"Smart Grid" is a dumb idea

[dnix71]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/45868/title/Electric_grid_still_very_vulnerable_to_electr



omagnetic_weaponry

Solar flares or a high altitude nuke would turn the US into an instant 3rd world country. Maybe that's why the gov't is so bent about N Korea having nukes. Even they could do it. All you need is a ship and a missile.

One more reason to be able to go off-grid.

[fabricator]

EMP, is line of sight, it would take a lot of nukes to fry the entire CONUS, and as far as flares are concerned, the existing grid is as prone to damage as a smart grid would be.

[bob g]

you get a pretty long line of site, if you detonate at a sufficient altitude

how high do you have to be to see all of the lower 48 and most all of canada?

50, 100, 150 miles high?

if you got a missle, all you need to do is get it up high enough

don't need very good targeting to deliver emp

a 10 yo with a joy stick is good enough to guide something like that.i

"lets see there kid, just get the thing over south dakota, and wait to press the little red button until you see this little altimeter guage read 113.4 miles, ok kid?"

its not the grid i am worried about, its the supertransformers that are going to present the biggest problem. it takes 6-12 months to build one on site, and there

are only 1 or 2 companies left on the planet to build them, and they will be sold to the highest bidder you can be sure.  depending on where you live, you might be

in 2 or 3rd place on the waiting list.

bob g

[brokengun]

Call me nieve  but I really don't think this is as big of a problem as you think. There are plenty of precautions that can be taken to ensure that solar flares and such don't interfere with the electronics responsible for managing the grid.

Basically the smart grid in the end will make grid tied electricity cheaper and hopefully reduce some people's demand for it. I don't know much about the "Super transformers" but I would like to know more about them. Mostly the smart gird is just to track price changes and demand fluctuations throughout the day. I know a lot of people are worried about stuff with the grid but I really think in the end we will be better for it.

[CmeBREW]

Seems unwise.

Not just the Giant MAIN transformers-- but ALL the hundreds of thousands of smaller transformers too.

Here's the 'Official' 2008 Government EMP (BIG) report. (They finally did some meaningful testing this time!)

http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.pdf

They've even had 'Super EMP' technology for over 10 years in many nations.

Maybe they should go back to the ol' reliable TUBE (dumb grid) control. (esp. in nuclear power plants)

[electrak]

I must be missing something about "smart grid" I thought it was basicly distributed generation, instead of just a few huge powerplants, the smart part being the conrtols for all those small systems and control over some loads.

Now if something happens and the controls go puff, failsafe to manual control again. If your using the grid as a battery, your are out of luck, but if you have a small battery bank you will be in better shape.

Now if you are worried about an EMF pulse, harden your system for it, think direct lighting strike survival, if it can be back on line after with just a few fuses, MOVs, diodes, you should be set.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Detonating above the atmosphere is even more effective for EMP.  The X-rays and gamma-rays cause electrons to jump upward over the entire atmosphere in a spreading circle, while the positive charges are stuck on the heavy nuclei, efficiently transforming a significant fraction of the energy of the bomb into a very energetic electromagnetic wave with a good approximation to a step function.  Due to the geometry the wavefront "propagates" faster than light, resulting in beam formation that directs the EM wave downward.

This spreading wave induces a high voltage-per-foot EMF in transmission lines and for large areas the angles and propagation speeds of waves in the cable work out so the voltage adds up for hundreds of miles.  The power transmission line acts as an antenna that gathers the bomb's energy over a wide area, both along and crosswise to the line's run.  When the transient finally gets to a transformer you're talking a high-voltage common-mode hit with energy levels orders of magnitude above a direct lightning strike.

The protection circuitry is inadequate so the transformer arcs over to ground and much of the energy is dissipated there, destroying it.  Meanwhile imbalance in where the arcs form - and arcs to the secondary - map some of the energy into differential mode and couple it to the secondary, to propagate further and pop transformers and other equipment further down the line (even if the secondary lines aren't going in a direction where they also act as an efficient antenna to pick up and deliver the EMP in common mode).

