please e-mail me if interested

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

I am an electrical contractor in Albuquerque. I have over 14 years of personal experience with industrial and commercial installation of electrical power, and uninterrupted power supply. I have read the websites about the y2k problem and have verified even the worst expectations with programmers I happen to know personally from the work I have done. There is no doubt in my mind that we are going to have extremely unstable and undependable power supply throughout the United States, from our utility companies for the next four or five years, beginning in September 9, 1999. (A date used as infinity by programmers in the 60's and 70's and part of the early 80's). I currently have a design and configuration on my drawing pad for what is called an uninterrupted power supply unit for single phase, low voltage power that could be produced and installed for single family homes and small businesses. This power supply does not need fuel and can kick on and off depending on whether the utility company is supplying power or not, without changing out the main service to the residence. The length of time it is good for, depends on how much you want to spend and how much space you have. I am shooting for a minimum of two months, with the smallest system. There is a back up addition possible to the installation as well, for more long term outages. I need an electrical engineer and two or three technicians who are in the Albuquerque area, or could relocate there to get this system on the market with a target date of October 30, 1998. I have one design for a mobile unit and one for fixed installation. I am planning on funding a part of this but need investors also. My corporation has 9000 shares of unassigned stock (not a publically held company). If there is anyone out there who is interested in teaming up to provide this solution to homeowners for power supply, please contact me by e-mail at Renipowr@aol.com., for additional information. For a modest fee, the system specs will also be available to other persons who would like to build their own, or start building them for resale in their own geographical areas. Will also trade this information or complete system install for well drilling, earth moving, concrete work and/or general residential construction.

-- Reni Ashton (Renipowr@aol.com), September 07, 1998

Answers

***Snake oil alert***

[cut] ..... programmers in the 60's and 70's and part of the early 80's). I currently have a design and configuration on my drawing pad for what is called an uninterrupted power supply unit for single phase, low voltage power that could be produced and installed for single family homes and small businesses. This power supply does not need fuel...

Note that last sentence. It's a perpetual-motion machine! And he wants "a modest contribution" ...

OK, I'll try to be fair. An uninterruptible power supply as normally referred to in the computer industry is a device that stores power in a battery when the power is on, and turns the battery power back into mains look-alike power when it's off. It would therefore be useful for dealing with short black-outs; usually to keep a computer running for the five or ten minutes it takes to do a controlled shutdown if the power doesn't come back in seconds. However, if the power is off for days or months, you'd need a humungous heap of batteries!

A relative of an UPS is an inverter, as used in mobile homes and boats. These in general are cheaper, and also generally need a manual switch-over between mains power and inverter power, rather than automatic. They are useful if you have a generator; it's more efficient to charge up a battery using a fast charger off the generator, then run it down slowly through the inverter, than to run a generator continuously generating 10% or less of its rated output. They also feature large in any solar-electricity setup.

An electronics wiz could doubtless build his own invertor, and there might be a business opportunity for 1999 in doing so (at present you can buy them on the market, but if a Y2K panic starts existing suppliers will dry up fast). However, and it's a biggie, you need a power source to charge batteries, which in general means a generator and fuel reserve. One car battery will run maybe 500 Watts for an hour; that's one normal light-bulb for a couple of nights at best.

-- Nigel Arnot (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), September 08, 1998.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