Enter: the Box

[SCRawl]

Unless the electric motors weigh 10x what the jet-fuel engines do you're still going to save weight on boxes+motors versus engines+fuel.

According to Wikipedia, the quoted plane uses six Progress D-18T engines, each of which is 4100 kg. Unfortunately I don't know very much about aerospace calculations, so I can't convert the amount of power in a motor (presumably turning a propeller) to thrust from an engine so we can compare this logically. I will think on this and consult better heads than mine.

[Sky Captain]

1kg per 10 kW output is actually pretty good. Boeing 777 for example takes off with around 150 tons of fuel. Replacing that with these generators would yield 1,5 GW while flight power requirements are around 100 - 150 MW. So a big airliner would need only 10 - 15 tons of Boxes which is much less than fuel load. An airliner powered by Boxes would not only be possible but would outperform hydrocarbon fueled ones and have unlimited range.

Giant cargo aircraft dwarfing even AN 225 would make lot of sense in this universe. Since fuel costs are zero much larger portion of intercontinental freight could be cheaply transported by aircraft than is economically feasible in real world. Although aircraft would have to compete with much faster ships too. Cargo ships traveling 100 km/h or more would be perfectly feasible and economical. Pushing the speed up as much as possible would mean ship and crew can do more trips per year and earn more money.

These are all fine, but how much would the electric motors weigh? They're going to be heavier than their jet fuel equivalents, but the question is by how much.

High end brushless motors currently top out at 10 kw/kg which is similar to large turbofan aircraft engines. However those motors are fairly small, few hundred kw at most so there may be some challenges scaling them up to multi MW range large aircraft would require. During WW II era aircraft piston engines had power to weight ratios in range of 1 - 3 kw/kg so propeller driven aircraft is perfectly possible with much less engine power to weight ratios than electric motors have now. Since modern turbofan engines produce 70 - 80 % of thrust from large fan if turbojet core can be replaced with electric motor then electric airliner may look just like one powered with jet fuel.

Electric motors would have better reliability, throttle response, less maintenance, no flameouts possible, also may be able to better survive bird ingestion since there would be no compressor and turbine blades to damage, just big ducted fan which could be fairly durable.

[Sea Skimmer]

Since the boxes are small you could package them all inside the plane wings instead of fuel tanks, and wire them to a series of podded electric props or turbofans depending on your speed range. With electric you'd go small so you could dynamically shut down a lot of them in cruise flight, instead of throttling back a few big engines. Then the ones spinning are constantly at peak performance.

This would certainly crush hydrocarbon fuels for anything traveling at subsonic speed and might be a way to build a very high performance scramjet, in speed conditions were hydrocarbon fuel won't work at all.

[Simon_Jester]

The Box is a "one size fits most" technology. If you want more power and/or significantly higher voltage, you'd need to gang many of them together. I'm imagining that voltage and frequency could be adjusted (or set at the time of manufacture, if they never need to be adjusted again), and phase would have to be adjustable (to create multi-phase power, such as for large motors).

Do you gang Boxes together in series for higher voltage and parallel for current? Or would it be something more exotic?

Can you make really small boxes that generate 'only,' oh, 10 watts, and which might compete with batteries in handheld devices? I wonder at what point it'd make sense to carry a 'pocket Box' that charges your portable personal electronics so you never have to worry about the battery...

[SCRawl]

The Box is a "one size fits most" technology. If you want more power and/or significantly higher voltage, you'd need to gang many of them together. I'm imagining that voltage and frequency could be adjusted (or set at the time of manufacture, if they never need to be adjusted again), and phase would have to be adjustable (to create multi-phase power, such as for large motors).

Do you gang Boxes together in series for higher voltage and parallel for current? Or would it be something more exotic?

Can you make really small boxes that generate 'only,' oh, 10 watts, and which might compete with batteries in handheld devices? I wonder at what point it'd make sense to carry a 'pocket Box' that charges your portable personal electronics so you never have to worry about the battery...

In order:

Yes, series/parallel for voltage/current.

No, it's really one size fits all. As you can see in the first thing I've posted here, no one can figure out why it works, and attempts to make it work a little differently have all failed completely. So if you want to charge your phone on the go, it's got to be a full-sized Box.

[Simon_Jester]

Physicists are going to keep poking at it; if it's effectively magic within the context of the Standard Model, then it implies a whole new world of "how physics really works" and any clues they can extract will be analyzed unto death.

Hmm... are Boxes always 100% on? Because that could actually be a problem, because much of the time you want less, much less, power than that running through your circuits. The average household might very well start blowing fuses if you ran ten kilowatts of power through it.

