e-day ?

[lnr]

I've just heard of this on Facebook: http://www.e-day.org.uk/

The idea is that for 24 hours starting from 6pm today we should all leave off any electrical appliances that are not in use. And on their webpage they'll try and chart the day's energy usage compared to a normal day.

In my case I think all I can do is:

• Turn off microwave at wall. This will reset the clock.
• Turn off computers at wall: this will make no difference to computer, monitor or speakers, as they're turned off properly instead of on standby anyway, but will turn off the camera charger.
• Be a bit more careful with lights.

The stereo is off at the wall, phone chargers aren't left plugged in, the kettle and toaster don't use any electricity except when in use. Ah, I can also unplug the video from the four-way block when we've got it turned on to use the telly and DVD player. They're all in the same strip and we turn that off when not in use. Edit Oooh, and we can turn off the ADSL modem too. Can't really turn off the DECT phones or we'll have no handset upstairs.

It's really not going to make much difference, is it?

Comments

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

tricky since that would normally be monitored upstream of the device

Now there's a nice thought; a device with a (presumably wireless?) Internet connection, to which signals are sent representing whether the National Grid would prefer your load to be inductive or capacitive. Get a hundred thousand of those going and it might make a difference.

The lower-tech manual solution:
1) Get a job at a power station, or social engineer yourself a friend who works at a power staiton.
2) Find out whether the power station is being required to create a back emf to produce positive or negative MVAr.
3) Add or remove your bank of capacitors accordingly. (Er, quite possibly "remove or add" rather than vice versa.)

[james-r.livejournal.com]

Umm, yes but no.. The reactive correction needs to be done as locally to the load as possible (one of the main things you're trying to avoid is the extra costs of 'transporting' the reactive energy and the grid losses associated with this, not just the generation requirements) - this is why places with eg very inductive reactive loads (such as large motors) have local capacitor banks nearby. I suspect most of the benefit of this would be negated after the first substation..

As for wireless communication of desired loads on the grid - this is already in place - economy 7 / heatwise / some odd tariffs which switch in more than once a day during low demand times and some even more bizarre tariffs which switch storage heating loads in for longer in the day when the weather is cold, use radio4 longwave as the carrier to piggy back the multi rate meters signalling on.

Theres recently been a rather bonkers effort by some company to have household appliances change their cutting in / out (ie refridgerators) patterns based upon the frequency of the mains supply - the idea being that when supply exceeds demand, the frequency is higher than normal (slightly), and thus now would be a good time to switch in and take power.
This strikes me as bad and wrong, because cutting in extra supply (such as from dinorwig) is precisely what the power companies do immediately before surges in demand (such as advert breakes in coronation street, when everyone turns their kettles on). Having peoples refridgerators second guess this second guessing of demand is probably going to cause nasty positive feedback loops.

Far more sensible would have been to piggy back a little more info onto the radio4 signal, such as to have refridgerators cut out for a few minutes if at all possible during the coronation street advert breaks, to reduce the supply capacity required while everyone turns their kettles on.. But since when did anyone listen to me =)

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Apparently the UK is the country in the world with the biggest TV-related demand pickup issue, simply because we are the country with by far the biggest tradition of celebrating with a cup of tea.

Far more sensible would have been to piggy back a little more info onto the radio4 signal, such as to have refridgerators cut out for a few minutes if at all possible during the coronation street advert breaks, to reduce the supply capacity required while everyone turns their kettles on.

What an interesting idea! Are there many items out there that could take advantage of micro-interruptible supply, and is their combined interruptible demand considerable?

Interruptible demand is so far theoretical in this country in modern times. There was one day (in, I think, late December 2006) where the National Grid had to send out "people who are only paying for interruptible supply, prepare for it to be interrupted" notices, and even then, there turned out to be enough generation out there to solve the problem.