BoatBanter.com - Gasoline Availability Good Locally

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 SÃ¶ze
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.

===
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.