Wow, I'm actually delivering on a pledged post within a week. OK, here we go, into the wonderful exciting world of synchronization of electric generators!
Maybe you don't know it, but that juice your electric utility provides you changes direction 60 times a second (assuming you're in the US - Europeans do it slightly differently of course). That's why they call it "alternating current", or AC. There's a diagram on this page with some other stuff too.
Generating electricity that way seems like a lot of trouble, but actually it's easier than producing nonreversing "direct current" (DC). DC requires rectifiers and other impedimenta, and was economically impractical at the time when our electrical distribution network was being built out.
But that alternation creates some problems. For one, it affects the impedance of electrical appliances - vary the rate of alternation and all of a sudden your motorized appliances might overheat. For another, it requires all generators hooked up to feed the system to be exactly in step with the existing rate and amplitude of alternation. That's where synchronization comes in.
They might have better metering stuff nowadays, but many plants synchronize with something called a synchroscope that looks something like a clock with only one hand. The hand rotates at a rate proportional to the difference in speed between the generator being synchronized and the grid it's being synchronized with. The hand position indicates the relative phases of the waves - when it's at 12:00 the waves are exactly in step.
So when you start a prime mover like a diesel generator or a steam turbine, you manipulate its speed with its governor. You set the speed up just a hair higher than that of the grid (as indicated by a slowly moving hand on the synchroscope), let the synchroscope's hand sneak up just short of 12:00, and then you close the breaker to connect it to the grid.
Whoops, you weren't in sync when you closed the breaker? Well, lots of neat stuff can happen then - just don't stand too close. You might fry the windings on your generator. You might jerk your prime mover loose from its mountings, or tear something loose internally. If your generator is big enough relative to the power distribution grid you're supposed to be feeding, you could even bring the whole grid down. That's not a good career move. (And unless you think it's a good idea to redline your car's motor in neutral and then slam it into gear, don't try starting a diesel generator by just connecting it to the grid. That was done at a plant in California back in the 80's, and they managed to break the ~13" crankshaft on a diesel generator).
Well, there's more to it than that yet. You also have to fool with the voltage regulator. This varies current in the exciter to get your generator's voltage at the appropriate value. You want the power to flow out, not in, you want the right power factor (no, not another pledged post!) and you'd better have some reverse power relays ready to knock you offline to protect against idiots and emergencies.
Nowadays more and more of this process is automated. But these functions above still must be carried out in some form or another. And with any luck, if you ever use a backup generator, I hope I've convinced you to read the instructions.
Friday, October 04, 2002
Thursday, October 03, 2002
Where are all the German jokes?
I stole this from Gene Expression (which now features Jason Soon and Suman Palit too - check them out).
Anyway, it got me thinking about German jokes. I don't know any. It's not like there aren't plenty of Krauts around, including me (50%). So where are the jokes?
Anyway, it got me thinking about German jokes. I don't know any. It's not like there aren't plenty of Krauts around, including me (50%). So where are the jokes?
Sillier than a simile
Once in a while I hear an expression that's, uh, memorable. But I daresay I haven't heard them all yet, so I thought I'd try to tap the collective wisdom of The Blogosphere(™ Bill Quick) to see what I've been missing. Here are some examples of the kind of stuff I'm looking for - some of them are, uh, pretty colorful...
For instance, say you want to convey the idea that someone is extremely busy. My two favorite standards are 'a peglegged man in an ass-kicking contest' or 'a one-armed paperhanger with the seven year itch'.
Then there's slipperiness. Most of the ones I've heard are kind of gross. 'Snot on a doorknob' is a worthy entrant, but it can't top this: 'two eels screwing in a bucket of snot'. I about cracked up when I heard that one from an old millwright years ago.
For tightness, there's 'a bull's ass sewn up with a log chain', or 'A gnat's ass stretched over a rainbarrel'.
Confusion? There's 'Father's Day at the trailer park' or '50 blind lesbians at a fish market'.
Human size? I like 'big enough to go bear hunting with a switch'.
Stupidity? 'Too dumb to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel'. I'm thinking the guy who pissed in the boot wasn't so bright either, but maybe some antiquarian can explain the logic to me.
Noisy? 'Like skeletons copulating on a tin roof'. I think I got that from National Review.
I suppose I could go on at great length, as I usually do. But now it's your turn - can you top these?
For instance, say you want to convey the idea that someone is extremely busy. My two favorite standards are 'a peglegged man in an ass-kicking contest' or 'a one-armed paperhanger with the seven year itch'.
Then there's slipperiness. Most of the ones I've heard are kind of gross. 'Snot on a doorknob' is a worthy entrant, but it can't top this: 'two eels screwing in a bucket of snot'. I about cracked up when I heard that one from an old millwright years ago.
For tightness, there's 'a bull's ass sewn up with a log chain', or 'A gnat's ass stretched over a rainbarrel'.
Confusion? There's 'Father's Day at the trailer park' or '50 blind lesbians at a fish market'.
Human size? I like 'big enough to go bear hunting with a switch'.
Stupidity? 'Too dumb to pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel'. I'm thinking the guy who pissed in the boot wasn't so bright either, but maybe some antiquarian can explain the logic to me.
Noisy? 'Like skeletons copulating on a tin roof'. I think I got that from National Review.
I suppose I could go on at great length, as I usually do. But now it's your turn - can you top these?
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
Uncivil comments
Let's make a deal, Sgt. Stryker. I won't claim that slavery wasn't involved in the secession of the Southern states in the Civil War, and you won't hand me this sanctimonious crap about how the Union side was fighting to free the slaves and stamp out a culture that was "evil and wicked to the core".