You reallly want those things to have variable power output. Otherwise your only real option to stop them from being actively unsafe is to kick resistors into the circuit that will dissipate the power as heat. Granted that you won't be burning fuel to generate the wasted power, but there are times and places where producing several kilowatts of waste heat all the damn time is... less than desirable. Like India.

[bilateralrope]

Physicists are going to keep poking at it; if it's effectively magic within the context of the Standard Model, then it implies a whole new world of "how physics really works" and any clues they can extract will be analyzed unto death.

Indeed. Though that doesn't mean that they will be able to learn anything within the timeframe of the story.

Hmm... are Boxes always 100% on?

The vignette SCRawl posted shows that the Boxes can be disassembled. So an on/of switch could always be moving a crucial component out of position so that it stops working.

Lets assume that a Box is either running at 100% or off. That can still be managed by turning Boxes on and off with batteries to store the excess electricity. Cycle between generating too much power while charging the batteries and generating too little while draining them. Likely computer controlled.

Otherwise your only real option to stop them from being actively unsafe is to kick resistors into the circuit that will dissipate the power as heat

Doesn't most electricity use have the energy become heat eventually ?

Which might be a problem.

[Simon_Jester]

Hmm... are Boxes always 100% on?

The vignette SCRawl posted shows that the Boxes can be disassembled. So an on/of switch could always be moving a crucial component out of position so that it stops working.

I meant, rather, "is the Box always 100% on when it is on, or is it possible to turn a box on and have it generate only 50% of its theoretical maximum power.

Lets assume that a Box is either running at 100% or off. That can still be managed by turning Boxes on and off with batteries to store the excess electricity. Cycle between generating too much power while charging the batteries and generating too little while draining them. Likely computer controlled.

Viable but it adds bulk to the system. Either the batteries are big and bulky (to store many kilowatt-hours of electricity)... Or they are being turned on and off very frequently. Which means the battery has many charge-discharge cycles and will reach the end of its life quickly, plus any malfunction in the computer switching equipment makes the device actively unsafe to use, and/or broken.

Otherwise your only real option to stop them from being actively unsafe is to kick resistors into the circuit that will dissipate the power as heat

Doesn't most electricity use have the energy become heat eventually ?
Which might be a problem.

Yes, but in a typical electrical system you can choose to generate less power if less power is being called for. You can always pump less fuel into the generator, or throw less coal into the furnace, or cool down your reactor by sticking the control rods in a bit further.

If your house is powered by a ten kilowatt generator whose output has to go somewhere all the time, which cannot be throttled back, you have one of a number of serious potential safety and stability issues.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Why not hook your house's box into the local electrical grid so you can help power other stuff when not using it's full capacity? IIRC that is how people with solar panels on their roofs or windmills do things.

[Simon_Jester]

This is a good idea if you have a grid that is capable of handling large amounts of dispersed power generation in an organized fashion. However, building and maintaining such a grid costs money... and this is happening precisely at the time that power companies who might maintain the system are going out of business because there's no actual demand for electricity anymore.

[SCRawl]

This is a good idea if you have a grid that is capable of handling large amounts of dispersed power generation in an organized fashion. However, building and maintaining such a grid costs money... and this is happening precisely at the time that power companies who might maintain the system are going out of business because there's no actual demand for electricity anymore.

Yes, I'm thinking that with widely decentralized power generation the vast majority of electrical distribution infrastructure will (in the fullness of time) be disassembled. It's expensive to maintain, and really, who would want to keep doing that?

There will have to be some decentralized centralized power distribution for things like street lights; I'm imagining something like a small structure which will power a few street lights on either side of it via underground cables. That will take a lot of work to set up, but then it will essentially run forever, so it's a good investment on an essential public service.

As for the 10 kW "all or nothing" issue, I'm imagining that only the power that is drawn will ever be produced, up to the maximum of 10 kW. And as Dr. Wallach suspects, that power is not being generated.

[bilateralrope]

There will have to be some decentralized centralized power distribution for things like street lights; I'm imagining something like a small structure which will power a few street lights on either side of it via underground cables. That will take a lot of work to set up, but then it will essentially run forever, so it's a good investment on an essential public service.

What about powering the streetlights from the Boxes in nearby houses ?

That seems like less work in the areas where it's viable if government can legislate it. Likely with some compensation for the homeowners who are forced to supply the power.

[SCRawl]

There will have to be some decentralized centralized power distribution for things like street lights; I'm imagining something like a small structure which will power a few street lights on either side of it via underground cables. That will take a lot of work to set up, but then it will essentially run forever, so it's a good investment on an essential public service.

