[sudo-discuss] Power grid: the internet of electricity: was Re: Sudo room should be about creating
Anon195714
anon195714 at sbcglobal.net
Tue Mar 26 23:15:18 PDT 2013
Yep, and I could give an all-day presentation on the topic, including
the UK and Australia as well as the USA.
The Bell System operated according to engineering standards that called
for design and installation details that were too expensive to provide
in rural areas without raising the price of service to an unacceptable
level. So the Bell stayed out of those areas at first, and smaller
independent telcos sprang up to serve them.
Farmers in some rural areas not served by Bell, set up "telephone
cooperatives" where they all bought in and paid for the equipment, and
chipped in labor or hired someone to go about setting up the systems.
The earliest implementations ran their wires along the tops of the
fences between farm properties.
Another story that's fairly well known: how the dial phone was invented.
Undertaker Almon Strowger noticed that he was losing business to a
competitor who had a relative working as an operator. When someone said
"operator, get me an undertaker," she'd put them through to her
relative. Strowger decided he'd had enough of that, and set about
inventing the Automatic Telephone. In a way, you could consider
Strowger to also be the inventor of the concept of "net neutrality."
This was the origin of the Strowger or (in Bell System lingo)
"Step-by-Step" switching system. These machines are a beauty to behold
as they go through their clever mechanical motions to connect calls. I
spent my teenage years in an area served by a Strowger switch, and I had
the chance to work on Strowger PBXs a couple of times, as well as
building some nifty stuff from Strowger components. Most noticeable is
the definite sense of being in a distinct "place" in cyberspace, a
unique route through the machine, with subtle acoustical characteristics
that a trained tech (or a teenage phone phreak) could recognize.
Strowger switches served in the USA from about 1896 (the very first one)
to the late 1980s, and in the UK and Australia from the late 1920s or so
through the late 1980s. They were immune to the electromagnetic pulse
(EMP) created by atomic bombs. And overnight when traffic was light,
they used less power than today's digital switches.
There are oodles of stories to be told about Strowger.
For one thing, "wiretaps" required physical connections to the lines at
the exchange. In the days when the GPO (General Post Office) ran the
telephones in the UK, GPO engineers were tasked with showing military
intelligence and law enforcement where to find the correct places to
make the connections. But if they (the GPO engs.) decided that a
particular wiretap was political or otherwise an abuse of authority,
they would wait until the coast was clear and then just disconnect it.
Today, with CALEA and Google Voice, we have no control over who gets
into the telephone switches via the back door, or who intercepts calls
from elsewhere in the network, and no way to stop them. Some would call
that "progress."
Going back to WW2, resistance members in the telephone engineering
staffs in Nazi-occupied countries figured out a clever way to "route
around the damage" of Nazi eavesdropping. I'll save that story for some
possible future presentation.
I also have a working English uniselector dial system that uses Strowger
components, that I could bring in and demonstrate at some point if
anyone's interested.
-G.
=====
On 13-03-26-Tue 10:24 PM, Romy Ilano wrote:
> side note:
> did you know the history of telephone companies in the usa? i was
> reading about it. (someone smart left a book for me to read) =D
>
> it's so fascinating. before the depression, it wasn't profitable for
> major telecoms to go to rural communities, especially in the midwest.
> they disrespected the farmers and thought they were yokels...
>
> so the midwest used to be pretty left wing too (and the source of a
> lot of unrest with the farmers etc), so there was this big tradition
> of DIY telephone and telegraphs. someone gave me this history to read,
> it was so neat! it's weird that nobody talks about this history now.
> it's like it was forgotten!
>
> it's so weird how all these rabblerousers and farmers from the midwest
> are totally buried. nobody learns about it in us history, especially
> kids in Kansas.
>
> it reminds me of the indie network you are constructing at 510
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 6:14 PM, Anon195714 <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net
> <mailto:anon195714 at sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>
>
>
> Anthony, I know you didn't mean "no grids," but I was concerned
> that a quick skim of this discussion by anyone who didn't know the
> material in depth, might lead to the wrong conclusions.