You don't like revisionism? Then what do you think about the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation was written halfway through the war, and didn't free the Northern slaves?
You don't like secession? The general rule is that, unless we're talking about the Mafia, we can leave associations if we choose after we join. Tell me what in the Constitution forbade secession. And if nothing forbade it, tell me why the 10th Amendment doesn't make it legal. The Southerners could see clearly that they were going to get a long brutal screwing once they were no longer in a position to block hostile legislation backed by Northerners, so why should they stick around?
One of the things that amazes me about this topic is how people who ordinarily would make fun of religious fanatics become such sanctimonious pricks themselves when expounding on Northern motives. And in fact a bunch of what could fairly be called religious fanatics provided much of the impetus. They were the abolitionists - a bunch of people who would suffer no economic impact from their radical changes, and who were bound and determined to impose their beliefs on everyone else. There's the analogy to Islamofascism Stryker was looking for - he was just looking on the wrong side.
Yankees have been morally masturbating about their role in ending slavery for a long time now, ignoring the fact that they weren't particularly enlightened about race themselves, and that most of the social disruption would happen far from their neighborhoods anyway. People would lose what historically had been considered property and uneducated ex-slaves would be dumped into the economy with even fewer guarantees than they had had under slavery. Yet back in Boston, where the likes of William Lloyd Garrison did their braying, they wouldn't see any of this. We saw just how tolerant Yankees were, especially Bostonians, over 100 years later, once blacks started migrating north in large numbers.
Slavery certainly doesn't meet modern moral standards, but it wasn't so exceptional by the standards of its time. Should it have been eliminated? Yes. At any price? Don't insult my intelligence - would anyone have voted to prosecute a war knowing it would cost 620,000 dead when many alternatives remained unexplored? Lincoln himself favored shipping blacks back to Africa. And if fighting against it was such a moral imperative, surely it is not diminished now - why aren't we sending troops into the Sudan and other places where the practice survives?
Admit it, the Civil War was about brute force politics and nothing more - the subsequent mythology is the whitewash it takes to cover up the incredible toll. The "save the Union" line sounds like the classic from Vietnam - "we had to destroy the village in order to save it". "With malice toward none"? Right - troops would invade others' property, kill them by the thousands and ruin their economies for years to come, but dammit, we draw the line there. To Stryker, people who have a problem with the way Lincoln, Sherman et al handled the war are "obstinate".
And while Stryker sheds crocodile tears for the slaves, let's note his claimed ties to Philip Sheridan. You remember Sheridan, don't you? He's the alleged source of the expression "the only good Indian is a dead Indian". That's the kind of racially enlightened moral paragons who were leading the armies of the North - after slaughtering their brothers who were defending their homes, what's a few redskins?
You don't like revisionism? Then what do you think about the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation was written halfway through the war, and didn't free the Northern slaves?
You don't like secession? The general rule is that, unless we're talking about the Mafia, we can leave associations if we choose after we join. Tell me what in the Constitution forbade secession. And if nothing forbade it, tell me why the 10th Amendment doesn't make it legal. The Southerners could see clearly that they were going to get a long brutal screwing once they were no longer in a position to block hostile legislation backed by Northerners, so why should they stick around?
One of the things that amazes me about this topic is how people who ordinarily would make fun of religious fanatics become such sanctimonious pricks themselves when expounding on Northern motives. And in fact a bunch of what could fairly be called religious fanatics provided much of the impetus. They were the abolitionists - a bunch of people who would suffer no economic impact from their radical changes, and who were bound and determined to impose their beliefs on everyone else. There's the analogy to Islamofascism Stryker was looking for - he was just looking on the wrong side.
Yankees have been morally masturbating about their role in ending slavery for a long time now, ignoring the fact that they weren't particularly enlightened about race themselves, and that most of the social disruption would happen far from their neighborhoods anyway. People would lose what historically had been considered property and uneducated ex-slaves would be dumped into the economy with even fewer guarantees than they had had under slavery. Yet back in Boston, where the likes of William Lloyd Garrison did their braying, they wouldn't see any of this. We saw just how tolerant Yankees were, especially Bostonians, over 100 years later, once blacks started migrating north in large numbers.
Slavery certainly doesn't meet modern moral standards, but it wasn't so exceptional by the standards of its time. Should it have been eliminated? Yes. At any price? Don't insult my intelligence - would anyone have voted to prosecute a war knowing it would cost 620,000 dead when many alternatives remained unexplored? Lincoln himself favored shipping blacks back to Africa. And if fighting against it was such a moral imperative, surely it is not diminished now - why aren't we sending troops into the Sudan and other places where the practice survives?
Admit it, the Civil War was about brute force politics and nothing more - the subsequent mythology is the whitewash it takes to cover up the incredible toll. The "save the Union" line sounds like the classic from Vietnam - "we had to destroy the village in order to save it". "With malice toward none"? Right - troops would invade others' property, kill them by the thousands and ruin their economies for years to come, but dammit, we draw the line there. To Stryker, people who have a problem with the way Lincoln, Sherman et al handled the war are "obstinate".
And while Stryker sheds crocodile tears for the slaves, let's note his claimed ties to Philip Sheridan. You remember Sheridan, don't you? He's the alleged source of the expression "the only good Indian is a dead Indian". That's the kind of racially enlightened moral paragons who were leading the armies of the North - after slaughtering their brothers who were defending their homes, what's a few redskins?
Coming up to speed
I just got back from Lynne Kiesling's excellent blog, which has a number of good entries related to electric power. Then I remembered that I write about that stuff too. Cool.
Anyway, the post of interest mentioned that it takes time to build more electrical generating capacity. Very true. But even if it's built, you don't get power from a plant immediately. You have to warm it up first.
