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"As of yesterday, 304 U.S. service members had died since the beginning of military operations inIraq, according tothe U.S.Department of Defense. The Britishmilitary has reported 49 deaths andDenmark's military has reported one death."
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Javert, you have to click on the links to see what aspectre is saying. I wonder if a lot of smaller generators, like combined heat and power systems, say at hotels, hospitals, schools, malls, and similar sized buildings, could help speed up the timetable for full power 24/7 to be brought to Iraq? I wonder if anyone is pursuing that option?
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Just interesting that the US, UK, and Denmark were the only countries that had ground troops in Iraq before Dubya declared that "major fighting is over". And that a small taste of Iraq's post-war lack of electrical power has struck the major cities of the US, UK, and Denmark within a short period of time. Capital cities if one includes Hurricane Isabel
During a serious smog crisis in Rome due to the dirtiness of powerplants, the Italian government seriously considered -- including some actual installations -- placing new far cleaner-burning automobile engines (thanks to environmental regulations) into apartment buildings, hospitals, large businesses, etc to drive generators. Not quite as clean or efficient as newer dual-cycle gas-turbine generators, but much better than the old powerplants. One thing nice about such a locally-distributed power system is ya don't hafta worry restoring&protecting (from sabotage and looting) long-distance transmission lines. And properly engineered, neighborhood power failures remain in the neighborhood.
Ya oughta contact someone in Rome's electrical utilities to get more info, ana kata, work it into a proposal, then present such a project directly to Halliburton.
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Yeah, distributed power is the wave of the future. Especially since, get this, something like 60% - 80% of the energy released when you burn fuel for electricity is in the form of heat. Power plants have no use for that heat, so they just dump it into the environment where it is wasted and can cause problems with local flora and fauna. If you use smaller generators at hotels, schools, office buildings, and so on, the slightly lower efficiencies that come from having a much smaller generator are way more than offset by the fact that you can use that heat for hot water, heating, and even air conditioning (by absorption chillers which use hot water as a source of power to cool stuff down) on site. This means you save hugely on your total energy bill.
This is called combined heat and power generation or cogen for short. It's truly the wave of the future. And like you said, you don't have to worry so much about citywide outages. You can hook up to the grid if you like for the times when your generator needs maintenance or is down or whatever, but when the utility grid experiences an outage, you can have switchgear that will isolate your system within milliseconds and let you keep on running.
I'm sure Halliburton and other contractors have looked at doing this in Iraq. It's quite widely known but just really coming into widespread use here in the states.
[ September 25, 2003, 03:04 AM: Message edited by: ana kata ]
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I recall that during the energy crisis, California was looking into several options for distributed power generation. I don't know how hard that's being pushed now that things have gotten better, though.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Actually I was involved in one of these projects in California, and during the very summer when they were having rolling blackouts from not being able to provide enough power for their customers, the utility (Pacific Gas & Electric) was doing MAJOR foot dragging on telling us what we could do to comply with their requirements to interconnect. We weren't planning on selling them power, and we had multiple redundant systems to disconnect our system from theirs within a few milliseconds in the event of any glitches but that was not sufficient for them. They started out saying it would cost $200k to let us interconnect (citing a lot of protective equipment they needed to install on their side which was pure bunkum), then finally after much negotiations about which I don't want to know what actually went on, they got the price down to $30k. Still pure bunkum.
They are very protective of their future market, despite the obvious benefits to everyone involved of distributed power systems. It was quite frustrating. That's what monopolies are like. We need to get rid of them all, somehow, including the monopoly on renewing your car tag or driver's license. And now I'm planning to work for some government contractor again! <grins> I'm going to need lots of heart and spirit to resist the soul-sucking forces that are so powerful in government work! I wonder if I have enough?
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aspectre, are you suggesting that there is active sabotage going on? I am very skeptical of that possibility, just from what little I do know of the blackout that happened here. Or is this just one of those twilight zone things? I think the truth is that blackouts are not terribly uncommon in general. And that during this same time period there have also been numerous blackouts in countries who have nothing whatsoever to do with the war in Iraq.
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I am not sure of the connection you are trying to make, but I do know it's a bit creepy. I will think about this one for a while. Thanks. I do not believe that these outages are coincidental, nor do I believe they are due to poor power grids. I do think "something is afoot."
Anne Kate wrote: "Yeah, distributed power is the wave of the future. Especially since, get this, something like 60% - 80% of the energy released when you burn fuel for electricity is in the form of heat."
Did you happen to see the 60 Minutes 2 show about Dean Kamen, the inventor of the (now recalled) Segway scooter? He has developed a generator which can power a PC, and he uses the heat it creates to purify water.
(it is really hard to get a good article about this, sorry.)
Hey, Aspectre, I've got it!! It is actually Dean Kamen's conspiracy to sell his generator to the government for use in Iraq. Eventually, when these power outages happen, people will start to say: "Dang, if only we had one of those Stirling generators which also purifies our water."
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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Now italy has lost its power (and some of France and Switzerland) this is starting to get out of hand. What's going on? How come, all of sudden, great chunks of countries are losing power. Before August, countries like these that are loosing power never had wide-spread blackouts. Now they are happening all at once.
It could be sabotage, but it seems unlikely. Is it just terribly co-incidental luck?
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I had to chuckle when I read the Yahoo News headline that said the Atkins Diet is spreading wildly through England. If Denmark is next, that would be too weird!!
Actually, I wonder if these outages are simply following a pattern because these are countries which are the biggest power hogs?
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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