Tag Archives: emergency preparedness

Six Sigma & The Law of The Hammer

The Bell Curve showing 3 standard deviations

Bell Curve showing Mean, μ & Standard Deviation, σ.

“The child who receives a hammer for Christmas will discover that everything needs pounding.”

One of my friends asked about “Six Sigma,” famously used by General Electric and Motorola to enhance the quality on their production lines, and famously used by Home Depot and 3M for short term gain and long term failure, (see “Six Sigma, So Yesterday,” on Business Week OnLine, here).

“I understand that Six Sigma means a very high quality system – with only 3.4 errors per million units,” my friend said. “What I don’t understand,” he added, “is the definition in terms of Standard Deviation and Normal Distribution. 99.99966% of the values will fall within 6 Standard Deviations of the Mean, compared to 99.73% of the values falling within 3 Standard Deviations of the Mean. What’s a standard deviation? And what’s a normal distribution?” Continue reading →

Connecticut Power – Failure

Tweet The few inches of heavy wet snow that fell in October took out power in parts of New Jersey and Connecticut. Millions lost power in the storm. Nine days later 50,000 remain without power in Connecticut. Hundreds are without power New Jersey and Massachusetts. Connecticut Outage map here. News coverage here: Business Week / NPR / NY Times.

People in New Jersey have installed over 400 MW of nameplate capacity solar. While this is a fraction of the 7.0 GW, or 7,000 MW, of generating capacity needed by the 8 million or so people who reside in New Jersey, and these systems don’t feed the grid when the power is out, let’s do a thought experiment.

Let’s imagine each of the 50,000 in Connecticut who remains without power had a PV solar array. They’d have power during the day. Lets also imagine that microhydro turbines along the Connecticut River, in other rivers, off the shores, and a set of utility scale wind turbines. The result? Power, day and night, without pollution. Power without the need to mine coal, drill for oil, fracture the ground for methane, or generate tons of radioactive waste.

Lets further postulate 50 MW on each of the public schools, and 1.5 to 5.0 MW on each of the colleges and universities in the state.

In the event of a major outage from a storm like the October Surprise of 2011, or Irene, the schools could be used as emergency shelters with power, during the day when the sun is shining – as it has been since the storm.

And these systems generate power in predictable amounts, with no fuel and no pollution.

An emergency backup power system is only used during an emergency. Solar energy systems are used every day – and so are a more efficient use of capital.

And as the picture above suggests – there’s an interesting feedback pattern when snow falls on a solar array. Solar arrays are pitched to face the sun. Snow is translucent – allows light to pass thru. The snow covered solar array generates power, which generates heat, which melts the snow, exposing the array to more sunlight – which generates more power.

Obama and The People Fight Terrorism

President Barack Obama

In response to the Christmas Day attempted terror attack, President Obama’s actions and former Vice President Cheney’s comments highlight the differences between the two administrations: The Bush Administration was famous for not being “Reality Based” (NY Times). The Obama Administration investigates first, thinks, and ACTS(Reuters), while accepting responsibility for any failures. “Ultimately, the buck stops with me,” Obama said. “As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people.” (CS Monitor)

On 12/29/9, President Obama said it was a systemic failure (Christian Science Monitor). On 1/3/10, he said the attack was planned in Yemen (NY Times). We also know he approved US counter-terror strikes in Yemen, which occurred on 12/24/09 (NPR / NYTimes) and which killed Al Queda Terrorists. Continue reading →

Terrible Problems with 911 Systems

9-1-1 Should Never Give Me A Busy Signal. By Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch.

Last night I got word that my parents had witnessed a tragic accident while driving in Northern California. I won’t get into the details, but suffice to say one person was killed and others were left bleeding, in various states of unconsciousness. Thank God my parents were not hurt in the accident, but they witnessed it first hand, as well as the disturbing aftermath.

Immediately after the accident, my parents and other witnesses began trying to dial 9-1-1. Attempt after attempt resulted in a busy signal. This isn’t unusual in the event of an emergency, as multiple dialers often tie up the lines to report the same incident. Except it seems that nobody managed to get through for far too long: emergency personal didn’t arrive for 20 minutes. The first officer to arrive at the scene said it took him two minutes to get there from the time he got the call. Which means that it took approximately 18 minutes for the news to reach him in the first place. Continue reading →

How to Strengthen the Grid, Minimize the Impact of Power Failures and Save Money

Stress related power failures, like the one that knocked out power in the northeastern United States and southeastern and central Canada in August 2003, are more likely to occur in the summer because of the additional air conditioning load. Storm related power failures in this part of the world are perhaps more likely in the winter because of cold weather and ice storms. In the south-east Atlantic states and the Gulf States – from North Carolina to Texas, weather related power failures are likely to follow hurricanes, and thus are more likely during late summer and autumn. Power failures caused by human action, whether accidental or willfull, i.e. terrorist, can occur any time. The only predictor is Murphy’s famous observation, “whatever can go wrong will, usually at the worst possible moment.”

There are some simple steps we can take to strengthen the grid, to minimize the probability and impact of weather related, accidental, and human triggered power failures, and to save the taxpayers and ratepayers money. Continue reading →

Emergency Preparedness, Israel, & Gaza

At Popular Logistics, while we believe in preparing for emergencies; we prefer to avoid emergencies, especially war.

Kassam in Sderot, Israel

As we see it, Peace is up to the Palestinians. The proof is Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas’ subsequent kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and launch of approximately 4,000 to 7,000 rockets like the one pictured above into Israel. We feel that the factories in Gaza would better serve the people of Gaza by building solar panels or wind turbines rather than guns, bullets, and Kassam rockets.

We would like to see Israel withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank and an end of Palestinian terrorism; a bilateral cease fire between Israel and the Palestinians. We see de facto states in the West Bank and Gaza; we would like to see de jure states that recognize the rights of all; male, female, gay, straight, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Moslem, and athiest. And that Palestinian state or those Palestinian states, along with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria must recognize Israel.