Wednesday, March 11, 2009
What Things Will Come
8:03 AM | 
Posted by
Billy Ray |
Hot on the heels of our recent posts about how broadband and electric power could be combined to offer solutions to the energy crisis we all face, comes this article from American Public Power Association. It is an interesting read as it paints the scene we have been describing from a totally new and independent perspective.
One thing is certain. Change is coming. We can try to steer that change by utilizing our network and our ideas about altering the way everyone uses energy, or, as the article below implies, we can all just prepare to pay a lot more to keep doing things the way we have for the last one hundred years. I know which choice makes the most sense. I hope you agree...
The next few years will be exciting for people in the electric utility business, as utilities struggle to decarbonize their portfolios and as consumers struggle with rising energy bills, a panel of CEOs agreed yesterday at an energy conference in Washington, D.C.
"If you're not up for an exciting time, you're in the wrong business," said APPA President and CEO Mark Crisson. The next decade or so will be a transition period that will make the difference as to what the electricity sector will look like 40 years from now, he said.
"The next five or 10 years will be exciting," agreed Richard Kelly, president, CEO and chairman of Xcel Energy.
"It will be interesting to see how we can decarbonize electricity over the next couple of decades," said Hank Courtright, senior vice president of the Electric Power Research Institute.
"It may be more than exciting," said Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. "There many be moments of sheer terror."
The electricity sector faces Herculean challenges, said Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute. "How to build transmission lines that will cost billions?" he asked. "How are you gong to reduce carbon emissions 80% by 2050?" he said, calling climate change "the mother of all issues."
They spoke at the EnergyBiz Leadership Forum, a two-day conference sponsored by EnergyBiz Magazine, USA Today, Energy Central, Oracle Utilities and several other companies.
"We've only got two objectives: to make sure consumers have enough power, and make sure they can afford it," English said. But both of those goals look increasingly hard to carry out, he said. Even with multibillion-dollar annual investments in carbon capture and storage technology, 2020 is the earliest anyone can expect CCS to be operable, he said. Until then, and perhaps beyond, utilities have to eliminate coal as a choice for new power plants, because Congress is bound to pass legislation soon that will make coal-fired power much more expensive, he said.
"We are removing our primary fuel of choice for the last 20 years," English said. "How in the world are we going to get through this?"
On climate change, APPA "would like to see the right bill" come out of Congress sooner rather than later, Crisson said. In today's economic environment, Congress is likely to be more sensitive to consumers' concerns, he said.
"We think it's important to minimize the impact on the consumer," Crisson said. That is why APPA is opposed to a proposal in the Obama administration's budget that calls for the federal government to auction off carbon emission allowances to the highest bidder. Under that proposal, the government would sell 100% of the allowances.
"We don't like this approach at all," said Crisson. "We think a cap-and-trade system is a thinly veiled tax and we have concerns around auctions," he said. One of those concerns is that prices may be volatile. Another is how the market could influence the auction process. APPA also is concerned about where the revenues would go, he said.
"We'd rather see a direct fee or tax," he said.
If a cap-and-trade system is used, all of the allowances should be allocated, rather than auctioned, at least in the beginning, he said. Then, the auction process could "grow at a pace that ensures protections for consumers," he said.
"We think it's extremely important that any climate bill isn't a tax collection bill," and that any auction revenues stay within the energy communities, said Kuhn. Price collars should be built into the auction system, "so the price doesn't fluctuate wildly to the benefit of traders," he said. EEI has endorsed a set of principles for climate change legislation that calls for half the emissions allowances to be allocated, and the other half auctioned. Gradually, the allocated allowances would be scaled back, he said.
How to handle allocations may be the biggest issue in the debate over designing a cap-and-trade program, Kuhn said. He agreed with Crisson that it will be important to avoid rapidly escalating electricity prices, which would cause a backlash by customers.
Marty Rosenberg, editor in chief of EnergyBiz Magazine, asked English whether he thinks Congress understands the issues involved.
"I don't think they get it," English replied. "I don't think they've focused on it. That's scary, when you realize how short a time we have. If we are going to have a strong climate change bill, that will severely limit the options available to us. Some time during the next decade, we will see brownouts and blackouts in some areas," he said. "We will see large price increases. I don't think the public is prepared for that."
Some people think their bills will go down because of the new emphasis on renewable resources such as wind and solar power, and there is a perception that "the wind and sun are free," English said.
On the contrary, he predicted, "We're going to see rates go up very steeply."
"We need time to inform consumers of what is coming because I don't think they have a clue," Crisson said.
One thing is certain. Change is coming. We can try to steer that change by utilizing our network and our ideas about altering the way everyone uses energy, or, as the article below implies, we can all just prepare to pay a lot more to keep doing things the way we have for the last one hundred years. I know which choice makes the most sense. I hope you agree...
The next few years will be exciting for people in the electric utility business, as utilities struggle to decarbonize their portfolios and as consumers struggle with rising energy bills, a panel of CEOs agreed yesterday at an energy conference in Washington, D.C.
"If you're not up for an exciting time, you're in the wrong business," said APPA President and CEO Mark Crisson. The next decade or so will be a transition period that will make the difference as to what the electricity sector will look like 40 years from now, he said.
"The next five or 10 years will be exciting," agreed Richard Kelly, president, CEO and chairman of Xcel Energy.
"It will be interesting to see how we can decarbonize electricity over the next couple of decades," said Hank Courtright, senior vice president of the Electric Power Research Institute.
"It may be more than exciting," said Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. "There many be moments of sheer terror."
The electricity sector faces Herculean challenges, said Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute. "How to build transmission lines that will cost billions?" he asked. "How are you gong to reduce carbon emissions 80% by 2050?" he said, calling climate change "the mother of all issues."
They spoke at the EnergyBiz Leadership Forum, a two-day conference sponsored by EnergyBiz Magazine, USA Today, Energy Central, Oracle Utilities and several other companies.
"We've only got two objectives: to make sure consumers have enough power, and make sure they can afford it," English said. But both of those goals look increasingly hard to carry out, he said. Even with multibillion-dollar annual investments in carbon capture and storage technology, 2020 is the earliest anyone can expect CCS to be operable, he said. Until then, and perhaps beyond, utilities have to eliminate coal as a choice for new power plants, because Congress is bound to pass legislation soon that will make coal-fired power much more expensive, he said.
"We are removing our primary fuel of choice for the last 20 years," English said. "How in the world are we going to get through this?"
On climate change, APPA "would like to see the right bill" come out of Congress sooner rather than later, Crisson said. In today's economic environment, Congress is likely to be more sensitive to consumers' concerns, he said.
