Electric chainsaw motor

Oh, fer crissake, they're just not trying very hard. Our water company recently 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 communicates directly with a satellite, so they tell me.

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

They aren't going to waste money on an incomplete temporary solution. Water meters don't need to track and report phasing and overloads in real time or command load shedding.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins
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As if sending managers out in cars in a storm isn't expensive or half-assed ? As I said, the solar panels they have already installed appear to have some sort of telemetry capability (I assume based on the fact that there are an tennas attached). I can imagine that being useful to locating faults. Or no t.

Meanwhile, in the past few years, my electric service has been much improve d, since they did some pretty big infrastructure upgrades. They raised the HV on our poles from 8KV to 13KV (half the I^^2R loss). In doing that, they replaced every transformer, several poles and the substation transformers. Where my line voltage often dipped as low as 104 volts on a regular basis, it is now rock solid 117V. Even when it rains and the wind blows.

When they replaced the transformers, each had a 8/13KV switch, set to 8KV. After everything was in place, they brought in more trucks than I knew they had, so that there was at least one bucket truck for every two transformer s. They shut off the power for less than ten minutes to switch every one of them. Pretty impressive.

Reply to
rangerssuck

Exempt employees aren't paid overtime. What's the expense?

Smart Grid components are appearing but I don't think they are ready for mass deployment.

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Ours is "19.9KV" which may be a regulatory step, otherwise why not call it 20KV?.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Probably the same reason that telephone central offices run on 48V DC, nominal, to stay within the "Less than 50V" section of the electrical codes. (Actual voltage is somewhat above that except when actually running on battery power.)

Reply to
Robert Nichols

19.9 KV is 34.5 KV / sqrt(3), ie, the distribution-system primary voltage of 19.9 KV looks like a 3-phase phase-voltage from 34.5 KV transmission-line-voltage.
Reply to
James Waldby

Which is why it needs to be addressed like the community problem it is. State-level. Dis -aincho- tree, Mr. Nimby.

Power outages are "large stir", sir.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

All that matters is which authority figure can be blamed, in this case God or Mother Nature.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Yeah, sucks. The Outraged Left need to be put in their places by common sense things like keeping weapons (trees) out of the range of our electric infrastructure (targets), period. Trim around them or bury the utility where possible, giving them the choice, but one or the other must be done. For the Santa Rosa fires to have happened in the first place lends enough nasty reality to warrant the changes immediately everywhere in the world, should they be sane enough to choose wisely. Continue draining the swamp. MAGA

Reply to
Larry Jaques

minal, to stay within the "Less than 50V" section of the electrical codes. (Actual voltage is somewhat above that except when actually running on batt ery power.)

I haven't done ony research on the (not THAT interesting)., but I bet that the 48V "battery" - actually -48V - predates any "Less than 50V" in the cod e. I spent a couple of weeks verifying test procedures at Bell Labs, where they have samples of EVERY device ever approved for connection to the PSTN. They go all the way back to stuff from the 19th century. All of them run o n the same -48V system.

I have to say (probably have said it here before) that it's remarkable that you can take one of these ancient phones and plug it into a modern phone s ystem and it still works. The same system can provide multi-megabit data se rvice over the same wires. The Bellcore standards are pretty rigid, but all ow for future improvements without obsoleting existing equipment.

Reply to
rangerssuck

At 11AM the two 100W panels were sending 175W into the batteries through a $20 PWM controller. I can't justify a $100 MPPT controller to gain 25W.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Back when I was working there (started in No. 5 Crossbar, 40+ years ago) I was told that's the reason it's called "-48V" rather than "-50V" even though the actual voltage is more like -52V or -53V. I just accepted that.

In that "stuff from the 19th century", the central office didn't supply power to the subscriber phones. You had your own dry cell batteries to power the carbon microphone, so whatever voltage ran the CO switchboard was irrelevant.

Reply to
Robert Nichols

Not at this level of play. When you get into kilowatts and battery banks, they make sense.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

I don't mind spending for test equipment that increases my knowledge, like wattmeters, but there's a tight limit to my investment in solar power that by my calculation will never break even and only reduces the inconvenience of a long power outage.

I use solar power to keep my vehicle batteries topped up. In this case it extends rather than reduces their lifespan for a significant savings, at no cost for electricity. The HF 45W kit is enough, typically the battery draws less than 1 Amp as it nears a full charge.

I first tried a small solar charger safely inside on the dash but the windshield reduced its output to less than the vehicle computer's parasitic drain.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Until it's permanent. With the new 200w, you might fare much better during a 3 month outage if major transformers were blown by a solar flare, EMP, or terrorists shooting them up and blowing up the mfgr plant. We have 1000x the required number of potential tangoes in the US right now for that, not including ANTIFA or BLM. 60 of them working together around the country concurrently could take us down to

9th century level in hours. It's only expensive until it isn't. Then it's a necessity.

Good to know.

Tinted windshield, or just the dual-pane with plastic in the middle?

Reply to
Larry Jaques

I'd actually be more concerned about stray bullets from the 100,000 NH hunters out chasing the terrorists. Normally we can fire only shotguns upward, but anyone caught up a utility pole without a truck nearby would be a rifle target.

The massive bombing of WW2 took over a year to cripple Germany and Japan, after several years of preparation and difficult lessons. Commando raids were costly and had relatively little effect unless the target was unusually vulnerable.

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Much of US infrastructure intentionally includes the redundancy to resist or recover from nuclear attacks, for instance the power grid, the Internet and phone systems, and the National System of Interstate and *Defense* Highways. The people who built them had first-hand experience of how hard it had been to disable Germany.

Around here at least the contractors and the town and State road departments are well equipped with the types of heavy equipment that originally built the infrastructure. FEMA needs to send only the suits who evaluate the damage and repair costs.

I hear that the South has begun to acquire equipment to deal with increasingly severe winters.

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-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Maybe, and only during hunting season.

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The worst is the potential increase in things like this:

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References at the bottom, too. An attack from the inside on multiple points would overload any possibility of rerouting.

Yes, I read a time travel book written around that raid. Exciting!

But we're talking about an open, free society who has let an unknown number of terrorists (+ hundreds of thousands of potential terrorists) loose in times of "peace" while half of society grumbles if someone "profiles" them. Not the same at all.

Redundancy once parts are missing? They're talking about everything we have, the whole grid, being maxed out right now, Jim. Can you say "cascading failures"? VERY new portions are hardened, but in the case of an EMP, the lines act as antennae, gathering the pulse. One on each north coast would take down a minimum of half the US grid. What then?

I'm talking about once they decide to really cripple us. 60 tangoes at once, all over the US. Most gas pumps would be out, truck supply would be out

Targeted on natural outages, not terrorism. Hmm, in the case of EMP, or solar flare, are -any- known snow plow electrical systems immune? Any diesel trucks newer than 20 years immune?

Bottom line: Got Preps?

Reply to
Larry Jaques

For a week or two, but not the collapse of civilization. Then the problem would be the hungry raiding hordes and the best answer might be to join the local warlord's army instead of trying to conceal yourself and your stash from them.

Got useful military or survival skills?

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-5Gn26mC&

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

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