[CarlosFerreira]

Hi, glad you're here. Make yourself comfortable.

Friendly word of advice. Don't go around, in your first post, preaching the greatest tech advice ever. Link information, add figures. And do not compare percentages of energy loss in power transmission (I've heard 10%, anyway) with US oil imports. You might as well be comparing Mach speed with the taste of chips. Makes no sense.

[cipi604]

Nookster , you're almost right, but it's not that easy as it sounds.

HVDC

[mos6507]

Unless it's cold all year round there is no benefit in serendipitous waste heat from things like incandescents or desktop PCs, fridge exhaust. So it's better to try to start with maximum efficiency appliances so you can control the energy you use. Even during winter months, if you are paying for the extra wattage of incandescents to generate that waste heat for your house, you are basically heating your house in part with electricity which everyone says is woefully inefficient per btu. So you have to justify the cost of that vs. your primary heating source.

[Texas_T]

17% seems like an awfully high percent loss for transmission - is there a source for that number?

Since conventional generating plants (Rankine cycle) are limited to about 33% efficiency, that would meant that the overall efficiency of fuel in at the power plant to electricity at the point of use would be about 27%.

And to add to what Mos said, the heat from lights may not be "useful" heat since one cannot control where it goes. It may help heat the building, or it may just result in overheating. And even if its useful heat it may be displacing a less expensive source (gas for example).

[Narz]

First, compact fluorescent bulbs only save energy when used in locations that are warm enough that you wouldn't otherwise heat them. If you're in a location where it's cold and you're going to be running the heat anyway, there is no efficiency advantage because the waste heat from incandescent bulbs isn't waste in that situation, it's heat that displaces heat that would have had to been created in some other manner.

Do you really believe that "logic"?

Anywayz, LED's > fluorescents. Plus they don't contain mercury.

[mos6507]

Anywayz, LED's > fluorescents. Plus they don't contain mercury.

LEDs are a LOT more expensive than CFL and the light is not powerful or diffuse enough. They have a ways to go still.

[WisJim]

A good part of a solution is to generate power where you use it. This includes rooftop PVs and small wind generators where possible (of course, NOT windgenerators on rooftops, but on appropriately tall towers)

[yesplease]

First, compact fluorescent bulbs only save energy when used in locations that are warm enough that you wouldn't otherwise heat them. If you're in a location where it's cold and you're going to be running the heat anyway, there is no efficiency advantage because the waste heat from incandescent bulbs isn't waste in that situation, it's heat that displaces heat that would have had to been created in some other manner.

Two words, local insulation.

Second, the amount of energy lost in the electrical transmission system is approximately 17% of that generated and is roughly equal to all of the oil the US imports.

The U.S. gubberment pegs T&D losses at ~7% as of 1995.

Energy losses in the U.S. T&D system were 7.2% in 1995, accounting for 2.5 quads of primary energy and 36.5 MtC

[dinopello]

Light switch dimmers use some power but I think they save energy overall. I have them on all my home lighting, mainly because I like low light levels most of the time.

I continue to believe that the thing that would save the most energy quickly is to have a meter in a prominent place in the home that measures energy useage and shows the rate of useage and is tied to electricty rates so that the readout is also in $$$. People I think would then turn off unneeded lights and better control vampire appliances.

[Frank]

It makes no sense to burn natural gas at 60% efficiency max. then transmit over electric lines (another 10% loss) then turn about 95% of that into heat instead of light. Much more efficient to burn the natural gas directly to provide heat where you want it.

Interesting to read about composite conductors...

[Tanada]

Just over a decade ago we had the Great Eastern Blackout of 2003. Now we have new warnings that taking out 9 targeted transformer farms would black out the entire USA for an extended period of time.

I have looked around for improvements to my local grid infrastructure and find very little difference between 2003 and today except industrial power demand is down because of the employment rate being down. I have a suspicion the only reason we have not had repeated blackouts is the weather until recently has been pretty mild in terms of electricity demand, but with the odds of an heavy El Nino increasing that spikes the chances we will get a hot late summer and early fall when everyone will want to run their A/C full blast repeating the 2003 pattern.

Is it a foolish fear, or realistic to think we are ready for another major grid disruption any time demand spikes up?

[Pops]

The grid is private, for profit, unregulated to a great extent - at least in relation to it's importance. The previous regulated monopoly model was better IMO. But then I think lots of important goods and services would be more reliable and secure with a greater emphasis on resilience than profit.

[Subjectivist]

The grid is private, for profit, unregulated to a great extent - at least in relation to it's importance. The previous regulated monopoly model was better IMO. But then I think lots of important goods and services would be more reliable and secure with a greater emphasis on resilience than profit.

Pops you are singing my tune! I remember the good old days of Ma Bell when we had a regulated monopoly that had excellent reliability. They were not innovating and didn't spend a lot on upgrading technology quickly, but they were dependable and affordable. They did upgrade technology over time, when I was a small child some places still had local operators to direct your call, but most places had upgraded to automatic systems by the time I was a teenager. When the break up took place the baby bells were all competing for the same customers as before, so they spent huge sums of money advertising and installing the latest untested technology to sound more progressive than their fellow baby bells. The old Ma Bell would have put in the technology after it was proven reliable instead of as soon as it was available, and wouldn't have wasted billions on advertising.

[Newfie]

Yup, cell phones are a great convince, but suck at reliability. The entire cell system can be overwhelmed simply by call volume. The old Bell system was extremely reliable by comparison. In fact I still have a POTS phone in the house for emergencies.

The NERC (North American Reliability Council) is supposed to look at system reliability and release periodic reports in the health of the system and it's prognosis. I started following it a few years ago but after a while I noticed some " issues" were simply being removed from consideration while others were never mentioned. In the brief period if watched the reports they became worthless.

Looking at the web site just now it appears they have revamped it and it is now even more opaque than before.

I have long thought our grid was very susceptible to attack, not high tech, low tech. Yet I never see any mention of that. Simply stocking a number of critical spare transformers would be relatively cheap and prudent insurance. It would also help float American industry. It's a no brainer.

Yet we falter over such simple steps, repeatedly. How can we possibly deal with our real major issues?