Are we now India -- Electric Woes

[whighlander]

Massachusetts is a deregulated electricity market. So you can do that very easily. And you probably should b/c its cheaper.

posted by Choo --

you can sign up for a number of other energy providers this afternoon if thats how you want to spend your St. Patricks day, but it isn't going to change the infrastructure......(Note: I do not work for a utility )

Choo -- this is a mega-scam on the consumer

Electricity doesn't work that way -- you hook up to wires along with everyone else on your block -- where the electricity comes from is not within your control even if you are paying NSTAR to be Green and ostensibly getting your electricity from some wind farm -- Well guess what -- you are most likely to be getting your power from:
1) burning natural gas, coal -- with small small amount from burning fuel oil in peaking units
2) fissioning uranium
3) Canadian hydroelectric power plants

The long-term contract and "spot-market" for electricity is just for financial purposes.

The reality of electric generation on the grid is that if you have a generator connected to the power grid -- unless the generator is turning backward as a motor - it will contribute to maintaining the voltage on the grid and power will then flow from the generator to all connected loads.

 

[whighlander]

Or turn electricty lines into something similar to landlines where the service and the infrastructure and separate and the end user can choose who to buy their electricity from.

You can choose from which electric company you want to buy from, just not the utility company. A few known ones are ConEdison, Hess, Sempra, Constellation New Energy etc.

Kahta, kent --- see the previous post addressing Chu's post


No you can't chose who really supplies your electricity other than if you want to connect to the wires out front on the pole or underground or not

And electricity wiring doesn't work like a telephone line or even cable TV -- it works like ... well electricity or perhaps a bit of a stretch like plumbing

So if the pipe comes into your house -- you have no way of knowing where the drop of water came from -- it could (assuming you are an MWRA customer) be nice and pristine rain which fell on the Quabin Reservoir or it could be the run-off from the nearby tree upon which the coyote leading the local pack used to relive himself.

 

[whighlander]

Are authorities sure--- the solar flares didn't cause it? I have the free app 3D sun ( http://3dsun.org/ ) and the sun has been throwing off many ray burts towards Earth lately.

Digi..boy--- No this time Solar Flares are not to blame - we didn't even get a particularly good auroral display around here

However -- there is certainly a probability of a major blackout being caused by solar activity -- its not high -- but I would not dismiss it either

In 1857 -- a Mega Solar event now known as the Carrington Event:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/

A Super Solar Flare
At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington—widely acknowledged to be one of England's foremost solar astronomers... [who was] capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and "being somewhat flurried by the surprise," Carrington later wrote, "I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.
It was 11:23 AM. Only five minutes had passed.

Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.

Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.

"What Carrington saw was a white-light solar flare—a magnetic explosion on the sun," explains David Hathaway, solar physics team lead at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama....
"It's rare that one can actually see the brightening of the solar surface," says Hathaway. "It takes a lot of energy to heat up the surface of the sun!"
....
a huge solar flare on August 4, 1972, knocked out long-distance telephone communication across Illinois. That event, in fact, caused AT&T to redesign its power system for transatlantic cables...

A similar flare on March 13, 1989, provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada, blacking out most of the province and plunging 6 million people into darkness for 9 hours; aurora-induced power surges even melted power transformers in New Jersey.

Another Carrington-class flare would dwarf these events. Fortunately, says Hathaway, they appear to be rare:
"In the 160-year record of geomagnetic storms, the Carrington event is the biggest." It's possible to delve back even farther in time by examining arctic ice. "Energetic particles leave a record in nitrates in ice cores," he explains. "Here again the Carrington event sticks out as the biggest in 500 years and nearly twice as big as the runner-up."
These statistics suggest that Carrington flares are once in a half-millennium events. The statistics are far from solid, however, and Hathaway cautions that we don't understand flares well enough to rule out a repeat in our lifetime.

here's an image of that transformer in NJ melted by the 1989 solar flare

 

[KentXie]

Kahta, kent --- see the previous post addressing Chu's post


No you can't chose who really supplies your electricity other than if you want to connect to the wires out front on the pole or underground or not

And electricity wiring doesn't work like a telephone line or even cable TV -- it works like ... well electricity or perhaps a bit of a stretch like plumbing

So if the pipe comes into your house -- you have no way of knowing where the drop of water came from -- it could (assuming you are an MWRA customer) be nice and pristine rain which fell on the Quabin Reservoir or it could be the run-off from the nearby tree upon which the coyote leading the local pack used to relive himself.

