On Mon, 17 May 2021 18:04:28 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

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. :-)

When I was in, we did not have any modern semiconductor stuff. Tacan was
all tubes, except maybe for silicon rectifier.

Spoofer alert!