>
> For an example of the danger of over-centralization:
>
> Consider the conversion of the public switched telephone network
> to VOIP, in light of the desire on the part of telcos to reap a
> huge honking windfall by selling off their vast real estate
> holdings. AT&T owns about 5,000 central offices, at least one in
> just about every medium or larger city in the USA. Comcast has
> FIVE nationwide, and AT&T would love to do likewise, and
> conversion to VOIP will accomplish just that.
>
> I'm sure you know what it's called when you centralize something
> by a factor of 1,000 to 1:
>
> "A high-value target."
>
> Something that's just begging to be hit hard and taken out, by a
> crazed dictator or an international terrorist group, or perhaps by
> a few sociopaths of the same kind who run ID theft rings and
> bank-card skimmer rings, or perhaps by someone out for the sheer
> thrill of smashing and wrecking.
>
> The plans for the "smart power grid" will produce more high-value
> targets: regional power control systems, centrally managed, all
> internet-connected and just daring the assholes of the world to
> hit them.
>
> Already, smart meters provide a tasty treat for predators. I'm
> aware of a couple of vulnerabilities that haven't been published,
> that would enable a single person with a grudge to black out a
> neighborhood for a couple of days. This situation will compound
> as smart meters, smart grids, and stupid regulatory officials
> converge.
>
> All of this over-centralization, and over-reliance on "smart"
> things, is causing our entire society to crawl further and further
> out on a limb that becomes more and more fragile every day.
> Sooner than later, something will break, bigtime.
>
> In a very practical sense, we have to be concerned with resilience.
>
> About which more in my next post.
>
> -G.
>
>
> =====
>
>
>
>
> On 13-03-26-Tue 5:28 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:
>> To be clear, I don't mean to say "no grids!1!!1!!!" but just "use
>> large-scale grids only for what they're best for in the context
>> of a broader heterogeneous system, not for almost everything as
>> they are now, and take into account in a rigorous way overall
>> system efficiency and other concerns like vulnerability to
>> failures both routine and rare and corruptibility of the social
>> systems that grow up around the technical systems."
>>
>> I remember discussing these points a few times in the past with
>> you, George, and Hol, and others around sudo room; might we like
>> to get some documentation together on interesting specifics? A
>> section of the wiki maybe, where we can throw ideas up about the
>> details and see what sticks?
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Anon195714
>> <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net <mailto:anon195714 at sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> A lot of the arguement against power grids is ultimately
>> rooted in opposition to having our energy supply controlled
>> by distant corporations whose decisions are not sustainable
>> and not in our interests.
>>
>> I agree that over-dependence on greedy corporations for vital
>> infrastructure, merely for the sake of convenience, is a
>> shortcut to servitude. Google is the worst offender, with
>> its seductive Gmail and Google Voice offering "convenience"
>> in exchange for intensive and intrusive surveillance, not
>> only of those who use the services, but of everyone they
>> communicate with. (Worst of all, Google Glass: "become a
>> volunteer surveillance drone!")
>>
>> The model we should be looking toward, to manage the power
>> grid, is one of municipally-owned transmission infrastructure
>> (the wires along the streets), and diversification of power
>> producers (from individual households to the existing power
>> utilities). Everyone would be paid the same rate for power
>> they "upload" to the grid, and everyone would pay the same
>> rate for power they "download." This would immediately level
>> the playing field and provide an enormous incentive for all
>> manner of renewable and new-tech power generation.
>>
>> Further, the municipal ownership model should also apply to
>> the wired telecoms grid: telephone and internet. (Even your
>> mobile device is only "wireless" for the last half mile at
>> most; the rest of the way it's as wired as my antique dial
>> phones.) All of these things are using the public
>> rights-of-way along the streets; they are arguably public
>> rights-of-way in themselves, and as such, should be owned by
>> the public.
>>
>> The municipal internet of electricity would entail each local
>> power producer (household or larger) having small storage
>> capacity on-site, and a switching synchronized inverter to
>> connect to the grid. An onboard microprocessor with an
>> analog voltage sensors would monitor line power to determine
>> when power should be uploaded to the grid or downloaded from
>> the grid. Simple "net metering" would keep track of the
>> billing.
>>
>> The small decentralized battery packs would act primarily as
>> buffers, to level out power production and consumption among
>> users. Overnight and over multiple cloudy days, and during
>> peak demand hours, the decentralized solar would be
>> supplemented by other power sources such as micro-reactors
>> and natural gas turbines.
