in.

Eventually you will come to C P Snow's "Last Law of Thermodynamics":  You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.

In the case of automobile, jet, electric power plants, etc., the Second Law applies.  This is because the engine's exhaust gasses are still hot (ideally, exhaust gasses should be at room temperature) as they leave the engine and, since this heat is dumped into the environment around the engine as part of the engine's exhaust, it's just plain lost. 

The second “law" of thermodynamics allows us to capture as mechanical energy only about 1/3 of the heat energy consumed by any heat engine (automobile, jet, power plant, etc.) we build. 

About 2/3 is always wasted.  "Lost" is the word used in the chart about U.S. energy below.  To make matters even worse, heat engines that run at variable speeds, such as automobile engines, rarely achieve even 1/3 efficiency since they are rarely running at their most efficient speed.  The more gears in a car's transmission, the better.  Running only when needed and, at a more constant speed when running, gives hybrid automobile engine systems their big advantage in city driving.  Power plants and jet engines run at constant speeds.

This means we will always need a lot of heat to drive the engines that power our society.

In other words, the power plant has to burn three lumps of coal to make one lump of heat in your toaster.

Hard Facts:

1. It is impossible to capture and contain all the dangerous polluting chemicals of combustion.  AND  Combustion materials (oil, gas, coal, etc.) are limited in availability.

2. It is easy to contain all the dangerous materials from a nuclear reactor.  AND  Nuclear heat is virtually limitless in availability.

Nuclear heat is the only kind of heat we can safely use forever.

A fact of physics: No one, including the government, will ever get the Second "law" of thermodynamics repealed.

 

Where does all that energy go? 

Notice the gray waste energy flow in the U.S. energy flows chart? (Click on it for bigger image.)

The second law of thermodynamics says we will fail to capture that amount of energy as mechanical energy.

 

 

Example: For a Lycoming airplane piston-engine at steady cruse.  The limiting case is described by the Carnot cycle:  (Gasoline's Burn Temperature minus Engine's Exhaust Temperature) divided by the Gasoline's Burn Temperature - all in absolute degrees.  Thus the engine's efficiency = (2,660 - 1,800)/2,660 = 0.32 or, roughly, 1/3. 

The bigger the difference between burn and exhaust temperatures, the more efficient the heat engine.  [All in degrees Rankine which equal Degrees F + 460.]

 

Eventually you will come to C P Snow's "Last Law of Thermodynamics":  You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game.

Thermodynamics is the study of the inter-relation between heat, work and internal energy of a system.
The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:

1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).
2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).

 http://secondlaw.oxy.edu/index.html     Light-hearted exploration into the implications of the second law of thermodynamics.  Or, "Why nothing lasts forever".

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