Residents asked to switch off appliances this afternoon due to heat [AU]

[Kleinstein]

How bad a high temperature feels, depends a lot on the humidity: when really dry 40 C are not a problem at all, you just need to drink a little more. When really humid even 25 C can be a problem. In my time in the US, 40 C at maybe 3-5% rel humidity (in NM) did not feel uncomfortable (just avoid the sun) - while 25 C at 95% (in Michigan) felt like a problem.

The swamp cooler described below only works well in really dry conditions. Otherwise the extra humidity in the air is more of a problem.

[CatalinaWOW]

I can just imagine how hot it must get inside a car when it's 50C out.    You can probably reflow circuit boards on the dash. 

I still remember a family visit to relatives in Phoenix when I was a child.  My box camera literally melted into a puddle on the shelf behind the back seat.  It was only 48C or 49C that week.

I swore I would never live in such a climate.  Later life intervened.  You learn to deal with it, but a common trip to the emergency room in Southern Arizona is visitors and new residents with burns from seat belt buckles.  Residents learn to cool things off a bit before buckling up.

[digsys]

I still remember a family visit to relatives in Phoenix when I was a child.  My box camera literally melted into a puddle on the shelf behind the back seat.  It was only 48C or 49C that week.
....  You learn to deal with it ... 

Funniest incident I remember was many years ago riding my m/cycle. It was a seriously hot day, and the bitumen was actually liquid and running at a recently upgraded road.
I stopped at the lights, put my right foot down (as per normal) and took off when they changed. I left my boot stuck in the bitumen !! (It wasn't a full lace up)
LUCKILY, I circled around, stopped at the same spot and re-inserted my foot, then twisting my leg (changing angle), slowly took off, pulling the boot out of the road :-)
I've seen liquid bitumen roads long ago when I lived in the centre of OZ

[Red Squirrel]

The one thing I remember from when I witnessed 40C is how fast stuff dries.  I was at Canada's Wonderland and it was so hot rollercoasters and stuff were just making us sick so we went to the water park.  It was PACKED in there given how hot it was.  Once you got to go on a slide or anything where you got wet, you'd be dry in like 5 minutes after.  I got sunburned so bad that day.  Days like that are definitely not ginger friendly.

[CatalinaWOW]

I still remember a family visit to relatives in Phoenix when I was a child.  My box camera literally melted into a puddle on the shelf behind the back seat.  It was only 48C or 49C that week.
....  You learn to deal with it ... 

Funniest incident I remember was many years ago riding my m/cycle. It was a seriously hot day, and the bitumen was actually liquid and running at a recently upgraded road.
I stopped at the lights, put my right foot down (as per normal) and took off when they changed. I left my boot stuck in the bitumen !! (It wasn't a full lace up)
LUCKILY, I circled around, stopped at the same spot and re-inserted my foot, then twisting my leg (changing angle), slowly took off, pulling the boot out of the road :-)
I've seen liquid bitumen roads long ago when I lived in the centre of OZ

Obviously somebody on the roads staff was a new transplant.  More experienced folk specify a higher softening point mix on the bitumen.  It still gets soft on the warm days, and the heavy trucks (lorries) wear ruts over time, but I have only seen roads built with the wrong materials liquify.

Another fun feature of these warm climates is sidewalk buckling.  Concrete sidewalks have a CTE just like everything else, and apparently it is higher than the local soils.  A long straight stretch of sidewalk will sometimes buckle up nearly a meter.  More dramatic than the frost heaves that the cold folk get to live with.

[vk6zgo]

I still remember a family visit to relatives in Phoenix when I was a child.  My box camera literally melted into a puddle on the shelf behind the back seat.  It was only 48C or 49C that week.
....  You learn to deal with it ... 

Funniest incident I remember was many years ago riding my m/cycle. It was a seriously hot day, and the bitumen was actually liquid and running at a recently upgraded road.
I stopped at the lights, put my right foot down (as per normal) and took off when they changed. I left my boot stuck in the bitumen !! (It wasn't a full lace up)
LUCKILY, I circled around, stopped at the same spot and re-inserted my foot, then twisting my leg (changing angle), slowly took off, pulling the boot out of the road :-)
I've seen liquid bitumen roads long ago when I lived in the centre of OZ

This used to happen in WA,when I was a kid in the 1950s.

