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Legacy From the 1800s Leaves Tokyo In the Dark
itwbennett writes "East Japan entered its fifth day of power rationing on Friday, with no end to the planned blackouts in sight. The local electrical utility can't make up the shortfall by importing power from another region, though, because Japan lacks a national power grid, a consequence of a decision made in the late 1800s."
Dark (and hopefully) clear skies...
They have several frequency converter stations.
if we get to 88Hz can we go back in time to fix this?
Half of Japan used 50Hz and the other side uses 60Hz. They have three conversion stations with a combined capacity of just 1GW, so power from one side can't power the other.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
... this situation changes. And Japan will leap to the forefront of HVDC transmission gear manufacturing.
Have gnu, will travel.
They can't really change it now, can they?
...so many to choose from.
It's time to get some new nighttime satellite photos. The ones that show the lights from space. It would be intresting to compare the before/after images.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Japan uses NTSC, which is based on 60 hertz. How does it work in East Japan's 50 hertz zone? Hmmm.
I guess this also means electronic manufacturers have to design their products to work with either 50 or 60 hertz.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
if we get to 88Hz can we go back in time to fix this?
Boy, imagine how we'd laugh if the punchline was funny!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Very interesting article. I had no idea that Japan was effectively split in half thanks to 50Hz and 60Hz power grids. So does every home that is hooked up to 50Hz have a converter to switch it to 60Hz or vice versa since some electronic devices are rather dependent on the AC frequency? What happens when somebody decides to move across the country from one power source to the other? Do you just throw out all your old clocks that relied on the AC frequency for its timing source and buy new ones? I also wonder if the disaster unfolding there might encourage them to try to migrate the entire country to a single standard, whether 50 or 60. It has certainly demonstrated a major problem with their current infrastructure...
Hey, just because they did things differently doesn't mean you should call people from Coventry England backwards.
They are screwed, this decision has fucked both parties.
RTFA first?
FTA: "Japan's electricity system got its start in 1883 with the founding of Tokyo Electric Light Co. Demand quickly grew and in 1895 the company bought electricity generation equipment from Germany's AEG. In west Japan the same evolution was taking place, and Osaka Electric Lamp imported equipment from General Electric."
Wait: I thought the free market solved all problems and never needed government intervention.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Other than poorly designed clocks, what other devices actually care about the power line frequency? My parents in Virginia have very bad 60Hz power, they have a few clocks that are often off by 10 minutes or more each way, so it's not a good idea to base your clock frequency source on the power line in the first place. Most devices not either don't care (light bulbs) or put their power through an AC/DC conversion step anyway. So what would really need to be thrown out if you switched from 50Hz to 60Hz standard? And wouldn't now be an excellent time to make the change?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
US gear is very much 60Hz, 110V. But electronics in Europe and Asia tends to be more flexible.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Tachi Station sells power converters.
Do you just throw out all your old clocks that relied on the AC frequency for its timing source
Clocks don't use the AC frequency as a timing source. The AC frequency is nowhere near accurate enough for that - I have lots of UPS logs showing how much it varies over time.
Clocks running on AC (or battery) use a cheap & accurate quartz crystal oscillator to keep track of time.
Now, AC motors on the other hand...
Government intervention exist just for this reason, to make sure that in case of a disaster the infrastructure doesn't crumble. How would you like if water wasn't regulated by the government? No, you're an American obviously and take such things for granted. Pray you never find out, it's an experience you likely won't survive.
Other than poorly designed clocks, what other devices actually care about the power line frequency?
Motors. Big motors, like the kind you find in your furnace, A/C compressor, elevators, and other places. Nobody cares about the consumer electronics because all that stuff either auto-ranges or can be manually switched. But big industrial equipment is everywhere and lasts a long time.
The real serious question raised here is that in Evangelion they hook up the entire Japanese power grid to the positron rifle. How is that supposed to work if the power grids are incompatible?
Whoooooosh
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Wait: I thought the free market solved all problems and never needed government intervention.
You seem to have a stunning amount of faith in government, including 1800's feudal Japan, to accurately plan for catastrophes 130 years in advance.
AC electric motors. Especially Three-Phase industrial motors.
that is all.
What about the parts of Japan that use 100VAC?
The motors I deal with in my job (manufacturing automation) are all DC motors and stepper motors driven by controllers which are performing an AC/DC conversion, so this is only a problem with constant speed AC motors. But granted, climate control is a HUGE installed base.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Slashdot reported last summer that the US grid is not ready to accept "green power" sources (wind/solar) and redistribute to consumers. The Slashdot story stated that wind energy created surges (gusts?) on the grid, especially when the wind was blowing too hard. The grid was designed for point source generation, not distributed generation.
