Let’s do it tonight too ….

How about for the rest of the year? It was not that difficult, was it?

I could save $15. That should make it about half a million dollars for the year for the 30,000 or so residential units. Give it to the City to fix potholes.

Whoop de friggin’ do. Just keep them potholes lit up so I can change lanes(without white lines to tell me)to avoid them.

Good idea Gus…except the City would have to hire a manager to look into pothole analysis & redistribution, of course he/she would absolutely need an
administrative assistant. Then they would have to commission a study into why the paving bricks are leaping out of the
roundabout…I figure we’ll have to borrow a few more million to cover any extra costs incurred…;)

Haven’t heard of any good April fools jokes yet except this one.
detoe43 has it right though. The whole City administrationn is a bad joke. Trouble is, its not just for today, its for the whole year!

And WOW, a whole whopping 4%! EVERYBODY must have got on board! That’s just another 121 megawatts we sold to the States for cheaper than we pay for it.

Anyway, enjoy the wonderful weekend everyone!

And now Hydro will feel good about hosing us another 7& increase in Hydro rates.

We use less all the more to send to our neigbours south of the border. They seem to be upgrading their infrastructer on a continuing bases for some reason at the present time.

And I guess those run of the river projects also need cash.
Cheers

Quite a good April fools joke. A good portion of the earth’s population would love to electricity of any amount.

As for the WWF those high rollers, just wonder what their personal consumption of energy is.

http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/

How did we conserve this power. If it wasnt used, did they slow down the turbines, and produce less?? If they did then how do you get a savings if you did not produce the electricity. Or put another way, if we did not use this electricity, then who did?? If we produced the same amount, but used less, then the electricity was either lost, or it was sent into the US and used.

Either way you may have used less electricity yourself, and saved a few pennies, however there probably was not a net reduction in the overall use of electricity on Earth hour. At least not in canada.

Beautiful day wasn’t it….?
May I quote Archie Bunker…..Whoopdie Doo…Whoopdie Doo….

Hydro fibs lets see the proof. Revelstoke down 12% somehow I don’t think so. Show me the proof.

LOL @ Palopu. They can’t slow them down but they can take one, two or more offline. When they shut one down that water stays behind the damn ready for when the demand is greater. Like when the US needs it this summer for all the AC’s.

Like Gus, I too wonder why we can’t do this all the time. On the other hand, what good are we doing? It is not as though we are served by coal or gas fired generators.
The dams are built, the environmental damage is done. All we will have accomplished with this exercise is a slight savings.
metalman.

The dams are built, the environmental damage is done. Soooo any suggestions for a source of power. Oh that is the funny part, what savings, the water is still there. Show the proof.

“How did we conserve this power”

There are many ways to balance the load. Depends on how sophisticated BCHydro’s grid is. Using SMART meter type of technology, it will become more sophisticated in the future I would think.

The most common way in the past, I understand, is to have water reservoir facilities available which will allow water to be pumped into them. It could be simply pumping water back into the proimary reservoir to balance the load. Of course, there is a reduced efficience as a result.

This city’s domestic water reservoirs could, for instance, be hooked into the grid and set to pump water when an excess of electricity is available.

Perhaps someone knows enough about BCHydro’s operations on here who could provide a more specific answer to how they currently balance the load.

When the electricity is not used, the generators are adjusted so that less water is used. If the load drops enough the generator is turned off.

If the electricity is generated, it has to be used, it can’t just sit there, somewhere. Load Frequency Control is a major aspect of the power system.

Not saying that the power saved last night actually resulted in the water being ponded, or that it was maybe sold to the US.

The intricacies of when to pond, when to sell and when to shut down the generator takes a bit more of an explanation that what I can do here.

Just a few more months before the city tells us all to turn all our pretty xmas tree lights on and “Light up the Night” .. what a frikken joke. Conservation my ass. This has the earmark of indoctrinating people into just doing what they are told and don’t question it.

Just ask yourself this. If you are a company that is asking people to use less of your product (electricy in this case) the difference has to be made up somewhere, either in higher rates or lowering thier cost to produce the product. I suggest the cost to produce is negligible because the infrastructure has been in place of many years, and its’ basically upkeep now. So why would we in BC shoot ourselves in our foot by using less electricity, which drives up the price, and giving hydro more to sell to the US at a cut rate. Why does hydro want to tie into the Alaskan grid system on the northwest transmission line project? Could it be to sell even more to the US at a reduced price, thereby driving our domestic price up even more?

We should double our use … this will reduce the cost in half …. because we have the capacity ….. LOL

Sort of like a 50% off sale or 2 for 1 sale…..

Buy one item … save $100

Buy two .. save $200 …

Buy 50 .. save $5,000 ….

If you buy enough, you can do better than buying a lottery ticket…. ;-)

“I suggest the cost to produce is negligible because the infrastructure has been in place of many years, and its’ basically upkeep now.”

The population of BC keeps growing every year, unlike the population of PG.

In addition to the increasing number of people using electricity, there is a continuing increase of the uses to which electricity is put.

The capacity of the infrastructure in place is finite.

We can make that infrastructure last longer by using less. Conversely, by using more, the infrastructure will reach capacity sooner and we will have to buy from other sources. In this case, that appears to be from coal or gas fired plants.

And we know that we do not want to run electric vehicles which uses fossil fuel generated electricity. That would be the height of inefficiency.

So, before we run out of capacity, we need to develop new hydro projects. They are expensive, they increase capacity in large increments so effectively if we start to use only 5% of the capacity of the new facility, we are really not able to recover that investment for a very long time or the rates have to go up to reflect that unused new capacity ……

So it stands to reason, we will want to find new customers for the short to intermediate term of building any new infrastructure like that.

Why is fossil fuel the height of inefficiency? Here is a graph from 2006, should not be any change in relationships today http://www.cna.ca/curriculum/cna_world_energy_res/images/cost_comparison-lg.gif

Pump storage is costly and only available for a limited time. Besides we have hydroelectric so no need for pump storage.

There is an arm of Hydro called Powerex, they buy and sell power all over North America, thus being able to buy and sell power at the best market rates. Because of the abundance of hydro electric power in BC, Hydro can adjust ramp rates almost instantaneously thus taking advantage of spot markets which can make money and save money. Selling high, buying low. Most of North America relies on thermal power and outside of gas generators this type of generation cannot be rapidly changed.

Also thermal generation is most efficient at full load. Utilities with thermal generation will almost give away their power at night when the load drops rather than reduce generation. Thus hydro backs off hydroelectric generation and imports cheap thermal power at night. So that happy electric car that the city is buying just might be charged with evil thermal power over night.

Our power rates are going up because of no planning by governments on an aging infrastructure. Just like they act surprised about our aging population.

Also a big cost is the contracts to IPP’s costing us billions. Hydro being forced to buy power from them at costs up to ten times what hydro can generate it at.

As for building a large block of power at once it takes 10 years to complete a large power project so planning has to start early and we are behind now. Also site C is needed as a base load for IPP’s to back them up. So we get to pay for Site C and the IPP’s instead of just site C.

reduced the provincial electricity load by 1.67 percent last night. Considering how much the load changes minute by minute I would like to see the proof.

“All we will have accomplished with this exercise is a slight savings.”
metalman.
“Oh that is the funny part, what savings, the water is still there. Show the proof.”
Seamutt.

Slight savings on power consumption in your home if you decided to unplug everything and keep the lights off.
Sorry seamutt, I thought it was obvious.
metalman.