Following the establishment of the Kwinana Oil Refinery,there was more scope to experiment with the asphalt mix,& they developed one where the bitumen would very rarely reach melting point,even though the Summers were still just as hot.

I was,therefore,surprised when I was in England during Summer 1971,& noticed on a 80F day (approx 27C) that their roads were melting.

I must admit that it felt a lot hotter than that!

[johansen]

The one thing I remember from when I witnessed 40C is how fast stuff dries.  I was at Canada's Wonderland and it was so hot rollercoasters and stuff were just making us sick so we went to the water park.  It was PACKED in there given how hot it was.  Once you got to go on a slide or anything where you got wet, you'd be dry in like 5 minutes after.  I got sunburned so bad that day.  Days like that are definitely not ginger friendly.

It's an unfortunate myth that you get sunburnt fron the heat. It's the UV light and you can get burnt in the snow. It's just that hotter day tend to get more people out with less clothing.

yep, and if you're out in the snow  breathing through your mouth you can get suburnt inside your mouth. from the uv reflecting off the snow

[vk6zgo]

Harking back to the original posting.

During the same period,Western Australia had torrential rain,flooding, & the coldest February day for many years.
This is a startling reminder of how large a country Australia is--- something not only people from other countries don't realise,but some Australians,too!

Of course, it happens the other way round,too.
Years ago, I spent almost a year in England, mostly in Southampton in Hampshire.

September in that part of the world was deep into Autumn----grey skies, howling winds off the Solent Estuary ( what we call "lazy" winds in WA ----they don't bother going round you, they go straight through you!).

A few years later, I went back to Europe,this time with Rome as my starting point.
Thinking "autumn" I was prepared for it to not be as nasty as the UK, but to be a bit more like a WA Autumn.

My mistake ! ----it was full summer there "100 degrees in the waterbag!" to use the old saying.
Actually,it was around 38C!
Europe is a big place,too.

[Red Squirrel]

The one thing I remember from when I witnessed 40C is how fast stuff dries.  I was at Canada's Wonderland and it was so hot rollercoasters and stuff were just making us sick so we went to the water park.  It was PACKED in there given how hot it was.  Once you got to go on a slide or anything where you got wet, you'd be dry in like 5 minutes after.  I got sunburned so bad that day.  Days like that are definitely not ginger friendly.

It's an unfortunate myth that you get sunburnt fron the heat. It's the UV light and you can get burnt in the snow. It's just that hotter day tend to get more people out with less clothing.

I heard this too but from my experience the hotter it is the stronger the sun is and the faster I burn.   Can't say I've ever seen anyone sunburn in winter or experienced it myself.  Ex: face. (everything else would normally be covered)  Also heard you can sunburn if there's clouds but can't say I've ever experienced that either. If I'm outside in summer and it's cloudy I don't bother with sunscreen.  I sometimes wonder if those "facts" are a myth in themselves, or an "alternate fact".

[digsys]

... Also heard you can sunburn if there's clouds but can't say I've ever experienced that either ...

Absoluuuuuuuutely !! I'm in a few shows outdoor shows a year, and never bother with sunscreen. On cloudy days, I get a HECK of a lot more burnt !
PLUS - our solar car achieves up to 20% more power on cloudy days, instead of clear, irrespective of temperature. We have observed this over several years.
Concensus is, that it has to do with cloud scatter / polarization yadda yadda .. I didn't pay much attention to the lecture :-)  but it is a truism.

[Kleinstein]

On a hot day you usually avoid the sun alone because of the high temperature. High temperature ( >30C) and intense sun make the skin feel burned from high temperature after something like 10 s in the sun. But this is different from UV damage.

The danger for sun-burn is usually highest when it is dry and cold/windy. Also high altitude adds to the danger. I got one in October early in the morning before 9 am one cold morning outside in the dry New Mexico. It the air is really dry even the rather low angle of incidence does not protect very well.

If you go to England, you don't have to wait for autumn to get dark gray wether with a little rain - that is about normal most of the year.