Luckily, I see this story is still online. Check the interactive graphic of the US grid.
All electronics that I have seen in Japan are all standardised to "100VAC 50/60Hz"
But since this was the case there since the advent of the electronic revolutions, the pretty well always sold frequency tolerant hardware to be used anywhere in the country.
Bringing those Japanese electronics back to the US has the benefit of running them at 10% over their preferred voltage (at the US 110V). So, that's something to keep in mind when importing electronics from over there.
I think the point was about the needless division of the country into 50Hz and 60Hz zones, thus inhibiting the growth of an efficient nation-wide power grid.
Yes its more expensive, but wouldn't independent solar power installations even at the local residential level seem attractive at this time?
The US has mostly unconnected power grids too.
Two major and three minor grids, the grid I'm on, Alaska isn't connected to anything else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection - has more information
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398
But theres a plan to connect the Eastern and Western Interconnections at Clovis NM in the next couple years.
If you look at electronics sold for Asian markets or manufactured by Japanese manufacturers for other world markets, it is usually labeled 50-60 Hz, and either 100-240V or 220-240V AC.
You can design for the worst case: Higher currents of the lower frequency and lower voltage, and then just run AC motors a little faster for the higher frequency. A combination of auto-switching transformer networks or DC-DC switching supplies handle the other issues.
The bigest problem for changing from 50->60 or 60->50 are electric motors. (fans, vaccums, elevators, FACTORIES, power tools, water pumps, and generaly changing factories is propably very expensive, you may not complain when vaccuming will give you 20%more or less power, but when conveyor belts, mixing machines, crains, and lot of other stuff gets faster or slower you get into trouble. And I am not even considering that in one or other way the efficiency got worse/better and things get stronger/weaker. In home you get some problems. ( like refiregerator(pump is Hz fixed, kitchen/toilet Fan, vaccuming, food processors and other spinning things.
TV, clock, radio, PC, chrgers: (is generaly not huge problem)
You seem to have a stunning amount of faith in government, including 1800's feudal Japan, to accurately plan for catastrophes 130 years in advance.
1890's Japan was very well post-feudal. Remember, it was only ten years after they bought the incompatible GE equipment (I should make a nasty comment here, since my family worked for Westinghouse) to where they defeating the Russians in 1905.
Also, this dual grid prevents countrywide cascade failures :-)
117, not 110, although it varies around from maybe 112-125 depending on where and when you are
Other than poorly designed clocks, what other devices actually care about the power line frequency?
Actually, mains power should normally be a very good frequency source for a clock. Utilities periodically adjust the frequency such that the long term clock drift is near zero. From wikipedia:
Network operators will regulate the daily average frequency so that clocks stay within a few seconds of correct time. In practice the nominal frequency is raised or lowered by a specific percentage to maintain synchronization. Over the course of a day, the average frequency is maintained at the nominal value within a few hundred parts per million.
Pfft, we don't need no national power grids! That's socialism! The free market will sort it out!
Actually the electric companies are typically for improved transfer capacity, as long as they're not paying too much for it. That allows them to sell the power some other place where prices are higher then turn around and demand higher prices locally too because reserves are low.
What they don't build is emergency capacity, because to a corporation they typically don't have to care about the consequences except to their bottom line. You saw it a lot in the financial crisis, if it's not profitable to lend money we'll simply stop. That it's choking the rest of the economy doesn't matter. Nor would they ever get to charge the costs either, imagine if in this crisis they said "Finally we ended up using those expensive converters, now to pay them off on this crisis we'll increase prices 10x" and you'd see a lynch mob with torches and pitchforks even in overly polite Japan. It's something people want to have, but they're not willing to pay for it. "The government" has to step in and be the collective responsibility that the country has emergency systems, because the consumers failed to make those demands to the producers.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Who is "Sighonara"?
Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
It varies. Most of my recent wall warts and my 4 year old laptop power supply all say something like 100-240V.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Most clocks don't use the AC frequency as a timing source. Plenty of older mains powered clocks do, you can often come across them in lecture theatres in older institutions. You can usually tell because the second hand will move continuously rather than ticking.
In the 1800's, Japan was just practicing eXtreme Engineering (XE) and employing the principle of YAGNI. It was deemed more important to electrify the country and then iterate the solution later, than it was to design for future expansion, let alone consider the risks of human life dependence upon the early choices.
when one cries, another one sheds a tear in some way. hurt one... it's even much bigger than that. the lights are coming up all over now.
For kicks pick any 5 power bricks and look at the label. I bet most of them will say 100-240V, 50-60hz. Will work in most of the world if you have a simple plug adapter, no need for a voltage or frequency change.