"We think it's important to minimize the impact on the consumer," Crisson said. That is why APPA is opposed to a proposal in the Obama administration's budget that calls for the federal government to auction off carbon emission allowances to the highest bidder. Under that proposal, the government would sell 100% of the allowances.
"We don't like this approach at all," said Crisson. "We think a cap-and-trade system is a thinly veiled tax and we have concerns around auctions," he said. One of those concerns is that prices may be volatile. Another is how the market could influence the auction process. APPA also is concerned about where the revenues would go, he said.
"We'd rather see a direct fee or tax," he said.
If a cap-and-trade system is used, all of the allowances should be allocated, rather than auctioned, at least in the beginning, he said. Then, the auction process could "grow at a pace that ensures protections for consumers," he said.
"We think it's extremely important that any climate bill isn't a tax collection bill," and that any auction revenues stay within the energy communities, said Kuhn. Price collars should be built into the auction system, "so the price doesn't fluctuate wildly to the benefit of traders," he said. EEI has endorsed a set of principles for climate change legislation that calls for half the emissions allowances to be allocated, and the other half auctioned. Gradually, the allocated allowances would be scaled back, he said.
How to handle allocations may be the biggest issue in the debate over designing a cap-and-trade program, Kuhn said. He agreed with Crisson that it will be important to avoid rapidly escalating electricity prices, which would cause a backlash by customers.
Marty Rosenberg, editor in chief of EnergyBiz Magazine, asked English whether he thinks Congress understands the issues involved.
"I don't think they get it," English replied. "I don't think they've focused on it. That's scary, when you realize how short a time we have. If we are going to have a strong climate change bill, that will severely limit the options available to us. Some time during the next decade, we will see brownouts and blackouts in some areas," he said. "We will see large price increases. I don't think the public is prepared for that."
Some people think their bills will go down because of the new emphasis on renewable resources such as wind and solar power, and there is a perception that "the wind and sun are free," English said.
On the contrary, he predicted, "We're going to see rates go up very steeply."
"We need time to inform consumers of what is coming because I don't think they have a clue," Crisson said.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Electric Power Version 2.0
This post is a bit technical and likely of little interest to most of our customers, but we thought some of you might like to understand a bit more about smart grids and how they might work. Most local folks would be surprised to learn just how deeply involved the team at Glasgow EPB is in the work to change everything about how electricity is generated, distributed, and consumed. So, here goes...
CONCEPT
We owe much of our prosperity over the last century to our discovery of electricity and the ways to generate, transmit, and use it to perform work. However, it turns out that nearly every method we devised to generate electricity has also generated problems with our environment and our weather. Perhaps it is time to upgrade electricity to release 2.0 and give it a new name, infotricity.
Infotricity is a product we have been experimenting with in Glasgow, Kentucky for many years. It is derived by combining the regular flow of electricity (think of it as the inorganic chemistry) with a flow of information which we know as the internet (think of it as sunlight), which results in a new product, infotricity (think of it as organic life). This is a virtual solution, not one where the actual wires are twisted together. Rather, it is a philosophy that all electric power delivery should be accompanied by a robust broadband connection which provides the intelligence for the workhorse. Once electric current is combined with, and controlled by, the river of bits, our theory is that the sum is much greater than the individual parts. If we are correct, then infotricity is to electricity as blood is to water, as a symphony is to a metronome, or as a summer breeze is to an air compressor. Infotricity is nearly organic.
THE TROUBLE WITH ELECTRICITY
Electricity is infinitely strong, but the resources we use to generate it are clearly finite and diminishing. Electricity is also infinitely mindless and clearly inorganic. If you come up with a way to generate an electromotive force, give that force a conductor, and connect that conductor to a load, and electric current will flow into that load and work will be accomplished until one of those elements is removed.
So, since electricity is unable to restrain itself from doing work until its fuel source is exhausted or the conductor is cut, we have turned the job of controlling it over to a number of equally dumb devices, mainly thermostats and timers. These guys are not in the mensa club either, yet we have entrusted them with making all the decisions about how we use billions of dollars worth of electricity each day. Further, they get to decide how much coal we burn, how much enriched uranium we need, how much water is released from hundreds of hydroelectric plants, and how much natural gas we burn to make electric power. Even though the electric bill comes to you and me, the decisions on how much energy bought were made by a $30 thermostat on your wall and a whole bunch of its $9 cousins in all of your other home appliances. And here is the real problem with that; these guys never talk to each other.
IT’S A CYCLICAL THING.
Since these thermostats and timers never talk to each other, one might then assume that they would then command the flow of electric power in a totally random and chaotic fashion which, in turn, would produce a demand for electric power in such a diverse pattern that the summation of all electric loads in a home, plotted against time, would produce a relatively flat horizontal line. But that is not the case. Instead, left on their own, these devices conspire to produce a demand for electric power which is rhythmic and tuned. In fact, an average day of electric power consumption for your home likely looks a lot like a simple sine wave. Surprisingly, there is a geometry to this chaos.
Does that mean that electricity is alive? Hardly. Does that mean it has intelligence? Absolutely not. However it does mean that our circadian rhythm has a great deal to do with our home’s use of electric power also having a circadian rhythm of its own. It means that those thermostats in your home are responding to the residents, the temperature and to the time of day by acting totally on their own. The result is a demand shape that is shaped like a sine wave, and that is very problematic. And it gets worse.
IT’S ALSO A FRACTAL THING.
It turns out that, much like in nature where a microscopic examination of a leaf reveals tree and branch structures that are a miniature copy of the totality of the tree, the sine wave shape of energy usage at your home is similar to the shape of total daily energy usage on your street. This energy usage is nearly identical to the usage for your community, and that shape is the same as that of the total energy demand on the utility that serves your home. Hundreds of millions of dumb thermostats somehow, without talking to each other, conspire to produce a sine wave shape for the total daily energy consumption of North America. For example, the largest public utility in our country, TVA, has a daily load shape that looks exactly like the simple sine wave previously described for a single house.
Fractal geometry is at work here, and the result is that we have a very high demand for energy, which results in large amounts of coal being thrown in the fire to produce the energy needed to meet that peak, which only lasts a few hours per day. This is another huge issue, because it is far more efficient to operate generation in the sweet spot of each generator’s efficiency curve twenty four hours a day, instead of trying to force them to follow this sine wave rhythm. So, what we really need here is some chaos. We need to de-tune this circadian rhythm and flatten out the load shape.
THE THEORY OF INFOTRICITY
In each of our bodies, fifty trillion cells live in harmony sharing energy, information, and purpose. They are united by a robust communications network and they are organized by a spectacular piece of software running on a powerful processor carried between our ears. In 2009 is it not possible to use a broadband network and some slightly less complicated software to convince twelve million motors and appliances within a region like the one served by TVA to live in similar harmony? If we replace the electricity, which powers those appliances today, with infotricity; if we replace water with blood, then we should be able to enjoy a symphony instead of the rhythmic ticking of the metronome.