In those hot areas, they should build the houses heavy enough to keep the cold from the night. This also allows to run the AC at night of the early morning when the air is not that hot, making is more efficient. I don't know about Australia, but in the US they seem to sell houses by the pound.

[CatalinaWOW]

The US is a big place.  Storing overnight cool works in mountainous New Mexico. Barely works in Tucson.  Hardly works at all in Phoenix (low altitude and widespread use of irrigation means little radiation cooling) or Houston or Atlanta.

[Marco]

Insulation would help more than thermal mass IMO. Pure ventilation and body heat wise you only need to get rid of a couple 100 Watt per person in a room.

[Someone]

I still remember a family visit to relatives in Phoenix when I was a child.  My box camera literally melted into a puddle on the shelf behind the back seat.  It was only 48C or 49C that week.
....  You learn to deal with it ... 

Funniest incident I remember was many years ago riding my m/cycle. It was a seriously hot day, and the bitumen was actually liquid and running at a recently upgraded road.
I stopped at the lights, put my right foot down (as per normal) and took off when they changed. I left my boot stuck in the bitumen !! (It wasn't a full lace up)
LUCKILY, I circled around, stopped at the same spot and re-inserted my foot, then twisting my leg (changing angle), slowly took off, pulling the boot out of the road :-)
I've seen liquid bitumen roads long ago when I lived in the centre of OZ

Obviously somebody on the roads staff was a new transplant.  More experienced folk specify a higher softening point mix on the bitumen.  It still gets soft on the warm days, and the heavy trucks (lorries) wear ruts over time, but I have only seen roads built with the wrong materials liquify.

Another fun feature of these warm climates is sidewalk buckling.  Concrete sidewalks have a CTE just like everything else, and apparently it is higher than the local soils.  A long straight stretch of sidewalk will sometimes buckle up nearly a meter.  More dramatic than the frost heaves that the cold folk get to live with.

Combined with high insolation and low winter temperatures there are still many roads in Australia and New Zealand that will get very soft in the summer, things have gotten better but there are still critical roads carrying heavy vehicles that need to span 90 degrees Celsius (or more) swings in temperature extremes and its just normal for them to be liquid on the hottest days of the year. But I don't recall any residential roads being tarred with such poor surfaces for decades.

[julianhigginson]

I can see a bigger push to implement DREDs (Demand Response Enabling Device AS4755) in air conditioners and other appliances if this trend keeps up in Summer.
Yay let the power companies nobble your device because they can't be bothered / too cheap to upgrade infrastructure to keep up with demand 

How about make a similar type of device that works in reverse - that is, it turns *on* during some off peak times for loads where using more now can reduce use later and make electricity very cheap or even free during those off peak times. An example of a load that would work extremely well with that is a dedicated freezer. A water heater is another, but they really should be pushing heat pump technology as it is very cheap to implement nowadays.

In principle, it can also be done for A/C loads. Run the A/C more before the peak so the peak ends up longer but lower. That would use significantly more energy, though, so it would have to be timed for a net benefit and be such that the end user also sees a cost savings.

The existing DRED standards have run commands too.. for exactly that purpose. so you can get everyone's equipment to run hard pre-peak, then turn off during the peak, and have that customer get through the peak with relative inconvenience.

The thing is last time I looked (a few years ago now) they were incomplete. And without legislative backing I don't see them going anywhere.

Also I'm not sure how DRED will work without a fully implemented smart meter system to combine with it. Possibly also a means by which people can go in and set threshold permissions based on price/temp/and effects of being kicked off peak. No good making people's aircons randomly run full blast when they haven't turned them on, if you can't also adjust the usage cost to suit... you'll have riots in the streets!

[hendorog]

I can see a bigger push to implement DREDs (Demand Response Enabling Device AS4755) in air conditioners and other appliances if this trend keeps up in Summer.
Yay let the power companies nobble your device because they can't be bothered / too cheap to upgrade infrastructure to keep up with demand 

How about make a similar type of device that works in reverse - that is, it turns *on* during some off peak times for loads where using more now can reduce use later and make electricity very cheap or even free during those off peak times. An example of a load that would work extremely well with that is a dedicated freezer. A water heater is another, but they really should be pushing heat pump technology as it is very cheap to implement nowadays.

