Help, please, with KNOWLEDGE!!

[Cat's Cradle]

Greetings all! I wish to query our more scientifically-learned members. I am writing a little tale, and in this tale I wish to have the members of a university's comptrollers office notice an extravagantly, shockingly high electrical usage in the physics building on campus..this high usage would manifest over a four-month period from mid spring to summer (and the comptrollers would need to be irate because the energy bill for this one building is destroying their energy budget for the entire campus; the physics building would be mostly empty after the spring semester ends in May, and would be not be air-conditioned during the summer). The physics building is smallish (as is the university); there might be only 2 labs, a few classrooms, 3-4 offices for teachers, modest storage, and a utility area in the basement (oil is burned for heat; there's no electrical usage for heating).

The increased energy consumption comes from illicit scientific experiments being done in the physics building; I can't say at the moment what the actual experiments are, just that they use a lot of energy. Because of this, I would be happy with just a ballpark estimate of a shockingly high energy usage, under the described circumstances--example, 'OMG, they've used three megawatts in the last four months!' (or one megawatt..or 10 kilowatts, whatever might be appropriate). And are megawatt or kilowatt even the correct terms for this type of measurement of electrical usage? Thanks so much in advance for any answers I may receive! CC

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Just to give you some kind of ballpark figure, here are some statistics from Vanderbilt University, a pretty big organization in Nashville, Tennessee. (Total full-time students about 12,000.)

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/sustainvu/thinkone/energy-faqs/#How much electricity does Vanderbilt consume?

How much electricity does Vanderbilt consume?

In 2012, Vanderbilt consumed over 392,000 megawatt-hours of electricity. That is the same amount of electricity consumed by almost 25,000 homes in the Nashville area last year.

Vanderbilt University spends approximately $37 million per year on energy consumption.

Let's see; scaling down to a "small" university, maybe somewhere around 50,000 megawatt-hours per year? Maybe the physics department uses 10,000 megawatt-hours per year? Or maybe only a few thousand? (Depends how small it is, but maybe your story doesn't need to go into such detail.)

So, maybe the line is something like "They've used nearly five thousand megawatt-hours of electricity this quarter!"

I translate that about half a million dollars (assuming the amount Vanderbilt pays is typical; if my math is correct, they seem to be paying about one hundred bucks per megawatt-hour.)

So, another line might be something like "At this rate, they'll increase our electricity bill by a million dollars this year!"

I assume also that the extreme use of electrical power will have other effects -- brown-outs or maybe even black-outs, damaged equipment, etc.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Thanks so much, Victoria! This is perfect! CC

 

[farntfar]

A point worth noting here Cat's.
As Victoria has specified, electricity is sold by the kilowatt hour (or megawatt hour), not simply by the kilowatt.
(It's the power used multiplied by the length of time it's used over.)
It'll be the same on your home electricity bill. One unit is the energy used running a 1 kilowatt fire for an hour.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Thank you, farntfar!

 

[Brian G Turner]

Look up the history of Google, and what happened when they first started experimenting at Stanford - that's as close as I can think of to a real-life example.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

The distribution panel limits the Kilowatts (amps actually) to an area.
Power is Watts = Amps x Volts
Energy used is Joules which is Watts x seconds. So a KiloWatt hour is 3,600,000 Joules. 3.6M J

Kilo = x1000
Mega = x 1000

Any lab will have a limited current supply, unless it's for High Energy Physics.

Note that something needing 1000 Amps for 10 seconds at 220V is 220 K Watts, but only 2.2M J, less than one bar of an electric fire for an hour.
A UK 3 bar fire on 240V might be 2.4kW, so if on for 24 hours is 57.6 KWH (or 42,998,169,600 Joules approximately 43 G J = 43,000 M J). That's only 10A.

A lab might be limited by the Distribution panel to 20A per circuit and only 5 circuits. If you illegally and dangerously parallel the 220V utility outlets then you can get 100A. It's only a peak power of 24kW. Of course if you run that 24x7 that is a massive bill in a month.