Nope.
Electric wall clocks that you plug in use the AC line for accuracy.
The 60Hz out of the wall socket is very accurate. Accurate to within a minute or so a month. They use something called a synchronous motor. It's only in the past 40 years that quartz crystal controlled clocks were even mass marketed.
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_2/chpt_13/2.html
Even plug-in alarm clocks don't use a crystal oscillator - they simply count pulses from the AC line.
When Southern California Edison went from 50 to 60Hz in 1948, people had to throw out their old electric wall clocks and get new ones.
--
BMO
If the USS Ronald Reagan had a couple Mighty Pumps in its inventory, these could be attached to the catapult steam lines. An electrical generator could be attached to the pump's drive shaft, generating power. Then they'd just run a cable to the shore to power the cities affected by the disaster.
The USS Enterprise has 310 megawatts of thermal power. I don't know how much of this could be sent to the catapult lines... Nimitz-class carriers have 2 reactors instead of 8, and generate ~190 MW of thermal power.
There is some historical legacy for using an aircraft carrier to power a city:
Lots of people have found my site this week (/. post on Sunday, google, etc), and the link about the MYT engine was one of the more-commonly followed links. This page has better information about the MYT pump/engine:
When Disaster Strikes, Send the Enterprise. I just did my first newspaper interview this morning. :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Dammit, I should have edited that. Ignore the "minute or so a month" because it's more accurate than that. I wrote that before finding the All About Circuits page.
--
BMO
I wonder if this is how my school did it. In grade school we had rather simple looking analogue clocks that essentially mimicked the clock on the control panel for the PA system. If there was a power outage the clocks would stop, and when the power came back we would see them run quick to catch up.
Same with DST, if we got in early enough we would see the clocks run fast to spring 1 hour ahead or run really fast to "fall" 11 hours ahead. (Never ran backwards)
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
The problem described above (a shortage of electricity) is easily solved through the use of smart meters, where electricity prices adjust in real-time in response to demand in order to prevent demand from ever exceeding supply.
Does Japan not have smart meters yet?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
When I worked in an oil warehouse, all of our portable pumps were AC. Granted, most of them had speed control modules because at full snort they would either a) make a gigantic splashing mess with light viscosity oil, or b) throw breakers like they were going out of style while pushing the high viscosity stuff. :)
Most devices not either don't care (light bulbs) or put their power through an AC/DC conversion step anyway. So what would really need to be thrown out if you switched
Umm that AC/DC coversion does not exactly handwave the difference in 50 or 60 hertz current so it might actually matter.
hint after you run it down your bridge rectifier coming out of your cap filter your ripple will be
(dc load current)/120|100*capacitance
and some thing may not be able to handle that much ripple
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Japan needs a Dagen H for electricity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H
Do people notice the lights? I recall dad mentioning the flicker was noticeable when you went from a 60 area into a 50.
This was some time ago when Canada still had a few areas of 50Hz. Perhaps more modern incandescents have a more sustained 'glow' that alleviates the effect.
ANSI C84.1 is the standard that power companies are held against. I don't have the standard in front of me, but I believe that the standard is 104V to 127V, for an average of 115V.
However east and west Japan were still relatively independent even in the 1890s. It wasn't really until after the Russo-Japanese war that the country really started to become just that, a unified country. Humans have this odd way of thinking about countries, namely that the government/political structures and geographical boundaries of countries today are the same as they were over 100 years ago, they are often much different. Japan was very much like Germany, essentially a very loosely affiliated set of states bound by geographical, linguistic, and cultural ties but often separated by bitter political and military rivalries. I doubt that even if someone had the foresight to force both sides to use the same standards they would have had the political capital to make it a reality. That sort of political capital didn't really exist until after the Russo-Japanese war towards the end of the Meiji era.
Monstar L
Some clocks DO use line frequency as the timing source.
For example, "synchronous movement" clocks -- essentially synchronous motors driving gears to move the hands. Many buildings from before 1980 have a clock socket (a recessed outlet) mounted where most people would put a clock that was intended for this type of clock. Most later buildings don't have this feature as most wall clocks are now battery operated.
I've also seen early electronic clocks that used the line for the timing source.
(Remembering this stuff is starting to make me feel old...)
110 is the guaranteed minimum. Any less than that and your power utility is not providing service, legally.
120 is the spec.
115 is an average of the two.
120V, 60Hz is the standard.
To know that, we'd have to know if the Japanese government got involved and locked in the choices before the market had a chance to correct it. After all, until the two systems met it didn't matter what frequencies they used.
That allows them to sell the power some other place where prices are higher then turn around and demand higher prices locally too because reserves are low.