What about powering the streetlights from the Boxes in nearby houses ?

That seems like less work in the areas where it's viable if government can legislate it. Likely with some compensation for the homeowners who are forced to supply the power.

In a lot of cases, like along highways and non-residential areas, such an arrangement will of course not be available. And I'm thinking that having a structure the size of, say, a beer fridge every few hundred feet wouldn't be any more difficult to set up than tapping every second house instead.

[bilateralrope]

In a lot of cases, like along highways and non-residential areas, such an arrangement will of course not be available.

Agreed.

And I'm thinking that having a structure the size of, say, a beer fridge every few hundred feet wouldn't be any more difficult to set up than tapping every second house instead.

You've still got to connect those Boxes to the streetlights. Which means a lot of underground cables.

Tapping the houses means shorter distances. Making wireless power transfer to the streetlights more viable.

Then there is going to be the issue of security. Boxes are going to be stolen by people who can't afford them, especially in places where the power grid is being dismantled but nobody is supplying Boxes to the poor. A Box inside a house is more secure than a Box in a roadside structure, because the Box in the house benefits from whatever security the house has. Even if that security is only the homeowner living there.

[SCRawl]

You've still got to connect those Boxes to the streetlights. Which means a lot of underground cables.

Tapping the houses means shorter distances. Making wireless power transfer to the streetlights more viable.

Then there is going to be the issue of security. Boxes are going to be stolen by people who can't afford them, especially in places where the power grid is being dismantled but nobody is supplying Boxes to the poor. A Box inside a house is more secure than a Box in a roadside structure, because the Box in the house benefits from whatever security the house has. Even if that security is only the homeowner living there.

Wireless power transfer? Sure, it's possible; you could mandate that certain homeowners must keep and maintain a dedicated Box with a transmitter whose sole purpose is to keep the street lights on. It would be horribly inefficient, since power would diminish as distance squared, but inefficiency isn't really an issue when the power comes for free. At that point, though, you might be better off just building a Box into each street lamp.

As for security being an issue, this is a project decades into the future. I imagine that traditional power distribution would remain for quite some time, after which the benefit of having one more Box would be so small that it wouldn't be worth stealing one just because you could. This is to say nothing of the other secondary benefits which will accrue to raise the standard of living. Which I will get to.

[Simon_Jester]

Wireless power beams have a problem because they're still power; you're basically talking about slinging around hundreds of watts of microwaves invisibly through the air. This can be bad for anything that gets into the path of the beam.

Also, rain, fog, or snow may interfere with certain kinds of wireless beam, although they won't interfere with radio or most microwaves.

[madd0ct0r]

Jesus guys, streetlights that are already built and wired to run off local distirubtion transformers having the grid connection replaced with a Box. that is the least consequential problem I can think of.

Why not hook your house's box into the local electrical grid so you can help power other stuff when not using it's full capacity? IIRC that is how people with solar panels on their roofs or windmills do things.

Yup. you'd just build the boxes in at local substations that supply power to a small number of houses. This can already cope with a certain amount of electricity feeding back up into the grid as explained in detail here: http://clive.semmens.org.uk/Energy/NotMeltGrid.html
This is a section of the essay. It's hugely worth reading, and deals with storage in the second part.

So as long as only one house in six has 24kW worth of solar panels, all will be well. Or you could say that each house should have no more than 4kW, and you’ll be all right. This is why there’s a limit of 4kW on the basic arrangements for government subsidies on domestic solar panels. You want to have more, you have to make special arrangements, and the electricity company may have to upgrade your connection, or even your local substation. (Unlikely in practice, unless every house in the area has solar panels, and more than the odd one want to have more than 4kW worth.)

You could have a bit more than that anyway, because although some houses might sometimes be drawing zero watts (or nearly zero) at the same time as the panels are generating their maximum, it’s extremely unlikely that they all will simultaneously. Just as the peaks are unlikely to be simultaneous, so the troughs are unlikely to be. You can allow for generating enough to max out the fuse at the local substation PLUS whatever is being consumed in the area.

But the combined trough will be less than that 0.5kW average, probably quite a bit less. So the extra amount over and above the 4kW per house isn’t really worth trying to take advantage of.

Intermediate Connections

Similar considerations apply to the higher voltage connections and intermediate substations that connect the local substations to the National Grid, and ultimately to the power stations. There are various levels of such connections: 240V local connections; 11kV, 33kV and 132kV intermediate connections; and 275kV and 400kV National Grid. (The whole network is three phase and the local connection is actually 415V three phase. Each house is connected to only one phase, which is 240V relative to neutral, and should be very close to earth potential.)

