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re: thermal paint?
4 mar 1997
kevin jones wrote:
>inter-connected utilities have been "wheeling" through the grid for decades.
>they buy/sell generated power, standby units, spinning reserve, etc by the
>minute! nothing new, nothing that will suddenly bring prices down.
small scale cogeneration is new and different in the us. almost all of those
utilities have been sending 2 kwh of heat energy up their cooling towers (and
about a gallon of water) for every 1 kwh of electricity they produce. using
this heat in a home or building instead of pumping it directly outdoors
changes the economics.
>> already rates are falling in areas where retail wheeling is imminent --
>>it will be just like the telco deregulation...
hmmm. cheap rates per kwh and high rates for the basic connection (the real
monopoly being the wires to each house), no matter how little electrical
energy is consumed. and a drop in reliability, since distribution utilities
most likely won't get rewards based on reliability, and they will no longer
even directly lose revenues from being unable to sell electrical power to
disconnected customers during local outages.
some utilities are now making their distribution networks cheaper and less
reliable by deliberately undersizing pole transformers and fusing primaries
at 10 times rated power, so in the statistically-unlikely event that a few
houses on the same transformer all turn on their hair dryers, ranges, etc,
at once, the pole transformer will catch fire before its fuse blows...
nick
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