BUILDING A BETTER SINE WAVE.
Each time slice of the daily demand curve for TVA is made up of two hundred eighteen blocks representing the energy demand from each of TVA’s distributor utilities and the other directly served industrial customers. Those blocks are made up of the nine million smaller blocks, which represent the individual homes and businesses that connect to the distributors. Finally, each of those nine million blocks is made up of the discreet loads; the appliances, motors, heaters, and lighting loads, which live in each of our homes and businesses. It is the chance stacking of each of those blocks that adds up to create each point along the sine wave shape of our daily demand curve.
The daily infotricity demand curve could be shaped differently, with much lower peaks and more shallow valleys, resulting in dramatic reduction in the amount of generation necessary at the hottest and coldest parts of the day and the virtual elimination of the most expensive and least efficient generation sources. A broadband network and some very good software would make this possible.
While today’s electric power demand curve is established by the cadre of deaf and dumb thermostats and timers, the infotricity demand curve would be sculpted by fully conversant software and telecommunications. Each of the discreet loads could be assigned an IP address. Each IP address could, in turn, be assigned a geometric form, a polygon. Then, all the software would have to do is organize the polygons like the pieces of a puzzle, into a daily demand curve that has a lower amplitude than the wave we experience today wherein none of the loads are controlled.
Of course, this would be far from simple. The music for this symphony could not be written overnight, but today’s high speed telecommunications and processors seem to have plenty of capacity to make the calculations and deliver the messages. Surely we can also assume that the same folks who write software and applications like iGoogle and Google Earth can also pull off Electricity 2.0.
HERE IS HOW IT MIGHT WORK.
Using historic energy consumption information for each meter combined with historic weather and calendar data, an algorithm could be developed for predicting the anticipated load shape on a day-ahead basis for each meter. Once robust broadband and IP based thermostats, appliance controls, and water heaters are installed to the home or business, and an inventory of the individual loads and the associated predictable usage information and other thermodynamic data about the location are collected, the software could start ascribing a two-dimensional model of each discreet load.
As mentioned above, the two dimensional models could be described as polygons, with the height equal to the projected load in watts and the base equal to the anticipated run time. Of course, the run-time would also have a certain amount of flexibility depending on the thermodynamics of the home, the habits of the residents, and the efficiency of the appliance. For example, the polygon ascribed to a water heater would not be simply the wattage of the heating elements and the length of time necessary to fully heat the volume of water in the tank. The polygon would be described by the wattage and time necessary to warm the water from its present temperature to the target temperature at the time predicted by the resident’s next likely need for the hot water. Obviously the same would be true for the HVAC needs of the location. It is assumed that the residents would offer a certain bandwidth of acceptable temperature for the air in the location, and that this acceptable bandwidth would also need to be recognized by the operating software. This would allow flexibility in the dimensions of the polygon ascribed to the HVAC load for the location. Thus, the software assembling the puzzle pieces would also have the option of re-sizing the polygons to make them fit.
It is the complicated nature of the variables and the need for IP based temperature sensors, and other IP based controls necessary to predict the need for energy, that makes it reasonable to assume that very high capacity broadband networks will be required for an organic smart grid. Further, it is clear that an exceedingly complex piece of software to operate over that network and connect generation plant and end user devices will be required for the creation of infotricity. The transactions described here are far from simple command and control conversations, rather, infotricity delivery and the endless number of calculations necessary to make it perform organically will approach the complexity of a living organism.
Once data and algorithms are developed that result in the definition of a polygon for all of these discreet loads, the software would be tasked with assembling those polygon puzzle pieces into a daily load shape. This shape would likely still be a sine wave, but one which is dramatically dampened, as the individual fractals that support it are each detuned and scattered.
Each load would communicate its status and its need to operate via an IP address through the broadband network to the control software. At the same time, the software would be studying the weather and the predicted load shape for the address. Then, its job would be to organize the loads into a shape which is flatter than the one predicted. As this is done for individual addresses, the software would also predict the new controlled load shape for the individual home and all of the homes at the various fractal levels; the street, the town, the region, and the utility universe, attempting to arrange the new sine wave peaks to occur at different times so that the load shape for each fractal area is as flat as possible. This is how an organically modeled infotricity network might function. Obviously, this is a daunting task, but impossible? Not likely.
LIVING BETTER WITH INFOTRICITY
For the first one hundred years of our utilization of electric power, the work done by electricity had no understanding of the source or limitations of the energy. To a large extent, neither did we, the consumers of the work and the designers of the electric power networks. Electricity 1.0 was inorganic and we allowed unsophisticated devices to decide how high our peak demands were. We looked at those peaks as impossible to change. In fact, we established rates and growth policies that added to their height, and we simply burned more coal and natural gas to meet them.
Infotricity (Electricity 2.0) could forever change this unwieldy and inefficient way of accomplishing our work. The robust broadband networks are available. The IP addressable thermostats, controllers, sensors, and appliances are within our reach. The software can be written. Sophisticated interfaces that will help us all visualize our infotricity usage are being written, and we will be able to get them on our computer screens, television screens, and wall displays.
Where the electricity network has been built in huge rectangular blocks that are ill-fitted to provide power for sine wave shaped demand, the infotricity network will assemble demand to closely match the output of our cleanest and most efficient generation units. When more wind power is available, the infotricity network will maximize demand when the wind output is available. When electric vehicle production grows, the infotricity network will recognize these new loads and assign them polygons of capacity which will fit within the targeted daily load shape.
Clearly, some of this discussion is theoretical. Telecommunications and technology can no doubt reduce peak demand, but just how much is not known. We can visualize discreet loads as polygons, but can software be designed to assign those polygons to run times in anything like the way our circulatory system distributes oxygen to vital organs? If not, how close can we get?
It seems plausible that we can make dramatic improvements. Such improvements might mean that nearly all of our least efficient generation sources, combustion turbines that burn large amounts of precious natural gas, might be moth balled. If the software is just a little bit better than that, then we can start retiring some of the oldest and dirtiest coal fired plants. By the time we get to Electricity 3.0, maybe we will be smart enough to actually start fueling our total needs with nuclear power, and the remainder with totally renewable resources like hydroelectric power, wind power, geothermal power, and biomass power. Perhaps infotricity will power a totally sustainable way of life for us all.
Is anyone ready to write that software? If so, let’s call it Sunshine, because inorganic chemistry plus sunlight equals organic chemistry, and we certainly need some new life around here.