>>
>> The uniform pricing mechanism would prevent predatory
>> "arbitrage" of electricity, and provide the incentive to
>> install solar panels on every solar-accessible flat surface,
>> even on bus shelters and other street kiosks.
>>
>> The point-of-production microprocessors would be isolated
>> from the internet to prevent cyber-attacks against the grid:
>> the best kind of "smart grid" is one that self-regulates
>> locally without being vulnerable globally.
>>
>> I should also mention: Yes, electric automobiles can provide
>> household power storage in the absence of having a grid, but
>> a) not everyone owns or even wants an automobile, b) if
>> you've drained your car battery pack overnight to power your
>> house, it's not available the next morning to get you to
>> work, and c) even if everyone could afford a new electric
>> car, there are good reasons to reduce car ownership and usage
>> in favor of bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, buses, and trains.
>>
>> Beyond that, we should not be destroying our civic
>> infrastructure in favor of requiring everyone to have their
>> own i-Things or do without. Public phones, public bathrooms
>> (do you really want to carry an i-Pee around?), public
>> drinking fountains, public benches for sitting, public
>> transport, etc.: are all civic goods that make the public
>> sphere more user-friendly and accessible. A public power
>> grid is another example, as with public water supply, public
>> sewage treatment, and refuse disposal: life without those
>> things would be worse than miserable.
>>
>> Don't destroy it: reclaim it, revision it, and rebuild it.
>>
>> -G.
>>
>>
>> =====
>>
>>
>>
>> On 13-03-26-Tue 3:41 PM, Anthony Di Franco wrote:
>>> Production of alternative energy can be and for most reasons
>>> probably should be much less centralized, equivalently,
>>> smaller-scale, than production of energy mostly is now.
>>> (Off-grid, as you mention, but very literally.)
>>> Large-scale up front + large, complex distribution networks
>>> is revealed as an obsolete architecture; large scale
>>> distribution networks become relatively less important, so
>>> even if the answer to your question is no, which it probably
>>> isn't given crowdfunding and other disintermediated finance
>>> gaining momentum, it's moot, or at least of much less
>>> relative importance.
>>> Put another way, when the most important goal is maximum
>>> efficiency rather than maximum centralization, large upfront
>>> capital investment + large, complex distribution network is
>>> stupid; proper accounting
>>> <https://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com/> of all
>>> costs and benefits in a global rather than piecewise local
>>> sense reveals this now for agriculture, manufacturing,
>>> energy, ...
>>> Even now, buffering between supply and demand is a
>>> constraint on grid architecture leading to great economic
>>> demand within the current paradigm for distributed storage /
>>> production of energy according to someone who came through
>>> sudo room whose name escapes me.
>>> This loosely-drafted email brought to you by the slogan
>>> <http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/11/eaas-non-rival-goods-vs-rival-goods.html>,
>>> "localize production, virtualize everything else"
>>> <http://www.miiu.org/wiki/Resilient_Things_by_Top-Level_Category> and
>>> the acronym STEMI
>>> <http://www.accelerationwatch.com/mest.html> compression
>>> <http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/11/stemi.html>.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 3:17 PM, Romy Ilano
>>> <romy at snowyla.com <mailto:romy at snowyla.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Is it possible to create alternative energy distribution
>>> networks (biofuels/solar/ wind etc) that replace
>>> mainstream petrol and natural gas based energy without a
>>> large financial sector?
>>>
>>> the vc system that funds these alternative energy
>>> start-ups piggy backs off the investment banks, etc. and
>>> big private equity and institutional investment funds.
>>> vcs are like a fly on the @ss of a financial hippo.
>>>
>>> I haven't heard people discuss off-grid that much in the
>>> tech talks I've been to( which are excellent). Is there
>>> a conversation here that would show how off grid is a
>>> viable alternative, even if it's not a big money solution?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 1:56 PM, <hol at gaskill.com
>>> <mailto:hol at gaskill.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> this talk about imports and exports always reminds
>>> me of energy flow
>>>
>>> compare 2011
>>> https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2012/Oct/images/25306_LLNLUSEnergy2011650.jpg
>>>
>>>
>>> with 2002
>>> http://www.hubbertpeak.com/us/images/us_energyflow2002.jpg
>>>
>>> fascinating
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>
>
>
>
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