In principle, it can also be done for A/C loads. Run the A/C more before the peak so the peak ends up longer but lower. That would use significantly more energy, though, so it would have to be timed for a net benefit and be such that the end user also sees a cost savings.

The existing DRED standards have run commands too.. for exactly that purpose. so you can get everyone's equipment to run hard pre-peak, then turn off during the peak, and have that customer get through the peak with relative inconvenience.

The thing is last time I looked (a few years ago now) they were incomplete. And without legislative backing I don't see them going anywhere.

Also I'm not sure how DRED will work without a fully implemented smart meter system to combine with it. Possibly also a means by which people can go in and set threshold permissions based on price/temp/and effects of being kicked off peak. No good making people's aircons randomly run full blast when they haven't turned them on, if you can't also adjust the usage cost to suit... you'll have riots in the streets!

The simplest solution is spot pricing. Then the consumer can pay for storage and/or peak shaving to mitigate for the price spikes as they see fit.

Not legislation needed and no loss of control for the end user.

[julianhigginson]

The simplest solution is spot pricing. Then the consumer can pay for storage and/or peak shaving to mitigate for the price spikes as they see fit.

Not legislation needed and no loss of control for the end user.

the issue that DRED is meant to solve is system overloading. that's it. It's meant to allow pushing up of  pre-peak consumption and limiting of peak consumption in order to flatten peaks. It does this so that poorly designed and maintained infrastructure doesn't catch fire under extreme situations, basically. Any negotiation around the operation of this system has to be fast and agile and effective.

Having every citizen needing to log into a server somewhere and setup rules for power usage or constantly monitoring spot prices every time their turn on their aircon is an awful lot to expect from a nation of people that got tricked into voting for a broken ADSL variant that is now costing more and taking about as long to install as a full FTTN install would have..

How many people can even set the clock on their aircon for the timer? How on earth are they going to understand game theory well enough to setup a working set of rules for their particular combination of appliances that makes up their particular home system which will always make meaningful and sensible decisions based on price and predicted weather?

And this free market idea that everyone always works in their own interests and all you need is to marketise something in order to make it perfect. People have shown this time and time again to be  anything from awfully simplistic to completely untrue. And even without people doing silly/wrong/incorrect/uninformed things, markets are entirely self-distorting once large incumbent actors emerge, and without active protection and adjustment it's always only a matter of time before that happens even if they aren't baked in from inception.

What you will end up with if we just implement a free market for consumer electricity is continued skyrocketing power bills for everyone as the retail entities setup the new business models with a nice fat buffer on their base price, then go from there and learn how to game the system even more to their benefit. You'll get ineffective load balancing, customers having hard cutoffs of service with no pre-load. You'll get a bunch of people getting 500k power bills and going bankrupt on current affairs programs. Then you'll get a bunch of old pensioners becoming too scared to use electricity at all and dying from heat and cold as a result.

Also you'd probably need legislation to enable consumer spot pricing, too, so that solution is still not legislation free either...
 

[digsys]

We seriously do have a mess ! I've been looking into powering my home from AA batteries. I've heard that there's a device out there that can extract 800% more energy from them !!
Irrespective of setup costs, this will pay for itself in weeks or months !!

[hendorog]

The simplest solution is spot pricing. Then the consumer can pay for storage and/or peak shaving to mitigate for the price spikes as they see fit.

Not legislation needed and no loss of control for the end user.

the issue that DRED is meant to solve is system overloading. that's it. It's meant to allow pushing up of  pre-peak consumption and limiting of peak consumption in order to flatten peaks. It does this so that poorly designed and maintained infrastructure doesn't catch fire under extreme situations, basically. Any negotiation around the operation of this system has to be fast and agile and effective.

Having every citizen needing to log into a server somewhere and setup rules for power usage or constantly monitoring spot prices every time their turn on their aircon is an awful lot to expect from a nation of people that got tricked into voting for a broken ADSL variant that is now costing more and taking about as long to install as a full FTTN install would have..