CONCEPT
We owe much of our prosperity over the last century to our discovery of electricity and the ways to generate, transmit, and use it to perform work. However, it turns out that nearly every method we devised to generate electricity has also generated problems with our environment and our weather. Perhaps it is time to upgrade electricity to release 2.0 and give it a new name, infotricity.
Infotricity is a product we have been experimenting with in Glasgow, Kentucky for many years. It is derived by combining the regular flow of electricity (think of it as the inorganic chemistry) with a flow of information which we know as the internet (think of it as sunlight), which results in a new product, infotricity (think of it as organic life). This is a virtual solution, not one where the actual wires are twisted together. Rather, it is a philosophy that all electric power delivery should be accompanied by a robust broadband connection which provides the intelligence for the workhorse. Once electric current is combined with, and controlled by, the river of bits, our theory is that the sum is much greater than the individual parts. If we are correct, then infotricity is to electricity as blood is to water, as a symphony is to a metronome, or as a summer breeze is to an air compressor. Infotricity is nearly organic.
THE TROUBLE WITH ELECTRICITY
Electricity is infinitely strong, but the resources we use to generate it are clearly finite and diminishing. Electricity is also infinitely mindless and clearly inorganic. If you come up with a way to generate an electromotive force, give that force a conductor, and connect that conductor to a load, and electric current will flow into that load and work will be accomplished until one of those elements is removed.
So, since electricity is unable to restrain itself from doing work until its fuel source is exhausted or the conductor is cut, we have turned the job of controlling it over to a number of equally dumb devices, mainly thermostats and timers. These guys are not in the mensa club either, yet we have entrusted them with making all the decisions about how we use billions of dollars worth of electricity each day. Further, they get to decide how much coal we burn, how much enriched uranium we need, how much water is released from hundreds of hydroelectric plants, and how much natural gas we burn to make electric power. Even though the electric bill comes to you and me, the decisions on how much energy bought were made by a $30 thermostat on your wall and a whole bunch of its $9 cousins in all of your other home appliances. And here is the real problem with that; these guys never talk to each other.
IT’S A CYCLICAL THING.
Since these thermostats and timers never talk to each other, one might then assume that they would then command the flow of electric power in a totally random and chaotic fashion which, in turn, would produce a demand for electric power in such a diverse pattern that the summation of all electric loads in a home, plotted against time, would produce a relatively flat horizontal line. But that is not the case. Instead, left on their own, these devices conspire to produce a demand for electric power which is rhythmic and tuned. In fact, an average day of electric power consumption for your home likely looks a lot like a simple sine wave. Surprisingly, there is a geometry to this chaos.
Does that mean that electricity is alive? Hardly. Does that mean it has intelligence? Absolutely not. However it does mean that our circadian rhythm has a great deal to do with our home’s use of electric power also having a circadian rhythm of its own. It means that those thermostats in your home are responding to the residents, the temperature and to the time of day by acting totally on their own. The result is a demand shape that is shaped like a sine wave, and that is very problematic. And it gets worse.
IT’S ALSO A FRACTAL THING.
It turns out that, much like in nature where a microscopic examination of a leaf reveals tree and branch structures that are a miniature copy of the totality of the tree, the sine wave shape of energy usage at your home is similar to the shape of total daily energy usage on your street. This energy usage is nearly identical to the usage for your community, and that shape is the same as that of the total energy demand on the utility that serves your home. Hundreds of millions of dumb thermostats somehow, without talking to each other, conspire to produce a sine wave shape for the total daily energy consumption of North America. For example, the largest public utility in our country, TVA, has a daily load shape that looks exactly like the simple sine wave previously described for a single house.
Fractal geometry is at work here, and the result is that we have a very high demand for energy, which results in large amounts of coal being thrown in the fire to produce the energy needed to meet that peak, which only lasts a few hours per day. This is another huge issue, because it is far more efficient to operate generation in the sweet spot of each generator’s efficiency curve twenty four hours a day, instead of trying to force them to follow this sine wave rhythm. So, what we really need here is some chaos. We need to de-tune this circadian rhythm and flatten out the load shape.
THE THEORY OF INFOTRICITY
In each of our bodies, fifty trillion cells live in harmony sharing energy, information, and purpose. They are united by a robust communications network and they are organized by a spectacular piece of software running on a powerful processor carried between our ears. In 2009 is it not possible to use a broadband network and some slightly less complicated software to convince twelve million motors and appliances within a region like the one served by TVA to live in similar harmony? If we replace the electricity, which powers those appliances today, with infotricity; if we replace water with blood, then we should be able to enjoy a symphony instead of the rhythmic ticking of the metronome.
BUILDING A BETTER SINE WAVE.
Each time slice of the daily demand curve for TVA is made up of two hundred eighteen blocks representing the energy demand from each of TVA’s distributor utilities and the other directly served industrial customers. Those blocks are made up of the nine million smaller blocks, which represent the individual homes and businesses that connect to the distributors. Finally, each of those nine million blocks is made up of the discreet loads; the appliances, motors, heaters, and lighting loads, which live in each of our homes and businesses. It is the chance stacking of each of those blocks that adds up to create each point along the sine wave shape of our daily demand curve.
The daily infotricity demand curve could be shaped differently, with much lower peaks and more shallow valleys, resulting in dramatic reduction in the amount of generation necessary at the hottest and coldest parts of the day and the virtual elimination of the most expensive and least efficient generation sources. A broadband network and some very good software would make this possible.
While today’s electric power demand curve is established by the cadre of deaf and dumb thermostats and timers, the infotricity demand curve would be sculpted by fully conversant software and telecommunications. Each of the discreet loads could be assigned an IP address. Each IP address could, in turn, be assigned a geometric form, a polygon. Then, all the software would have to do is organize the polygons like the pieces of a puzzle, into a daily demand curve that has a lower amplitude than the wave we experience today wherein none of the loads are controlled.
Of course, this would be far from simple. The music for this symphony could not be written overnight, but today’s high speed telecommunications and processors seem to have plenty of capacity to make the calculations and deliver the messages. Surely we can also assume that the same folks who write software and applications like iGoogle and Google Earth can also pull off Electricity 2.0.
HERE IS HOW IT MIGHT WORK.
Using historic energy consumption information for each meter combined with historic weather and calendar data, an algorithm could be developed for predicting the anticipated load shape on a day-ahead basis for each meter. Once robust broadband and IP based thermostats, appliance controls, and water heaters are installed to the home or business, and an inventory of the individual loads and the associated predictable usage information and other thermodynamic data about the location are collected, the software could start ascribing a two-dimensional model of each discreet load.
