Want! Want!

[Griffin NoName]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9708468.stm

<sigh> looks like we have to wait 2-3 years

[Aggie]

One potential issue in the US: The most likely early adopters of the electric car will be California, and they are major power importers already.  BC Hydro has been installing smart meters here, and power bills have been jumping, because they are now bidding us against California during prime energy use times (we export hydroelectricity from this province, most years). Either shift your habits, or pay the price.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

One potential issue in the US: The most likely early adopters of the electric car will be California, and they are major power importers already.  BC Hydro has been installing smart meters here, and power bills have been jumping, because they are now bidding us against California during prime energy use times (we export hydroelectricity from this province, most years). Either shift your habits, or pay the price.

Power-trading is a commodity like anything else.  And smart meters are enabling that- what?

You actually believed the story (as told by the power companies) that the smart meter would benefit the consumer?

One of the things that makes this more palatable, though, are smart appliances-- especially ones that consume mass quantities of electricity--like clothes dryers and dishwashers (using the heat-dry cycle).  A smart appliance can be programmed to query the smart meter, and ask it what's the going rate-- and be told when the cheap rates begin (and end), and adjust their operating cycle accordingly.  So you put your clothes in your dryer as usual, you set it to start whenever the power goes cheap, and you ignore it until morning-- during the night sometime, it get's the "go ahead" and runs its full cycle at the cheaper rate.  Same for the automatic dishwasher-- load it up after supper, set it to run whenever, and next morning?  Dishes are done-- ran during the cheap-rate period in the wee hours of the morning.

You could even tell your appliances to not interfere with each other-- to keep the total load low, the dryer runs, while the dishwasher patiently waits for it's turn....

... lovely.

Now..... to coordinate with all your neighbors, to keep the total neighborhood demand low... let's see: Smith will start her's at 12am, and Jones' will get the 1am slot, and McAllen's get the 2am....

.... this is all possible with smart meters:  the power company knows the demand of each resident, and at what time, for how long too.

"Let's see:  it's 8'o'clock on Friday.  The Smedlaps always turn on their Jacuzzi at 8, better dial it up a notch for sector 1K2B....  and the Mendalls always cook a pizza at 9... and over at the O'Donnell's, their 11 kids fire up all 6 X-boxes at 10"

[Aggie]

I never believe any of those stories.

Ayuh, and there's speculation that it may not be impossible to hack the signals to tell exactly what's going on with other people in your neighbourhoods.  Burglary rings could have great fun with this.

I wonder what the power company would do if one stuck a Faraday cage around the meter/antenna? Or if 'squirrels' chewed the cables to the antenna?  Probably fine you for the former.

I wonder to what degree the hybrid-car factor will apply to smart appliances.... you too can save money on energy, but only if you pay more in the original purchase price than you're likely to recoup for many years, vs sticking with a more modest energy-efficient standard appliance.  The alternative for some appliances is to just buy a cheap manual timer to run things (although this isn't as easy in the case of high-use three-phase appliances).

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Yes, simple mechanical (manual) timers are easily adapted to most of the non-electronic appliances like dishwashers and electric clothes dryers.   

But the more modern appliances have digital controls, and if you remove power (as with a simple timer) when it's restored, the appliance starts up in idle mode... not gonna work.   You'd have to hack the inner workings somehow... voiding the warranty in the process.

I've even seen demonstrations of refrigerators that try to limit the power-useage during peak hours (refrigerators gobble up huge amounts of power-- not all at once, but they never stop.. and it adds up prodigiously).

What really gets me, though?  Is you put your heat-producing refrigerator inside your house-- then you use another "refrigerator" to remove that heat and all the rest-- the AC unit... wouldn't it make more sense, at least in the summer, to funnel some outside air across the refrigerator's coils, and dump the now hotter air back outside?  Yes... yes it would.. but nobody bothers with that...

... meh.

Of course, during the winter, the extra heat is welcome, but here in Oklahomer, the winter's just not that long-- so it does not even out even a little-- 3 months of welcome extra heat, offeset by 9 months of unwelcome extra heat... I really ought to built a duct and test it out...



As for 3 phase appliances?  Those are more rare than lawyers practicing for free, here in the States... even in commercial settings.

[Griffin NoName]

Hang about, that link was to develpment of new chargers - not costings/meters etc. Did we do a topic drift?

Also, what are we going to do when everything is "smart"? We'll need a new word for new things. To be honest I am already a bit sick of smart.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Yeah, sometimes "smart" means "they think they know better than you-- so bend over and prepare for the inevetable ***ing by the Giant MegaCorp"....

... meh.

But not always-- sometimes "smart" can mean adaptable and flexible-- able to cope with rapidly changing conditions that would leave a "dumb" appliance near-useless.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

It should be smarter, because there is usually some improvement but still lots of room to improve more.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

It should be smarter, because there is usually some improvement but still lots of room to improve more.