That sounds awfully familiar.. Let me guess, you're from Norway, too? :D
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Moreso for commercial and government buildings in Japan.
Most residences don't have air conditioning. It's typically seen as frivolous.
Consumer electricity in the US is required by law to be 120 volts plus or minus 5 percent. I believe that was standardized in the 1980's. Before that some places were 110 volts, some 115, and some 120.
Running clocks from the powerline frequency is not poorly designed, in fact, it's a very good design, except, it seems, in Virginia.
Power companies are required to keep their line frequencies at a steady 50/60 Hz over the average of a day. If the company generates too high a frequency at some point, they will purposely generate a lower frequency to even it out so that during a day, the correct frequency average is attained.
Your clock should be very accurate if powered off the power lines and you have a competent electric company.
[citation needed?] -- Just call your electric company and get someone with a clue on the phone.
Poorly designed? In the UK, power line frequency is very tightly controlled and fluctuations are corrected for during the night, so clocks that were synchronous to the power were very accurate. The problem isn't the clocks, its the power generation. Also, sotting in my garage, I have an old turntable, with a synchronous motor. Again, any frequency error is far less than one's ability to distinguish from the correct frequency.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Land of setting sun, may be dark.
Wait: I thought the free market solved all problems and never needed government intervention.
You seem to have a stunning amount of faith in government, including 1800's feudal Japan, to accurately plan for catastrophes 130 years in advance.
In a perfect world, the moral would be that you can't put your complete trust in any one thing. But that concept has been having an on-again off-again relationship with Gray Areas, which makes many people distrustful of it.
Your lack of right parentheses makes me uneasy. Like a badly-formed Lisp program...
Usually when a Japanese power plant is shut down, it has a serious pest control problem. The best solution is to send in the first cyberpunk-looking teenage kid you see with no help whatsoever. You don't need to pay them, they have to do it because the only way to get where they're headed is through the power plant.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
So you're hypothesizing that, after a power outage, they increase the line frequency for a while to compensate for the time down?
The 60 Hz power in the U.S. is monitored on a cumulative basis. Over time, it is very accurate. My Dad worked at a power plant in the '40s and said he had two clocks: one running on Western Union and one running on the generated power. If the clocks deviated by more than a second, the generator speed would be adjusted slightly to get the clocks back in sync.
I'm sure the method has been updated, but I'll bet the concept is the same.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Climate control (at least for commercial HVAC) is a relative non-issue as well. Every motor I've seen installed lately is happy at either frequency - for that matter, we put lots of them on variable-speed drives which varies the frequency and voltage all over the place. Only extremely old motors might have issues.
So all that really happens is the motor speeds up/down a bit (depending on who converts their system) which is handily fixed - if you even need to - as most large air handling equipment is belt-driven. Pull the sheaves off, put on a slightly-different size, fire it back up. Some equipment has adjustable sheaves already, so just screw the assembly in/out a bit to change the diameter.
Water pumps aren't so readily adjusted, but most have balancing valves after the pumps anyway to set the desired flow - just tweak it open/closed a bit and again you're done.
Some of the really old building automation systems I've seen used to use "line time clocks" - referencing the AC frequency for their clock. I expect some of those wouldn't keep proper time, and one particular panel simply quit functioning if the frequency fell outside 60 Hz +/- a few tenths (found that out when they stopped running every time the emergency generators were tested). Those panels were obsoleted by the manufacturer quite a few years ago, but there are still a LOT of them installed and operating (in the US anyway). They would have to be upgraded, but it's an easy retrofit to something newer - the new stuff is so much smaller than those old panels you can just gut the old cans and install new with room to spare.
Well, how about the Reagan administration decision to leave the choice of cell transmission system up to the free market? I'm not saying there were *no* advantages to doing things that way, but net I don't think it produced such great results.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
US only standardized it's power grid in the 1950s or so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Standardization
In the United States, the Southern California Edison company had standardized on 50 Hz. Much of Southern California operated on 50 Hz and did not completely change frequency of their generators and customer equipment to 60 Hz until around 1948. Some projects by the Au Sable Electric Company used 30 Hz at transmission voltages up to 110,000 volts in 1914.
In Mexico, areas operating on 50 Hz grid were converted during the 1970s, uniting the country under 60 Hz.
But,
Some 25 Hz generators still exist at the Beck 1 and Rankine generating stations near Niagara Falls to provide power for large industrial customers who did not want to replace existing equipment; and some 25 Hz motors and a 25 Hz power station exist in New Orleans for floodwater pumps
Eventually, world power grid will be created and new standardization will need to happen, probably DC, but that will take a century or two ;)
The 50/60 Hz split posed a problem for air conditioner manufacturers in Japan. Their solution was frequency-converting air conditioners that would work on either 50 Hz or 60 Hz. When they were first being installed it was not noticed that their characteristics over their range of operating voltages were not the same as conventional air conditioners.
