دانلود کتاب انگیزه‌ای برای بقا -اصل انرژی آزاد و معنای زندگی

This book could not have been written without support from the inhabitant of a large basement that lies just beneath where the M4 motorway passes through Wokingham. Here lives the National Grid’s Electricity Control Centre (ECC), the “brain” behind the UK’s power network. By monitoring millions of sensors across the country, this partially automated system works to continuously maintain a level of 400 kilovolts (kv) throughout the grid’s five thousand miles of powerlines. The maintenance of an uninterrupted flow of electricity to the computer at which I’m writing, alongside every other electrical system in the country, depends upon the ECC’s success at mantaining that set point within a tolerance of just five percent. If supply outstrips demand, the ECC releases pressure by lowering electricity prices. If demand increases, the control center rapidly spins up its reserves to compensate—for instance, by instructing Dinorwig power station to release the nine billion gallons of water stored near the summit of Elidir Fawr, converting this gravitational potential energy into enough electrical power to ensure that millions of households across the UK can simultaneously make their morning cup of coffee without plunging the nation into a blackout. In recent years, this regulatory task has become more challenging, thanks to the replacement of traditional voltage support reserves, such as coal and gas, with the environmentally friendlier but inconstant alternatives of solar and wind. In order to budget with such unreliable forces, the grid has had to get “smarter” via the deployment of AI systems to forecast demand increases or weather-induced outages. These enable the ECC to automatically take predictive actions to maintain the delicate balance of the grid. There is no in-principle reason why the national grid’s control center could not become a fully automated, anticipatory system.