Electric chainsaw motor

Somehow I thought you lived in Maine. Is it NH?

Reply to
Ed Huntress
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But still, it seems to me that there could be (at the cost of a few bucks each) a transponder in, say, each transformer that would let them know it's got power. Much easier than driving around with a flashlight to look at the poles & wires. =======================

The easiest and cheapest solution is to see who calls to complain.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Go to your local phone company's central office. Take a look at their backup power and then tell me how I get dial tone for $11/month and it's got enough batteries to last until doomsday, and enough generator & fuel to last till the coming of the messiah.

========================

I built a test load for a 48V 1000A central office battery charger, to replace an old wood-framed one that had burned up. I didn't tie down all the 4/0 welding cables for the initial test and when we switched it on the suddenly magnetized cables slamming into the metal frame sounded like lightning had hit the building.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Ned Simmons lives in Maine, I'm in NH. I grew up in Exeter and bicycled as far as Greenland.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Aha. Now I remember. The memory is the second thing to go. d8-)

I guess we talked about Greenland, which is where my family is from, since around 1675 or 1680.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Straight man: "What's the first?"

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I used to know, but I forgot...

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Simple, 12 ch one way analog systems are extinct. Today they carry digital TV, and internet. Both are bidirectional. They also monitor system status with the return channels. A weak, or missing sgnal at an EOL testpoint will ntify the headend faster than a customer can find the right phone number, and has more useful data.

Here is a quick shot of the levels Involved in my DOCIS 3.0 modem. I don't have a modern FSM for the QAM256 bit video used for digital TV

Downstream Bonding Channel Value Channel ID 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Frequency 681000000 Hz 687000000 Hz 693000000 Hz 699000000 Hz

705000000 Hz 711000000 Hz 717000000 Hz 723000000 Hz Signal to Noise Ratio 37 dB 36 dB 36 dB 36 dB 37 dB 37 dB 38 dB 38 dB Downstream Modulation QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 QAM256 Power Level The Downstream Power Level reading is a snapshot taken at the time this page was requested. Please Reload/Refresh this Page for a new reading 0 dBmV -1 dBmV -1 dBmV -1 dBmV -1 dBmV 0 dBmV 0 dBmV 1 dBmV

Upstream Bonding Channel Value Channel ID 3 1 2 4 Frequency 30200000 Hz 17400000 Hz 23800000 Hz 36600000 Hz Ranging Service ID 7992 7992 7992 7992 Symbol Rate 5.120 Msym/sec 5.120 Msym/sec 2.560 Msym/sec 5.120 Msym/sec Power Level 41 dBmV 41 dBmV 38 dBmV 40 dBmV Upstream Modulation [4] 16QAM [2] 64QAM [4] 16QAM [2] 64QAM [3] QPSK [3] 16QAM [2] 64QAM [4] 16QAM [2] 64QAM

Ranging Status Success Success Success Success

Signal Stats (Codewords) Bonding Channel Value Channel ID 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Total Unerrored Codewords 29160951386 29160125781 29160129343

29160128668 29160098379 29160057034 29159825336 29159451723 Total Correctable Codewords 3106 2757 6792 13887 20869 51354 113548 165190 Total Uncorrectable Codewords 4952 1906 2551 4315 3557 15497 186133 509452
Reply to
Michael A Terrell

The crew that restored my power (N. Central Florida) after Irma were form where I had lived in Ohio. I talked with them for about ten minutes while they ordered a new 40' pressure treated power pole, and discussed what had changed in the last 30 years.

They were stunned to learn that I had managed to get their company's authorization to pole mount a NEMA cabinet with a single 'Heterodyne Signal Processor' to interconnect the community loops of two different CATV companies. The design only worked because one system was sub split (below NTSC Ch 2), and the other was mid split (Between NTSC Chs 6-7).

You needed a minimum of Ch 2 and Ch 13 to set system gain controls. I fed Ch 2 from 'Metrovision' into our subsplit loop, and converted their Ch13 forward channel to T10, return channel. At our headend, I used a pair of additional HSP. One converted T10 to Ch2, to feed to their headend. The second converted Ch2 to Ch13 for the schools in our service area. We provided a clean, NTSC analog modulator to a school in our service area, while Metrovision used the cheapest FM video crap from Catel. We left the control up to Metrovision. Our side looked as good as our main CATV system, while anything provided through Metrovision was smeared.

The design from Metrovison was costed at over $30,000, and was their excuse for never interfacing with United Video Cablevision.