As mentioned above, the two dimensional models could be described as polygons, with the height equal to the projected load in watts and the base equal to the anticipated run time. Of course, the run-time would also have a certain amount of flexibility depending on the thermodynamics of the home, the habits of the residents, and the efficiency of the appliance. For example, the polygon ascribed to a water heater would not be simply the wattage of the heating elements and the length of time necessary to fully heat the volume of water in the tank. The polygon would be described by the wattage and time necessary to warm the water from its present temperature to the target temperature at the time predicted by the resident’s next likely need for the hot water. Obviously the same would be true for the HVAC needs of the location. It is assumed that the residents would offer a certain bandwidth of acceptable temperature for the air in the location, and that this acceptable bandwidth would also need to be recognized by the operating software. This would allow flexibility in the dimensions of the polygon ascribed to the HVAC load for the location. Thus, the software assembling the puzzle pieces would also have the option of re-sizing the polygons to make them fit.
It is the complicated nature of the variables and the need for IP based temperature sensors, and other IP based controls necessary to predict the need for energy, that makes it reasonable to assume that very high capacity broadband networks will be required for an organic smart grid. Further, it is clear that an exceedingly complex piece of software to operate over that network and connect generation plant and end user devices will be required for the creation of infotricity. The transactions described here are far from simple command and control conversations, rather, infotricity delivery and the endless number of calculations necessary to make it perform organically will approach the complexity of a living organism.
Once data and algorithms are developed that result in the definition of a polygon for all of these discreet loads, the software would be tasked with assembling those polygon puzzle pieces into a daily load shape. This shape would likely still be a sine wave, but one which is dramatically dampened, as the individual fractals that support it are each detuned and scattered.
Each load would communicate its status and its need to operate via an IP address through the broadband network to the control software. At the same time, the software would be studying the weather and the predicted load shape for the address. Then, its job would be to organize the loads into a shape which is flatter than the one predicted. As this is done for individual addresses, the software would also predict the new controlled load shape for the individual home and all of the homes at the various fractal levels; the street, the town, the region, and the utility universe, attempting to arrange the new sine wave peaks to occur at different times so that the load shape for each fractal area is as flat as possible. This is how an organically modeled infotricity network might function. Obviously, this is a daunting task, but impossible? Not likely.
LIVING BETTER WITH INFOTRICITY
For the first one hundred years of our utilization of electric power, the work done by electricity had no understanding of the source or limitations of the energy. To a large extent, neither did we, the consumers of the work and the designers of the electric power networks. Electricity 1.0 was inorganic and we allowed unsophisticated devices to decide how high our peak demands were. We looked at those peaks as impossible to change. In fact, we established rates and growth policies that added to their height, and we simply burned more coal and natural gas to meet them.
Infotricity (Electricity 2.0) could forever change this unwieldy and inefficient way of accomplishing our work. The robust broadband networks are available. The IP addressable thermostats, controllers, sensors, and appliances are within our reach. The software can be written. Sophisticated interfaces that will help us all visualize our infotricity usage are being written, and we will be able to get them on our computer screens, television screens, and wall displays.
Where the electricity network has been built in huge rectangular blocks that are ill-fitted to provide power for sine wave shaped demand, the infotricity network will assemble demand to closely match the output of our cleanest and most efficient generation units. When more wind power is available, the infotricity network will maximize demand when the wind output is available. When electric vehicle production grows, the infotricity network will recognize these new loads and assign them polygons of capacity which will fit within the targeted daily load shape.
Clearly, some of this discussion is theoretical. Telecommunications and technology can no doubt reduce peak demand, but just how much is not known. We can visualize discreet loads as polygons, but can software be designed to assign those polygons to run times in anything like the way our circulatory system distributes oxygen to vital organs? If not, how close can we get?
It seems plausible that we can make dramatic improvements. Such improvements might mean that nearly all of our least efficient generation sources, combustion turbines that burn large amounts of precious natural gas, might be moth balled. If the software is just a little bit better than that, then we can start retiring some of the oldest and dirtiest coal fired plants. By the time we get to Electricity 3.0, maybe we will be smart enough to actually start fueling our total needs with nuclear power, and the remainder with totally renewable resources like hydroelectric power, wind power, geothermal power, and biomass power. Perhaps infotricity will power a totally sustainable way of life for us all.
Is anyone ready to write that software? If so, let’s call it Sunshine, because inorganic chemistry plus sunlight equals organic chemistry, and we certainly need some new life around here.
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Thursday, February 26, 2009
VOD, Maybe the Coolest New Toy Yet
It took us much longer than we anticipated, but Video On Demand (VOD) is now working on our cable system and should be available to nearly everyone who is taking the digital tier of service (sorry, we still have a few days to work on getting it to work to our Fiber To The Home customers). VOD is chock full of really amazing technology, and, for the most part, the best way for you to come to understand it is to simply start playing with it! Go to your remote and press the "VOD" button if it has one, or simply go to channel 1 and hit enter. Either way, you go to the VOD menu screen and things are pretty intuitive from there.
There is a lot of free content and simply reading the screen lets you know when you are about to view something free versus buying a movie. Don't worry one bit about breaking it! You are not going to do that and don't worry about buying something by accident - the menu prompts you at least twice before you finally confirm your purchase of a movie, so accidents simply should not happen.
Once you choose to watch something on VOD, that movie or event appear on your screen under the menu heading "My Rentals" and they stay there for 24 hours. While in there you can pause, rewind, and replay them as much as you like. What is really, really cool is that, once you have an event in your My Rentals folder, you can watch the movie or event on any digital converter in your house! You can start watching something on the television in your den and then go the bedroom to pick up where you left off and finish watching it there! This is so cool!
Now, all of the content that should be available is not yet populated on our VOD server. I can assure you we are pounding on the programming vendors as hard as humanly possible, but they often ignore us because of our diminutive size. When this is all done, if you are a subscriber to a premium channel like HBO, Showtime, etc., you will also get free content on your personal VOD menu from those services which will be free with your purchase of the premium channel. Unfortunately, this feature is not yet populated. But there is already tons of other programming on there. Movies, both very old and very new, are the main feature on VOD, but there is a lot more stuff. For example, most of the programming on PBS Sprout is also available on the VOD menu. That means if you have a son or daughter who is addicted to Bob the Builder or Thomas the Train (like my grand daughter is), you don't have to record the episodes, they are simply available at the push of a VOD button on your remote!
We will be putting together some long form demonstrations of the VOD system to play on Cable6 and we may be holding EPBU classes to demonstrate it as well, but, really, you can just go to it and start playing. You may even discover features that we did not even know about. It is yours to enjoy Glasgow!
There is a lot of free content and simply reading the screen lets you know when you are about to view something free versus buying a movie. Don't worry one bit about breaking it! You are not going to do that and don't worry about buying something by accident - the menu prompts you at least twice before you finally confirm your purchase of a movie, so accidents simply should not happen.
