(no subject)

[ocschwar]

Ontario's power utility is offering money for people to put a switch on their air conditioners so that the utility can turn them off at times of peak load.

Eeenteresting.

Comments

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

Ontario is just generally fucked. They shut down a bunch of nuclear power plants a couple years ago because it turned out they weren't being run safely. They haven't built new power plants in the last n years even as Toronto grew. Basically they have Californiaitis...

[aerynne.livejournal.com]

There was actually plenty of power in California during the rolling blackouts---it was being rerouted elsewhere to create artificial shortages.

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

My understanding was that that is both true and false. That is, the market was actually very tight and that was the only reason the evil people were able to create the shortages. If there had been plenty of power the strategy wouldn't have worked since they would have been able to just replace the power with other sources. But they were already buying everything they could from all the sources in the west so they had nowhere else to turn when the market was cornered.

Earlier in this century it was a pretty common speculator strategy to corner a market and force prices up. People did it for stocks and most often for commodities. We don't see it much any more because the markets are so big and so liquid that it's hard to make it work. In this case the market was so tight that it became possible again. Ontario risks creating the same situation as it scrambles to replace the lost power capacity by buying every available watt on the open market.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Nuclear plants don't help you with demand surges. For that you need oil & gas.

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

If you have a nuclear power plant why do you care about turning it off during off-peak hours? It's not like saving fuel is going to save you any money.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Eh? You mean to redirect nuclear plant steam away from the turbines when there's low demand? Incredibly wasteful when the proper thing to do is throw it on the grid for continentwide use.

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

throw away the steam, generate electricity and throw away the electricity, generate electricity and sell it on the market, generate electricity and store it using reservoirs, whatever.

"wasteful" is only meaningful if you're wasting something valuable. If it's surplus and nobody wants to buy it in off-peak hours then you're not wasting anything. If it didn't cost you any more to generate then what do you care if you generate enough to satisfy peak-hour demands 24/7?

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Um, because you're still trying to pay back the gigabuck-to-terabuck mortgage on your nuke plant? You know, I may not be a left winger, but listening to the right talk about energy issues makes me want to drown myself.

[zkzkz.livejournal.com]

Your original statement was that nuclear plants don't help you with peak usage because you can't turn them on and off. I'm saying I don't see how that's true since you don't really care how little you get for the surplus power during off-peak use since the fuel is basically free. The only thing that costs money is the capital investment and running costs which aren't reduced by shutting the plant off during off-peak hours. So whether you get pennies for those kWh or even if you just have to throw it away for lack of buyers doesn't stop you from using the nuclear powerplant for your peak usage.

Certainly you want to get the most return on the investment and possibly the extra return from the peak usage isn't enough to justify scaling the entire plant up to peak usage for 24/7 operation. But even that seems unlikely given how much more that peak energy production is worth than off-peak.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Power utilities are doing that all over the place. Well, here, too, at least.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Interesting. What are the details in your neck of the woods?

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to link, because the URL is hideous, but google for "xcel saver's switch".

They've been advertising it for years every time they mail me a bill.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

They won't say how it communicates. THe Ontario folks only say the thing is wireless (which I think means GSM). An interesting thing to post to RISKS.