My design was designed and built for under $3000. It took one NEMA box, three RCA HSP, and a handful of splitters that were used as combiners or splitters inside the NEMA box, and two for the headend. I was chewed out at turn on, because my levels were .25 dB hot at initial power up.

The NEMA Enclosure was similar to this.

Reply to
Michael A Terrell

(Shhhh! They're getting closer.)

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Heh, heh, heh. That's a good reality check for a Leftjournalist.

The problem is that wherever the trees can fall on lines, they will in a storm. All trees tall enough to impact lines should be topped (usually not a good idea, but one option) or removed, not just trimmed, if the power line is above ground. It's a binary problem and solution. Fix it or suffer the consequences. Any trees tall enough to impact the lines should be considered to be on the utility's right of way. Yes, the owner should be given the choice of topping or felling, and if they want the wood, the utility can leave the cut remains. All or nothing. State legal teams need to get this to happen. They already have right-of-ways through private property, so this is a small extension.

== Looking at Santa Rosa and Napa Valley should be a clear indication of why this needs to be done. 5,700 homes lost to simple gusty winds because people wouldn't let the utility trim trees. ==

I took the option to ask the tree trimmers hired by Pacific Power to take the whole trees down instead of just trimming them, and they did it for me. The agreement was that I would handle the remains, but when I returned home that day, they had chipped it, too. I asked if they wanted to get rid of the chips and got two truckloads of them, which I installed in place of a front lawn. Win/Win/Win.

Yeah, linesmen are just like firefighters in that respect, swarming from all over to fix a problem ASAP.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

I'll bet the janitor had to sweep up a whole lot of buttonholes that evening.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Ayup. That gives them the range and the range gives them what lines are involved. That's how they initially determine what teams to send out with what replacement equipment.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Here is a good analysis of PWM vs MPPT:

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On Amazon PWM controllers go for $20 or less, MPPTs for $100 and up.

I use a metered adjustable linear regulator to top up and mildly equalize batteries with power from my HF 45W kit. As they near full charge the batteries draw less than the full current the panels can provide and easy voltage adjustment becomes more important than controller efficiency. 1.5A is enough for the marine batteries, 1.0A for the vehicles. A Schottky diode in the regulator keeps battery current from feeding back if I step on the wires and crush them together against a stone.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Everyone was used to the high noise level of a sheet metal fab shop.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

The owner of roadside trees is generally the town and removing them is an expensive and difficult political issue. People complain in the paper about trees cut on private property.

I recently had my property lines surveyed and found that one corner was out on the pavement. The town engineer's map of the road right-of-way overlaps my deed by nearly 20', as he showed me with his cell phone GPS. He prefers to avoid stirring up trouble.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Cheapest, but hardly efficient. Again, transponders would be cheap and coul d provide otherwise useful telemetry (voltage, load, etc). Our local utilit y (PSE&G) has installed 200W solar panels on many poles. Lots of poles - 40 MW total. Some of these units have antennas on them. I don't know whether t hey are in constant communication to a central computer, but if they are, t hey could provide some useful information about outages. But I don't think they use that information. They just wait for enough people to call and the n send out a car.

Reply to
rangerssuck

Utility installed "smart meters" here several years ago. They use one of the cell networks (my understanding) to report meter readings and such several times a day. When power goes out they are suppose to be able to still send out a death gasp.

I gave up calling in outages when they said I would be charged for the service call if they deem it isn't there fault...

Reply to
Leon Fisk

Cheapest, but hardly efficient. Again, transponders would be cheap and could provide otherwise useful telemetry (voltage, load, etc). Our local utility (PSE&G) has installed 200W solar panels on many poles. Lots of poles - 40MW total. Some of these units have antennas on them. I don't know whether they are in constant communication to a central computer, but if they are, they could provide some useful information about outages. But I don't think they use that information. They just wait for enough people to call and then send out a car. ======================================

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We haven't seen a quick, easy solution because the issue is very complex.

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"Deployment of BPL has illustrated a number of fundamental challenges, the primary one being that power lines are inherently a very noisy environment."

This is a somewhat similar system in which independent nodes intercommunicate over a single radio frequency using a collision detection and avoidance protocol similar to Ethernet's.

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-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

==============

Oh, fer crissake, they're just not trying very hard. Our water company rece ntly did a third upgrade of our meter sender. The first could be read by a car driving by. The next could be read by helicopter, and the current on co mmunicates directly with a satellite, so they tell me.

Power monitors wouldn't have to transmit a whole lot of data to say "I am a live."

Reply to
rangerssuck

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