Surge Capacity
Building slack into the system.
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It’s suddenly cold here. There was snow on the mountains this morning. The heat has fully kicked in and the dog rarely leaves his bed by the radiator. The sun rose at 7:47 am and has just set at 4:07 pm, leaving an unusually clear, silvery sky. We’ll have the lights on all evening and early tomorrow morning.
More heat, more light, more demand on the power grid. I often think about where my household’s energy comes from and how we can minimise our impact — we use 100% renewable electricity and carbon neutral gas, turn off the lights the kids are constantly leaving on, keep the house at jumper (sweater) temperature, limit hot baths to fewer than I would like, etc etc — but I rarely think about the grid itself.
That’s probably why I’d never heard of ‘surge capacity’ until I read about it in an article written by physicist Zahaan Bharmal this past weekend. When engineers design power grids, they figure out how much energy they expect the system to produce and distribute. Then they add 20%. In other words, they build slack into the system. That way, if energy use spikes, as it does when everyone turns on air conditioners during a heat wave (so I’m told — it’s been nearly a decade since I’ve lived someplace where people chill air) or when everyone suddenly cranks the heat during an early cold snap for which they are unprepared, like today, the system can handle it.
When you run a system at less than its capacity, then the system can deal with an increase in the demands made on it.
There are so many applications for this. Not just power grids. Bodies. Institutions. Schedules. Budgets. Relationships. Run them at 80% capacity. Allow for rest, space, time, funds. If you are not going full throttle all the time, then, when you need to, you can.
Bharmal ran at 100% for years, expecting a result that never came. In the meantime, he burned out. I know many of you can relate to this. I certainly can. We think the way to deal with increased demands is to ‘optimise.’ We think the way to manage always running at full speed is to make sure we stop sometimes. But what if, instead of all-or-nothing, we tried to keep it to 80% and always leave some capacity for a surge?
If there is no capacity, the surge does you in. Blackouts ensue. But if there is capacity, you accommodate, make the extra effort, put in the extra hours, find the extra funds. And then — and this is tricky part for those of us indoctrinated into burnout culture — you go back to running at four-fifths capacity, doing less regularly so that, when you need to, you can do more.
Postcard from the Tate Modern