Whig,

You're debating against someone who worked for NSTAR last year. I'll clarify your confusion. No you can't change the poles or wires (which NSTAR owns), etc. etc. but you can control the amount of electricty supplied by each power plant running through the power lines. The meters installed for each customers are then read by NSTAR who then forwards the information to electric companies for billing. Yes the electricity will be pooled but the proportion each electric company supplies will be proportional to their customer base's usage.

I worked in data management, and suppliers for commerical and residential consumers change, some yearly.

 

[choo]

posted by Choo --

Choo -- this is a mega-scam on the consumer

Electricity doesn't work that way -- you hook up to wires along with everyone else on your block -- where the electricity comes from is not within your control even if you are paying NSTAR to be Green and ostensibly getting your electricity from some wind farm -- Well guess what -- you are most likely to be getting your power from:
1) burning natural gas, coal -- with small small amount from burning fuel oil in peaking units
2) fissioning uranium
3) Canadian hydroelectric power plants

The long-term contract and "spot-market" for electricity is just for financial purposes.

The reality of electric generation on the grid is that if you have a generator connected to the power grid -- unless the generator is turning backward as a motor - it will contribute to maintaining the voltage on the grid and power will then flow from the generator to all connected loads.

The Green Energy programs run by NSTAR is pretty much a scam, as most of your extra payment goes to the administrative overhead of the program itself rather than the wind or solar farm. That is quite different from buying from a competitive supplier. Agreed that physically, because electricity follows the path of least resistance, you are probably getting power from a natural gas or hydro plant in new england (very little coal here). But that is different from the electricity you pay for.. you pay your utility company, they pay the generator for the supplied amount, the utility contracts future power based of expected future demand. This can change, albeit slowly, and deregulated electricity markets are by no means a scam.

For an ironic political touch- the most monopolistic (and sometimes publicly owned) electricity markets are in the "conservative" bastions of freedom like Nebraska and the South.

Also- In your subsequent post you called me "Chu" probably thinking of the Energy Secretary- Thanks for the complement, but overstating my credentials a little bit

 

[whighlander]

Whig,

You're debating against someone who worked for NSTAR last year. I'll clarify your confusion. No you can't change the poles or wires (which NSTAR owns), etc. etc. but you can control the amount of electricty supplied by each power plant running through the power lines. The meters installed for each customers are then read by NSTAR who then forwards the information to electric companies for billing. Yes the electricity will be pooled but the proportion each electric company supplies will be proportional to their customer base's usage.

I worked in data management, and suppliers for commerical and residential consumers change, some yearly.

Kent -- I'm not going to debate the legality or the accounting -- But as a matter of electrical science and engineering what you are saying is just not possible -- and I hope that your employer didn't teach you otherwise.

While the following is a gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) -- although, in principle you actually can do what I'm about to describe:

1) Take a light bulb and connect it to a battery with a switch
a) when you close the switch power is supplied by the battery to the light bulb and the light bulb will light
b) Place a meter at either the battery and another one at the bulb -- you will find that the power supplied by the battery all goes to the bulb (well there might be a very small amount lost in the wire)

2) Now add a second switch, 2 more meters, a second battery, a second light bulb -- independently everything is the same -- it behaves the same as the above system

3) Now combine the two systems into one system:
a) each battery is connected to a local meter and then to a common wire feeding both switches and light bulbs through their own meters.
b) Call one battery Green and the other Red.
c) Call one switch, light, meter and bulb -- Left and the other set Right.
d) If I now close the Left Switch -- power flows from both Green and Red Batteries to the Left Bulb -- due to small variations in the two batteries more power may be delivered by the Red Battery.
e) Open the Left Switch and repeat the experiment by closing the Right Switch -- this time power will flow from Green and Red batteries to the Right Bulb.
f) Finally -- close the Left Switch leaving the Right Switch closed -- now power is supplied by both Green and Red Batteries to both Left and Right Bulbs. Outside of disconnecting one of the two batteries -- you can not control which battery is supplying which bulb.