Once you choose to watch something on VOD, that movie or event appear on your screen under the menu heading "My Rentals" and they stay there for 24 hours. While in there you can pause, rewind, and replay them as much as you like. What is really, really cool is that, once you have an event in your My Rentals folder, you can watch the movie or event on any digital converter in your house! You can start watching something on the television in your den and then go the bedroom to pick up where you left off and finish watching it there! This is so cool!
Now, all of the content that should be available is not yet populated on our VOD server. I can assure you we are pounding on the programming vendors as hard as humanly possible, but they often ignore us because of our diminutive size. When this is all done, if you are a subscriber to a premium channel like HBO, Showtime, etc., you will also get free content on your personal VOD menu from those services which will be free with your purchase of the premium channel. Unfortunately, this feature is not yet populated. But there is already tons of other programming on there. Movies, both very old and very new, are the main feature on VOD, but there is a lot more stuff. For example, most of the programming on PBS Sprout is also available on the VOD menu. That means if you have a son or daughter who is addicted to Bob the Builder or Thomas the Train (like my grand daughter is), you don't have to record the episodes, they are simply available at the push of a VOD button on your remote!
We will be putting together some long form demonstrations of the VOD system to play on Cable6 and we may be holding EPBU classes to demonstrate it as well, but, really, you can just go to it and start playing. You may even discover features that we did not even know about. It is yours to enjoy Glasgow!
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Welcome Home Dan Miller!
One strange twist of our recent realignment of our broadcast channels is that we are getting to return an old friend, WSMV, to our lineup on channel 9! This move was completed this morning as the work on our tower was finally completed. For those of you with our digital service and the i-Guide that goes along with it, we hope that WSMV information will be appearing there very soon. The same goes for the old scrolling guide on channel 36. Both should start displaying WSMV on channel 9 very soon.
Dan Miller has been a fixture on WSMV for a very long time. Back in the 80's he disappeared for a while when he agreed to be Pat Sajak's sidekick on his short-lived late night show, but pretty soon he was back where he was supposed to be, at WSMV, as the news anchor there. Seeing him again makes me feel like everything is going to be alright with the world. I hope he has the same effect on you. Of course in 2009 there are multiple ways for you to get your Dan Miller fix. Of course you can now watch him on our channel 9, but you can also read his thoughts on his blog at this link.
As always, thanks for the patience you have shown as we worked to make this change. It was supposed to happen on January 1, but the extensive work that was necessary on the antenna tower combined with some particularly nasty weather to put us a couple of months behind. We hope you now enjoy this new programming choice.
Dan Miller has been a fixture on WSMV for a very long time. Back in the 80's he disappeared for a while when he agreed to be Pat Sajak's sidekick on his short-lived late night show, but pretty soon he was back where he was supposed to be, at WSMV, as the news anchor there. Seeing him again makes me feel like everything is going to be alright with the world. I hope he has the same effect on you. Of course in 2009 there are multiple ways for you to get your Dan Miller fix. Of course you can now watch him on our channel 9, but you can also read his thoughts on his blog at this link.
As always, thanks for the patience you have shown as we worked to make this change. It was supposed to happen on January 1, but the extensive work that was necessary on the antenna tower combined with some particularly nasty weather to put us a couple of months behind. We hope you now enjoy this new programming choice.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Glasgow Gets Smart Grid First
Of late it has been impossible to avoid the term "smart grid." If you watched to Super Bowl, you saw this commercial from GE which features the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz touting the benefits of the smart grid. Additionally, over the las few days nearly every print and on-line publication has had articles like this one about Google's plans relative to managing your electric power consumption.
The Google article should be particularly interesting to us in Glasgow, because we have been promoting this very idea for nearly twenty years. While much of the smart grid discussion revolves around "vaporware" (hardware that is promoted as if you could just buy it off the shelf while, in reality, it does not actually exist), Glasgow's combination of a robust broadband network, a growing number of internet-based electric meters, a growing ZigBee wireless mesh network, and our municipally owned electric power network combine to make up the major components of the smart grid a reality here in Glasgow.
About all that we still need before we can actually start offering smart grid products and services to our customers in Glasgow is a good internet addressable thermostat, a good internet addressable water heater switch, and some very complicated software to make all of these devices work in concert to lower the electric power demand of each individual home. We are not only working on finding these necessary parts, we are also hoping to establish Glasgow as the center of the smart grid world and, hopefully, even convince manufacturers of these devices to come to Glasgow, hire local people, and build the devices in the same community that stepped forward to help develop the technology so many years ago. It is a big dream for sure, but, well, building a municipally owned broadband network was a similarly big dream back in 1988 . . . and we made that one come true!
Want to know how to make your home ready to take advantage of these new devices and the corresponding savings? Well, if your water heater fails over the next few months, you ought to replace it with a high efficiency ELECTRIC water heater. If you are looking to upgrade you heating and air conditioning system, talk to a local HVAC contractor about replacing your old unit with a modern high SEER heat pump. The smart grid is designed to control electric appliances and offer amazing incentives for allowing them to be controlled by the utility. So long as your major appliances are fired by natural gas, you will not be able to participate in the brave new smart grid world.
Once you have the right combination of electric appliances, we hope to be contacting you soon to seek your participation in one of the most important scientific explorations ever. We will be seeking to learn how far customers will be willing to allow the utility to control the temperature of their home and their hot water. At the same time, we will be determining if our long-held theory is correct; we believe that it is possible to use broadband control of major home appliances to provide new electric power generation capacity without burning one additional chunk of coal or building a new nuclear power plant. We think new capacity can be gained by teaching our appliances to use less energy! I hope you will join us in this brave experiment.
The Google article should be particularly interesting to us in Glasgow, because we have been promoting this very idea for nearly twenty years. While much of the smart grid discussion revolves around "vaporware" (hardware that is promoted as if you could just buy it off the shelf while, in reality, it does not actually exist), Glasgow's combination of a robust broadband network, a growing number of internet-based electric meters, a growing ZigBee wireless mesh network, and our municipally owned electric power network combine to make up the major components of the smart grid a reality here in Glasgow.
About all that we still need before we can actually start offering smart grid products and services to our customers in Glasgow is a good internet addressable thermostat, a good internet addressable water heater switch, and some very complicated software to make all of these devices work in concert to lower the electric power demand of each individual home. We are not only working on finding these necessary parts, we are also hoping to establish Glasgow as the center of the smart grid world and, hopefully, even convince manufacturers of these devices to come to Glasgow, hire local people, and build the devices in the same community that stepped forward to help develop the technology so many years ago. It is a big dream for sure, but, well, building a municipally owned broadband network was a similarly big dream back in 1988 . . . and we made that one come true!
