Physicists have to save on power consumers

At the end of 2023, the break for system maintenance should start even earlier. Joachim Mnich, director of research at the German Press Agency, said that this can be overcome. But: “If electricity prices remain high in the long run, that may mean we need to cut back on the physics program or spread it over time.”

Overall, uptime will be reduced by 20 percent this year and after French electricity supplier EDF requests cost-cutting measures. This should be a big relief for the grid, as the system consumes a huge amount of power. In a full working year, it consumes as much electricity as households in a city of 300,000 inhabitants.

In the accelerator LHC, about two billion collisions between protons are generated per second during its runtime. Physicists gain insight into the building blocks of matter from decay processes.

“Measured over the entire four-year current LHC operating period, 20 percent fewer crashes can be endured this year and next year,” Mnich said. Even if the loss cannot be fully compensated later. The LHC and data recording devices are within current performance limits.

Mnich said that with the discount, the organization wants to make a contribution so that there is no threat of power outages for households and industry. A sudden power outage will also be difficult for the plant. Critical systems have backups that provide electricity for a few hours. “But no one can guarantee that something won’t break in the high-tech infrastructure on the accelerator,” Mnich said.

“Like everyone else, we’re trying to save energy everywhere,” Mnich said. So the heaters were turned on later. In addition, waste heat from the consumed energy should be used better. Mnich said that in the French border area, a new housing estate will soon be heated with it. From the end of 2023, CERN buildings will also be supplied with waste heat from a new data center.

(SDA)