My observation seems to be that if the temperature is decent, people hop in their cars, start them, and are in gear and moving seconds later. They wouldn't make good power plant operators. Unless you want to risk potentially very costly maintenance problems, you start up slowly.
In particular, steam turbines are touchy about uneven heating. The ones in use at big commercial nuclear power plants are quite large, and the shafts are very long. So long in fact that one of the first things you do when starting up a turbine is to put it on turning gear, so any heat it is exposed to is evenly distributed and you don't make the shaft bow from the weight of all the blades at operating temperature. Even small amounts of bowing of the shaft will cause vibrations which can destroy the turbine.
Piping runs are also very long, and the temperatures in them may vary over several hundred degrees. These factors cause great thermal expansion to occur during startup, accompanied by noises. Heating these pipes too rapidly can cause undue stresses or even failure.
Heat exchangers (see figure 1) like feedwater heaters are also big enough to expand by several inches as they heat up to operating temperatures. The hotter stages will be constructed with one end on wheels to permit the motion required. Meanwhile there are hundreds of interference fits between tubes and the bulkheads they pass through (called 'tube sheets') in these heat exchangers - any of them can leak, lowering the thermal efficiency of the plant.
The part of the plant that produces the steam takes time to warm up too. For nuclear reactors this is further complicated by the need to pull the fuel rods out in special patterns as directed by nuclear engineers to optimize the use of the reactor's power potential. You don't want to do things rapidly with a nuclear reactor unless it's an emergency shutdown (which is called a 'scram').
Once the plant is at operating temperature it becomes more flexible. It can be synchronized to the grid (another post later), and then its load can be varied over a certain range without affecting efficiency and reliability intolerably.
A little consideration of the above tells us something about how electric generation utilities are forced to operate. If they are to be able to pick up loads rapidly and reliably and to accomodate disturbances such as trips, they must always have more generators running than they need to carry the load. And because of the time it takes to heat up, these generators must be running well in advance of the load change. This might force them to run, say, 5 plants at 80% capacity instead of 4 plants at 100% capacity (this of course assumes you have 5 plants of identical capacity using the same fuel, or else there are several other things to consider).
But running 5 plants instead of 4 is expensive - the power to spin the turbine costs money whether it's generating salable electricity or not, and the 4 plant scenario is cheaper than the 5 plant one. So a utility must in a sense act like an insurance company, trying to balance reserves against anticipated demands and still make a profit.
Whoops, I promised another post. Terrific - I can think of about 3 others I've pledged, and one of them is about 2 months old now. The synchronization one will probably come soon though - I'm just getting warmed up.
Anyway, the post of interest mentioned that it takes time to build more electrical generating capacity. Very true. But even if it's built, you don't get power from a plant immediately. You have to warm it up first.
My observation seems to be that if the temperature is decent, people hop in their cars, start them, and are in gear and moving seconds later. They wouldn't make good power plant operators. Unless you want to risk potentially very costly maintenance problems, you start up slowly.
In particular, steam turbines are touchy about uneven heating. The ones in use at big commercial nuclear power plants are quite large, and the shafts are very long. So long in fact that one of the first things you do when starting up a turbine is to put it on turning gear, so any heat it is exposed to is evenly distributed and you don't make the shaft bow from the weight of all the blades at operating temperature. Even small amounts of bowing of the shaft will cause vibrations which can destroy the turbine.
Piping runs are also very long, and the temperatures in them may vary over several hundred degrees. These factors cause great thermal expansion to occur during startup, accompanied by noises. Heating these pipes too rapidly can cause undue stresses or even failure.
Heat exchangers (see figure 1) like feedwater heaters are also big enough to expand by several inches as they heat up to operating temperatures. The hotter stages will be constructed with one end on wheels to permit the motion required. Meanwhile there are hundreds of interference fits between tubes and the bulkheads they pass through (called 'tube sheets') in these heat exchangers - any of them can leak, lowering the thermal efficiency of the plant.
The part of the plant that produces the steam takes time to warm up too. For nuclear reactors this is further complicated by the need to pull the fuel rods out in special patterns as directed by nuclear engineers to optimize the use of the reactor's power potential. You don't want to do things rapidly with a nuclear reactor unless it's an emergency shutdown (which is called a 'scram').
Once the plant is at operating temperature it becomes more flexible. It can be synchronized to the grid (another post later), and then its load can be varied over a certain range without affecting efficiency and reliability intolerably.
A little consideration of the above tells us something about how electric generation utilities are forced to operate. If they are to be able to pick up loads rapidly and reliably and to accomodate disturbances such as trips, they must always have more generators running than they need to carry the load. And because of the time it takes to heat up, these generators must be running well in advance of the load change. This might force them to run, say, 5 plants at 80% capacity instead of 4 plants at 100% capacity (this of course assumes you have 5 plants of identical capacity using the same fuel, or else there are several other things to consider).
But running 5 plants instead of 4 is expensive - the power to spin the turbine costs money whether it's generating salable electricity or not, and the 4 plant scenario is cheaper than the 5 plant one. So a utility must in a sense act like an insurance company, trying to balance reserves against anticipated demands and still make a profit.
Whoops, I promised another post. Terrific - I can think of about 3 others I've pledged, and one of them is about 2 months old now. The synchronization one will probably come soon though - I'm just getting warmed up.
Saturday, September 28, 2002
Alright, just this and nothing more
I got a Google hit for "Madelyne Toogood Playboy". Go ahead, Mr. Hefner, let's see what you can do with that one.
Nothing happening this weekend
I'll be incommunicado, but there's enough blogs and other sources listed here to keep you busy for days. See ya late Sunday night at the earliest.
