On Sun, 16 May 2021 18:24:15 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

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.co...etter-ac-or-dc

https://www.powermag.com/benefits-of...ssion-systems/

https://energycentral.com/c/ec/ac-vs...lectrical-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.


Seems as if over the years, people have powered there places with inductive
power from power lines. Run insulated fences under the lines crossing
their land. As I said in another post, they had 200 amps power induced in
the ground lines by the break in a 500kv line here.

Spoofer alert!

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 5:31:41 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 12:29:59 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 1:34:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 10:10:08 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 12:10:47 PM UTC-4, wrote:

My spa controller is 4xxx CMOS but my pool controller is all relays
and switches with a cam timer on a 24 hour gear motor shaft.
Power surges will not hurt that although the 4xxx CMOS has lived
through 35 years of lightning strikes and power hits.

I may have posted this before, but this is a really good product and worth every cent.

https://www.amazon.com/Delta-LA302-R-120-240V-Lightning-Arrestor/dp/B006H3U4HS/ref=asc_df_B006H3U4HS/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309804813335&hvpos=&hvnetw= g&hvrand=12948758990071981512&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqm t=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010378&hv targid=pla-568919638940&psc=1

I have three on my house... one in one of the two, 200amp breaker boxes, one on the
well pump pressure switch, and one in the breaker box for my shop. I've never lost
anything to surges, at least that I know of. They do make several different products for
different applications.
I have several of those MOV protectors in the system along with some
point of use protectors.
It is important that you have all wires coming into your house
protected (cable, phone and power). All should be tied to the same
common grounding electrode system with the shortest wire possible.
You also need to be sure your grounding electrode system is good. A
ground rod or two isn't going to cut it.
I have a number of electrodes but the pool and concrete deck is
probably the best one. Everything is bonded.

Yep, it's not the potential (voltage) that kills things, it's the difference in potential. Years ago I went to
the fire lookout tower on top of Mt. Hough, Plumas County, California. The amount of grounding
was unbelievable. The four corners of the building had heavy ground wires that ran out across
the mountain top and had rods driven down through the solid rock. The idea is to keep everything at the
same difference in potential. The whole top of the mountain rose, then drained off. If the circuit runs off 5 volts,
but a strike causes the 5 volt buss to rise to 1005 volts while the ground buss rises to 1000 volts, then the
chips and circuits still see just a 5 volt difference. Nothing pops, everything is bonded together.
They said it gets struck several times a year, and they rarely lose anything. Probably gets
exciting for the lookout person, though.
That is pretty much how they did all of those radio towers along I-75.
There was a ground ring around the whole complex with 40' rods. the
concrete was all bonded as a Ufer and they ran 2ga bare radials out to
the ring.

Those had another purpose. They formed a ground plane for the antenna to work against. It's common
for any commercial antenna tower to have radials extending out from the base. Think about those CB
antennas from the 70's. One radiator going up vertically, with four sticking out horizontally
at 90 degree angles. Those formed the ground plane, and allowed the vertical radiator to perform as
it should. The towers also benefit from the same technology. "Ground" (dirt) isn't always conductive enough.


The toll complex at MM99 was done almost the same except the poured
concrete duct banks going out to the booths was also part of the
ground electrode system along with the building footers. The duct
banks were 6 feet down to the top of the concrete. It the wet season
they will be underwater.
I have taken at least 2 direct hits to the lightning rod on top of my
weather station. The first time it took out a serial port. The second
time, after I added more mitigation, all I had to do was reboot the
PC. On that second hit, I was in the driveway. It was exciting.

I had a lightning bolt hit a pine tree about 30' away some years ago as I was getting out of my car.
I had just opened the door, and hadn't put my feet on the ground yet. Good thing.
I closed the door and sat there for a few minutes to get my **** together. Then I bolted to the front
door of my friend's house. They were happy to see me alive. It took us all a couple of strong drinks to
calm down.

We used RS422 in our systems to mitigate the effect. RS232 is refenced to ground, 422 isn't (balanced pair).
If you shielded the 422 and grounded things properly, you had better luck surviving. If it was a real concern,
you used fiber to run the serial ports out to the operator positions. Problem solved.

