On Mon, 17 May 2021 10:04:43 -0400 (EDT), justan wrote:

"Mr. Luddite" Wrote in message:r
On 5/16/2021 2:28 PM, Bill wrote: wrote: On Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 9:09:11 PM UTC-4, wrote: On Sat, 15 May 2021 12:35:41 -0400, "Mr. Luddite" wrote: On 5/15/2021 10:08 AM, wrote: On
Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 7:07:22 AM UTC-4, Mr. Luddite wrote: On 5/14/2021 8:34 PM, wrote: On Friday, May 14, 2021 at 8:13:14 PM UTC-4, wrote: On Fri, 14 May 2021 11:35:07 -0700 (PDT), " wrote: On Friday, May 14, 2021
at 2:21:17 PM UTC-4, wrote: On Fri, 14 May 2021 07:08:29 -0400, "Mr. Luddite" wrote: On 5/13/2021 11:50 PM, wrote: On Wed, 12 May 2021 10:51:07 -0400, Keyser Söze wrote:
Three of the four gas stations in our area had product to sell and no lines. The big volume dealer -WaWa- was sold out and awaiting a tank truck delivery later today. We had spot shortages here and we don't even get our gas from that pipe. Nobody in the peninsula does.
It was just panic buying AKA a media driven emergency. Now that everyone has every gas can and tupperware bowl full of gas, supplies are recovering. I still got gas yesterday at my regular station no line no problem regular price. Cracks me up though.
Responding to the alternative methods to deliver fuel, Biden's Energy Secretary stated that the pipelines are the better way to transport it even though her boss axed the Keystone pipeline. Then she thumbed her typical liberal nose at the public by saying that if
people used electric vehicles, they wouldn't be experiencing these fuel shortages. She also happens to own stock in an electric bus manufacturer that Biden visited to promote. The value of her stock holdings are potentially worth $ millions and she has not divested her holdings even
though there's a conflict of interest issue. But what really cracks me up is none of these electric vehicle advocates ever mention where the energy comes from to charge up their electric vehicle batteries. The vast bulk of it is generated by fossil fuel plants. Plus,
whenever energy is transformed from one state to another there are losses involved. Laws of physics prevail. There are also the I2R losses in the transmission lines. A while ago one of my inspector trade rags had a story "How hot are those conductors?" talking about how
hot some transmission lines run and how that affects line sag but the fact remains that is waste heat going into the air. It is hard to get the utilities to say how much power is wasted in transmission and the crazy bookkeeping they use on the grid makes those numbers hard to
actually believe when you see them but it is a pretty big number if your power is coming from very far away. I2R still wins in the end. I'm sure you know that's the reason the transmission lines are run at such a high voltage. It minimizes he losses, but there are still some.
The company I used to work for put in some equipment for a regional power company some years ago. They told me about an incident where, in the middle of the summer in a coastal SC area, a transmission line that was hot and sagging separated at a badly crimped barrel "butt"
splice. No
one was there to see it, but when it separated it produced a fireball that, when it hit the ground, blew a big enough hole to drive a truck down into and hide it. They said there were clumps of fused sand laying around. That would have been cool to see, just not too close
up. Watts is watts (is 3.4BTU) , if you have 300 miles of transmission line that is running at 40-50c above ambient air, you are wasting a lot of watts. When you consider transmission lines typically carry two or 3 triplexes that starts looking more like 1800-2700 miles of wire to go 300
miles. You don't usually see a lot of snow around transformer farms either. They do twist the triplexes to minimize parasitic losses but they are still there or you wouldn't be hearing all the concerns about power line radiation. I have tried several times to find out what the difference is
between power generated and power actually billed to a customer but those numbers are hard to come by, even by people I know, close to the business. As I said, the screwy grid bookkeeping makes it hard to get a real answer. Understood, but as you point out the loss equation is
I2R. If you make the I (current) smaller, the loss is smaller. That's what raising the voltage does (P=E x I). Double the voltage, then halve the current for the same power (watts). That reduces the IR loss. Math and physics are cool. My electrical knowledge is fuzzy at best
now but I also don't think there is a huge loss due to inductive or electromagnetic radiation. The freq is too low at 60 Hz. At high frequencies (RF range) electromagnetic radiation is an issue which is why transmission lines are shielded and are designed to have a uniform characteristic
impedance. Inductive and capacitive reactance are involved that define the transmission line's impedence. DC has no issues with this. There's no "impedence" (which is a reactive component and only applies to AC) to deal with. There's only pure resistance. -- This email has been checked
for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com === If you read through the sources that I cited there is a great deal of information on why conversion to DC makes sense on long high voltage lines. One of the loss factors mentioned was inductive reactance (2pifl). On long transmission lines there is
enough inductance to cause power loss even at 60Hz. https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/19758/transmitting-power-over-long-distances-what-is-better-ac-or-dc https://www.powermag.com/benefits-of-high-voltage-direct-current-transmission-systems/
https://energycentral.com/c/ec/ac-vs-dc-powerlines-and-electrical-grid I don't question what they are saying. I never dealt with high voltage transmission lines other than for high powered transmitters that were operating in the RF range. I recall in school however that for all intents and purposes
AC at 60 Hz was like DC other than the fact that in transformers and coils it has inductive qualities if in very close proximity or, in the case of a transformer, wound and "cutting" into an iron core. We used to deal with it all the time as "hum" induced into low voltage signal lines, for sure though.
As for reactance ... 60 Hz was just too low of a freq to be concerned about. My instructor would scold us if we used the term "impedance" in a DC circuit instead of pure resistance. At much higher voltages and much longer transmission lines it apparently has reactive qualities though according to your
cites. As I pointed out they actually twist the triplex to mitigate those losses a little or at least balance the loss but at 60 hz one twist per mile or so seems to be all they need. You will see it if you drive along next to a transmission line and look tho. The losses must be a lot worse on the single phase wye
distribution in front of most people's houses tho. === I believe the losses due to EMF radiation and inductive reactance are really only a factor on very long distribution lines. The articles that I cited also mentioned another interesting advantage to direct current distribution: Phase matching between networks.
The DC to AC conversion process makes that easy. The problem I see is the reliability of the conversion equipment. Transformers are super durable, especially in power generation and oil cooled. DC to AC conversion has losses, but also, how do you keep the equipment from melting. You would be hard pressed to have
semiconductors work, except in controls. Probably need vacuum tubes for power handlin I was thinking about the hacking of critical infrastructure systems last night.One solution might be to go back to analog control systems with controlrelay logic instead of solid state controls running on computer software that is tied to the
Internet for "wireless" system controls.Back when the US military was working on "hardening" systems in ships and aircraft against EMF from a nuclear blast the Soviets had a muchsimpler solution. Their systems ran mostly on vacuum tube technologyand were pretty much immune to electromagnetic radiation.It's why today there are few
(if any) vacuum tubes manufactured inthe USA. Most all come from Russia.

When I was in, my ship was fully compliant with vaccum tube
technology. :-)

The Mk13 "computer" on my first ship was wound up with a key. It only
computed fuse time. the RADARs had tubes. The actual fire control
"problem" was solved with analog logic using hydraulics, gears and
cams. Not a lot there that EMP would affect.
OTOH it was all WW1-WWII technology that predated the nuclear age
anyway.