Friday, September 27, 2002
Blinded by science
I'm getting some feedback that suggests that some of us have a fundamental misunderstanding about science. IMO I'm picking up a heavy load here, but let's see what happens.
Plato famously made a point with his "cave". In this, people were chained facing a wall, unable to turn around. Things were going on behind them, but all they could see were the shadows of them on the wall before them. Whatever Plato's intent was, mine is to get across the idea that our perception of nature is similar - what we can know of the world is distorted because we have distorted information, filtered through our senses and our instruments.
Another example would be the blind men and the elephant. One found its trunk, another its leg, another its side, etc, and each drew an incomplete conclusion about what an elephant was. Here the idea is that our perceptions can be all too narrowly focused on aspects of a phenomenon which are inadequate or even misleading wrt describing its whole.
Are scientists thus "blind"? Yes, like all the rest of us, in certain respects.
Well, there's no denying that science has had smashing success. So let's suppose we ignore those problems and gather data anyway - now what? We have to decide what data to collect. That requires a hypothesis, which introduces yet another source of distortion. What doesn't get hypothesized doesn't get investigated. So if scientists are politically limited, internally or otherwise, they can remain blind to discoveries that are obvious to less constrained investigators.
OK, now you've collected data. It alone isn't so useful. It is given value by being organized into models designed to behave like the phenomena being studied. Then these models can be used to interpolate values where no direct data exists (in 1995 the population of Chicago was X), or to extrapolate beyond the range were data was available (in 2100 the population of Chicago will be Y). I'm showing my bias toward the "hard sciences" here, but corresponding processes exist where the data is less quantitative.
Engineers like myself can testify to the great usefulness of these models in innumerable situations. But these models impose yet another form of blindness or distortion. They might apply to only very limited circumstances. They take into account only the phenomena that appear in the equations. Other yet to be discovered phenomena might be emerge, or be significant under other circumstances. We may improve our mensuration, thus exposing flaws in the model that were not evident or significant previously. And mathematical models necessarily have the same limitations of mathematics itself (you can't divide by zero, for instance).
If you were successful to this point, terrific, but it ain't science yet. Now you must suffer peer reviewers. Peer reviewers are human beings, complete with biases, blind spots, reputations, and political agendas. Woe to you if your discovery is unwelcome. It can take years before the fogeys give way for a new theory, and entire books have been written about this.
You made it this far? Now we get to the interpretation, where entirely different kinds of errors arise. This is especially true in the hands of amateurs like journalists.
One of these errors arises in application. Models ordinarily are limited in applicability to a range of circumstances. For instance, you can use the "ideal gas law" for gases, but not for liquids (you'd think that's intuitive enough, but I've corrected alleged engineers who thought otherwise). Even that law isn't good for all gases under all circumstances. And beware of extrapolations.
Another type of application error which is depressingly common is overgeneralizing. I don't know how many times people have told me seriously that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity shows that "everything's relative", morality and all. Or they start with microevolutionary changes in, say, the distribution of colors of some moths as proof that all life on earth came from some primordial protein molecules coming together by chance - maybe they did, but you'll need more and better evidence than that.
One of the worst interpretation errors is to confuse the model for the phenomenon. Nature doesn't obey our scientific "laws" - it does what it does . We write our "laws" to accomodate what we observe, subject to the limitations of our observations, our mensuration, and our capabilities for mathematical reasoning. Any conflict between what nature does and what scientists predict is always the scientist's fault. And we can't ever be sure but that tomorrow something new might come along and force us to revisit it all.
Despite it all, science produces results which we engineers use to make life better for all of us.
But science does not give us Truth. To that it will remain forever blind.
Plato famously made a point with his "cave". In this, people were chained facing a wall, unable to turn around. Things were going on behind them, but all they could see were the shadows of them on the wall before them. Whatever Plato's intent was, mine is to get across the idea that our perception of nature is similar - what we can know of the world is distorted because we have distorted information, filtered through our senses and our instruments.
Another example would be the blind men and the elephant. One found its trunk, another its leg, another its side, etc, and each drew an incomplete conclusion about what an elephant was. Here the idea is that our perceptions can be all too narrowly focused on aspects of a phenomenon which are inadequate or even misleading wrt describing its whole.
Are scientists thus "blind"? Yes, like all the rest of us, in certain respects.
Well, there's no denying that science has had smashing success. So let's suppose we ignore those problems and gather data anyway - now what? We have to decide what data to collect. That requires a hypothesis, which introduces yet another source of distortion. What doesn't get hypothesized doesn't get investigated. So if scientists are politically limited, internally or otherwise, they can remain blind to discoveries that are obvious to less constrained investigators.
OK, now you've collected data. It alone isn't so useful. It is given value by being organized into models designed to behave like the phenomena being studied. Then these models can be used to interpolate values where no direct data exists (in 1995 the population of Chicago was X), or to extrapolate beyond the range were data was available (in 2100 the population of Chicago will be Y). I'm showing my bias toward the "hard sciences" here, but corresponding processes exist where the data is less quantitative.
Engineers like myself can testify to the great usefulness of these models in innumerable situations. But these models impose yet another form of blindness or distortion. They might apply to only very limited circumstances. They take into account only the phenomena that appear in the equations. Other yet to be discovered phenomena might be emerge, or be significant under other circumstances. We may improve our mensuration, thus exposing flaws in the model that were not evident or significant previously. And mathematical models necessarily have the same limitations of mathematics itself (you can't divide by zero, for instance).
If you were successful to this point, terrific, but it ain't science yet. Now you must suffer peer reviewers. Peer reviewers are human beings, complete with biases, blind spots, reputations, and political agendas. Woe to you if your discovery is unwelcome. It can take years before the fogeys give way for a new theory, and entire books have been written about this.
