Re: deregulation

[Lester.Slaback@nist.gov]

As mentioned earlier, and as we are already seeing, when price becomes the
controlling parameter you lose .....
 1. reserves (i.e., excess capacity) which means regular
outages/brownouts.
 2. quality (more noise, etc)
 3. fast recovery from emergency conditions (storms, etc).

These are not just nuciances.  They have real impact on business and
business costs.  The NIST reactor cannot complete a 6 week operating cycle
without at least one trip due to power quality.  This usually results in a
24-36 hour disruption in our scheduled cycle which mess's up travel
schedules for all sorts of international visiting researchers who have
specific usage dates.

Has anybody ever seen an estimate of how much power is wasted by the UPS
everyone uses to guard against quality problems?

This is one area where IMHO using cost as the controlling criterion will
really cost us in the future.

-- 
the above are the personal musing of the author,
and do not represent any past, current, or future
position of NIST, the U.S. Government, or anyone else
who might think that they are in a position of authority.
NBSR Health Physics
NIST
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
301 975-5810
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Lester.Slaback@nist.gov
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