On Mon, 17 May 2021 17:16:22 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 5:31:41 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 12:29:59 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 1:34:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 10:10:08 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 12:10:47 PM UTC-4, wrote:

My spa controller is 4xxx CMOS but my pool controller is all relays
and switches with a cam timer on a 24 hour gear motor shaft.
Power surges will not hurt that although the 4xxx CMOS has lived
through 35 years of lightning strikes and power hits.

I may have posted this before, but this is a really good product and worth every cent.

https://www.amazon.com/Delta-LA302-R-120-240V-Lightning-Arrestor/dp/B006H3U4HS/ref=asc_df_B006H3U4HS/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309804813335&hvpos=&hvnetw= g&hvrand=12948758990071981512&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqm t=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010378&hv targid=pla-568919638940&psc=1

I have three on my house... one in one of the two, 200amp breaker boxes, one on the
well pump pressure switch, and one in the breaker box for my shop. I've never lost
anything to surges, at least that I know of. They do make several different products for
different applications.
I have several of those MOV protectors in the system along with some
point of use protectors.
It is important that you have all wires coming into your house
protected (cable, phone and power). All should be tied to the same
common grounding electrode system with the shortest wire possible.
You also need to be sure your grounding electrode system is good. A
ground rod or two isn't going to cut it.
I have a number of electrodes but the pool and concrete deck is
probably the best one. Everything is bonded.

Yep, it's not the potential (voltage) that kills things, it's the difference in potential. Years ago I went to
the fire lookout tower on top of Mt. Hough, Plumas County, California. The amount of grounding
was unbelievable. The four corners of the building had heavy ground wires that ran out across
the mountain top and had rods driven down through the solid rock. The idea is to keep everything at the
same difference in potential. The whole top of the mountain rose, then drained off. If the circuit runs off 5 volts,
but a strike causes the 5 volt buss to rise to 1005 volts while the ground buss rises to 1000 volts, then the
chips and circuits still see just a 5 volt difference. Nothing pops, everything is bonded together.
They said it gets struck several times a year, and they rarely lose anything. Probably gets
exciting for the lookout person, though.
That is pretty much how they did all of those radio towers along I-75.
There was a ground ring around the whole complex with 40' rods. the
concrete was all bonded as a Ufer and they ran 2ga bare radials out to
the ring.

Those had another purpose. They formed a ground plane for the antenna to work against. It's common
for any commercial antenna tower to have radials extending out from the base. Think about those CB
antennas from the 70's. One radiator going up vertically, with four sticking out horizontally
at 90 degree angles. Those formed the ground plane, and allowed the vertical radiator to perform as
it should. The towers also benefit from the same technology. "Ground" (dirt) isn't always conductive enough.


The toll complex at MM99 was done almost the same except the poured
concrete duct banks going out to the booths was also part of the
ground electrode system along with the building footers. The duct
banks were 6 feet down to the top of the concrete. It the wet season
they will be underwater.
I have taken at least 2 direct hits to the lightning rod on top of my
weather station. The first time it took out a serial port. The second
time, after I added more mitigation, all I had to do was reboot the
PC. On that second hit, I was in the driveway. It was exciting.

I had a lightning bolt hit a pine tree about 30' away some years ago as I was getting out of my car.
I had just opened the door, and hadn't put my feet on the ground yet. Good thing.
I closed the door and sat there for a few minutes to get my **** together. Then I bolted to the front
door of my friend's house. They were happy to see me alive. It took us all a couple of strong drinks to
calm down.

We used RS422 in our systems to mitigate the effect. RS232 is refenced to ground, 422 isn't (balanced pair).
If you shielded the 422 and grounded things properly, you had better luck surviving. If it was a real concern,
you used fiber to run the serial ports out to the operator positions. Problem solved.

You can mitigate most of that common mode stuff with a ferrite or two
wrapped around the cable.
Our greatest success came from bonding the machines together. The pool
bars at the Holiday Inns were blowing up all the time and I had them
run an 8ga between the server and the pool bar register pulled tight,
then I put ferrites on the Ethernet cables and coiled up about 15 feet
on each end.
The problem went away and I had HI HQ calling me asking how we did it.

On Tue, 18 May 2021 00:16:43 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 17 May 2021 17:16:22 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 5:31:41 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 12:29:59 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 1:34:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 10:10:08 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 12:10:47 PM UTC-4, wrote:

My spa controller is 4xxx CMOS but my pool controller is all relays
and switches with a cam timer on a 24 hour gear motor shaft.
Power surges will not hurt that although the 4xxx CMOS has lived
through 35 years of lightning strikes and power hits.