In the USA the ordinary outlets are only 110V (perhaps 115V nominal) so you can only get 1/2 the power. This is why stuff that can plug into a wall outlet in Europe (220V to 240V depending on country) such as a Tumble Dryer, 3 bar fire, Washing machine, table top cooker (2 x rings and grill) or fast kettle etc needs a utility outlet in USA. Most lab equipment is only 10W to 300W. The maximum US regular socket might be about 16A or a bit less, perhaps 1.5kW. In Europe over 3.5kW is possible on a 16A socket and 3.1kW on a UK 13A socket.

So unless it's a 24x7 power drain, some illicit wiring is needed to have high peak powers for short duration experiments. Then you might blow the master fuses.

Really high power plant uses 440V and three phases. This would allow up to 53kW peak powers, I think. You'd not see that in a regular lab.

It depends on kind of experiments if it's a 24 x7 power drain (huge bill even if only one 110V outlet is used at 1.5kW) or if something needing 50KW peak power, which needs 3 phase 440V plant cables. Note that a month is about 720 hours, or a day 24, so 15 minutes a day is 1/96th of a 24x 7 consumption, so you'd need 144kW power to get the same bill as the measly 1.5kW device on all the time!
Likely finding 25kW supply needs illicit wiring and 144kW would need new cable from a new substation on the main grid!

So to get a noticeable jump in college bill, your mysterious experiment needs to be running 24 x 7. Even at just 1 hour a day for same energy bill, you need massive illegally added infrastructure, which likely means you'd bypass the college meter anyway...

Look up the history of Google, and what happened when they first started experimenting at Stanford

Servers or multiple PCs running Web Crawlers is a 24 x 7 power load (Energy). It will show up faster than a daily "experiment".

I assume also that the extreme use of electrical power will have other effects -- brown-outs or maybe even black-outs, damaged equipment, etc.

No, a trip would go feeding the lab area. UNLESS there was an illegally installed substation hooked direct to grid.
Brown outs are only possible by overconsumption at the Grid level.
Blackouts outside of the lab only possible if the main distribution panel has been bypassed.

A "substation" is basically transformers in a unit about the size of a Garden Shed to convert 10KV to 110kV Grid Voltage to 440V, 220V or 110V.
Grids use high voltage to reduce the current so thinner wire can be used. At 110kV grid you can carry 1000x power as 110V outlet on same wire. The Grid wire is usually larger and aluminium to save weight and cost (building wire is usually copper to save space).

5,000 MW H a quarter is 2,314,814 W H per Hour
i.e. more than 2.3MW if 24 x7,
if only 8 hours a day, then over 6MW!
It would be impossible to consume even 1/50th of that without an extra substation connected to grid!

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Thank you, Brian, thank you Ray! This has all been very helpful! Dang, though...those who dare the creation of a hard-science story/novel must be incredibly brave! I'm finding this minor-minor story point to be a fair bit confounding..I can't imagine the difficulties of creating a work wherein the believability of the science portrayed is paramount to the success of the storytelling. Hah! No hard science for me, then! Thanks again all! CC

ps--I do have my solution now as to how I will explain this excessive electrical usage in my story, so I'm set there, merci!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

creation of a hard-science story/novel must be incredibly brave

There is a reason why it's called Hard SF

A lot of stuff people think is hard SF is just Magic.

 

[Vertigo]

Just a thought but you could dodge the actual figures by just having something like: "Good God! They're 300% over budget on electricity, what the bleep are they up to?"

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Metering individual depts. in a smaller college though seems unlikely. Also increasing total College consumption by even 50% seems unlikely?

Though the first Computer courses I gave the premises were shared by a Pottery! They accounted for more than 90% of the bill. Electric Kilns

But I agree, if in doubt don't put details. So just remarking on increase in Bill without percentage, then they investigate to see is the central heating broken somewhere and electric fires have been left on 24 x7 ... The Electrician uses a Clamp meter on each power cable to see which dept is using it when the meter readings speed up.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Oh, that's a very nice thought, Vertigo! That is a real possibility for the story (vagueness, I suspect, is a friend to the technologically ignorant!). The story isn't meant to be horribly accurate about..well, anything! So a phrase such as you suggested could be just the thing. Thank you, CC

ps--thanks Ray! OMG, your knowledge on these matters is impressive! Also, I kind of like the thought of kilns skewing electric percentages!