North American Network Operators Group
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Re: East Coast outage?

  • From: Iljitsch van Beijnum
  • Date: Fri Aug 15 18:33:04 2003

On vrijdag, aug 15, 2003, at 23:58 Europe/Amsterdam, [email protected] wrote:

Amount of energy generated must be balanced with the amount of energy used
at any time. Otherwise Bad Things (tm) will happen. The shutown of the grid is a very good thing compared to what it would have been had it not
shutdown.
It seems to me that the power guys are still living somewhere in the last century. Is it really impossible to absorb power spikes? We can go from utility to battery or the other way around in milliseconds, so it should be possible to activate something that can absorb a short spike much the same way. Balancing intermediate-term generation/usage mismatches should be possible by simply communicating with users. There is lots of stuff out there that switches on and off periodically (all kinds of cooling systems, battery charging, lights), so let it switch on or off for a few minutes when the power network needs it to.

I think the idea that the power should be always present and always reliable is actually harmful, as it doesn't provide for any "congestion contnrol" by bringing the users into the loop.