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

Due to the geometry the wavefront "propagates" faster than light, resulting in beam formation that directs the EM wave downward.

In fact the propagation of the EMP wave essentially mimics the original expanding spherical wavefront of the nuclear flash.  The upper atmosphere acts as a down-converter to efficiently shift much of the energy of the flash from X/gamma-rays to near-DC EMP.

Think about the energy of a nuclear flash - igniting whole cities, burning "fossil shadows" of people into concrete, etc.  Now turn much of that into a radio wave of low enough frequency that a power transmission line will pick up the energy from an area miles SIDEWAYS from itself and hundreds of miles along its length and dump it all into the transformer at the end of the run...

[Old F]

I would be more worried about the nuke war that would start after a EMP attack.   Than what would happen to the grid .  But that's just me : )

Old F

[TomW]

Nobody seems to have considered the ramifications of sensors on your appliances. Thats the obvious next step and once the system is in place you know damned well it will be used to track your habits. Both to sell you more and to keep you "safe" from yourself and bad habits.

Slippery slope stuff involving more and more centralization enabling more control of your life.

Don't get me started.

We need more decentralization and independence in order to be more secure as citizens.

Just a side I didn't see mentioned

Tom

[DamonHD]

"Dead" right, IMHO...

Rgds

Damon

[scottsAI]

"the wavefront "propagates" faster than light".

Nothing travels faster than light.

"propagates" faster than light is not possible.

[Dave B]

Well said Tom, it's all sugar coating on the outside and better for whom ? To be paranoid anymore you got to be WAY, WAY out there, this is real and the writing is on the wall.  Dave B.

[scottsAI]

Brokengun,

Please explain how spending billions studying smart grid followed up by spending trillions to upgrade the grid will save me money?? 1 trillion divided by population of USA is $4,000 each.

My electric bill is $60/mo or $720/yr. Free electricity for 5.5yr will pay it off, 20% reduction will take 25 yr to pay off, not counting the time value of money. This did not count there are two living here, further extending payback beyond 50 yr.

In summery smart grid will NEVER save me or you money.

What it will do is make a few rich as all these big ideas do.

All smart grid articles are nothing more than a sales pitch, with just as few facts.

Exactly how will it save me money?

Have fun,

Scott.

[DamonHD]

Note: it's relatively easy for something to travel faster than light in an optically dense medium (which can be much slower than "c" the speed of light in a vacuum) and indeed light can be more or less stopped in some extreme cases.

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

Without a smarter grid, and given more intermittent generation such as wind, it may not be possible to keep the lights on at all much of the time.  What's it worth to you to have the grid when you want it, maybe $1000/y?

Rgds

Damon

[scottsAI]

Ungrounded Lightning Rod,

The Kill range of a nuk is greatly exaggerated.

Few bombs are large enough to burn whole cities.

Kill range outside is many miles with lots of damage to buildings beyond that.

Below ground kill range is blocks, rubble from buildings is more likely to kill you.

Further reading (not the whole story):

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html?inpyield=500

Radiation effects are dependent on the bomb, often generalizations are based on the dirtiest bomb which have lower yields.

Think about it a moment, the claims of devastation are false.

Japan cities nuked are still there? How can that be? Health in those cities has been extensively studied, health risks are no different form other japan cities. Those bombs were very dirty.

People within blocks of the bombs dropped in WWII were living until recently.

Don't get me wrong, the more distance the better!!

Have fun,

Scott.

[scottsAI]

DamonHD,

"it may not be possible to keep the lights on at all much of the time."

Why?

[scottsAI]

an optically dense medium.

Agreed.

Detonating above the atmosphere...

Vacuum.

Where is the optical dense medium? Don't see it!-)

[DamonHD]

As the EMF enters the atmosphere, which is denser than vacuum?

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

Hi,

Because without a better a sense of what's being used where, and the ability to encourage (and send signals for) demand-side management, it may be difficult to balance the grid against short-term fluctuations and (say) long-term wind lulls.