How else can they get you to buy next year's model?

What?

You planned to keep it for 17 years, like the last one?  Seriously? 

Are you trying to ruin the economy? 

[Aggie]

As for 3 phase appliances?  Those are more rare than lawyers practicing for free, here in the States... even in commercial settings.

Yes, I was muddled with the 240V outlets, which are three prong but not three-phase. I've only used three-phase for heavy duty water pumps running off diesel generators. Bit of a brain fart.


The point of the electrical timers was intended exactly for those who have stuck with the erm, 'classics' in the way of appliances.   Presumably all the other smart-wotzits will be programmable via an app on your smartphone or tablet. Amazing; ten years ago we were probably thinking that we'd program all our appliances of the future via a central control panel, Star Trek style, but now it's just going to be a piece of software on your pocket computer.

Regarding refrigerators, it actually makes sense (heat-wise) to mount the compressor at the top of the fridge, so that convection will dissipate the heat without passing it around the outside of the box.  The smaller the temperature gradient across the insulated walls, the more efficient the fridge is. Even better... if you can do a permanent install, mount the compressor separate from the body of the fridge, and perhaps find a way to recover the waste heat using a heat exchanger, to preheat the intake stream of your hot water tank. Higher efficiency, no issues with counterproductive heat in the summer.

A more modest approach is to put your main storage freezer in the basement, which is the coolest place in the house, or if you are in a secure area, put it under a covered area on the north side of your house.  It'll do very little work in the winter, and in the summer it will still be relatively cool and shady there.

[Sibling DavidH]

This 120V / 240V split phase power in the USA seems totally weird to a European.  OK, heavy loads draw too much current at 120V, but why not use the higher voltage for everything?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I totally love your refrigerator/hot-water machine, Aggie-- you ought to patent that idea, it's beautiful.  

As for split refrigerators?  I do commercial work occasionally-- and for the unnamed fast-food franchise, they do exactly that:  they split the system-- inside the insulated box (built to order-- it's a walk-in refrig/freezer (two compartments) the compressor is on the roof, along with the heat-getting-rid-of-panel (condenser).  

But they also have a giant commercial hot-water tank, with a circulating pump for instant-on hot water-- and yes, they do insulate the pipes-- so there are three pipes going to each sink:  cold, hot-supply and hot-return (both insulated).

But if they had a heat-loop to capture some of that wasted heat from the freezer's output?  Wondermous-- the natural gas fire would be set to a higher temperature, such that it only came on, if there was insufficient heat-gain from the freezer's output.   Would save them boat-loads of operational cash-money.  And since they already have the circulation pump.... a simple heat-capture loop, with a thermostatic valve controlling the loop:  if heat is available on the roof, open the valve, let the water circulate.  If the output on the roof is lower temperature than the water already?  Close the valve.  Let the air dump the excess heat.  Simple.

I love it.

---------------------------------

David:  it's worse than that-- before Westinghouse "standardized" electric power, back in the day, there used to be a fight between him and Edison-- Edison advocated direct current, at much lower voltages, some as low as 6 volts, but 12, 24 or even 60 volts was not unheard of for power-- all DC.  

Westinghouse won, with A/C, and had initially set the volts to an arbitrary 100v.  120v was a little later, likely due to pushing an initial volts of 120 to achieve a delivered volts of 100 at the other end.  They discovered in those days, that if your wire run was short enough?  You only needed one wire-- let the path "return" via the earth itself-- and stringing a single wire was way cheaper than stringing two...  and the A/C would "float" with the ground, using that one wire.

Later still, this practice was discarded, and two wires were used-- and later still, three, for multiphase.  Finally, in modern systems?  There are 4:  the 4th one being a ground-return or "neutral".

But the 2nd wire was added to increase capacity:  it was at the opposite phase of the A/C cycle, and quadrupled the carrying load of the single wire that way--- but the effective, additive volts of the two opposite-phase wires, each being pushed at 120v, gave you 240v.     But since they still referenced to ground?  A single leg, referenced to the literal ground, would give you 120v.

In the early days, each "half" would go to a different, adjacent customer's house.  It wasn't until later, that they started putting both legs in-- and adding a dedicated 3rd "neutral" leg up to the house itself, leaving the earth-reference back at the power-pole.

3 phase came later-- I suspect it was an attempt to add more capacity, without re-stringing the entire run-- add a 3rd conductor, and again greatly increase the total output more than by 1/3, by shifting the phase of the 3rd wire.   It's called a "balanced load" as the theoretical load-return doesn't actually exist (A/C-- oscillating back and forth, the current "floats") -- the energy is all "used up" by the load.  