How many people can even set the clock on their aircon for the timer? How on earth are they going to understand game theory well enough to setup a working set of rules for their particular combination of appliances that makes up their particular home system which will always make meaningful and sensible decisions based on price and predicted weather?

And this free market idea that everyone always works in their own interests and all you need is to marketise something in order to make it perfect. People have shown this time and time again to be  anything from awfully simplistic to completely untrue. And even without people doing silly/wrong/incorrect/uninformed things, markets are entirely self-distorting once large incumbent actors emerge, and without active protection and adjustment it's always only a matter of time before that happens even if they aren't baked in from inception.

What you will end up with if we just implement a free market for consumer electricity is continued skyrocketing power bills for everyone as the retail entities setup the new business models with a nice fat buffer on their base price, then go from there and learn how to game the system even more to their benefit. You'll get ineffective load balancing, customers having hard cutoffs of service with no pre-load. You'll get a bunch of people getting 500k power bills and going bankrupt on current affairs programs. Then you'll get a bunch of old pensioners becoming too scared to use electricity at all and dying from heat and cold as a result.

Also you'd probably need legislation to enable consumer spot pricing, too, so that solution is still not legislation free either...
 

I mentioned it earlier in the thread, I have it at home and fortunately for me the reality is much simpler than you described
This is who I use, they aren't perfect but it is way better than paying a flat rate and getting ripped: www.flickelectric.co.nz
I get a notification when the price spikes <- this has been pretty unreliable from them, but I've found another way to do it.

When the price spikes over a preset level my Heat Pump turns itself off. This is done via IFTTT. I can turn it back on if I like, the idea is just to avoid getting caught out. _Even if I did nothing it would still be cheaper_

From the system perspective, the overloading issue is neatly solved (over time) as householders will pay to install storage (NZ) and/or solar (Oz) to reduce their peak demand.

Given that solar and AC line up in Oz, and the high uptake of solar over there from the subsidies you had, it's really a no-brainer.

OTOH I really need some storage as here in NZ the sun isn't shining when the demand is high - Winter heating is the major cost.
However with 'AC battery' products slowly appearing like the Tesla it's easy for a non-tech consumer to solve that problem.

I don't know if Oz has any power companies that offer that. If not it's an opportunity.

Maybe it's just too simple, you guys do enjoy making things big and complex over there

[julianhigginson]

oh of course - simple!! bodge a home system together with your own ethernet compatible microcontrollers and a cloud data messaging service!! so easy! I can see my parents managing that just fine.
 

The closest thing I know of to your provider that's available to me is this.
http://www.powershop.com.au/toolkit/
where you can pre-buy power "packs" upfront when they are on sale.... if you have the time to get the best deals. So your cost changes based on when you pay for it whether than when you use... which is sort of pointless from a load controlling point of view. Most of my friends who use it are mostly happy with the idea but in practice don't manage to spend enough time doing the best for themselves that they could. But they stay because, well, it's still better than the big retailers.

In NSW, we have a basket case of competing interests and entrenched monopolies that make up our power supply.. I've never had a smart meter anywhere I lived, and still have a retailer that basically guestimates my usage every quarter, sends a random bill and laughs hysterically when I can be bothered to even ask where they got this quarter's usage numbers...

The only thing left to do for anyone who can afford it, is get a big set of panels on the roof, a big battery storage, (and maybe a sneaky petrol generator) and cut the line completely. That, or a whole lot of batterizers....

[hendorog]

oh of course - simple!! bodge a home system together with your own ethernet compatible microcontrollers and a cloud data messaging service!! so easy! I can see my parents managing that just fine.

Nah you are giving me too much credit mate The wifi module came with the AC for an extra $250. The intention is that you can control the AC from your phone, but they also have an interface with IFTTT.

I accept your point - it is not yet ready for low tech consumers - bear in mind that this company has only been around for a year or two here. However that does not change my point. Spot pricing is still cheaper over the year, and if you are even slightly clever to reduce your consumption it is a lot cheaper. And that is before you combine it with solar and/or battery. A battery based peak shaving device will be something you can buy off the self once there is a demand. Right now it's early adopter territory. All that adds up to cheaper power bills and eventually people (and companies supplying hardware) will figure it out for themselves.