The problem became clear on a hot summer day in the late 1980's. TEPCO was importing power to the Tokyo area from nuclear plants a considerable distance away. Long distance transmission of electricity requires reactive power to maintain voltage at the receiving end. The frequency-converting air conditioners increased the need for reactive power in the Tokyo area.
In early afternoon, TEPCO ran out of reactive power and the voltage collapsed, causing a major blackout. It was the first major blackout that happened without some kind of event such as a lightning strike or a piece of equipment failing.
Although it's different there, I seem to recall more air conditioning in Okinawa.
SSC
Most electronic devices accept AC between 50Hz and 60Hz. Most industrial applications use inverters to put out whatever frequency they want - when I used to work in automation we used them to change the speed of conveyors with AC motors on.
We use 50Hz in the UK; I've never had a problem with a US device, which uses 60 Hz, other than needing a step-down transformer.
In America it is the opposite, as today many citizens believe that the political boundaries of 100 years ago are still in effect.
In particular with respect to Hawaii not being a state.
This is one of those situations which could be the best to use as a reason to upgrade, with the help of many other countries who want to see japan get back on its feet, and just get something new going that the whole country can rely on, and make it just one type, but also better the overall situation as future disaster situations can profit from...
Your clock should be very accurate if powered off the power lines and you have a competent electric company.
Aye, therein lies the rub. My parent's property is very rural. My mother also claims that light bulbs burn out a lot faster there, but I think that is just her imagination.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I worked in power generation for Duke Power, now Duke Energy, back in the 1980's and I can assure you that the 60Hz is very, very, very tightly controlled. That's the only way multiple power generation stations can connect to the grind without canceling each other. That's what the power companies call motoring and it's just about the worst thing that can happen on the grid.
What, and "bigest", "vaccums", "propably", "vaccuming", "refiregerator", "chrgers", and "generaly" DON'T bother you? Not to mention the grammar? You, sir, are a ridiculous computer nerd!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It's extremely unlikely your parents have power which is not 60Hz within very close tolerances, unless they're literally off the grid.
Looks like the invisible hand of the free market really dropped the ball that time....
Well notebooks usually have power supplies capable of accepting 100-250VAC 50-60Hz. There is (or have been at least) some efficiency loss in those universal power adapters but there is no big problem in designing them even for higher power outputs.
And is it not likely the clocks in Japan never have used the AC frequency as a timebase?
-- Megol
great scott!
I will repost again this updated http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2035046&cid=35472440 post.
Wikipedia has a inaccurate map of Japan's power grid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Power_Grid_of_Japan.PNG
A better map, more detailed that shows how really is actually the grid:
http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national_energy_grid/japan/graphics/japangridmap.gif
Updates at the end since the following is necessary to put things in context.
They have 2 FC facilities able to exchange 1200 MW at best, but the exchange between the two grids goes around 7-8% yearly, both ways, far, far less than what is needed at the moment and what they could provide, I doubt that Japan doesn't have at least 15% spare capacity in both grids. The FC are only able to replace units 1 and 2 from Fukushima Power Plant. 1200 MW are nothing versus the demand of eastern Japan. The reason that eastern Japan blackouts will be more bad than needed and Tepco's problems with their nuclear power plants comes in this report http://www.ieej.or.jp/aperc/pdf/GRID_COMBINED_DRAFT.pdf from APEC:
But power interconnections are far less developed between Japan’s electric service areas than within them. Thus, an issue has arisen with respect to what might happen to the reliability of power supply in Japan when a particular class of generating capacity has to be taken out of service. In August 2002, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was required by the Japanese government to take all of its nuclear power plants out of service since the utility had failed to report technical safety violations at some of the plants as required by law. Although subsequent safety inspections revealed that none of the violations presented an actual threat to public safety, continuing public distrust meant that nearly all of Tokyo’s nuclear plants remained out of service through the summer of 2003 and beyond. (emphasis mine) Since summer is when Tokyo’s power demand peaks, and since TEPCO relied on nuclear power for 29 percent of its generating capacity and 47 percent of its electricity generation in 200117, there were real concerns that power demand might not be met.