In the 50's it was discovered that you really needed an actual ground, tied to the ground, to bleed off minor imbalances-- or else these would build up and spark, starting fires...  

... and there you have it.

It wasn't as if anyone sat down and planned it--they really didn't understand exactly the total consequences-- but they did understand stringing one fewer wires was cheaper than stringing two (initially), and cheaper almost always wins out in the end.

One of the happy consequences of using A/C over D/C?  Is you get much less transfer-corrosion effects at your various electrical junction points-- the current is rapidly pushing one way, then pushing back the other way (in and out, if you will).  This has the effect of reducing the migration of dissimilar metals from one point to the other, which greatly helps reduce corrosion.  In DC, you can get this phenomena, which leads to bad connections eventually.

Another beneficial side-effect of A/C versus D/C:   if a human accidentally gets in contact with A/C, the muscle spasms (not unlike a shiver) tend to force you to let go (at lower voltages) than D/C which tends to make you "lock-on" (driving your muscles to contract as hard as they can).  So it is ever so slightly safer-- a dubious "fact" that Westinghouse exploited to the detriment of Edison's DC efforts.

Now, as I described this, it was all hunky-dory, and processed from one to the next-- which is hardly the case at all.  The actual history was a boat-load of trial-and-error, backwards "progress" and other things.

But competition eventually led to the modern practices and policies.  Accompanied by not a few deaths and injuries along the way, as humans learned how to wrangle this thing called "electricity".

I have no idea why Europe went strictly to the full two-phase 240v myself-- that's missing from my education.   Sorry.  

Oh, and I left out a couple of critical facts, too:

With DC current, you start out with a given volts, say 60.   And at each step in the line, each junction, each length of wire?  The volts drops-- such that, by the end (customer's house) you might have 50v (on a slow day).  You might have 40v.  You might have only 6v (if everyone has their lights on, say).  No way to tell at the point of origin, really, what the final voltages will turn out to be.   But no real way to regulate this, back in those days of vacuum tubes and wire-wound resistors.

You could not easily change the voltages at all, back in those days.   In fact?  You pretty much had to power an electric motor connected to a generator of the desired voltages.... with a loss of efficiency of better than 50%.

But with A/C?  You used the back-and-forth "motion" of the current, and the latent magnetic effect of soft-iron.   That is, if you put a magnetic field into a chunk of soft iron, and then remove it, the magnetic effect takes a bit to go away-- it's not immediate.   But you can easily change voltages with A/C, using this effect:  to go down, from say 100v to 50v?  You put 100 turns of wire around one side of an iron ring, and 50 turns around the other half, and in comes 100v and out goes 50v at pretty good efficiencies too.   You can go the other way, by reversing the set-up. 

Add in this:  higher voltages are less susceptible to power losses due to long wire-runs, than lower volts.

So you generate your volts at many, many thousands of volts-- makes the generators cheaper too (smaller wires).  Send this kilovolt power along the main trunks, greatly reducing the power-loss due to wire resistance. 

Then, at your customer's house?  You step it down to the desired voltages, using a simple power transformer.

You simply could not do that with DC back in Edison's day.  You just could not get there from here, effectively.

Which is the main reason AC one the electricity 'wars'

[Sibling DavidH]

I have no idea why Europe went strictly to the full two-phase 240v

No, we all use 3-phase, though an ordinary dwelling-house uses only 1 phase (plus earth and neutral).  Each house along the road is supposed to be connected to the next phase from next door: Red - Yellow - Blue ...

But our village hall used to be a workshop and has 3 phases.  Wiring faults between phases can cause loud bangs.    When I've wired in new sockets and lights, I've  had to label each one with its phase when updating the plan.

[Bluenose]

Same here in Aus.  I suspect that one reason for using 240 V is the reduction in Ohmic loss.  For the same power transmission 240 V reduces losses by a factor of 4.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Same here in Aus.  I suspect that one reason for using 240 V is the reduction in Ohmic loss.  For the same power transmission 240 V reduces losses by a factor of 4.

You can also send more power over a given set of wires-- or you may reduce the size of the wires for the same power-load.

Either way, it's cheaper overall to stick with 240v than a lower value.

I also suspect that there are safety factors too-- 240v typically is not referenced to ground, with the actual current/loads, whereas 120v typically is-- one "side" of the conductor circuit is referenced to ground (allegedly at a zero float current-- but ground faults do happen, creating a hazardous condition), whereas the other "side" is called "hot" or has potential voltage (120v) with respect to the ground (literal or figuratively, depending on the circumstance).

However, many 240v circuits do have a ground potential, but at 1/2 the voltage (120v), at least here in the USA, they do.

There really is no reason to do that, though, and if you didn't do that?  It would be overall safer.... alas, it isn't so, and we are bound by Tradition!  It's Tradition--dammit!

... meh.