Posted on 06/07/2018 3:44:04 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A great deal of the electricity in the United States goes to waste.
Much is lost in the initial generation of electricity. And much is lost through the use of inefficient devices, like incandescent light bulbs that heat up a filament to produce light.
But power is also lost in between, on the grid, as it is carried along hundreds of miles of wires, repeatedly shifted between different voltages, and converted from AC to DC and back, all in the split second between the time it enters the grid and the time it powers your computer.
How much power is lost on the grid?
The consensus among experts in the field is that most electricity is lost on the two ends, in generation and use, and not that much in between. The Department of Energy estimates that, of 37.7 quads (quadrillion BTUs) of “energy consumed to generate electricity,” 23.24 quads (about 62 percent) is wasted as “conversion losses.” After that, only 0.84 quads (roughly 2.2 percent) is lost or “unaccounted for” in transmission and distribution (T&D)....
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
Good thing we have wind turbines and solar cells.
Nikola Tesla had this all figured out but the FBI stole all his notes after he died.
Thank god for wind and solar, maybe we need a device that converts atmospheric energy into usable power at virtually no cost. Where is John Galt when you need him.
The article is factually correct, the better job of managing power factor you can do the lower the conversion losses. Whether that’s feasible at the micro scale they’re describing isn’t clear.
Today a power company gathers data over a period of time and implements corrections that are crude and invariant. About the best they do is things like putting power factor correction capacitors on a timer to shift the correction during business hours when industrial devices are in use. We all pay for waste, if the waste is reduced we pay less.
Interlude: your bull detector
By now, many BS detectors will be ringing at full volume. I get it. This sounds like magic beans.
And this is a field full of magic beans. Manifestos promising revolutionary energy solutions (if only The Establishment weren’t suppressing them) abound. I get those emails myself.
...
The only part of the article that seemed credible.
It seems to me that getting the generators closer to the end might be a solution.
Nikola Tesla had this all figured out but the FBI stole all his notes after he died.
...
That’s crap.
President Trump’s uncle was involved. More info here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Trump
“..the company conceives of as an “operating system for electricity,” can not only track what’s happening on the electricity sine wave from nanosecond to nanosecond, it can correct the sine wave from microsecond to microsecond, perfectly adapting it to the load it serves...”
My response.
More ultra complicated and fragile catastrophy-prone complexity tech bullshit that they promise will be “more efficient” “ cheaper” and, of course, “carbon neutral”.
Massive complexity can catastrophically fail in the way that simple but “less efficient” systems cannot.
I say, let the test area be California. The silicon valley tech douches say our overcomplicated future will be wonderful. Let them be the first to enjoy it !
From the article:
“By now, many BS detectors will be ringing at full volume. I get it. This sounds like magic beans.”
Yup. The more I read the article, the more I thought the exact same thing.
I was in the power generation business for about 25 years, the mechanical side, not the electrical.
The article is really about a company selling snake oil in my opinion.
“Comments? “
I have a comment/question. Do thousands of us really need to click on over to this left wing rag, to see what this article is really about? Does the article make a point, or are you trying to raise revenue for Vox?
About 50% of the power is lost in the transmission lines due to resistance. Superconductors are the answer if you ignore the cost.
I read recently that the USA power grid is the most complex engineering project in the history of the world.
I believe I read that in article about a theoretical nuclear EMP attack on our power grid.
I don't have the expertise to know if that's true or not.
Any expert opinion from Freeper engineers on that claim?
They lost me at the ADT ad
Yep. Most of the loss is in converting fuels to electricity. When they start comparing BTUs and say our grid wasted its BS. Like burning coal to heat water to turn a turbine to make electricity to heat water to turn a turbine to see how much we got out. STUPID.
Like my nephew who was 22 at the time showing me magnets on a wheel causing it to spin with another magnet in his hand. Then asking me why we can’t create electricity for free doing that. He really thought he had created a solution to the world. I tried in vain to explain but gave up and just said yep. Public education is failed. It did turn out that he is crazy not ha ha crazy but pass the lithium crazy.
OK.
Did you know that Trump’s uncle was involved?
They mentioned it the last episode I watched. Didn’t go into detail yet.
It’s dreamers like him that some day may make this possible. Think about it yourself. All other technologies have grown in leaps and bounds since discovered, why not magnetism. It has always baffled me.
Because that what turbines turn. U serious?
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