Emily Forzano

Electricity is the kind of thing that everyone uses, but not everyone realizes is such a necessity. This past September, I went home for the weekend and the entire time i was there our power was out. It was a frustrating and annoying weekend, especially when i wanted tot get home work done! But it was the kind of thing i never really noticed was a burden (losing power) until it actually happens. Not to say this was the first time my power has ever gone out, it was just the most recent and inconvenient.

That being said, our demand for electricity is continuously growing. Demand response, however, manages the amount of electricity used by customers depending on market supply conditions. Reasons to reduce or shut off power or use generators when the market prices change or at critical times when energy supplies are low, or there is extra demand on a power grid. Customers are requested to reduce or shut off power during demand response. Demand response can lower peak prices because supply and demand goes into effect, basically by customers using less power.

Basically, in simpler terms, demand response programs give us the consumers an easier way to conserve our energy and electricity at specific times, usually peak usage times.
Demand response is a resource to customers, which allows them to mange or shift their usage of electricity from time to time.

California’s three regulated investor-owned utilities: PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E. are currently how demand response programs are administrated and distributed.

There 3 types of demand response
emergency DR which is used to avoid involuntary service interruption when supply is scarce.
economic which asks customers to use less electricit;y when the convenience of consuming it is worth less than actually paying for it.
ancillary services which are services needed to ensure operation of the grid that usually is provided by generators.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/demand-response.htm
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/energy/Demand+Response/

For our first lab activity in this class we conducted a lego robot activity, which was awesome because I love legos and robots are pretty cool too! During this activity we each worked with a partner (mine was molly!) and were given a kit which included all the things needed to create this lego robot. The first step of the activity was to literally build this robot. We were given a guide to help us put together this robot but it definitely wasn’t as easy as just following some directions. The robot was in the form of a car, once it was finished. It was given to us as just a simple block, we then had to attach that battery which later “fueled” the robot to move! Once that was complete we had to put the wheels, which was a trying task but once we figured out the correct way it put them on it began to look more like a robot! Our next task was to assure that all other parts of the legos and robots were placed in the correct spots so that nothing fell off or was missing later in the project. We then had to make sure the required wires were connected and all in the right spots, this is important because the wires are a key necessity later on when we wanted the robot to start moving. Once the robot was built we connected it to the computer and used the required programs to set it up so that we could control and operate the robot from the computer. After playing around for a while we got the robot to move! And later on we got it to go in a circle and it was pretty awesome i must say. We then found the measured distance of the robot which was 29 cm= .29 m and the programs distance which was .129m and the fractional error was .161m. The equation is listed below.

.29-.129 .161
__________ _____
(.29*.129) .209
__________
2

%error=.77

Over all this was a successful and exciting project and very interesting as well. We learned a lot about the mechanics involved in what actually made these little guys go!

The Fukushima nuclear disaster took place in Japan on March 11th, 2011. The events that caused the actual disaster rooted from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, which was the largest disaster to hit japan since 1986. In general the natural disasters that hit, set off a huge nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The disaster consisted of a series of failures at the power plant such as nuclear meltdowns and releases of radioactive materials.

Within the days that followed the disaster, the 3 major reactors at the power plant, experienced full meltdowns. This series of events affected Japan in a huge way because Japan gets almost all of its energy from nuclear power plants. Not only did the disaster influence the way in which Japans’ energy was distributed throughout, but the leak of radioactive material affected the atmosphere and environment.

After the earthquake struck, all affected plants shut down immediately, the plants that were affected weren’t built to handle a tsunami and earthquake of this severity and to this extent.

Several of the plant workers at Fukushima were injured badly, or killed by the conditions of the earthquake and the tsunami.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/fukushima_accident_inf129.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/26/japan-fukushima-disaster-probe_n_1169837.html