4) While there are some subtle differences between the above DC system and the Polyphase AC system which we use for our electric supply -- the basic principles remain in place. These principles used to analyze all electrical circuits are they are known as Kirchhoffs Laws of Current and Voltage. They govern all electrical systems. The simplest way to think of it is -- if you and your neighbor are on the same wire -- you get whatever your neighbor gets

The same apples to suppliers of electricity -- close the switch and the electricity will flow between and among the various sources and sinks in the system to satisfy the two laws.

5) Now because the suppliers have meters and the users have meters -- $ can flow pretty-much independent to the flow of electrons because of the ability have agreements to price the energy or power according to short term, long term contracts or even on a spot market instantaneous basis.

 

[whighlander]

The Green Energy programs run by NSTAR is pretty much a scam, as most of your extra payment goes to the administrative overhead of the program itself rather than the wind or solar farm. That is quite different from buying from a competitive supplier. Agreed that physically, because electricity follows the path of least resistance, you are probably getting power from a natural gas or hydro plant in new england (very little coal here). But that is different from the electricity you pay for.. you pay your utility company, they pay the generator for the supplied amount, the utility contracts future power based of expected future demand. This can change, albeit slowly, and deregulated electricity markets are by no means a scam.

For an ironic political touch- the most monopolistic (and sometimes publicly owned) electricity markets are in the "conservative" bastions of freedom like Nebraska and the South.

Also- In your subsequent post you called me "Chu" probably thinking of the Energy Secretary- Thanks for the complement, but overstating my credentials a little bit

Choo -- even your "sound-sake" Energy Secretary would have to agree with my previous post replying to Kent -- while politically he may not agree with me -- his physics education forces him to agree to the fundamental principles

 

[choo]

no one, and certainly not myself, is disputing physics here. I said as much. But there is a difference between electricity and the grids operational functions and the market functions. I think given our inability to change things like the earth's rotation and electricity's nature, we are left only with our power to manipulate utility markets.

 

[whighlander]

no one, and certainly not myself, is disputing physics here. I said as much. But there is a difference between electricity and the grids operational functions and the market functions. I think given our inability to change things like the earth's rotation and electricity's nature, we are left only with our power to manipulate utility markets.

Choo - the problem is that when you manipulate markets you trigger the indefatigable "Doctrine of Unintended Consequences" -- its not knowable as to what strange behavior you will favor or what normal behavior you will disfavor -- but it is knowable that you will

The magnitude of the consequences can be trivial and minor or they might cause the equivalent of the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965 -- when a relay which was not tripping when desired to isolate a line and causing a breaker on a generator to trip resulting in local outtages was reset to have a lower trip-point -- well below the lines capacity - and this time it tripped when it shouldn't -- power heading for Southern Ontario was redirected into New York lines causing overloads and trips -- soon breakers had tripped as far south as Maryland -- rather than a local problem more than 30 million people were in the dark.

Now mucking with prices will not do that -- yet it could cause significant economic distortion akin to the building of a large Aluminum ore reduction plant in Dubai -- far from the ore, far from Aluminum consumers -- why -- because of decision not to meter natural gas led to the building of an extra-large natural gas-fired electric generating plant. So because natural gas was priced well below the market price -- people were induced to bring Bauxite from as far away as Jamaica and take the Aluminum ingots to Europe for further processing

In the case of so-called 'Green energy" -- due to market manipulations by the Legislature we pay the producers of wind or solar generated electricity a premium for less reliable and thus less desirable power production.

 

[KentXie]

Kent -- I'm not going to debate the legality or the accounting -- But as a matter of electrical science and engineering what you are saying is just not possible -- and I hope that your employer didn't teach you otherwise.

While the following is a gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) -- although, in principle you actually can do what I'm about to describe:

1) Take a light bulb and connect it to a battery with a switch
a) when you close the switch power is supplied by the battery to the light bulb and the light bulb will light
b) Place a meter at either the battery and another one at the bulb -- you will find that the power supplied by the battery all goes to the bulb (well there might be a very small amount lost in the wire)

2) Now add a second switch, 2 more meters, a second battery, a second light bulb -- independently everything is the same -- it behaves the same as the above system

3) Now combine the two systems into one system:
a) each battery is connected to a local meter and then to a common wire feeding both switches and light bulbs through their own meters.
b) Call one battery Green and the other Red.
c) Call one switch, light, meter and bulb -- Left and the other set Right.
d) If I now close the Left Switch -- power flows from both Green and Red Batteries to the Left Bulb -- due to small variations in the two batteries more power may be delivered by the Red Battery.
e) Open the Left Switch and repeat the experiment by closing the Right Switch -- this time power will flow from Green and Red batteries to the Right Bulb.
f) Finally -- close the Left Switch leaving the Right Switch closed -- now power is supplied by both Green and Red Batteries to both Left and Right Bulbs. Outside of disconnecting one of the two batteries -- you can not control which battery is supplying which bulb.