Normally, TEPCO would have had roughly 72 GW of generating capacity available to meet Tokyo’s needs during the summer of 2003, including 60 GW of its own capacity, 8 GW owned by Japan’s Electric Power Development Corporation (EPDC) and other generators in its area, and 4 GW from companies outside of its area. But with 13 GW of nuclear capacity remaining out of service (though about 4 GW of nuclear capacity had already been allowed to resume service), and with 4 GW of thermal power plants out of service for scheduled maintenance, the actual amount of generating capacity on which TEPCO could rely that summer was only around 55 GW. By comparison, the utility projected that peak demand would be around 61 GW if the weather were normal and 64 GW if the summer were hot. Hence, it had to plan for a possible 9 GW shortfall.
TEPCO’s plans for filling the gap between available capacity and possible peak summer demand included a variety of supply-side and demand-side measures. On the supply side, the utility anticipated that it could obtain 2,190 MW by restarting thermal plants that had been shut down due to their relative inefficiency and high cost, 760 MW by accelerating the testing and start-up of new plants, 700 MW by rescheduling thermal plant repairs, and 1,660 MW through extra purchases from neighbours. Somewhat more alarmingly, the utility hoped to obtain 3,200 MW if necessary through emergency supply measures such as power drawn from the trial operation of thermal
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
Funny. I know my local power power companies count the 50 hz cycles and makes sure it evens out over a day.
Wait: I thought the free market solved all problems and never needed government intervention.
The Free Market *WOULD* solve all these problems, if it weren't for all that pesky government intervention.
There are few activities so strongly regulated anywhere as the electric power industry. I should know it, for the first five years of my career as an electronics engineer I worked for a power company.
The situation is so bad that when people say the power industry has been "deregulated" somewhere, like in California, for example, the industry is actually still more regulated than any other industry.
Had Free Market forces prevailed in Japan there would exist many interconnection points between the 50hz and 60hz zones. After all, what good is a market if you are unable to buy and sell stuff?
The problem in Japan is not the Free Market, but the fact that the industry was divided in two segments that weren't allowed to trade their product freely among themselves.
Okay, so I read the article (so sue me)... Here's an interesting tidbit...
All of eastern Japan, including Tokyo and the disaster-struck region to the north, is standardized on 50Hz supply while the rest of the country uses 60Hz.
I wonder what the USS RR could output given the USA is on 60Hz... The history you cited was that the USA Lexington powered Tacoma, WA (a USA city that used 60Hz)...
Given the limited number of frequency converting stations in Japan, I find it hard to believe that...
1. an Aircraft carrier would carry a frequency converting unit with enough capacity OR
2. Aircraft carrier systems could use either 50Hz or 60Hz so the whole ship could run at 50Hz and supply power to the 50Hz grid in that part of japan
So I'm wondering if this is just a "would-be-nice-but" option instead of something they could actually do...
Somehow this reminds me of the STTNG "sour the milk episode"...
Huh? Japan has been a more-or-less unified county since the Battle of Sekigahara paved the way for the Tokugawa Shogunate.
It was - until the Tokogawa Shoguns. After that, while there were regional rivalries and factions (which were not really worse than the same found in the US today), but political and military power was firmly in the hands of the Shogunate and after that the Imperial Goverment.
and passengers in some stations are being asked to take the stairs instead of the escalator.
Escalators are stairs (even ones that are off)...
I think the main cost would be the large power transformers between the power stations, substations and neighborhoods. You'd also need to replace half the power plants in Japan so that they generate power at a different frequency (or add a converter at each power plant which would also cost a significant amount of money). On top of that, you'd need to figure out some way to transition from one power network to the other, probably by building duplicate transformers and substations in an area, connecting it to the other grid then switching to it neighborhood by neighborhood. Doesn't seem feasible to me, especially when they need to spend at least $100 billion to recover from the disaster. Remember, the area that was destroyed uses the same grid as Tokyo and there is absolutely no way in the world you're going to get Tokyo to switch power systems at this point.
Many things, such as lights, don't care.
Most modern built-in power converters and supplies can handle pretty much anything - if you look at the power brick for your computer, chances are it says "100-240V, 50-60Hz". It's expensive to run separate production lines, so companies have tried to make stuff as universal as possible.
Older things here in Japan often have a small switch at the back, marked "50/60". You set it according to where you live.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
this is the perfect time for japan to think about long term power savings. by the sounds of how affected things are by the impact of losing electricity, they should take a really hard think about whether they really need to be consuming so much electricity. from the ashes of this disaster they have the potential to be the most affinitive with tech and most environmentally friendly.
in crisis there is opportunity
No reason they couldn't if all the clocks were on their own circuit.
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Modern clocks use quartz crystals instead. Older devices (and I have seen one such clock-radio myself) have an explicit switch for 60 Hz or 50 Hz operation.
Have you been to Japan in the past 30 years? Most residences have air conditioning as it's frequently > 35C with tonnes of humidity during the summers.