You made it this far? Now we get to the interpretation, where entirely different kinds of errors arise. This is especially true in the hands of amateurs like journalists.
One of these errors arises in application. Models ordinarily are limited in applicability to a range of circumstances. For instance, you can use the "ideal gas law" for gases, but not for liquids (you'd think that's intuitive enough, but I've corrected alleged engineers who thought otherwise). Even that law isn't good for all gases under all circumstances. And beware of extrapolations.
Another type of application error which is depressingly common is overgeneralizing. I don't know how many times people have told me seriously that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity shows that "everything's relative", morality and all. Or they start with microevolutionary changes in, say, the distribution of colors of some moths as proof that all life on earth came from some primordial protein molecules coming together by chance - maybe they did, but you'll need more and better evidence than that.
One of the worst interpretation errors is to confuse the model for the phenomenon. Nature doesn't obey our scientific "laws" - it does what it does . We write our "laws" to accomodate what we observe, subject to the limitations of our observations, our mensuration, and our capabilities for mathematical reasoning. Any conflict between what nature does and what scientists predict is always the scientist's fault. And we can't ever be sure but that tomorrow something new might come along and force us to revisit it all.
Despite it all, science produces results which we engineers use to make life better for all of us.
But science does not give us Truth. To that it will remain forever blind.
Monday, September 23, 2002
Packaged cogeneration
< needle>By the grace of God< /needle> Kathy Kinsley has led me to this item about a company that is building rooftop power plants on commercial buildings.
The article doesn't give a lot of detail, but it appears that they are doing something called cogeneration. With cogeneration, you generate electric power, but you also use some of the waste heat from the prime movers (usually gas turbines) for heating rather than rejecting it to a heat sink like a river, lake or atmospheric cooling tower. The result is improved thermal efficiency - more delivered power per unit of gas consumed.
There are other benefits also. There is more diversity of supply for electric power. Capital, operation and maintenance costs can be reduced with standardized designs and training. And as an engineer with a strong IT background, I like technologies that leverage both - such installations require sophisticated control systems.
There is a downside, however. One nice thing about remote powerplants is that any pollution is deposited far from the point of consumption. And the real cost of pollution is a strong function of where it is deposited. I'm not sure places like LA need any more heat or exhaust gases around - other locales such as Ontario may be far better.
The prime movers, which provide the heat and drive the generators, run on natural gas. Presumably any cost savings would result in part by buying natural gas in long-term contracts. I have to wonder if the existing gas distribution infrastructure can handle large-scale application of this. This could require major capital investment in places that are hostile to such development.
Also, although absorption chillers can use waste heat to provide cooling for air conditioning, it's difficult to balance the power and cooling demands. The difference presumably would be made up by buying more power from other utilities. The result will be a system that reduces the base load for power without doing much to reduce the maximum loads. And it's the costs at the maximum loads that cause the grief.
So I'm not sure we'll ever see really wide application of this in places like California, where the initial sites are. Ontario may be different. It will be interesting to watch.
The article doesn't give a lot of detail, but it appears that they are doing something called cogeneration. With cogeneration, you generate electric power, but you also use some of the waste heat from the prime movers (usually gas turbines) for heating rather than rejecting it to a heat sink like a river, lake or atmospheric cooling tower. The result is improved thermal efficiency - more delivered power per unit of gas consumed.
There are other benefits also. There is more diversity of supply for electric power. Capital, operation and maintenance costs can be reduced with standardized designs and training. And as an engineer with a strong IT background, I like technologies that leverage both - such installations require sophisticated control systems.
There is a downside, however. One nice thing about remote powerplants is that any pollution is deposited far from the point of consumption. And the real cost of pollution is a strong function of where it is deposited. I'm not sure places like LA need any more heat or exhaust gases around - other locales such as Ontario may be far better.
The prime movers, which provide the heat and drive the generators, run on natural gas. Presumably any cost savings would result in part by buying natural gas in long-term contracts. I have to wonder if the existing gas distribution infrastructure can handle large-scale application of this. This could require major capital investment in places that are hostile to such development.
Also, although absorption chillers can use waste heat to provide cooling for air conditioning, it's difficult to balance the power and cooling demands. The difference presumably would be made up by buying more power from other utilities. The result will be a system that reduces the base load for power without doing much to reduce the maximum loads. And it's the costs at the maximum loads that cause the grief.
So I'm not sure we'll ever see really wide application of this in places like California, where the initial sites are. Ontario may be different. It will be interesting to watch.
Sunday, September 22, 2002
Heroine for the day
You've probably already seen this on Instapundit, but it's worth republishing. Anyway, a Jordanian woman kicked three creeps' butts in front of a bunch of witnesses. Heh heh.
Attention sisters
Researchers trying to find environmental causes of breast cancer--diet, exercise, exposure to chemicals or other factors--will start recruiting 50,000 sisters on Saturday for study.Much more here.
The government-funded teams will start in Florida, at a fund-raising event in Tampa called the "Race for the Cure."
They hope to sign up 50,000 women nationally, aged 35 to 74, whose sisters have been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Sisters of women with breast cancer have up to twice the breast cancer risk of other women. A few genetic mutations are associated with breast cancer risk, but they account for fewer than 10% of cases.
Stem cell misreporting
Gray Davis has signed a bill to allow embryonic stem cell research in California.
The misreporting is here: "Stem cells, which are found in human embryos, umbilical cords and placentas, can divide and become any kind of cell in the body. " Stem cells are also found in adults.
