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They say they save $100,000 per year, but what was the cost to implement this, and how much does the battery maintenance cost?

by miahi 14y ago

maxerickson 14y ago
This page: http://www.acgov.org/government/news/smartgrid.htm http://www.acgov.org/government/news/smartgrid.htm Says $11.7 million. But that is the project cost, not the additional cost of using this system to provide backup power to the jail.
- miahi 14y ago
  So they can save those $100,000 per year after 100 years. Good luck with that.
  - maxerickson 14y ago
    It depends on the characteristics of the alternatives that they had. Given that the prison is designed to house 4,000 people, I imagine the cheaper alternatives were still in the millions of dollars.
    - droithomme 14y ago
      The cheap alternative here as far as power is concerned is grid electricity and have natural gas turbines for electrical backup. Blackouts never last more than a day in this area, and very rarely that long, so being able to run the air conditioning is not important, you need to run lights, security cameras, and the door locks. However much they are generating with solar cells it's not even a fraction as much as they would save in switching to a geothermal heatpump system for the heating and cooling needs, which would have been a fraction of the cost of the solar system, and a minute fraction of the ongoing costs including battery replacement. This is about certain people getting contracts to sell stuff to the government. Anyone competent who is really interested in a good solution wouldn't have built this system.
  - droithomme 14y ago
    117 years, but only as long as we completely ignore that all the batteries have to be replaced every 5 years, the solar cells every 20 years, and the diesel generators have to be continually maintained and swapped out with new fuel - if you just store diesel passively long term, even with fuel stabilizers, it goes bad, so use it or lose it with that.

They say they save $100,000 per year, but what was the cost to implement this, and how much does the battery maintenance cost?

by miahi 14y ago

They say they save $100,000 per year, but what was the cost to implement this, and how much does the battery maintenance cost?

maxerickson 14y ago

This page: http://www.acgov.org/government/news/smartgrid.htm http://www.acgov.org/government/news/smartgrid.htm Says $11.7 million. But that is the project cost, not the additional cost of using this system to provide backup power to the jail.

miahi 14y ago
So they can save those $100,000 per year after 100 years. Good luck with that.
- maxerickson 14y ago
  It depends on the characteristics of the alternatives that they had. Given that the prison is designed to house 4,000 people, I imagine the cheaper alternatives were still in the millions of dollars.
  - droithomme 14y ago
    The cheap alternative here as far as power is concerned is grid electricity and have natural gas turbines for electrical backup. Blackouts never last more than a day in this area, and very rarely that long, so being able to run the air conditioning is not important, you need to run lights, security cameras, and the door locks. However much they are generating with solar cells it's not even a fraction as much as they would save in switching to a geothermal heatpump system for the heating and cooling needs, which would have been a fraction of the cost of the solar system, and a minute fraction of the ongoing costs including battery replacement. This is about certain people getting contracts to sell stuff to the government. Anyone competent who is really interested in a good solution wouldn't have built this system.
- droithomme 14y ago
  117 years, but only as long as we completely ignore that all the batteries have to be replaced every 5 years, the solar cells every 20 years, and the diesel generators have to be continually maintained and swapped out with new fuel - if you just store diesel passively long term, even with fuel stabilizers, it goes bad, so use it or lose it with that.