A new type of power grid

Why Tesla's battery for your home should terrify utilities
Elon Musk's electricity empire could mean a new type of power grid

[...] The prospect of cheap solar panels combined with powerful batteries has been a source of significant anxiety in the utility sector. In 2013, the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for investor-owned electric companies, issued a report warning that disruption was coming. "One can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent," the report said, likening the speed of the coming transition to the one from landlines to cellphones 10 years ago. Suddenly regulated monopolies are finding themselves in competition with their own customers.

They haven’t had to deal with this on the residential side yet, primarily because people can sell excess power back to the utilities at fairly high rates — a practice called net metering. But that’s hurting utilities, too, and some have tried to lower the price at which they buy back power, which has been met by furious protests from people leasing panels. If utilities lower the buyback rate too much, however, and batteries get cheap enough, people may just unplug from the grid altogether — or more likely, install systems that let them rely on it only rarely — prompting what those in the industry call "the utility death spiral." It’s quite a bind: by fighting net metering, utilities would help make battery storage more economically viable, driving the transition to a distributed grid.

Manghani believes utilities aren’t doomed, but they may undergo a radical transformation, becoming something closer to service providers and minders of an increasingly distributed grid rather than the centralized power producers they are today. Such a system would require lots of batteries to help balance the load and supply extra power during peak times, which is why GTM estimates the market will grow from $48 million today to about $1 billion in 2018. [...]

Excellent, I say bring it on! And Tesla seems perfectly poised to pounce and make it happen. Read the whole thing for the details that back it up, embedded links and more.
     

Would you live in a Yurt in Winter?

Off the grid, in Northern Minnesota? Apparently, it can be done:



Even in the frozen North, a yurt's so good

Grace Brogan and John Kamman live in a yurt.

It's a squat round structure with lattice walls, a dome skylight and a few layers of canvas over the whole thing — think of a tent with stiff walls. Tents are great in the summer, but this is winter. In northern Minnesota.

Why would two employed people with three master's degrees between them choose to live with only a quarter-inch of material between themselves and the elements? And how do they stay warm?

To find out, I drove a dozen miles north of Bemidji on a recent morning and hiked a quarter-mile across a snowy field. It was not yet dawn, and from the outside, the yurt's vinyl windows glowed with firelight.

Inside, a small home's worth of furnishings lined the circular wall. A calm mutt named Mabel loitered near the crackling wood stove. The yurt was actually a really nice place to be. [...]

They are young, so I'm sure it's an adventure. At first I thought, a grizzly bear could break in and eat them. But it says only that they live off the grid, a dozen miles North from Bemidji. They talk about "going into town", so I think they probably aren't in an extremely remote area.

The inside of the Yurt looks nice, very cozy. Do follow the link to see the other photos, and the interview with them answering questions. Be sure and click on the "gallery" link to see the extra photos.

     

What does internet vulnerability mean for US?

Internet 'biggest threat' to the US

[...] The internet, said former national intelligence director Michael McConnell, "is the soft underbelly" of the US today. Speaking recently at a new cybersecurity exhibit at the International Spy Museum in Washington, McConnell said the internet has "introduced a level of vulnerability that is unprecedented".

The Pentagon's computer systems are probed 360 million times a day, and one prominent power company has acknowledged that its networks see up to 70,000 scans a day, according to cybersecurity expert James Lewis.

[...]

The exhibit at the Spy Museum - Weapons of Mass Disruption - tries to bring that threat to life.

A network of neon lights zigzags across the ceiling. Along the walls computer screens light up with harrowing headlines outlining the country's digital dependence. Drinking water, sewer systems, phone lines, banks, air traffic, government systems, all depend on the electric grid, and losing them for weeks would plunge the country into the 1800s.

Suddenly, the lights go out and the room is plunged into silent darkness.

Seconds later as the sound system crackles, a video ticks off a pretend crisis: no food, no water, system shutdown.

That faux threat has become a prime concern for the government, but fully protecting the grid and other critical computer systems are problems still waiting a solution.

Federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, are pouring more money into hiring computer experts and protecting their networks.

But there are persistent questions about how to ensure internet traffic is safe without violating personal privacy. [...]

Read the whole thing for details. The power grid and many other systems are tied into, and relying on, the internet. Systems that never used to be, systems that got along fine without the internet before. But as they become increasingly reliant on the web, it presents a growing vulnerability. People may not take the threat seriously enough, until they experience the danger first-hand.