I may have posted this before, but this is a really good product and worth every cent.

https://www.amazon.com/Delta-LA302-R-120-240V-Lightning-Arrestor/dp/B006H3U4HS/ref=asc_df_B006H3U4HS/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309804813335&hvpos=&hvnetw= g&hvrand=12948758990071981512&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqm t=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010378&hv targid=pla-568919638940&psc=1

I have three on my house... one in one of the two, 200amp breaker boxes, one on the
well pump pressure switch, and one in the breaker box for my shop. I've never lost
anything to surges, at least that I know of. They do make several different products for
different applications.
I have several of those MOV protectors in the system along with some
point of use protectors.
It is important that you have all wires coming into your house
protected (cable, phone and power). All should be tied to the same
common grounding electrode system with the shortest wire possible.
You also need to be sure your grounding electrode system is good. A
ground rod or two isn't going to cut it.
I have a number of electrodes but the pool and concrete deck is
probably the best one. Everything is bonded.

Yep, it's not the potential (voltage) that kills things, it's the difference in potential. Years ago I went to
the fire lookout tower on top of Mt. Hough, Plumas County, California. The amount of grounding
was unbelievable. The four corners of the building had heavy ground wires that ran out across
the mountain top and had rods driven down through the solid rock. The idea is to keep everything at the
same difference in potential. The whole top of the mountain rose, then drained off. If the circuit runs off 5 volts,
but a strike causes the 5 volt buss to rise to 1005 volts while the ground buss rises to 1000 volts, then the
chips and circuits still see just a 5 volt difference. Nothing pops, everything is bonded together.
They said it gets struck several times a year, and they rarely lose anything. Probably gets
exciting for the lookout person, though.
That is pretty much how they did all of those radio towers along I-75.
There was a ground ring around the whole complex with 40' rods. the
concrete was all bonded as a Ufer and they ran 2ga bare radials out to
the ring.

Those had another purpose. They formed a ground plane for the antenna to work against. It's common
for any commercial antenna tower to have radials extending out from the base. Think about those CB
antennas from the 70's. One radiator going up vertically, with four sticking out horizontally
at 90 degree angles. Those formed the ground plane, and allowed the vertical radiator to perform as
it should. The towers also benefit from the same technology. "Ground" (dirt) isn't always conductive enough.


The toll complex at MM99 was done almost the same except the poured
concrete duct banks going out to the booths was also part of the
ground electrode system along with the building footers. The duct
banks were 6 feet down to the top of the concrete. It the wet season
they will be underwater.
I have taken at least 2 direct hits to the lightning rod on top of my
weather station. The first time it took out a serial port. The second
time, after I added more mitigation, all I had to do was reboot the
PC. On that second hit, I was in the driveway. It was exciting.

I had a lightning bolt hit a pine tree about 30' away some years ago as I was getting out of my car.
I had just opened the door, and hadn't put my feet on the ground yet. Good thing.
I closed the door and sat there for a few minutes to get my **** together. Then I bolted to the front
door of my friend's house. They were happy to see me alive. It took us all a couple of strong drinks to
calm down.

We used RS422 in our systems to mitigate the effect. RS232 is refenced to ground, 422 isn't (balanced pair).
If you shielded the 422 and grounded things properly, you had better luck surviving. If it was a real concern,
you used fiber to run the serial ports out to the operator positions. Problem solved.

You can mitigate most of that common mode stuff with a ferrite or two
wrapped around the cable.
Our greatest success came from bonding the machines together. The pool
bars at the Holiday Inns were blowing up all the time and I had them
run an 8ga between the server and the pool bar register pulled tight,
then I put ferrites on the Ethernet cables and coiled up about 15 feet
on each end.
The problem went away and I had HI HQ calling me asking how we did it.

Spoofer alert!

wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 18:04:26 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 18:24:15 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

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.co...etter-ac-or-dc

https://www.powermag.com/benefits-of...ssion-systems/

https://energycentral.com/c/ec/ac-vs...lectrical-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.


Seems as if over the years, people have powered there places with inductive
power from power lines. Run insulated fences under the lines crossing
their land. As I said in another post, they had 200 amps power induced in
the ground lines by the break in a 500kv line here.

I have never been able to duplicate any of that. Fluorescent lamps do
not glow under my 230kv power line, even when I did string a 100'
insulated wire and connected it to the lamp.
I was hoping I could get enough to light up my boat without stringing
a 120v wire down there but I could never get it to work.

