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With negative electricity rates you can do crazy things like buy thousands of space heaters, and just heat the outside. Space heaters don’t become obsolete, an

With negative electricity rates you can do crazy things like buy thousands of space heaters, and just heat the outside. Space heaters don’t become obsolete, and they’re not very capital intensive, or require much maintenance. You just need space to put them in.

adwn 6y ago
> You just need space to put them in. What are you talking about? Just take the three phases from your power outlet and stick them in the ground, with some distance between them. There, zero capital costs, and a nice, mostly resistive load for the power plant. A bad time to be an earthworm, though.
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  Yeah, last time that (accidentally, effectively) happened just down the road from here, it caused some rather interesting smells, and that was just a 300A feed (or rather, it blew a 300A fuse - repeatedly - the technician kept just replacing the fuse a few times until I wandered over and told him about the smelly bit of pavement).
  - adwn 6y ago
    > the technician kept just replacing the fuse a few times What the fuck?!
    - mnw21cam 6y ago
      That admittedly was kind of my thought at the time. As he explained to me, often the underground cable will short out due to water ingress (it had rained a lot in the previous few hours), and pumping 300+A through that water could often drive the water off, and resolve the short. It took a bit of persuading to get him to believe me about the smell of burning plastic and suspiciously dry area of pavement just down the road. Once he believed me, a crew came in, dug the thing up, replaced a section of cable, and relaid tarmac, in a surprisingly short time.
qchris 6y ago
Alternatively, maybe in an era of climate change, there could be an incentive to use the extra to run processes like carbon capture. If carbon credits became a thing in a global economy, I could see some companies in a cap-and-trade scenario use that as a convenient way to offset their total footprint.
opwieurposiu 6y ago
You can buy a 10MW load bank on alibaba for $40k https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/11KV-10MW-Load-Bank-for-Genset_60177048818.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/11KV-10MW-Load-Bank-f... Sometimes power plants have GW size load banks, it's an acre or so of steel wires strung up on poles. All the wires glow red hot when in use. It is quite a sight.

adwn 6y ago

> You just need space to put them in. What are you talking about? Just take the three phases from your power outlet and stick them in the ground, with some distance between them. There, zero capital costs, and a nice, mostly resistive load for the power plant. A bad time to be an earthworm, though.

mnw21cam 6y ago
Yeah, last time that (accidentally, effectively) happened just down the road from here, it caused some rather interesting smells, and that was just a 300A feed (or rather, it blew a 300A fuse - repeatedly - the technician kept just replacing the fuse a few times until I wandered over and told him about the smelly bit of pavement).
- adwn 6y ago
  > the technician kept just replacing the fuse a few times What the fuck?!
  - mnw21cam 6y ago
    That admittedly was kind of my thought at the time. As he explained to me, often the underground cable will short out due to water ingress (it had rained a lot in the previous few hours), and pumping 300+A through that water could often drive the water off, and resolve the short. It took a bit of persuading to get him to believe me about the smell of burning plastic and suspiciously dry area of pavement just down the road. Once he believed me, a crew came in, dug the thing up, replaced a section of cable, and relaid tarmac, in a surprisingly short time.

qchris 6y ago

Alternatively, maybe in an era of climate change, there could be an incentive to use the extra to run processes like carbon capture. If carbon credits became a thing in a global economy, I could see some companies in a cap-and-trade scenario use that as a convenient way to offset their total footprint.

opwieurposiu 6y ago

You can buy a 10MW load bank on alibaba for $40k https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/11KV-10MW-Load-Bank-for-Genset_60177048818.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/11KV-10MW-Load-Bank-f... Sometimes power plants have GW size load banks, it's an acre or so of steel wires strung up on poles. All the wires glow red hot when in use. It is quite a sight.