I see parallels in pay TV. Sky TV in NZ is now losing customers by the 10's of thousands to streaming services - of course both of my parents are still Sky TV customers but I have dumped Sky. (My parents probably still see that as bleeding edge high tech as they were brought up in the era before TV was common here.) Streaming has been around for quite a while, but it seems that it has reached a tipping point over the last year. I can see the same thing happening with power in a few years.

The closest thing I know of to your provider that's available to me is this.
http://www.powershop.com.au/toolkit/
where you can pre-buy power "packs" upfront when they are on sale.... if you have the time to get the best deals. So your cost changes based on when you pay for it whether than when you use... which is sort of pointless from a load controlling point of view. Most of my friends who use it are mostly happy with the idea but in practice don't manage to spend enough time doing the best for themselves that they could. But they stay because, well, it's still better than the big retailers.

Yeah that sucks and isn't the same thing at all. Funny we have the same thing - powershop.co.nz

In NSW, we have a basket case of competing interests and entrenched monopolies that make up our power supply.. I've never had a smart meter anywhere I lived, and still have a retailer that basically guestimates my usage every quarter, sends a random bill and laughs hysterically when I can be bothered to even ask where they got this quarter's usage numbers...

The only thing left to do for anyone who can afford it, is get a big set of panels on the roof, a big battery storage, (and maybe a sneaky petrol generator) and cut the line completely. That, or a whole lot of batterizers....

Smart meters are fairly standard here now - although not universal - and are required for my provider at least. The crap thing is the data comes through 2 days delayed which makes it a bit poor for optimising usage. Better than meter readers but not perfect.
(The power industry advertised smart meters as being great for consumers, but then they didn't install ones which supported the consumer getting the data direct...)

Anyway, the fundamental change which would drive all this is to give consumers the option of spot pricing.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

Well maybe things aren't such a mess and before long we in Aus can use an alternative to flat pricing.
Most states I think have already split the Electricity supply into 3 roles.
 Generating, Distribution and Retail-Metering.

So hopefully soon Flick can come into our market.

[vk6zgo]

Well maybe things aren't such a mess and before long we in Aus can use an alternative to flat pricing.
Most states I think have already split the Electricity supply into 3 roles.
 Generating, Distribution and Retail-Metering.

Which is a seriously dumb idea---lack of communication between the  3 entities will lead to higher, rather than lower costs.

[digsys]

... Most states I think have already split the Electricity supply into 3 roles.  Generating, Distribution and Retail-Metering. 

Which is a seriously dumb idea---lack of communication between the  3 entities will lead to higher, rather than lower costs.

Absofookenlootly a bad idea !! I was living in the states, applying for a green card, in the late 90s / 2000 and had several run-ins with power / phone companies.
They were all broken into at LEAST 3 parts, and the run-around was horrible, and each had their own legal department, who constantly threatened legal action, rather
than discussing the problem ... we were accidentally given someone else's account, and they refused to withdraw it as it was NO-ONEs department.
In the end our lawyer told us to pay it - US$1,500.00. Same kept happening to her family and friends ... I withdrew my application.
AND .. with it all split up, you now have several CEOs and boards etc etc that will milk millions $s and pass the buck. Been there, done that :-)  Look at OZ post currently !

[rrinker]

Well maybe things aren't such a mess and before long we in Aus can use an alternative to flat pricing.
Most states I think have already split the Electricity supply into 3 roles.
 Generating, Distribution and Retail-Metering.

Which is a seriously dumb idea---lack of communication between the  3 entities will lead to higher, rather than lower costs.

 Bills have remained flat or even gone down since they introduced choice for electric suppliers here. It's not practical to have multiple lines strung so the distribution charge still comes from the same electric supplier you have always had, but the generation portion you have your choice of many different providers. There are suppliers all over the spectrum - if you're highly concerned about the environment, for example, you can choose a supplier who is 100% green energy.  You still get a single bill from whoever it is owns the lines to your hose, but this is broken down into generation, distribution, and administrative costs on the bill. The electric company is not allowed to change their portion of the bill based on who you pick as a supplier.