Why is this important? Because some people want to represent embryonic stem cell research as the only game in town. It does offer advantages for some purposes, but the use of adult stem cells is more advantageous for other purposes.
The misreporting is here: "Stem cells, which are found in human embryos, umbilical cords and placentas, can divide and become any kind of cell in the body. " Stem cells are also found in adults.
Why is this important? Because some people want to represent embryonic stem cell research as the only game in town. It does offer advantages for some purposes, but the use of adult stem cells is more advantageous for other purposes.
What has he been smoking?
Rod Blagojevich is a representative from IllinoisChicago, representing disgraced fellow Democrat Dan Rostenkowski's old district.
Now he's running for governor. We have yet to see if he's crooked enough - I think the last two Democrats who governed Illinois wound up in prison like Rosty.
Someone asked him if he had smoked pot, and this is what he said
Big deal if he did some pot. Good grief, anybody who went to a rock concert in the 70's or 80's did whether they liked it or not - closed venues were like walk-in bongs.
But does he have to insult our intelligence by saying he doesn't know if he inhaled or not?
Now he's running for governor. We have yet to see if he's crooked enough - I think the last two Democrats who governed Illinois wound up in prison like Rosty.
Someone asked him if he had smoked pot, and this is what he said
"I did it twice, and I'm a nonsmoker," Blagojevich said at a Statehouse news conference. "I don't like it; I run. So I don't know if I inhaled or not."Musta been some good stuff.
Big deal if he did some pot. Good grief, anybody who went to a rock concert in the 70's or 80's did whether they liked it or not - closed venues were like walk-in bongs.
But does he have to insult our intelligence by saying he doesn't know if he inhaled or not?
Saturday, September 21, 2002
You deserve better
...so check out The Misanthropyst.
He has some good ideas, but it'll be a cold day when they implement this one.
He has some good ideas, but it'll be a cold day when they implement this one.
Abuse?
I'm gonna have to learn to shut off the TV. I just saw the videotape of the event that led to the hunt for Madelyne Gorman Toogood for child abuse.
Maybe you've seen it - she's leaving a Kohl's department store and puts her 4 year old girl in the back of the vehicle, and from a camera some distance away we see some rapid movements which could be construed as a mother beating her child violently. I understand that the whole thing lasts about 55 seconds.
Nobody is in favor of child abuse. But we saw abuse of The Children™ under the previous administration, and there appears to be some here too.
How? Well, we don't know exactly what happened to the child. We do know that when the mother turned herself in (several days later) the child had no cuts or bruises. We know the child was taken away from her mother and the rest of her family, which IMO is at least as traumatic as anything that happened with bare hands in 55 seconds in the car.
I've seen worse, but I'm not a child abuse professional, so I'll withhold judgment of that. What gets under my skin is this:
Pavlik Morozov would be proud.
Maybe you've seen it - she's leaving a Kohl's department store and puts her 4 year old girl in the back of the vehicle, and from a camera some distance away we see some rapid movements which could be construed as a mother beating her child violently. I understand that the whole thing lasts about 55 seconds.
Nobody is in favor of child abuse. But we saw abuse of The Children™ under the previous administration, and there appears to be some here too.
How? Well, we don't know exactly what happened to the child. We do know that when the mother turned herself in (several days later) the child had no cuts or bruises. We know the child was taken away from her mother and the rest of her family, which IMO is at least as traumatic as anything that happened with bare hands in 55 seconds in the car.
I've seen worse, but I'm not a child abuse professional, so I'll withhold judgment of that. What gets under my skin is this:
Toogood's sister, 31-year-old Margaret Daley, who authorities say was with her at the store, was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor count of failure to report child abuse. Prosecutors later added a charge of assisting a criminal. Daley was released Friday after posting $2,150 bond.Got that? Now you have to turn in your relatives on suspicion of such events, or get busted yourself. I haven't heard of anything like that even in the drug wars.
Pavlik Morozov would be proud.
September 22 is Bilbo Baggins' birthday
It's also the day he set off to Rivendell ahead of the Black Riders, leaving the ring with Frodo.
Admit it, you wanted to know.
Admit it, you wanted to know.
96% of all international terrorists fail to eat a nutritious breakfast
For that and many more, look here.
Anti religious nuts part 2
This started as a reply to a comment made by Robert Spiers on this item. It exceeded the 2500 word YACCS limit, so here it goes.
Religion is based on faith, meaning it is based on mystical visions visible and knowable only to the one who has the visions.
You make it sound like one's religion is determined by what he smokes or what kind of mushrooms he eats.
If religious people have had such visions, so what?
Communism and Fascism are, like religions, based on fictions called "the people" or "die Volk".
You have yet to demonstrate that religions are based on fictions.
Objectivism is based on perception and reason
Look, I like Ayn Rand - anybody who writes books with titles like "The Virtue of Selfishness" can't be all bad, and "Atlas Shrugged" influenced me more than any other book I've read.
But you're leaving something out. Objectivism is based on faith in perception and reason.
It doesn't take much perception to see that you can't perceive everything. And it doesn't take much reasoning to show that reason is ultimately based on some assumptions that cannot be proven within reason's framework.
It is not faith that says free markets work. That statement is based on perception and reason.
And faith. You have to believe that human nature and economic circumstances are such that it works. Fortunately I know of no exceptions.
It is not faith that says religion and other collective delusions kill. That statement is based on history.
You haven't demonstrated that religion is a "collective delusion". This must be an article of faith.
Meanwhile, what was the faith of the Mongols? The Huns? The Cold War Russians? The Red Chinese? The Nazis? Pol Pot?
And who attacked first in the Crusades?