Just as the peaks in consumption in all the houses in one street are unlikely to coincide with each other, so the peaks in consumption in all the different areas are unlikely to coincide.

If we’re only looking at domestic consumption, this is a small effect – most of the effect is already seen at the local level, and what peaks and troughs remain at the local substation level mostly do coincide at different local substations, because they have common causes, like loads of people switching on their kettles at the end of a popular TV programme, or during advert breaks (sharp peaks); or loads of people cooking meals at similar times (much broader peaks); nearly everyone being asleep (a broad trough); or a spell of cold weather (long term peak).

But larger consumers such as supermarkets, warehouses or factories, who often have their own local substations, will generally have different peaks and troughs – from each other, and from local substations serving domestic properties. A local substation serving a street of small commercial premises will have different peaks and troughs again, and so forth.

Overall, that spiky graph of consumption in households becomes a somewhat smoother graph at the local substation level, smoother still at intermediate substation level, and even smoother at grid connection level. It still has peaks and troughs, but the peaks are not so big (in proportion to the average), and the troughs are not so deep.

The deepest of the troughs is called the base load.

The amount you can generate anywhere without damaging the circuitry is equal to the capacity of the supply to that point, PLUS the local base load – once the local base load has been taken out of what you’re generating, you can safely push the rest back up to the network. That wasn’t useful at the local level, because the base load was very small compared to the capacity of the supply – but as you go up the system, it becomes quite significant.

If you want to instal more than (supply capacity + base load), you need an upgraded connection – just as you would if you wanted to connect a large additional load, an additional twenty houses on a local circuit, for example.

This cascades all the way up the network. Installing 24kW of solar panels won’t hurt your own domestic connection, but if everyone in your street does it, you’ll blow the fuse at your local substation. You can safely instal just enough between you that on a sunny day, your local substation will be working in reverse, feeding as much back into the grid as it could possibly supply when you’re all consuming electricity like mad. In the same way, it’s all very well your local substation feeding that much back up the system, but if every local substation in the area does it, you’ll blow the fuse at the intermediate substation. And so on, all the way up to the National Grid.

[Simon_Jester]

Jesus guys, streetlights that are already built and wired to run off local distirubtion transformers having the grid connection replaced with a Box. that is the least consequential problem I can think of.

Yeah. But people keep thinking wireless power beams are a good idea around here, and they're really not in places where we can imagine things or people getting in the path of the beam. There's a reason this technology is basically not used at all outside of a handful of low-power household applications, plus the delusional fantasies of Nikola Tesla whose ideas of how electricity and magnetism actually work were... a bit less than fully logical or accurate... in his later years as far as I can tell.

[torpedomixer]

If power is not a problem anymore you can go for localized "bad efficiency" solutions to give you some more resilience and independence. Mind that a 100% solution will be not the best (as today).

- fertilizers (The Nitrogen based at least) - a known process. Phospor based stuff can be done by recycling human wastes/urin (also known but rarely used today)
--> food is possible locally (noone has to starve) even if the food might be a bit boring

- hydrocarbon material (chemical industry) - can be done from the CO2 in the air
- power generation - as discussed in this thread. If the boxes can't be regulated than you dump the excess power capacity into the fertilizer or CO2 plants

transportation - now easily doable

use hydrocarbon fuels for the cement production, aluminium smelters is easy, steel maybe a bit more tricky (don't know enough) unleass you can produce coal from air CO2.

That will mean a shift in power between the nations - goodby saudi arabia...

What would that mean for the way people deal with each other?? This is the REALLY interesting question.

[torpedomixer]

to elaborate:

- a star treckish society (free power) and you do "neighborhood hours" ?
- communism (power generation and all associated from that is part of the state) ?
- capitalsim (who has some usefull way to generate/justify a wage?)

[Sky Captain]

This technology would also allow all sorts of VTOL aircraft. It is quite possible that most moderate and long distance passenger transport would be by air. Think of a heliport in place of a bus terminal in every small town connecting it to nearby cities. Why take a 5 hour bus or train ride when you can fly to your destination in hour or less. Energy is free, so who cares if "flying bus" uses 10 times more energy. Getting to destination faster would be a lot more important. Personal VTOL aircraft (flying car in sci fi) also would be possible if foolproof autopilot is invented.

[SCRawl]

I've posted another vignette. The sharper among you will note that Karl Cooke is a dead ringer for a real-world person, and this isn't an accident.