4) While there are some subtle differences between the above DC system and the Polyphase AC system which we use for our electric supply -- the basic principles remain in place. These principles used to analyze all electrical circuits are they are known as Kirchhoffs Laws of Current and Voltage. They govern all electrical systems. The simplest way to think of it is -- if you and your neighbor are on the same wire -- you get whatever your neighbor gets

The same apples to suppliers of electricity -- close the switch and the electricity will flow between and among the various sources and sinks in the system to satisfy the two laws.

5) Now because the suppliers have meters and the users have meters -- $ can flow pretty-much independent to the flow of electrons because of the ability have agreements to price the energy or power according to short term, long term contracts or even on a spot market instantaneous basis.

Make sense after recalling that I did do this experiment in high school physics. How pricing works however is that the utility company, like NSTAR, purchases a certain amount of energy from each supplier. Yes the energy is pooled and you can't differentiate from it when it comes to your household. Pricing-wise, however, will depend on which supplier you choose for that is where the utilility company will purchase from.

 

[Matthew]

In the case of so-called 'Green energy" -- due to market manipulations by the Legislature we pay the producers of wind or solar generated electricity a premium for less reliable and thus less desirable power production.

You know I'm not in favor of market manipulations -- but you can't say this without giving a nod to the enormous implicit and explicit subsidies that coal-fired power receives.

I'd rather that the cost of burning coal include the cost of cleaning up the pollution emitted (including the large amounts of radioactive coal ash) and the cost to human health and lives caused by the pollution. With that factored in, "green energy" looks a lot more cost effective. Of course, since we do everything ass-backwards, we subsidize coal and then subsidize "green energy" to make up for that.

 

[HenryAlan]

I don't see it as a market manipulation. If I as a customer want to buy my electricity from provider A instead of provider B, I'm well aware that I don't have a direct circuit tying me to provider A's plant. But what I do expect (and is indeed what happens) is that the infrastructure operator will purchase an amount of electricity matching my consumption from provider A rather than from provider B. Collectively, the consumer determines which providers and in which proportion sell electricity to the grid operator.

 

[whighlander]

I don't see it as a market manipulation. If I as a customer want to buy my electricity from provider A instead of provider B, I'm well aware that I don't have a direct circuit tying me to provider A's plant. But what I do expect (and is indeed what happens) is that the infrastructure operator will purchase an amount of electricity matching my consumption from provider A rather than from provider B. Collectively, the consumer determines which providers and in which proportion sell electricity to the grid operator.

Henry -- that is mostly true for the major providers of generation such as Excelon, Duke Power, Entergy Corporation, FPL Energy, Mirant Corp -- they operate numerous,large traditional fossil and nuclear fueled steam plants and have a history of reliability, etc. Typically the local utility handling the distribution of the electricity in the cities and towns signs long-term contracts with the major producers and then may purchase additional power on a spot basis as needed

In contrast, under the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) of 1978 and as amended and extended -- the then integrated utilities (the then Boston Edison) and today's power distributors such as NSTAR have to purchase "alternative, non-traditional, or "green power" from the non-transitional producers when offered at the price set to cover the costs of generation of the non-traditional producer.

So if the cost of generation at Mystic Station #8 or #9 (1400 MW of brand new, highly efficient "2-on-1 combined cycle gas turbines" (i.e there are two gas turbines whose waste head produces steam used in a single multistage steam turbine) was say $0.05 / kWhr and some green generator offered the same 1400 MW produced by a mixture of wind turbines and solar arrays at $0.50/kWhr -- the local utility would have to pay the 10X premium for the green power .

