On Monday, May 17, 2021 at 12:19:06 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 09:20:32 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:

On 5/16/21 7:55 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 14:29:34 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:

On 5/16/21 12:25 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 09:53:07 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:

On 5/15/21 9:02 PM, wrote:

This is an all electric house. The only utilities coming in are FPL
and the telco.
With 5 pumps running off and on, 2 AC units, a water heater, 2 fridges
and a few PCs going all the time, I can rack up some KWH.


Five pumps? Are you running an aquaculture farm there? We have two heat
pumps, but in the winter the main floor of the house is heated via a gas
furnace with electric backup. Water heaters are gas, stovetop is gas,
fireplaces are gas.

2 pumps for the well. One pool pump, one spa pump for circulation, one
R/O booster pump. There is also a jet pump and heater for the spa but
those are only on when I am using it. That really makes the meter hum.

I can't get gas here or I would have it.
OTOH gas isn't all that cheap here and electricity is. (11c /KWH)
Teco is still recovering the cost of running a pipe from Tampa and
they still haven't expanded into most old neighborhoods. I haven't
really looked into it since I can't get it but at my wife's club the
snowbirds were complaining that gas was a lot cheaper up there. I
remember it being a pretty small bill when I was there.


I looked up Maryland...it's in the 11 cents/KWH range in this state,
too, on average. Our local company gets:

SMECO Energy Rates
May 2021
Residential: $0.057873
Plus a couple of "adjustments" and "tariffs" that add about a penny and
a half.

That is the usage rate but the only real way to look at it is to
divide the total bill by the number of KWH used.



Last time I checked propane, it was about $2.75 a gallon, but
that rate fluctuates widely. Have seen it at $3+ a gallon.

Propane can go from a little over $2 a gallon to over $4 here. I don't
buy enough to care that much tho. I know after Irma and through most
of that winter it was around $4 but I didn't need it enough to pay
that much. In the spring I filled my tank for $2.11 "on sale". It is
still out there.


We have a good number of propane "appliances," and two propane
fireplaces. The propane supplier we use is very customer friendly and
service-oriented, so it is easy to maintain or upgrade or replace
whatever uses their product. When we added the second fireplace a few
years ago, the supplier sent out a crew to dig the 3' deep trench
between the buried tank for about 75' to where it enters the house, plus
the fittings, the hookups and the county inspection. The fittings and
hookup were done by a union plumber. My recollection is that the only
charge was for the wrapped copper pipe and fittings.

I paid about $1500 for the buried tank and the connections for the
pool heater and generator (tank, pipe, regulators, permits and labor).
I own the tank so I have some flexibility in who I get to fill it.

You end up paying for that "free" installation anyway. It's built-in to the price of the
propane and the services and the appliances you buy from your dealer that has you locked in.

We use very little propane these days. Cooktop, water heater, and 2 fireplaces. I get
the tank filled by whoever has the best price, and I usually pit them against each other.
Last fill was $2.39/gal.

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.

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.

wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 18:24:14 -0000 (UTC), Bill
wrote:

Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 5/14/2021 8:12 PM, 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 poweThe
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.


I'll pay attention to my next electricity bill. I know it is
composed of two major charges, one for generation and the other
for delivery.

I think the delivery component is higher than the generation.




I have roof solar. We pay $10 a month for the grid, no,matter what. I get
credit for my power generation at retail rates, and I can run a plus or
minus. With a true up bill in December. Which can be up to maybe a $100,
but seems to be around zero. I still pay for my grid part.

Not really. I doubt your $10 a month pays more than a fraction of the
cost and them giving you the retail rate for the power you feed back
is a gift, paid for by your neighbors.
It is not surprising for California tho.
Welfare for politically correct rich people seems to be the norm.
If you can afford it, you would be dumb not to take it. Same with your
electric car. You get a subsidized rate for your power and you use the
road for free.
Such a deal.


Yup. Mine is a plug-in hybrid, so I do buy gas at times.

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.

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

wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2021 09:53:07 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:

On 5/15/21 9:02 PM, wrote:

This is an all electric house. The only utilities coming in are FPL
and the telco.
With 5 pumps running off and on, 2 AC units, a water heater, 2 fridges
and a few PCs going all the time, I can rack up some KWH.


Five pumps? Are you running an aquaculture farm there? We have two heat
pumps, but in the winter the main floor of the house is heated via a gas
furnace with electric backup. Water heaters are gas, stovetop is gas,
fireplaces are gas.

2 pumps for the well. One pool pump, one spa pump for circulation, one
R/O booster pump. There is also a jet pump and heater for the spa but
those are only on when I am using it. That really makes the meter hum.

I can't get gas here or I would have it.
OTOH gas isn't all that cheap here and electricity is. (11c /KWH)
Teco is still recovering the cost of running a pipe from Tampa and
they still haven't expanded into most old neighborhoods. I haven't
really looked into it since I can't get it but at my wife's club the
snowbirds were complaining that gas was a lot cheaper up there. I
remember it being a pretty small bill when I was there.


Gas here used to run about $10 a month, with just the heater. Now with
heater (more efficient model) and a gas dryer, the prices have soared. I
pay about $120 average a month in gas. As electric Is very pricey. I get
an Electric Vehicle rate and pay almost 13 cents a KWh at night, but 42.5
cents peak rate times. If I charged my car during peak times, I figured
the gas equivalent is over $4 a gallon.

I think I would get an electric dryer and only do laundry at night.
;-)


We used to have electric and went to gas when it was cheaper. Before the
solar install. Maybe you stay up 11 pm to 6 am for laundry, but not going
to make wife. Happy wife, happy life.

Mr. Luddite wrote:
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.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.


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 control
relay 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 much
simpler solution. Their systems ran mostly on vacuum tube technology
and were pretty much immune to electromagnetic radiation.

It's why today there are few (if any) vacuum tubes manufactured in
the USA. Most all come from Russia.




Russia even ran mini tubes in their war planes 20 years ago,

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.

wrote:
On Mon, 17 May 2021 06:13:15 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

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.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.


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 control
relay 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 much
simpler solution. Their systems ran mostly on vacuum tube technology
and were pretty much immune to electromagnetic radiation.

It's why today there are few (if any) vacuum tubes manufactured in
the USA. Most all come from Russia.


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.


Means you have a great power supply on the cmos. We had a disk controller
in the 1980’s that had pass transistors. Passed lots of lightning glitches
through. We in engineering were going to replace new production with
switching power supplies, but the idiot VP of manufacturing paid a premium
for the crappy supplies to continue production.

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?