Religion is a problem only when it is harnessed by the state, such as in the Spanish Inquisition. Ferdinand and Isabella, the two who had just united Aragon and Castile to make modern Spain and bankrolled Columbus, wanted money. They resorted to the age-old expedient of screwing Jews out of their property. Ha! - some of the Jews converted to Catholicism. But F and I still wanted their property, so they sent for Grand Inquisitors from the Vatican to pronounce them heretics. Then the state could kill them under their heresy laws and take their property anyway.
It's the state power that's the problem. Keep churches separated from the state and then it's clear what is to blame. That's the whole problem with Islam - state leaders can't be trusted with that kind of power over people's lives.
And it is only faith that says that "God" or "the people" exist at all.
I'm with you on the God part - I haven't had one of those visions you're talking about, and furthermore nothing that I know of in the Bible promises me one. I can't speak for other religions.
This reminds me of a story I heard once. State cops came by a house to warn the resident that a flood was rising and he had to leave, but the resident said "no, the Lord will provide". Later some officials came by in a rowboat to rescue him, but he said "no, the Lord will provide". The waters kept rising, forcing the man to get on the roof of his house. A helicopter came by to rescue him and he said "no, the Lord will provide". Then he was washed away and drowned.
Outraged, he confronted St. Peter, who told him "We sent the cops, a rowboat and a helicopter - what more did you want?" If you're expecting your own personal burning bush, maybe you're just too much trouble.
Several of Kurt Vonnegut's books include improbable religions, such as the Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped (followers were always snapping their heads around looking for him) and the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent (I'm working from memory, so cut me some slack). Anyway, the latter group said that there was a God, but it was preposterous to think that He would care about what happened to something so trivial as a human being. Hmm.
The fictions of Heaven and angels, just to name a couple of examples, are so transparent that one can only accept them as a guide to action if one closes one's eyes, falls one's knees and inhales incense. Which is exactly why religions encourage such behavior.
But the arrogance of such a statement is here for all to see. Sheesh. I'm no expert, but I don't recall any of that stuff in Sunday school (although they might have given us some Kool-Aid). And that's the last time I was a regular churchgoer.
Until we can see a God or until our reason otherwise tells us he must exist, he does not. And that statement is NOT based on faith.
Yes it is. You are implicitly claiming that everything that exists can be perceived or deduced. We must be creating the universe as we go then, because germs have thus existed for only the last couple of centuries, and quarks for less time yet.
If I told you that germs didn't exist because I can't see them, you'd rightly think of me as deranged. Has it occurred to you that perhaps the reason why you can't perceive any deities that might exist lies not in them, but in your capacity to perceive and reason?
Religion is based on faith, meaning it is based on mystical visions visible and knowable only to the one who has the visions.
You make it sound like one's religion is determined by what he smokes or what kind of mushrooms he eats.
If religious people have had such visions, so what?
Communism and Fascism are, like religions, based on fictions called "the people" or "die Volk".
You have yet to demonstrate that religions are based on fictions.
Objectivism is based on perception and reason
Look, I like Ayn Rand - anybody who writes books with titles like "The Virtue of Selfishness" can't be all bad, and "Atlas Shrugged" influenced me more than any other book I've read.
But you're leaving something out. Objectivism is based on faith in perception and reason.
It doesn't take much perception to see that you can't perceive everything. And it doesn't take much reasoning to show that reason is ultimately based on some assumptions that cannot be proven within reason's framework.
It is not faith that says free markets work. That statement is based on perception and reason.
And faith. You have to believe that human nature and economic circumstances are such that it works. Fortunately I know of no exceptions.
It is not faith that says religion and other collective delusions kill. That statement is based on history.
You haven't demonstrated that religion is a "collective delusion". This must be an article of faith.
Meanwhile, what was the faith of the Mongols? The Huns? The Cold War Russians? The Red Chinese? The Nazis? Pol Pot?
And who attacked first in the Crusades?
Religion is a problem only when it is harnessed by the state, such as in the Spanish Inquisition. Ferdinand and Isabella, the two who had just united Aragon and Castile to make modern Spain and bankrolled Columbus, wanted money. They resorted to the age-old expedient of screwing Jews out of their property. Ha! - some of the Jews converted to Catholicism. But F and I still wanted their property, so they sent for Grand Inquisitors from the Vatican to pronounce them heretics. Then the state could kill them under their heresy laws and take their property anyway.
It's the state power that's the problem. Keep churches separated from the state and then it's clear what is to blame. That's the whole problem with Islam - state leaders can't be trusted with that kind of power over people's lives.
And it is only faith that says that "God" or "the people" exist at all.
I'm with you on the God part - I haven't had one of those visions you're talking about, and furthermore nothing that I know of in the Bible promises me one. I can't speak for other religions.
This reminds me of a story I heard once. State cops came by a house to warn the resident that a flood was rising and he had to leave, but the resident said "no, the Lord will provide". Later some officials came by in a rowboat to rescue him, but he said "no, the Lord will provide". The waters kept rising, forcing the man to get on the roof of his house. A helicopter came by to rescue him and he said "no, the Lord will provide". Then he was washed away and drowned.
Outraged, he confronted St. Peter, who told him "We sent the cops, a rowboat and a helicopter - what more did you want?" If you're expecting your own personal burning bush, maybe you're just too much trouble.
Several of Kurt Vonnegut's books include improbable religions, such as the Church of Jesus Christ the Kidnapped (followers were always snapping their heads around looking for him) and the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent (I'm working from memory, so cut me some slack). Anyway, the latter group said that there was a God, but it was preposterous to think that He would care about what happened to something so trivial as a human being. Hmm.
The fictions of Heaven and angels, just to name a couple of examples, are so transparent that one can only accept them as a guide to action if one closes one's eyes, falls one's knees and inhales incense. Which is exactly why religions encourage such behavior.
