Warming up your car (schools, university, cost of)

[Rance]

Mal...are you not an electrical engineer slash genious? Help us out!

I've been electrocuted and I am not even touching this one.

[Xa'at]

I once fancied myself an electrical engineer. I spilled some water on the concrete floor and proceeded to attempt to plug in my aquarium pump.
Gosh, I was a dumb child. I was dropped on my head as a baby.

[DannyL]

we're looking at wind at the moment for SE Alaska. maybe I can talk about it more later.

[RayinAK]

Originally Posted by Xa'at

Ooh oh, me me! I'm an electical engineer!
Never mind.
I start my car early sometimes. Yep, polluting the environment, I know. But I don't think anyone is allowed to tell me that I'm some sort of hazard to the environment, considering I use only 100% recycled paper, eat organic food, do my shopping with recycled cotton bags, and use environmentally friendly soaps, cleaners, etc etc. Not to mention I get my electricity from hydro, which, admittedly, isn't the best either, when one thinks about the poor darling salmon. However, I don't believe that the alternative (solar!) would work out very well in Southeast Alaska.
This rant in a nutshell: chill out. Also, me for president.

You got my vote

[mal_flisk]

I work on power systems throughout the state and the amount of power available to be produced and that utilized by the customers is generally where the difference comes into play. A village power plant generally consists of 3-4 gensets in parallel, and the generators come on-line or shift in accordance with the demands made on the system. GVEA consists of 2 diesel power plants with 5 main diesels each, and 4-5 backup sets. They're located in Glenallen and Valdez. In the summer, the hydro plant at Solomon Gulch provides all the power for the 150 mile long system, with the diesel plants largely lying idle. The Petrostar Co-Gen plant across the road from Solomon Gulch utilizes a form of petroleum incapable of being utilized elsewhere and is only used when there is a large enough supply to warrant placing the plant on-line. Solomon Gulch is always running in the background to keep the equipment in a ready state, and the water level is what dictates use beyond a certain point. GVEA has Bradley Lake and several other hydro plants running.

Hydro is an integral part of the supplied power on the road system and in SE AK. Listing available and peak power consumption is there for people to understand the supply and demand factors. Hydro probably supplies on the order of 30% of the power in the aforementioned areas. Maintenance costs and the requirement for available crews for emergency power are costs factored into the price of the power.

Homer Electric has some smaller hydro sets, Chugach has Cooper Lake, and several others. Each is utilized primarily from April to September, with maintenance flow run through to prevent problems.

If you read GVEA's BESS site, the outages prevented seem to be excessive according to the statistics given.

Lies, d**n lies and statistics.

[Rance]

But is a kilowatt equal to a megawatt?

[mal_flisk]

No, kilo is a thousand and a mega is a million. Home consumption can range from as low as 3-4 kW a day, or as high as 30-50 kW per day (lots of lights left on!). a standard light bulb is 60W, consuming 60 watts of power per hour. At 120 Volts, this is drawing 1/2 Amp of current. .5A x 120V = 60Watts. I think Chugach is charging 9 cents per kW hour, dividing 60 into 1000 (1 kiloWatt) would mean that if you left this bulb burning 16.7 hours, you would consume 1000 watts (for any nitpickers, yes this is 16.66666666... etc hours, I do know, and I'm rounding up as they taught me in grammar school.... darn nuns anyway). Large TVs, electric water heaters, coffee pots etc, can use 5-10 amps of current to run them. Use a coffee carafe (insulated) to hold that fresh pot of coffee, and you can decrease your bill. If you fall asleep to the TV and enjoy doing that, set the sleep timer if you have one. Put a timer on your hot water heater, and turn it down in the daytime to 90 degrees when you are at work. 5 amps over 10 hours is 50 amps times 120V is 6 kW of power consumed. At 9 cents per KWH, your cost is $.54. Half a buck and enough left over to tell me off twice! What a bargain! Save your money, users.

[warptman]

Lost me on kilo...

[mal_flisk]

LOL warpt. Sorry. Was trying for erudite and came off as a bore.

[Rance]

No that all made sense. Sort of. Anyway...looking at the Anch paper...back of the front page where the weather forcast is...that long strip of forcasts it says to "reduce pollution", plug in at 20°. Just thought that was cool. And it says it for everyday of the week. You reckon they know something we don't know?