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40 MICROPOWER: THE NEXT ELECTRICAL ERA RUNNING THE DIGITAL ECONOMY 41 transmission networks are casting doubt on the reliability of large, centralized power systems, modern society’s growing dependence on digital, computerized processes is beginning to heighten the need for high-quality, reliable power. With the rise of computerized transactions and manufacturing, users are more susceptible to momentary voltage fluctua- tions or outages. In the past, such “glitches” were less impor- tant, causing lights and motors to dim or slow but not to fail. But greater reliance on computers demands voltage stability; computer networks cannot withstand disruptions longer than eight thousandths of a second, a timespan that utilities do not consider long enough to be categorized a failure. For businesses that already cite electricity as a critical lifeline ser- vice, growing use of “e-commerce” will increase the need for reliable power.89 Particularly at risk from unreliable power are computers at the heart of the financial system. If they shut down even for a moment, data can be lost and millions of dollars of transactions involving loans, credit cards, and automatic teller machines forgone. In 1997 a brief disruption of electri- cal supply—a mere “power flicker” to the local utility— caused a widespread crash of the computer system responsible for virtually all of the major transactions of the First National Bank of Omaha. The bank, which estimates that a one-hour power outage costs it $6 million, has now invested in a high-reliability system from Sure Power, con- sisting of four phosphoric acid fuel cells backed up by two flywheels and two diesel generators. The fuel cells supply 800 kilowatts of power to the data center’s mainframe, and run at “six 9s,” or 99.9999 percent availability. The system also reduces carbon emissions by 45 percent and other air pollu- tants by 95 percent relative to grid power.90 Not only banks, but supermarkets, restaurants, insur- ance companies, hospitals, and factories are all beginning to look to micropower to avoid costly interruptions in their electricity supply. In Anchorage, Alaska, the U.S. Postal Service is running five fuel cells that protect its automatic mail-processing system against grid power outages. In New York City, Central Park police have installed a fuel cell and cut themselves from the aging grid; a new skyscraper at Four Times Square employs two fuel cells that provide supple- mental power and maintain vital operations in the event of a blackout. Micropower is especially valuable for high-tech industries such as computer chips, semiconductors, pharma- ceuticals, chemicals, and biotechnology, which rely on com- puterized manufacturing applications, and are vulnerable to slight power interruptions. The byproducts of micropower can be useful resources: computer chip manufacturing plants may employ fuel cells, Stirlings, or microturbines as a source of hot distilled water as well as reliable power.91 It is reasonable to ask whether a distributed power net- work would be more capable than the existing system of meeting the need for more reliable, higher-quality electrici- ty. For many decades, utility engineers argued that central- ized control of the system was necessary to maintain the reliability of the grid. Allowing millions of customers to operate their generators, they contended, would endanger the flow of current they had been entrusted to provide.92 Many analysts now argue the contrary: that an electric power system in which control is more decentralized may prove more reliable and better able to respond to weather extremes and fluctuations in demand. Some see electric power systems exhibiting a “bio-logic”: evolving more along the lines of biological systems, such as ecosystems or the human body, that run not with a rigid, centralized hierarchy but with a decentralized series of feedback loops. Just as the brain does not need to track every bodily process—breath- ing, blood pumping, for example—for the system to func- tion, power networks need not have a point through which all information flows.93 There are a number of ways in which innovations in telecommunications, power electronics, microelectronics, and storage systems might make a micropower-based net- work more reliable. Some utilities already employ telecom- munications to start and run engines at customer sites when they are needed to support the grid. This type of “central dis-PDF Image | Micropower: The Next Electrical Era
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