Quick thoughts...

[darrelx]

I find it hilarious that "Earth Hour" last week coincided with several power grid failures. I guess activists didn't realize that if the power grid doesn't have somewhere for the power to go to, it has to shut down generators to avoid a meltdown... It melted down. If the people organizing and participating in "Earth Hour" by turning off all their

Comments

Re: power-less.

[darrelx]

The problem is basic electrical theory... in order for Earth-hour to have worked, power generating plants would have needed to shut down corresponding to the lesser demand.

For everyone to simultaneously lower the power generating demand at the same minute of the same hour on the same day... there's NO WAY even a very sophisticated system could have handled that.

Power generating stations need time to shut down. In the process of being switched off the grid, they shunt their power into heat-sinks, effectively wasting it instead of using it. Then they need time to turn back on again.

That's why the grid failed in several locations. Too much power was being generated for the demand.

A more effective "Earth Hour" would have been if people would have rolled through turning off certain parts of their building at different hours thorughout the day, or if there was some sort of system of managing which people shut their power off during certain hours, but NOT ALL AT ONCE!

Re: power-less.

[barry_short]

Maybe there was more participation in San Diego than around here (actually, I'm fairly certain there was - the only evidence of Earth Hour I saw locally was that Google changed their screen to black, which I guess might have used one or two fewer micro-milli-ergs

[amberdine]

My first thought when I heard about "Earth Hour" was how these people obviously don't know how power plants work, and this could only cause trouble...

[darrelx]

Me too... but I kept forgetting to blog about it until I heard the news about all the blackouts after-the-fact.

Funny how the mainstream media isn't reporting this. They are either too stupid to grasp the concept, or too afraid of pissing off the left.

[theresamather]

Darrel, the red states including most of Utah are still totally anti-environmental to the point that the act of recycling alone will get you aggressively ridiculed and the media caters to them too. Any story that involves investigation or complex thought is not interesting to the masses in the eyes of the mass media. Even the Tibet story is a minor blip, and Chinese aggression is something we will probably eventually actually have to deal with. Brittney is all the news anyone cares about, or at least the ratings suggest that to the advertisers. :P

Come to red state country for a visit. You're a flaming liberal compared to many southern Utahns. You'll either find it a breath of fresh air or terrifying. Possibly both. :P

[vulpesrex]

Loss of load does NOT result in system power failure! In fact, shedding of load, planned or unplanned, is what circuit breakers do, to protect against excessive current damaging the transmission system. When load is heavy and one delivery path fails - usually due to interruptors opening stressed lines - remaining feeders have to bear the load; if you were at capacity on those paths to begin with, unless the load itself is reduced, you get a cascade where all paths feeding that load will fail