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As heat continues, area employers ask workers today to save energy

From Harvard and Brandeis to landlords in downtown Boston, people are being asked to turn off lights and close blinds to help conserve energy so that the operator of the regional power grid doesn't have to take more extreme measures to help its electrical grid deal with all the added demand from air conditioners.

Updated to correct source of the request - ISO New England, not Eversource. Thanks, cybah!

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Yeah we received an email about conserving energy. The interesting thing was the email said our power for our building (I'm in a high rise) comes from ISO New England, not Eversource. *shrug*

I'm a bad power consumption person.. my A/Cs are on at home. But set to 75 and in power saving mode. Just so the kitties don't get heat stroke (and I don't come home to a blast furnace)

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Yeah it was ISO New England in that email that was sent out yesterday. But not surprising, they are the ones who nudge BostonGas/NStar/Eversource about this stuff when high electrical usage is anticipated. Mostly because they own most of the grid in NE (and do most power selling/buying to companies like Eversource)

It's a common mistake to make tho.. I do it all the time. Hard not to since your bills come from Eversource, not ISO NE.

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ISO-New England is not a utility itself, but more of a regulator of utilities. I'm fuzzy on the details, but it was formed by the Federal government. It doesn't own local utilities like NSTAR (sorry, Eversource) or National Grid.

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There are really three businesses:

  1. Generating electricity (i.e., building fossil, nuke, solar, wind plants, buying fuel, operating them)
  2. Retail distribution (i.e., building and maintaining the substations and wires that bring electricity to your house, reading your meter, etc.)
  3. Grid (i.e., operating the wholesale market in which the people who bring electricity to your house buy enough of it from the people who generate electricity to meet your need, also operating the grid that connects various producers and consumers)

ISO new england is in the third category.

All of the generating and distribution infrastructure, and all the associated capital costs, need to be sized to meet peak demand, not average demand. In very broad (i.e. wrong in many cases) terms, about half the total cost of electricity is in this capital plant. the other half is in actually generating the electricity.

You pay all year for the extra capital plant you use only on the hottest day in August. It follows that there's huge savings in knocking a few megawatts off the peak demand.

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Thank you Bob! I knew it was something like that. I know ISO NE controls the main grid, and there were 'retail' entities like Eversource, National Grid, etc which were more consumer facing. But like anon, I'm a bit fuzzy about the details. So thanks!

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The forecast high is barely 90 degrees and the utility is concerned about load. What happens when we touch the upper 90's or low 100's?

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I'm going to go ahead and say that the hospitals should not be near the top of the "who loses power first" list.

Incidentally, I seem to recall the airport and the hospitals supposedly being last in line - is something else up?

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I suspect something went awry in the underground transformer vaults on Cambridge Street.

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Raise the settings on your AC to a still comfortable but not chilling level. Like 78 or 80.

What the Japanese call "Cool Biz", in part.

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... will be whatever cool (or less hot) air remains in the house after we closed all the windows and pulled down all the blinds this morning...

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That's all we have, other than a basement bedroom with a very small for the square footage AC unit set at 80 during the day (cat respite).

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... but the living room (which has a revolving fan).

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Ditto here; in the process of moving but moving from a house with no A/C (packed already) and it's amazing what shutting the windows and drapes and/or blinds will do to keep the heat out. I shut everything this morning as soon as the sun started coming in the windows.

Moving to a house with central air. I should feel guilty but I don't.

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Which I guess would be second to moving in the dead of winter Edit: September 1st.

Anyway, having made a similar move myself, enjoy the central air.

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Central air is nice to have and we don't live in the stone age. When i was younger and had no AC i would hop on the T on my days off because the trains tended to be cooler than my house. Cheap solution and a good way to get some reading in.

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in my second bedroom for use only when it gets really oppressive. Fortunately, I haven't had to turn it on yet this season - window fans in the master bedroom have proven sufficent up until now.

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It's been consistently in the 90s with very high humidity. At what point in MA weather do you turn on this AC, and more importantly, if not while in the 90s, why do you own it

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a house that remains relatively cool if I close the blinds during the day. As such, it takes five to six days of constant high heat and high humidity before the house gets oppressive enough for me to decide to sleep in the spare bedroom with the A/C on.

It also helps that, growing up, we had no A/C in our house, so I probably have a higher tolerance for heat and humidity than many people do.