I bet that "200 amps" was actually 200 volts that went away as soon as
you attached any significant load.
I can get crazy high readings on a digital meter and a piece of wire
but on an analog meter, not so much.


Nah, the PG&E friend said they were seeing 200 amps in the ground line.
But this is a probably a 500 mile long 500kv line.

200 amps into what kind of load?


The earth. They were heavy lines from the shutdown line to big grounding
rods.

On Wed, 19 May 2021 17:22:07 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 18:04:26 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 18:24:15 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

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.
--
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===

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.co...etter-ac-or-dc

https://www.powermag.com/benefits-of...ssion-systems/

https://energycentral.com/c/ec/ac-vs...lectrical-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.


Seems as if over the years, people have powered there places with inductive
power from power lines. Run insulated fences under the lines crossing
their land. As I said in another post, they had 200 amps power induced in
the ground lines by the break in a 500kv line here.

I have never been able to duplicate any of that. Fluorescent lamps do
not glow under my 230kv power line, even when I did string a 100'
insulated wire and connected it to the lamp.
I was hoping I could get enough to light up my boat without stringing
a 120v wire down there but I could never get it to work.

I bet that "200 amps" was actually 200 volts that went away as soon as
you attached any significant load.
I can get crazy high readings on a digital meter and a piece of wire
but on an analog meter, not so much.


Nah, the PG&E friend said they were seeing 200 amps in the ground line.
But this is a probably a 500 mile long 500kv line.

200 amps into what kind of load?


The earth. They were heavy lines from the shutdown line to big grounding
rods.

You're a dummy roomba.

wrote:
On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 3:30:00 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 1:34:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 10:10:08 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 12:10:47 PM UTC-4, wrote:

My spa controller is 4xxx CMOS but my pool controller is all relays
and switches with a cam timer on a 24 hour gear motor shaft.
Power surges will not hurt that although the 4xxx CMOS has lived
through 35 years of lightning strikes and power hits.

I may have posted this before, but this is a really good product and worth every cent.

https://www.amazon.com/Delta-LA302-R-120-240V-Lightning-Arrestor/dp/B006H3U4HS/ref=asc_df_B006H3U4HS/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309804813335&hvpos=&hvnetw= g&hvrand=12948758990071981512&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqm t=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010378&hv targid=pla-568919638940&psc=1


I have three on my house... one in one of the two, 200amp breaker boxes, one on the
well pump pressure switch, and one in the breaker box for my shop. I've never lost
anything to surges, at least that I know of. They do make several
different products for
different applications.
I have several of those MOV protectors in the system along with some
point of use protectors.
It is important that you have all wires coming into your house
protected (cable, phone and power). All should be tied to the same
common grounding electrode system with the shortest wire possible.
You also need to be sure your grounding electrode system is good. A
ground rod or two isn't going to cut it.
I have a number of electrodes but the pool and concrete deck is
probably the best one. Everything is bonded.
Yep, it's not the potential (voltage) that kills things, it's the
difference in potential. Years ago I went to
the fire lookout tower on top of Mt. Hough, Plumas County, California.
The amount of grounding
was unbelievable. The four corners of the building had heavy ground
wires that ran out across
the mountain top and had rods driven down through the solid rock. The
idea is to keep everything at the
same difference in potential. The whole top of the mountain rose, then
drained off. If the circuit runs off 5 volts,
but a strike causes the 5 volt buss to rise to 1005 volts while the
ground buss rises to 1000 volts, then the
chips and circuits still see just a 5 volt difference. Nothing pops,
everything is bonded together.
They said it gets struck several times a year, and they rarely lose
anything. Probably gets
exciting for the lookout person, though.

===

Very exciting I'd imagine. I was once in a violent thunderstorm on a 50
ft sailboat with an 80 ft aluminum mast. Miraculously we didn't take a
direct hit but the lightning did hit a wave top about 100 ft away. It
was both spectacular and deafening. Some of the crew were still shaken
up an hour later. We lost every bit of electronics on the boat except for
my hand held, battery operated GPS. That was enough to get us to Bermuda.


I read one time that England even had some 1st and 2nd rate ships in the
1800’s that had to be scrapped because of lightning strikes. I imagine it
wold be even worse on the smaller frigates, etc.