Rgds

Damon

[DanG]

Some years ago I won a $100 bet with a geek friend about the nature of EMP. (Hi Mike W. if you read this)

This is a guy who actually help rig sensors on US and English Warships when they would be berthed alongside ocean-going barges 20 or more miles offshore - then gently probed with small order EMP pulses and the data from sensors they added would be used to extrapolate what the real damage would be. He was of the school the EMP pulse was comparable to a camera strobe flash - lightning...

What he didn't know is I had just been re-reading my collection of Scientific American Magazine and they had a long essay on 3rd generation weapons.. (1987) The linked article here captures some of the info in brief form:

http://www.futurescience.com/emp.html

Note the three types of EMP - with the third type lasting MINUTES. That is the one that won me $100.. I even gave him the magazine. The linked article glosses over it as 'heaving of the Earth's Magnetic Field' but its more complicated then that; the altitudes low molecular pressure: 1) keep the particles disassociated for a longer time and  2) prevent the plasma from cooling since there are so few molecules to absorb energetic particles.

Think of a plasma pancake 200 miles across amplifying the normal field using the stellar hot leftover plasma as power source on the Neutron & Ionizing radiation interactions already set up via EMP types one and two. (God help us if the nuclear device evnet happens when there is already solar ativity)

Anyhow - they also note The 1859 carrington flare as a sure thing - it's just a matter of when....

[scottsAI]

DamonHD,

Within the stimulus package more than $35 billion is allocated to study smart grid.

http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/news/Smart_Grid_Stimulus_money_comes_in_many_forms_Money
_to_flow_by_April_Smart_Grid_a_better_2009_investment_than_alternative_energy.html

GE is claiming only $46 to $117 Billion to build smart grid. Therefore it's a lie.

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/02/02/smart-grid-goes-mainstream-with-general-electri
c-super-bowl-ad/

Real Estimates of smart grid are in the Trillions of dollars.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/06/news/economy/smart_grid/index.htm

Just how much information does the utility need?

They need to know demand... look at their power meter. Forecasting demand is not difficult.

How much power is available, hope they know this!

We do not need revamping of the grid to accomplish these goals.

CA had problems which were self created. No problems the years before. The demand did not change and cause the problem.

Dynamic demand management (DDM)

Peak times charge more. Benefits:

Get peoples attention by doubling their electric bills if they don't pay attention.

Solar produces best during these peaks, making solar more affordable along with netmetering.

Business need to pay the price too. So far I see only retail paying.

Claims: if the electric car takes off the demand will take down the grid. More lies.

My electrical cost are on par with gas cost. The electric vehicle uses much less.

Low fees at night will support the demand at night when the grid is unused. Well within its current capabilities.

Sister in law lives in San Diego, CA, had optional TOS metering choice. Peak was at $0.25/kwhr. Night cost $0.05/kwhr. Designed system to charge a battery at night, discharge back into the grid during the peak rate. She worked during the day, turning AC off at peak times allowed this idea to work. Daily Electrical cost were free. Equipment paid off first year! She was not interested. Bummer.

Since then the Equipment cost lower, would be worth it at 15/5 today.

Electric company found the only users of TOS were people with netmetering, within the year the peak rate was lowered couple times down to $0.15 for peak and upped night rate to $0.10. Negating TOS benefit.

DamonHD, I wish you lived next door. We could have lots of fun discussing things over a beer.

Have fun,

Scott.

[scottsAI]

Agreed.

Electric utilities problems should be solved by the electric utilities NOT tax dollars, I do not care what their claims of cost are. If things are in need of fixing, increase my electrical rates to reflect the REAL cost. Competition will force a reality check in how they spend money.

Boost my rate above $0.22/kwhr. Solar becomes a very real option for everybody today.

Claims of $1/w solar panels, if real the electric company should be worried.

The 11 cents/kwhr I pay today is then too much.

Have fun,

Scott.

[scottsAI]

Do you have further reading on this subject?

Interesting.

Thanks,

Scott.

