[Gllug] [OT] Technobabble

[Anthony Newman]

Nix wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, Sean Burlington mused:
> 
>>The other way of doing this is to install boilers in houses that generate
>>electricity - in effect they are mini-power stations - but instead of heat
>>being an incidental it is the primary purpose.
>>
>>The electricity generated is put back into the grid, the overall
>>effeciency is very high.
> 
> 
> What kind of quality is the power? One advantage of big generators is
> that they can be properly monitored, so the power is quite clean and
> most parameters of it are stable. Assuring that with micropower is
> liable to be hard.
> 


Locally or globally? Locally, your local power is likely to be quite 
dirty, both in terms of third harmonic distortion owing to three phase 
neutral current imbalance due to crude load sharing, and burdened with 
hashy high frequency mess from switched-mode power supplies and the 
like. Globally; I can't imagine local power generation to be compatible 
with the sort of distribution network we have at present, so there would 
have to be a change there in any case. The industrial world lives by 
three-phase, which as stated is produced beautifully by balanced 
rotating machinery, but not conceivably by distributed local power 
generation. So, yes :-)

Power usage does not begin at home; domestic power consumption does not 
represent a significant part of the electricity consumption of the 
country, and that which it does is during the dark hours outside work 
when cookers, kettle and showers come on; when renewable energy sources 
are next to useless unless their contribution has been bottled up during 
daylight hours.

Given the present situation, in the long term there would either have to 
be some move away from the fully distributed power system we have at 
present, or the migration to other large-scale power generation projects 
to replace the gigantic power stations we currently rely on.

Unless anything has changed in the last few years since I last read 
about it, our base load in this country is still provided by coal, most 
of which likely be imported. The "dash for gas" saw a lot of smaller 
power stations being built, but their output is still dwarfed by the 
monster generation plants of days gone by which are now seriously 
nearing end-of-life, and neglected by virtue of the policies of 
privatisation which have seen energy costs to the consumer driven down 
recklessly in the pursuit of frivolous end customer acquisition.

Large-scale solar farms, with either steam generation plant or miniature 
Stirling engines always strikes me as a pleasant solution, but our lack 
of incident radiation probably writes this off. How about... we get used 
to not using so much energy?

This is where the conflict lies; that what people can relate to 
represents other than the reality they perceive through their lives - 
rather like the recycling debate in many ways.

To frivolously quote a probably out-of-date figure for illustration, it 
has been said that around 0.5% of the global carbon dioxide load is 
contributed per unit time (shall we say, annually :-) ) by man-made 
mechanisation; the other 95.5% may be attributed to man and beast that 
were here long before the Industrial Revolution.

This is not to belittle the impact that fossil fuel combustion is liable 
to make on the "environment"; neither I nor any readers are in any 
position to suppose that, but merely to suggest that perhaps our best 
effort on some avenue of endeavour towards reducing "carbon" emissions 
are not necessarily the saviour of mankind. While we career recklessly 
towards the Heat Death of the Universe by means of our vehicles and 
central heating, is there any benefit in filling our lofts with more 
lagging to prevent the deeper lining of the pockets of the energy barons?


Hmm, time for bed before it gets too philosophical.


Ant
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