Luckily its not quite that bad as the distribution utility can impose some reliability and availability criteria and the major saving grace is that the purchase requirements only apply to small producers so 1400 MW is not involved

None-the-less we've already seen the economic ugliness of the Cape Wind Project foisted onto NSTAR's customers as a condition of approving the merger with Northeast Utilities

 

[whighlander]

Get used to it. Grid failures are going to be the "exploding mid-19th century rusted-out water mains" of the 21st century urban core. Underground and overhead high-tension power lines are some of the most obscure critical infrastructure in terms of public consciousness, so the investment in basic maintenance has been nil compared to, say, road bridges where people will easily bark up the chain about the rust they're seeing and bumpy ride. You don't know the grid is on the fritz until it gives out. Severely.

I think we're a few 2004 NYC blackouts away from our leaders getting the message. Stuff like NStar's and CL&P's (in the post-Irene and October storm debacles) sluggishness at repairs is seen rightly as monopolistic corporate dysfunction, but that masks to some degree how overwhelmed their qualified techs are out in the field in an emergency knowing the true fragile state of their infrastructure and knowing what they don't know about all that can go wrong with the unmapped spaghetti mess of wiring. We saw that unknown at work this afternoon after the juice went on when manholes started exploding all over Back Bay.


The "good" thing is that a mass blackout socks every income and demographic and political group equally, and makes them equally cranky. So there is hell to pay in a systemic failure. But there'll be no prevention. There'll have to be lost weeks of productivity, calculable billions in lost regional revenue, local/national/international embarrassment, hearings, citizens screaming at harried pols, sacrificial lambs, and all that...repeatedly...before that most-obscure of infrastructure takes center stage.


In other words...move to Needham. Municipal power supply FTW!

F-Line -- a precient comment? or just another random event clustering and appearing to be correlated?

Anyway another Back Bay blackout orginating at the Scotia Street Substation -- this one seems to have only lasted for about 1 hour

I'm sure we will hear more later

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Things are still not back to normal in BB. I know people who live in some of the South End streets affected the first time around and there's still disconcerting blips happening frequently. Haven't been down that area in awhile so don't know if NStar's still doing mop-up work to the lines, or if (more worrisome) the original kaboom stressed the infrastructure to the fritz further away from the source.

 

[choo]

Well the substation isnt complete yet. It's strung together with temporary cabling and all the other substations going overtime. If, let's just say, it rains for days and something gets wet, the temporary set up fails and other substations become overworked and blow a circuit.

 

[bbfen]

Well the substation isnt complete yet. It's strung together with temporary cabling and all the other substations going overtime. If, let's just say, it rains for days and something gets wet, the temporary set up fails and other substations become overworked and blow a circuit.

This.

Power may be "back" but it's conditional upon the temporary solutions continuing to operate. I don't know how much today's "blip" set them back, but my understanding is that they were still several weeks away from a permanent restoration of service to the approx 12k customers relying on the Scotia substation.

 

[cozzyd]

Was visiting a friend at Davis Square. Power went out for over an hour on his street...

 

[whighlander]

This.

Power may be "back" but it's conditional upon the temporary solutions continuing to operate. I don't know how much today's "blip" set them back, but my understanding is that they were still several weeks away from a permanent restoration of service to the approx 12k customers relying on the Scotia substation.

BBF -- Here's the latest on the original Back Bay Black Out -- aka BBBO

Associated Press story quoted by the Boston Herald

Cause of Back Bay blackout remains unsolved
By Associated Press
Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - Added 4 days ago

BOSTON -- An independent engineering consultant hired by NStar [NST] to investigate a transformer fire and power failure that knocked out power to some 22,000 customers in Boston’s Back Bay in March has been unable to pinpoint an exact cause.

...The 220-page report by RTI Group ruled out human error because no one entered or left the substation in the 18 hours before the fire.

A connection failed and sparked mineral oil, used as a cooling agent and conductor in the power line. But the root cause, the failure in a high-voltage connection, may never be solved.

That gives one a whole degree of confidence!

 

[bbfen]

@whigh -- "It's just one of those things."

Work in the neighborhood seems to be slowing down at the street/manhole level. Fewer overnight crews in the surrounding blocks in the manholes, and everything at the substation is now contained in the building. Presumably they're splicing everything back up to the new transformer.

It'll be nice when they open St. Cecilia's and Cambria streets back up.

edit: clarity