Want to know how to make your home ready to take advantage of these new devices and the corresponding savings? Well, if your water heater fails over the next few months, you ought to replace it with a high efficiency ELECTRIC water heater. If you are looking to upgrade you heating and air conditioning system, talk to a local HVAC contractor about replacing your old unit with a modern high SEER heat pump. The smart grid is designed to control electric appliances and offer amazing incentives for allowing them to be controlled by the utility. So long as your major appliances are fired by natural gas, you will not be able to participate in the brave new smart grid world.
Once you have the right combination of electric appliances, we hope to be contacting you soon to seek your participation in one of the most important scientific explorations ever. We will be seeking to learn how far customers will be willing to allow the utility to control the temperature of their home and their hot water. At the same time, we will be determining if our long-held theory is correct; we believe that it is possible to use broadband control of major home appliances to provide new electric power generation capacity without burning one additional chunk of coal or building a new nuclear power plant. We think new capacity can be gained by teaching our appliances to use less energy! I hope you will join us in this brave experiment.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Ice Storm of 09
Well, our lives have not been a bit boring over the last couple of days. How about yours? We spent the day Monday reviewing our disaster plans, fueling vehicles, agreeing on work schedules, stocking trucks, and preparing for the worst. Tuesday morning about 4:00 a.m., the freezing rain commenced and so did our troubles. As usual, no plan really survives contact with the enemy, and some of our plans fell apart, but for the most part everything went quite well.
As we sat in the dispatch center and monitored our substations, it was amazing to view the radar as Glasgow straddled the line between ice and rain. That played out just as it showed on radar as the northern half of our service area was very hard hit by ice and fallen trees, while the southern half escaped with very little damage to our networks. However, just to our north, east and west, our neighboring utilities have not been so lucky. As this is written there are over 62,000 customers of TVA distributors in Kentucky who are still without power. Conversely, there are none here in Glasgow. I would like to say that is because of our great planning, but there is also a large element of luck and geography that must be considered as well.
Still, everything did not go as we wished. Our biggest problem throughout the weather event was, and to some extent continues to be, our telephone connections to the outside world. Our telephone partner, Cinergy (now Norlight) uses a long haul fiber provider called Kentucky Data Link (KDL) and KDL suffered numerous cuts to their fiber lines due to down trees, poles, and simply ice thickness that damaged the cables. While this is not preventable, utilities strive to offset this danger by providing a number of redundant routes to serve an important network like the one serving all of our phone customers in Glasgow. We had been assured by our telephone partner that we were served by multiple redundant routes. However, they were not redundant enough and all of our telephone customers were off for about fourteen hours. We sincerely apologize for that outage and we are already looking to Norlight to rectify this situation.
Speaking of redundancy and diversity of network segments, we also purchase our internet connections to the outside world from more than one vendor so that all of our customers will not be down should one fail. One of those vendors was also KDL and, as a result, many of our internet customers were also without service when KDL’s network was damaged. Even today that connectivity has been up and down some, so, this is not totally over yet.
Finally, one good thing that has come from this event is that we have learned how to use Twitter to keep folks better informed of the status of Glasgow’s critical power and broadband networks. During this event alone some fifty new folks have become Twitter “followers” of Glasgow EPB by going to this site, setting up an account, and choosing to click the “follow” button to be updated when we post new information. We also learned how to have that information automatically appear on our www.glasgow-ky.com web page for those who do not want to jump on Twitter. The service is also capable of sending the information as a text message to your cell phone and we think that would be fantastic since you should be able to get these text messages even if your home has no electric power (so long as your cell phone battery is charged up).
So, that is where we stand after two days of extremely horrible winter weather. We survived better than most, we had some failures of technology, and we learned some new ways to serve our community better in the future. Here’s to hoping that spring is just around the corner!
As we sat in the dispatch center and monitored our substations, it was amazing to view the radar as Glasgow straddled the line between ice and rain. That played out just as it showed on radar as the northern half of our service area was very hard hit by ice and fallen trees, while the southern half escaped with very little damage to our networks. However, just to our north, east and west, our neighboring utilities have not been so lucky. As this is written there are over 62,000 customers of TVA distributors in Kentucky who are still without power. Conversely, there are none here in Glasgow. I would like to say that is because of our great planning, but there is also a large element of luck and geography that must be considered as well.
Still, everything did not go as we wished. Our biggest problem throughout the weather event was, and to some extent continues to be, our telephone connections to the outside world. Our telephone partner, Cinergy (now Norlight) uses a long haul fiber provider called Kentucky Data Link (KDL) and KDL suffered numerous cuts to their fiber lines due to down trees, poles, and simply ice thickness that damaged the cables. While this is not preventable, utilities strive to offset this danger by providing a number of redundant routes to serve an important network like the one serving all of our phone customers in Glasgow. We had been assured by our telephone partner that we were served by multiple redundant routes. However, they were not redundant enough and all of our telephone customers were off for about fourteen hours. We sincerely apologize for that outage and we are already looking to Norlight to rectify this situation.
Speaking of redundancy and diversity of network segments, we also purchase our internet connections to the outside world from more than one vendor so that all of our customers will not be down should one fail. One of those vendors was also KDL and, as a result, many of our internet customers were also without service when KDL’s network was damaged. Even today that connectivity has been up and down some, so, this is not totally over yet.
Finally, one good thing that has come from this event is that we have learned how to use Twitter to keep folks better informed of the status of Glasgow’s critical power and broadband networks. During this event alone some fifty new folks have become Twitter “followers” of Glasgow EPB by going to this site, setting up an account, and choosing to click the “follow” button to be updated when we post new information. We also learned how to have that information automatically appear on our www.glasgow-ky.com web page for those who do not want to jump on Twitter. The service is also capable of sending the information as a text message to your cell phone and we think that would be fantastic since you should be able to get these text messages even if your home has no electric power (so long as your cell phone battery is charged up).
So, that is where we stand after two days of extremely horrible winter weather. We survived better than most, we had some failures of technology, and we learned some new ways to serve our community better in the future. Here’s to hoping that spring is just around the corner!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Page Two
A few days ago I was shopping in a local business when I noticed some folks examining a smartly styled electric space heater. “This is the one Paul Harvey talks about,” one of the anxious shoppers remarked. “Yes,” replied a bystander, “it is supposed to keep the whole house warm and save you more than 50% on your electric bill.” Now that attracted my full attention. I had not heard Paul Harvey making this proclamation, but I was intrigued. The heater was handsome and it had some very cool looking lights and dials. It even had a remote control! However, when I spun it around to look at the UL label it clearly stated that it was a 1500 watt device. This was a $400, 1500 watt electric heater. Nearby were dozens of other 1500 watt electric heaters, and most of them were about $60, and I can assure you that both will do exactly the same thing. Sadly, no matter what Paul Harvey says, a 1500 watt heater is a 1500 watt heater, at least so far as the cost of operating it goes. I felt bad for the excited shoppers. I felt worse for the scores of folks who might have been romanced by the remote control and the flashing lights on the $400 unit, because they are going to be disappointed when they get their electric bill.