But the arrogance of such a statement is here for all to see. Sheesh. I'm no expert, but I don't recall any of that stuff in Sunday school (although they might have given us some Kool-Aid). And that's the last time I was a regular churchgoer.
Until we can see a God or until our reason otherwise tells us he must exist, he does not. And that statement is NOT based on faith.
Yes it is. You are implicitly claiming that everything that exists can be perceived or deduced. We must be creating the universe as we go then, because germs have thus existed for only the last couple of centuries, and quarks for less time yet.
If I told you that germs didn't exist because I can't see them, you'd rightly think of me as deranged. Has it occurred to you that perhaps the reason why you can't perceive any deities that might exist lies not in them, but in your capacity to perceive and reason?
Old jokes
This past week some of us were talking around the water cooler and sci-fi came up. Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" came up, especially Mike the computer.
Mike was pretty smart, but he had a hard time with jokes. This was a problem because Mike was a joker. Humans had to explain to him that some jokes were funny once, and others could be funny repeatedly. And to this day I haven't heard of any computers that were successful in generating non-formulaic funny material on demand. So work on your jokes folks - comedians may be the last people on the planet that aren't displaced by computers and robots.
Humor certainly doesn't age well. Shakespeare has some great lines, but you have to read a dozen footnotes or be familiar with ancient cultures to appreciate them. Likewise for Chaucer, Boccaccio and innumerable others. I really don't want to work that hard.
Even old joke books can be mystifying. The oldest one I've heard of is Joe Miller's Jests, published in 1739. Here's one killer from the collection:
There were idiotarians around before they were so named, and their recent "chickenhawk" slur isn't anything terribly original. It reminds me of a joke popular with Democrats around 1988 when Bush 41 and Dan Quayle were running against a nonentity named Dukakis (who desperately needed to get out of Massachusetts before the impact of his policies set in) and future Clintonoid Lloyd Bentsen. When Dem sympathizers weren't accusing Bush of strafing lifeboats in the Pacific Ocean, they were giving Dan Quayle lip about being in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. (This was before it became convenient for them to act outraged whenever anyone questioned Bill Clinton's dishonest behavior regarding military service). Anyway, the joke was "What do you get when you cross a hawk with a chicken?". "A Quayle".
(You remember Dan Quayle, don't you? He was accused of being stupid by people who later supported Al Gore, who couldn't cut it in divinity school during the Vietnam War. And he didn't have a brother with a history of substance abuse and drowned women, so he was 'no Jack Kennedy').
I don't hear so much from them nowadays, but for a long time there has been a charity called the United Negro College Fund. Anyway, back around the early 80s accidents affected black entertainers Michael Jackson and Peoria, Illinois native Richard Pryor. Jackson's hair caught on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial, and Pryor was badly burned while free-basing some cocaine. About then I heard a joke that the two of them were starting a charity - the "Ignited Negro College Fund".
That's all I can think of for right now. Well, I edited out two that concerned a mass murderer - I have some taste.
Mike was pretty smart, but he had a hard time with jokes. This was a problem because Mike was a joker. Humans had to explain to him that some jokes were funny once, and others could be funny repeatedly. And to this day I haven't heard of any computers that were successful in generating non-formulaic funny material on demand. So work on your jokes folks - comedians may be the last people on the planet that aren't displaced by computers and robots.
Humor certainly doesn't age well. Shakespeare has some great lines, but you have to read a dozen footnotes or be familiar with ancient cultures to appreciate them. Likewise for Chaucer, Boccaccio and innumerable others. I really don't want to work that hard.
Even old joke books can be mystifying. The oldest one I've heard of is Joe Miller's Jests, published in 1739. Here's one killer from the collection:
A Westminster Justice taking Coach in the City, and being set down at Young Man's Coffee-house, Charing-Cross, the Driver demanded Eighteen-Pence as his Fare; the Justice asked him, if he would swear that the Ground came to the Money; the Man said, he would take his Oath on't. The Justice replyed, Friend, I am a Magistrate, and pulling a Book out of his Pocket, administer'd the Oath, and then gave the Fellow Six-pence, saying, he must reserve the Shilling to himself for the Affidavit.Alright, are you composed yet?
There were idiotarians around before they were so named, and their recent "chickenhawk" slur isn't anything terribly original. It reminds me of a joke popular with Democrats around 1988 when Bush 41 and Dan Quayle were running against a nonentity named Dukakis (who desperately needed to get out of Massachusetts before the impact of his policies set in) and future Clintonoid Lloyd Bentsen. When Dem sympathizers weren't accusing Bush of strafing lifeboats in the Pacific Ocean, they were giving Dan Quayle lip about being in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. (This was before it became convenient for them to act outraged whenever anyone questioned Bill Clinton's dishonest behavior regarding military service). Anyway, the joke was "What do you get when you cross a hawk with a chicken?". "A Quayle".
(You remember Dan Quayle, don't you? He was accused of being stupid by people who later supported Al Gore, who couldn't cut it in divinity school during the Vietnam War. And he didn't have a brother with a history of substance abuse and drowned women, so he was 'no Jack Kennedy').
I don't hear so much from them nowadays, but for a long time there has been a charity called the United Negro College Fund. Anyway, back around the early 80s accidents affected black entertainers Michael Jackson and Peoria, Illinois native Richard Pryor. Jackson's hair caught on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial, and Pryor was badly burned while free-basing some cocaine. About then I heard a joke that the two of them were starting a charity - the "Ignited Negro College Fund".
That's all I can think of for right now. Well, I edited out two that concerned a mass murderer - I have some taste.
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