Any type of simple motor assembly really. Open up any random drill in your local home improvement store if you want and the 110V/220V (depending where you are) is just connected straight through to the motor with a small triac controller to control speed. Same goes for your bigger appliances around your house (washer machine, dryer). The heating elements in appliances as well which would affect the rate at which they heat up, standard light bulbs will be either dimmer or brighter (depending on which way you go) which affects lifespan, powerline data transfer (home control units like X10 or plug-in networks) depend on a certain frequency etc. etc.
There's a lot going on that we're still relying on AC for. Until a couple of years ago there was still gear in NYC that depended on DC being there and here in the states we still expect 110-130V with hopefully a double phase in your house to get 220V vs. 220-240V 3-or-more phases (to get 400V) elsewhere in the developed world. We're stuck with the choices some of our great-grandparents made (actually choices Tesla and Edison made) for a long time to come.
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>So does every home that is hooked up to 50Hz have a converter to switch it to 60Hz or vice versa since some electronic devices are rather dependent on the AC frequency?
There is no converter available for home. The only electronic devices
dependent on the AC frequency are extremely cheap microwave ovens.
A good microwave oven works on either frequency.
> What happens when somebody decides to move across the country from one power source to the other?
Most devices automatically works on either frequency, and a small number have some manual switch for the frequency.
Perhaps the cheap microwave oven would be much cheaper than a converter.
> Do you just throw out all your old clocks that relied on the AC frequency for its timing source and buy new ones?
As, stated above, most such clock should work just fine or have a switch.
In addition, the manufacturer normally have services to adjust the product for frequency if it do not have a switch.
> I also wonder if the disaster unfolding there might encourage them to try to migrate the entire country to a single standard, whether 50 or 60.
> It has certainly demonstrated a major problem with their current infrastructure.
In my observation, the migration to a single standard will not happen in this century.
The converter capacity might be made higher and dual frequency power stations might be increased.
Some of the power stations located close to the border can generate either frequency.
Many, many coal, oil and nuclear power plants have capacities from 0.9GW to 5GW. Even some hydroelectric systems - notably the Three Gorges Dam, which has a capacity of 22.5 GW. "Small" gas-fired plants designed to be powered up to meet intermittent peak power demand range up to 700 MW.
This is just one reference.
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Never mind grid! Stuff has to work on either 50 or 60 Hz, evidently.
Even before the days of electronic control, there were a vast variety of motor types. High power motors needed to be highly efficient and highly reliable, and that meant slip rings (no commutation), which implied a motor synchronous with the power source (or, I guess, a permanent magnet on the rotor and no electrical connection to the rotor, also synchronous). Commutating motors could run at almost any speed, but commutators wear and have some efficiency loss. Induction motors aren't as efficient and lag the synchronous frequency by a small (load-dependent) amount. (Note: when I say synchronous I mean the line frequency or an integer division of it.)
I'm no expert on motors, perhaps someone can clarify the technology here?
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That's because they use new switching regulators which bump up the frequency to a couple of kilohertz anyway and are pretty indifferent to input voltage as long as it isn't so high it physically fries the equipment. Transformers and AC motors need to be tuned to a specific frequency/voltage. cheap switching supplies are great, but rather limited. In general they can reduce the voltage and handle a few hundred watts. If you need a couple dozen kilovolts (like your old tv) or a few kilowatts of power (like your microwave) or have a strong AC motor (like your plug-in power drill) then transformers tuned to your specific frequency are needed.
certainly inexpensive switching supplies have been great for reducing the dependence on specific voltages and frequencies, but there are hundreds of millions (billions?) of microwaves, refrigerators, washing machines, power tools, electric razors, high power amplifiers, magnetic ballasts and whatnot out there.
And moving them to DC power isn't a good idea, there are big inefficiencies in power supplies, economical solid state high power ones especially so. a 1500 watt microwave with an unreasonably high 90% efficient power supply would still have to radiate 150watts(!!) from its power circuitry. A lot easier with a metal core transformer the weight of a brick than a silicon mosfet the size of a fingernail. (though, the CPU overclockers have some experience with that :))
That said, eastern japan is in a particularly odd spot, being 100V 50Hz. Matching neither US nor european standards.
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This is worth reading: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/tepc-m17.shtml Insightful article, things are making sense now...
I hope Japan seriously consider to go with a single standard, so they can share and balance their needs in situations like this.
It intrigues me, how could they chose a common voltage but not a common alternating frequency? And i wonder about the advantages disadvantages form using, say, 100volts instead of 120 or 220?