A 1500-watt electric heater, whether it cost $400 or $60, is going to consume 1.5 kWh of electric power each hour that it runs. At today’s inflated cost of electric power that translates into fifteen cents for each hour the heater is running. So, if you are trying to save money by turning back the thermostat on your central heat and using one of these space heaters for the room you spend most of your time in, just running the 1500 watt heater could cost more than $100 per month! If this is going to save you 50% on your heating bill, well, you would likely have to be maintaining the rest of your house at about 55 degrees or so. I hope you realize this is not likely to happen. I wish that was not the case, but the laws of thermodynamics are not alterable, even by a kindly old gentleman like Paul Harvey.
Clearly, folks are looking to believe in something that will give them some relief from the high cost of electricity. If it isn’t the Paul Harvey heater, then the attraction of the “Amish fireplace” must be the answer (sorry, but look closely at those full page advertisements as well . . . the Amish fireplace is just another 1500 watt electric heater). But the truth is there is no technology that is going to change the fact that electric energy is very expensive in 2009 and it is likely to climb even higher.
Why has this happened? Well, this scenario has been developing for several decades. To a large extent, energy is expensive today because it was too cheap for many years. Cheap electric power caused us all to use it carelessly. At our homes we have piled up electronic gear, televisions, computers, video game consoles, DVD players and other appliances use spiraling amounts of power. In our communities, we have demanded, and received, a steady progression of big box retail stores which demand staggering amounts of electric power. Regionally, we have invited, and welcomed many large industrial facilities that consume unbelievable volumes of electric power. For example, a new facility recently announced near Clarksville, Tennessee, will demand more electric power than five Glasgow’s! While all of these loads have drastically increased our net need for electricity, the cost of building and operating new power generation facilities has skyrocketed. So, our present cost of electric power is a direct descendent of our wishes. My mother used to warn me to “be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.” My mother was right. We wished for constant growth, and we got it. Now, the cost of electric power is demonstrating the folly of our old assumption that all growth is good.
It is also not just our history that is driving up the cost of electric power. Our present has a lot to do with it as well. Surely you have heard about TVA’s massive spill of coal ash from the Kingston Steam Plant into the Clinch River. The cost of cleaning up that mess will likely exceed a billion dollars, and every bit of that cost will wind up on our electric bills. Our Congress is also very likely to implement new restrictions on all coal burning power plants. While I am certainly in agreement that we must reduce the amount of CO2 we are dumping into our atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuel, there is no way to do this without adding additional cost to each kWh that we consume.
But there are some bright spots in our energy future. Suddenly we have a president who is extolling the virtues of converting our electric power delivery systems to “smart grids.” At the same time, TVA is now actually talking about the virtue of the “infotricity” network that we have been shouting about for twenty years. Perhaps the planets are lining up for us to finally be able to use our broadband network to change the way we use electric power, and that could result in us learning how to actually reduce the amount of power that needs to be generated. In time, this may actually reduce the cost of a kWh of electric power. But, in the short term, the cost of electricity is high and the consumption of a 1500 watt heater is going to be 1.5 kWh per hour . .n . and THAT is the rest of the story!
A 1500-watt electric heater, whether it cost $400 or $60, is going to consume 1.5 kWh of electric power each hour that it runs. At today’s inflated cost of electric power that translates into fifteen cents for each hour the heater is running. So, if you are trying to save money by turning back the thermostat on your central heat and using one of these space heaters for the room you spend most of your time in, just running the 1500 watt heater could cost more than $100 per month! If this is going to save you 50% on your heating bill, well, you would likely have to be maintaining the rest of your house at about 55 degrees or so. I hope you realize this is not likely to happen. I wish that was not the case, but the laws of thermodynamics are not alterable, even by a kindly old gentleman like Paul Harvey.
Clearly, folks are looking to believe in something that will give them some relief from the high cost of electricity. If it isn’t the Paul Harvey heater, then the attraction of the “Amish fireplace” must be the answer (sorry, but look closely at those full page advertisements as well . . . the Amish fireplace is just another 1500 watt electric heater). But the truth is there is no technology that is going to change the fact that electric energy is very expensive in 2009 and it is likely to climb even higher.
Why has this happened? Well, this scenario has been developing for several decades. To a large extent, energy is expensive today because it was too cheap for many years. Cheap electric power caused us all to use it carelessly. At our homes we have piled up electronic gear, televisions, computers, video game consoles, DVD players and other appliances use spiraling amounts of power. In our communities, we have demanded, and received, a steady progression of big box retail stores which demand staggering amounts of electric power. Regionally, we have invited, and welcomed many large industrial facilities that consume unbelievable volumes of electric power. For example, a new facility recently announced near Clarksville, Tennessee, will demand more electric power than five Glasgow’s! While all of these loads have drastically increased our net need for electricity, the cost of building and operating new power generation facilities has skyrocketed. So, our present cost of electric power is a direct descendent of our wishes. My mother used to warn me to “be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.” My mother was right. We wished for constant growth, and we got it. Now, the cost of electric power is demonstrating the folly of our old assumption that all growth is good.
It is also not just our history that is driving up the cost of electric power. Our present has a lot to do with it as well. Surely you have heard about TVA’s massive spill of coal ash from the Kingston Steam Plant into the Clinch River. The cost of cleaning up that mess will likely exceed a billion dollars, and every bit of that cost will wind up on our electric bills. Our Congress is also very likely to implement new restrictions on all coal burning power plants. While I am certainly in agreement that we must reduce the amount of CO2 we are dumping into our atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuel, there is no way to do this without adding additional cost to each kWh that we consume.
But there are some bright spots in our energy future. Suddenly we have a president who is extolling the virtues of converting our electric power delivery systems to “smart grids.” At the same time, TVA is now actually talking about the virtue of the “infotricity” network that we have been shouting about for twenty years. Perhaps the planets are lining up for us to finally be able to use our broadband network to change the way we use electric power, and that could result in us learning how to actually reduce the amount of power that needs to be generated. In time, this may actually reduce the cost of a kWh of electric power. But, in the short term, the cost of electricity is high and the consumption of a 1500 watt heater is going to be 1.5 kWh per hour . .n . and THAT is the rest of the story!
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