Adjprog Key Generator

[Carlito Roby]

HOEPHourly Ontario Energy Price) is only one component of the total commodity cost for electricity in Ontario. Global adjustment (GA) is another component which covers the cost of building new electricity infrastructure, maintaining and refurbishing existing generation resources and covers the cost of delivering conservation programs in order to ensure adequate electricity supply over the long term in the province of Ontario.

The following graph shows the breakdown of the total commodity costs on a typical electricity bill. There is an inverse proportionality between HOEP and GA (i.e., generally when HOEP is lower, GA will be elevated and vice-versa).

Your LDC will be able to tell which variation of the GA they bill on. If the rate on the IESO website is different than the rate on your bill, your LDC can provide more information (for example, your billing period spans more than one calendar month).

The global adjustment (GA) amounts increase or decrease in response to changes in HOEP. When HOEP is lower, the GA is higher to cover the additional payments such as for energy contracts, and regulated generation. GA also changes in response to system conditions, and with the addition of, or changes to generator contracts and programs.

Like many of you, I have a bench full of electronic instruments. The newest is my Rigol oscilloscope, only a few years old, while the oldest is probably my RF signal generator that dates from some time in the early 1950s. Some of those instruments have been with me for decades, and have been crucial in the gestation of countless projects.

I can make a few educated guesses based upon what I know about the instruments in question. I am working against the inevitable degradation of components over time changing the parameters of the circuitry inside the instrument, and my estimate is based upon the quality of those parts and the type of circuit involved.

I once worked in a factory where the product technical drawings had measurements in millimeters, but the chop saw used to cut those lengths had just a wooden stick for a ruler with a couple lines marked on it with a ballpoint pen, and everybody just remembered which line corresponded to which product.

Say you can calibrate a reference voltage in your nice desktop model dmm. That wil just work for a single range, most ranges will depend on voltage dividers which can also easily drift off value with age. The different types of measurement available might use different ways of using the voltage reference to end up with the desired measurement. The device would end up with loads of adjustment points. These could influence each other.

Components do drift over time, though. Ceramic caps can lose a few percent of capacitance for every decade of hours since they were fired, resistors can drift a few percent over their first thousand hours of runtime. Even pretty good thin film resistors are often rated for 1% drift over their first year of runtime.

My physical measurement gear, on the other hand, yes, when I need to. It sometimes is needed for actual work. I have maybe 20 external micrometers in my current system, of various sizes and flavours, a large vernier caliper, a 2m inside mice set, and a few other things. All NIST tracable, and for most of it, I keep the standards on hand (a couple I send out every year, the rest I replace after some number of uses). For all of this, I also can monitor temp to 20mK, which, these days, is not a reach. This also means my electronics gear can be kept at a stable temp (+/-1K generally) so less worry about stability and calibration, there.

Chasing digits can be fun, but 3.5 digits is usually fine for a hobbyist. A bad test setup will swamp any absolute accuracy issues anyway. That said, as a steward of a large test equipment collection, I do like to have at least one semi-trusted meter to detect trends in failing equipment in rotation on the bench.

I rarely need to chase absolute digits, even professionally, withe anything but frequency, so other than the counters, 3.5 to 5.5 digits is generally the order of magnitude better than I need to be confident enough in the data. My first Fluke 8000A is still in spec (when I last checked, at least, a couple years ago), and my HP 3469B- a daily driver as I like the display- is, as well.

The H{ 34401A comes out when I need stability or digits for relative measurements, but I am only guessing it is in spec since the last cal check it has was when I bought it second hand for repair in the previous millennia.

And some equipment comes with its own calibration capabilities. I just spend a number of hours wrestling with the calibration process for a couple of Hewlett-Packard RF power meters, which have reference outputs that can be used to calibrate the sensors. RF network analyzers come with calibration loads. Anything that cares about precise time and frequency these days will have references inputs that can be fed from your own GPS-disciplined clock.

I have some old tube gear (radio, signal generator, vtvm) that I need to check the components on, but I figure my LCR meter will get me close enough. Maybe get some precision reference components to check against to make sure things are in the right ballpark, otherwise no one is in harms way for any of my projects.

Around 1967, I recovered a very busted Simpson 260 from a trash can at the division of RCA where I worked. The date code inside the meter movement was 1951 (RCA had been building transmitters for a while). Some epoxy and new banana plugs got it working, and some years later when I got a 3 1/2 digit digital meter, I checked the 260. It was dead nuts accurate.

I just bought a new DMM, a Velleman DVM030 from Jameco, for $66. The first thing I did was check it against my 39-year-old Metex 3650 DMM I also bought from Jameco, a little bit cheaper IIRC (although the dollar was bigger back then), which has never been recalibrated. They agreed within about 0.1%.

Data centers have traditionally been seen as a consumer of energy, not a source of sustainable energy production. STACK is changing this perception in Toronto by embracing alternative fuel sources and working with provincial energy regulators in Canada. Innovation is paving the way for a sustainable demand response to regional energy needs.

Sustainable sources of electric power in the province continues to be a national priority in Canada, with ongoing incentives and government programs aimed at rewarding the responsible generation, transmission, and consumption of electric power throughout each province.

The Industrial Conservation Initiative (ICI) is an example of one of these government programs. This demand-response program is designed to push power back into the Ontario system when it is at its highest demand. Data centers in Toronto have a distinct opportunity to participate in the ICI by utilizing their already existing, and underutilized, backup generators. For most critical capacity data centers, backup generators are consistently maintained and tested but otherwise lay dormant. By adding in a layer of innovation and sustainability, a host of these backup generators are manufactured, or retrofitted, to accept Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) fossil-free diesel as a primary or secondary fuel source.

Our TOR01 data center will be tied into a municipal power grid that serves all of Toronto and the surrounding area. As sophisticated and well-planned as this grid is, the regional demand for power often creates spikes in usage, much like any municipality. This demand has led to creative solutions to address on-peak power development in Toronto, including socializing the Global Adjustment program to regulate energy rates.

This charge is levied to pay for the cost of providing adequate power supply and a wide variety of government-sponsored programs aimed at ensuring electric power is sustainably generated and consumed. Some of these programs include:

In sum, the Global Adjustment charge makes up for the gap between the wholesale market price of electricity and regulated rates, payments for building or refurbishing infrastructure, contracted rates, and cost of delivering conservation programs. Generally speaking, when the market price is lower, the more the consumers have to pay to cover the cost for power generation.

Critical capacity and other commercial electric power consumers are starting to partner with the major commercial power generator manufacturers to test and enhance these diesel-powered machines to be more sustainable. More than ever before, there is a heightened focus to build higher-efficiency, more carbon-neutral generators that can be used to meet the needs of continuous reliable power, demand response, and, in the case of the Ontario power market, Global Adjustment Reduction programs.

With the advent of HVO as a fuel source, fossil-free optionality now exists for the traditional diesel-fueled generator technology. One example is the Caterpillar C175 (included in the basis of design at the TOR01 facility), which allows the use of HVO as a fuel source with the addition of specialized hardware.

How STACK is operating in Ontario has implications for our clients, the everyday Canadian, and the data center industry as a whole. Our adoption of HVO-fueled power technology can be seen as a positive use-case for the industry and forward-thinking use of electricity in markets throughout the world.

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