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From what I remember, during time changes or other corrections, they'd shift the minute hand's gear to match the second hand until the clocks displayed the right time. The shift-in and shift-out happened right at the 12 o'clock position.
As a result, the motor still ran at the same rate, and at no point did any hand move faster than 6 degrees/second. Nonetheless, the displayed time would advance at 60x normal rate.
It's the kind of thing that could be handled with a simple shifting mechanism that changed which gear drove the minute hand. Even simpler than VTEC.
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"Perhaps the cheap microwave oven would be much cheaper than a converter."
so start a new trend and mass produce the 12v DC microwave oven components and other hybrid off grid/on grid consumer devices in the next rebuild from the insurance monies and new investments coming your way etc to get the costs down, and sell all this dual power consumer kit to the world
it's 1.21 jigawatts
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Well, how about the Reagan administration decision to leave the choice of cell transmission system up to the free market? I'm not saying there were *no* advantages to doing things that way, but net I don't think it produced such great results.
Yes and no. As a consequence, there was no choice of cell transmission system. Instead, we have multiple incompatible systems, but then again the tech is still fairly new, and it wasn't obvious then which way we should go. So they experimented ... different companies doing things differently. Eventually things will shake out.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Perhaps the 60 Hz power could be imported as is and sent to circuits which would be specifically allocated to the task. Then people could use these circuits to power devices that just don't care (heat, light, computers, anything with a wallwart) and take an equivalent load off the 50 Hz side. The nice part is that this system could just STAY IN PLACE more or less indefinitely. While it would be impractical to do this with homes, many commercial buildings are wired with multiple circuits.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
And of course this is (partly) because Japan has both 50 and 60Hz. So all of us who can plug our portables anywhere in the world can say "thank you Japan"!
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Wooooosh.
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Yeah, eventually they'll all adopt some descendant of GSM.
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Yes, but only if there's 1.21GW of power available available.
I replace most of the incandescents in this house multiple times per year. The one over the stove is unsurprising, the others moreso. I live in the boonies. Lots of brownouts, almost no surges, or so the UPS claims. The electrical switches in the house are crap, I've replaced some of them over time, mostly as they've failed. The owners built the place and used the cheapest of everything.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's because they use new switching regulators which bump up the frequency to a couple of kilohertz anyway and are pretty indifferent to input voltage as long as it isn't so high it physically fries the equipment. Transformers and AC motors need to be tuned to a specific frequency/voltage. cheap switching supplies are great, but rather limited. In general they can reduce the voltage and handle a few hundred watts. If you need a couple dozen kilovolts (like your old tv) or a few kilowatts of power (like your microwave) or have a strong AC motor (like your plug-in power drill) then transformers tuned to your specific frequency are needed.
For a given mass a switching supply can always be built which will handle more power than a linear supply. What the linear supply gets you is that it doesn't require any management. I tried to run a Singer embroidery machine from a switching supply because its linear supply died and it didn't work. I put a voltmeter on it and I found that the machine doesn't draw enough power at idle to keep the supply switching (it's a real simple, very low-power 2.5D CNC machine, it only has a 4x4" work area and it runs on teensy little steppers and an electric motor that looks like it came from an ordinary R/C kit car, as you might imagine) so the voltage wouldn't stay up at 12V to run the thing. I can probably put a load resistor alongside, but I haven't gotten around to it. I think it would be wiser to just find a linear supply, since you have to load a switcher to at least 5% (more for low-quality supplies) to get it to work properly. I need about 1.25A peak at 12V, so finding a linear wall wart that will do the job is a task.
Obviously a linear supply is cheaper unless copper gets much more expensive...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But it's mostly because they use switching power supplies and they will actually run on a broader range than 50-60 Hz (sometimes much broader) and on a broader range of voltages than 110-250 as well. So all of us who can plug our switching power supplies in anywhere in the world can say "thank you, transistors and capacitors!"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes. Yes, I am.
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I highly doubt the FREQUENCY of the power is off. Voltage is another matter entirely. The US has a grid system, with multiple power plants interconnected. If the frequency goes off by even a small percentage, you risk damaging the actual power generators themselves.
Most of the common red LED alarm clock/clock radios that use a 9 V battery as a back up power source also use the line frequency as the power source. It's kind of obvious as when operating on battery power, they don't have access to the line frequency and therefore rely on some kind of internal oscillator that is horribly inaccurate. At least they seem to run fast on battery power, so you don't end up late for work when the power goes out.
As a side note, it's kind of amazing to me that those clocks with that design are still being made. The battery backup circuit was probably designed in the 1970's. In 2011 surely they could design a better battery backup system that is a lot more accurate, not to mention doesn't eat through a fresh 9V battery in about one and a half days.