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You reminded me of my youth as well. No one had air conditioning. My dad had one stand fan we would take turns standing in front of it. Maybe it was because we were kids, but we never got that bothered by the heat and I don't remember grown ups complaining about it either.

Its probably what you become used to. Now a days, most buildings are air conditioned* and more and more homes go central.

*I would much prefer an office with windows that open. Anyone that works in an office can probably attest to the fact that summertime means sweaters while at work.

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From Roche in West Rox, to Whole Foods, to Costco all seem to think the colder it is and the more you freeze, the more 'cool' you are. I must always wear a long sleeve shirt in these places and I simply don't understand it. I have spoken to all managers and I am told that "people like it this way"...I guess I must belong to a subcategory of "people" that does not count.

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This is definitely a pet peeve of mine--so many places are freezing indoors in the Summer. The office, bus, restaurants, grocery stores, etc. As someone who doesn't mind the heat, I'm usually relieved when I step out of my freezing office lobby and into the sun. We use AC in my apartment but keep it in the 70s on econ mode. I have no idea what these places of business keep it at--I just know I too bring a sweatshirt or sweatpants when I go in!

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If you spend about an hour or so in the store, you want it to be cool to keep the perishables in your cart from spoiling. You can't shop everything last.

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I'd bet that stuff on the shelves -- even stuff that doesn't need to be refrigerated -- lasts longer if you keep the temperature down.

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Think things like bread.. chips.. flour. Any item where humidity and heat could really effect the quality and freshness of the merchandise.

Plus I'm sure keeping the store temp colder helps keep the coolers and freezers from working overtime also. Maybe not so much the door'd freezers/coolers, but more so the open ended freezers/coolers. (i.e. in the dairy, produce, and meat departments)

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My pet peeve is the opposite. In the winter when you're dressed up like the Michellin man and going into places of business that have the heat up too high.

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With the window open for the best of both worlds

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That's not any fun unless you can actually see the dollars fly out!

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the MBTA initially took delivery of in the late 1960s. Air conditioning, but you could still open the windows as well.

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I miss buses where you could actually open the window. Now you're at the mercy of the driver as to whether or not they turn on the AC.

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You can open the windows on the T's current buses, unless they happen to be locked, which is rare.

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I didn't know men from Harvard sweat the heat!

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For their efforts to oppose existing and new power plants. Lets hope they have their AC off and suits and ties on in their downtown office.

Shouldn't solar power panels be operating at peak efficiency as they put out the alert? Why didn't that solve the problem?

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take positions on plants other than that everyone ought to obey the applicable laws and contractual commitments?

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They pushed for the Salem plant to be the most expensive gas fired electric plant ever with a $1B retrofit to have the lowest CO output. Not pollution, mind you, just carbon dioxide which we all exhale. No word yet on any plans for population control to reduce that source of CO emissions.

BTW, when the Salem plant was operational as a coal plant, it was idle most of the time and only running when cost-effective, like peak demand periods and highest gas prices. EPA pollution pricing doing its job.

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CO = carbon monoxide, a greenhouse gas that displaces oxygen in blood and is therefore toxic to air-breathing animals
CO2 = carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, toxic only under blood saturating conditions.

Not the same thing.

And by the way, both are pollution when emitted by the megaton by power plants.

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Let's just generalize it as "COx". Excessive COx emissions causes global warming. Inhaling too much COx causes blood poisoning.

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Yeah, I know the difference. Thanks for clarifying for all. For the plant, you and I, I was talking about CO2 emissions.

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Shouldn't solar power panels be operating at peak efficiency as they put out the alert?

No

IMAGE(http://www.viridiansolar.co.uk/Assets/Images/Technical/Solar%20panel%20efficiency%20curve.jpg)

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Thanks for the graph. How about windmills? Air seems to stagnate when its hot out!

BTW, what is the markup for image inclusion? Not per documentation. Poor standards etc.

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Peak efficiency, no. But peak output, maybe if the sun hits the panel just right.

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Bob, the graph you posted refers to solar water heating; it's a completely different animal from the much more common photovoltaic panel (PV) that's meant to generate electricity.

I'd say over 95% of what you see on roofs in New England's these days are PV panels, and this chart doesn't apply to PV at all.

With temperature in the 90 F range, the maximum power of (PV) panels is reduced by something like 10%.
http://www.solar-facts-and-advice.com/solar-panel-temperature.html

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