[DamonHD]

DanG's link would be a good place to start.

Rgds

Damon

PS. I was hoping to forget all my teenage angst about MAD, along with corny numbers such as Ultravox's "Dancing with tears in m yEyes" (yes, that's how it sounds)!

[ghurd]

Wow Scott!  You sound a bit cynical today.

Don't you know if you read it in Print, either paper or cyber, it has to be true?

The most accurate print can be found in sales brochures and corporate news releases, because people selling something have nothing to gain by lying.  

Way too many links to read in this thread.

Anybody know if car ignition coils get cooked, like they always do in the movies?

If so, HDDs, VCR tapes, Margarita blender, dual rotor stator, magnet wire on the spool, etc, can't be far behind?

(funny how they always find a diesel without an ignition coil or computer but the starter motor works?)

Grid isn't much good if the only thing working is incandescent bulbs stored in the closet when they were changed to CFLs.

G-

[spinningmagnets]

Ghurd, the way I understood it, older classic cars with points and coil will be safe from an EMP. I believe its the electronics of fuel injection that will have problems.

I would be interested to read what the military has put together for EMP weapons against others, and EMP protective measures for our side. Its quite possible most of the trucks and Hummvees have a diesel with mechanical fuel injection, and vehicles with modern electronics "might" have some type of Faraday cage or similar device?

[joestue]

You do have a point, but the reason they want to know this info is so they can go from 90% utilization to 95% and call that progress.

I call it a reduction in overload capacity.

For the past 20 years much of the supposed gain has been the increase in utilization of resources and reduction in residential electrical consumption. In fact it worked so well in some areas that they had to bump up the electrical rate because they started losing money, as 2% annual growth wasn't countering inflation, where it was before.

The reinvestment rate is at an all time low, just look at the number of transformers being ordered.

At the current rate it appears they expect the new ones to last 100 years.

[joestue]

Provided every transformer has a ground fault circuit breaker on the primary side, solar flares in theory aren't an issue.

Solar flares create a dc current that saturates the core, and over heats the transformer on a 20 second to 2 minute time scale. the voltage involved, 1-100 volts per mile, isn't high enough to damage the system, if your line can handle a floating neutral with 100Kvdc on it, you just need to unground it, for stability reasons they would never do that, but rather switch in the resistors, which are mentioned in various reports as costing a few tens of billions to install everywhere.

Real life only 98% of the circuit breakers open, but that one in 50 that fries is still enough to kill the grid for a month.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

No question a lot of that stuff is overrated.

For starters - health effects.  Turns out health effects of radiation are extrapolated from high exposures (where they produce health effects strong enough to be measured) to low ones, on the assumption that the exposure/damage curve is linear.  In fact it's far from linear - and for cancer it appears to be a power function:  If it takes six mutations to go from normal cells to cancerous ones for a particular type (as it apparently does for long cancer) the rate goes up with the sixth power of exposure.  So low doses are far less dangerous than assumed.  (Also:  Damaged cells tend to self-destruct and damaged fetuses abort, thus eliminating much of the damage after a short time.)

The problem with EMP is that the long wires collect the energy from a large area - like many square miles in the high-altitude EMP case - and concentrate it in the devices at their ends.  Having even a very small fraction of a nuclear bomb "go off" inside an electronic component is a real bummer.

[dnix71]

The grid here in south Florida is famously unstable anyway. A technician who violated procedures brought it down by shorting out a single substation during routine service.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/26/national/main3879549.shtml

http://www.newser.com/story/20442/engineers-goof-turned-out-florida-lights.html

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

If it takes six mutations to go from normal cells to cancerous ones for a particular type (as it apparently does for long cancer) ...

LUNG cancer.  B-(

You can get an idea of the number of mutations involved in a particular cancer type by plotting the incidence versus age on a log-liner graph.  The slope of the line gives the exponent of the function, i.e. constant mutation rate and 6 mutations to cause cancer gives a slope of 6 (presuming the sample population hadn't gotten a head start by inheriting one or more of the mutations).