"SteveB" wrote in message
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"ATP*" wrote in message
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"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
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On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:15:40 -0500, "ATP*" wrote:
"Buerste" wrote
"SteveB" wrote

I admit to being a Bush fan, but on a declining basis as he neared the
end
of his term. So, I let him slide on a lot of stuff.

Today, Purple Lips said our country's electric grid was much the same
as
in Thomas Edison's day. I guess he never read about Nikola Tesla or
alternating current.

I was in a car wash and laughed my ass off at the captioned picture.
When my wife asked me what I was laughing about, I explained it to
her
and a couple of onlookers and they got a laugh, too.

Liberals have no use for actual facts when perpetrating an emotional
manipulation scheme. Just forget what is right an what is wrong and
embrace the horror they have planned for us.

Turns out it's not Obama who had the facts wrong, Tesla actually worked
for
Edison for a short time and alternating current was developed while
Edison
was still active in the electrical business.

Short form: Edison thought Tesla was a crackpot and fired him - and
when Tesla later developed practrical AC power it threatened the
Patents that Edison held and Monopoly positions he had developed in DC
equipment and services.

Edison declared war and did his best to tear down Westinghouse and
Tesla in the media and proclaim his DC as safer. Well, you can see
where that went...

Tesla was probably a bit crazy, but it was a good crazy.

Edison wasn't an inventor as much as a Pointy Haired Boss -
Developing the lightbulb they didn't follow a systematic method of
coming up with a good filament, Edison just had all his lab assistants
throw every material they could come up with at it, and develop the
solution by brute force elimination. And the first few "sucessful"
filaments really weren't all that good, like carbonized bamboo and
carbonized cotton thread. Tungsten came much later.

Tesla quit after he believed Edison cheated him out of a promised bonus.
But my point is that Tesla, although younger than Edison, was a
contemporary, and most of the elements of the modern distribution system
were in fairly wide use during Edison's lifetime, even before he more or
less left the business and got into mining, etc.. So to say that Obama is
stupid and must never have read about AC or Tesla is not an informed
statement.

So, then, just where IS the power grid in the condition it was during
Edison's day? I say Obama is stupid just from listening to what he says
on a lot of things.

Steve
The condition is not the problem in most cases, it's the design and capacity
of the grid. But updating it is going to take more than money, there's a lot
of NIMBY opposition:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/sc...th/07grid.html



Hurdles (Not Financial Ones) Await Electric Grid Update
"The Obama administration has vowed to make the grid smarter and tougher,
allocating $11 billion in grants and loan guarantees to the task in the
economic stimulus package passed by the House last week.

But it will take a lot more than money to transform the grid from a form
that served well in the last century, when electricity was produced mostly
near the point of consumption, and when the imperative was meeting demand,
no matter how high it grew.

Opposition to power lines from landowners and neighbors, local officials or
environmental groups, especially in rural areas, makes expansion difficult -
even when the money for it is available. And some experts argue that in the
absence of a broader national effort to encourage cleaner fuels, even the
smartest grid will do little to reduce consumption of fuels that contribute
to climate change.

In fact, energy experts say that simply building a better grid is not
enough, because that would make the cheap electricity that comes from
burning coal available in more parts of the country. That could squeeze out
generators that are more expensive but cleaner, like those running on
natural gas. The solution is to put a price on emissions from dirtier fuels
and incorporate that into the price of electricity, or find some other way
to limit power generation from coal, these experts say.

The stimulus bill passed by the House includes $6.5 billion in credit to
federal agencies for building power lines, presumably in remote areas where
renewable energy sources are best placed, and $2 billion in loan guarantees
to companies for power lines and renewable energy projects. The bill also
includes $4.4 billion for the installation of smart meters - which,
administration officials say, in combination with other investments in a
smart grid, would cut energy use by 2 percent to 4 percent - and $100
million to train workers to maintain the grid.

About 527,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines stretch across the
United States, most installed many decades ago.

Everyone agrees that more lines are needed. But some industry experts argue
that the problem of making the grid greener goes well beyond upgrading and
expanding the existing power lines. The grid, they say, was set up primarily
to draw energy from nearby plants and to provide a steady flow of
electricity to customers. It was not intended to incorporate power from
remote sources like solar panels and windmills, whose output fluctuates with
weather conditions - variability that demands a far more flexible operation.

The experts say that the grid must therefore be designed to moderate demand
at times when there is less wind or sun available - for example, by allowing
businesses or residential customers to volunteer to let the local utility
turn down air-conditioners in office buildings or houses, when hourly prices
rise." (more on NYT site)