[Paleopsych] Gaming the power grid

[HowlBloom at aol.com]

Thanks for this, Paul.  It's disturbing but critical information.

In a message dated 8/16/2004 6:10:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
paul.werbos at verizon.net writes:
Rooftop PVs are nice, but best solar thermal is cheaper and more efficient.
More important, rooftops are a drop in the bucket.

The one really serious and urgent energy crisis in the US is the crisis
of electricity regulation so crazy that we dramatically overuse natural gas
as a fuel, distorting markets worldwide. Even modest reforms
have gotten nowhere based on folks in Congress who have said
"First things first. First MUST come controversial corporate welfare
(pork for my buddies, either earmarks or tax breaks). And if we DO get that 
through...
well, next year more of the same will come first..."

But the world oil situation is coming to a head fast. Decisions within the 
next 5 years will
be decisive, in terms of our ability to avert global catastrophe 20 years 
hence.
(Those poor folks who think TODAY'S problems with the Middle East are 
large...)

IF Bush were brave enough to dump Cheney AND Halliburton, and bring on 
McCain with
a promise to really clean house and get back to what the US and the world 
really needs...
well... there might be some hope by that route... But I have to admit, 
putting it all together,
it's my personal judgment right now that the chances of nonextinction would 
definitely be a lot greater
if we all picked Kerry (f Bush-Cheney is the alternative).

The present grid, and the modest reforms now before Congress, wouldn't do 
much to
give the US the kind of "spinning reserve" backups that made the big 
blackouts in France
and Italy last so much less time than the big one in the US Northeast. 
Expanding spinning
reserves is just one aspect of "intelligent" (and more rationally 
regulated) power grids,
and... as you say, critical to getting full value from intermittent 
distributed generation.

To put it another way... a major barrier to mega-use of stuff like solar 
thermal power is
the low VALUE (and payment) per kwh of intermittent power today. More 
intelligent grids
(including better and more use of spinning reserves) would raise that 
value... raise
what utilities can RATIONALLY pay to intermitted power generators... and 
SUBSTANTIALLY
increase the potential market for much larger-scale renewables.

By the way... "intelligent grids" are a major official priority of DOE. 
They will tell you
it's $80 million/year. But IEEE-USA people tell me more than half of that 
is just
Ronald Reagan's superconductor program, recycled and relabelled.
(Since current projections are that such wires will cost ten times present 
transmission
capability, and we can't even afford simple wires these days, one may question
the relevance to what I just discussed...) Lots more is pork. They estimate 
about
$2 million for the actual grid research in FY03, about half or a third of what
NSF put in. There are some unmet opportunities as it happens... a polite way
of saying we are sitting down marking time as the flood waters rise...

========

Best of luck to us all...

    Paul

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----------
Howard Bloom
Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 
21st Century
Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty 
Member, The Graduate Institute
www.howardbloom.net
www.bigbangtango.net
Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic 
of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The 
Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American 
Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy 
of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International 
Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive 
editor -- New Paradigm book series.
For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: 
www.paleopsych.org
for two chapters from 
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, 
see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang 
to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
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