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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 should just be linked up with HVDC lines anyway, but eh. Same problem.
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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.
...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 do, but they don't have the capacity to convert the amounts of power that the Kanto side suddenly needs. It's unfortunate that they didn't invest in more conversion capacity before this disaster, but then again, it probably would have been viewed as a waste of money, as few people could have imagined a power shortage of this scale before.
A few years ago the government began urging offices to keep their indoor temperatures at 28 degrees C (82 F) to save energy; there are doubts as to its efficacy as the increased sweat and lethargy bring greater water usage (more laundry) and lowered productivity.
I despised this program but could certainly endure it this year when there are so many people suffering from a lot more than an overheated working environment, but the silver lining is that when power capacity does finally get back up -- the Fukushima reactors were nearing end-of-life and new ones were already scheduled for 2013 -- regular folks might be able to work in air-conditioned offices again. After what we've been through, it sure will feel like a luxury.
it's changeable, but costly. Transformers are designed around the frequency of the power they handle. To standardize would require a lot of big expensive multimillion dollar monster transformers to be replaced. And if you do some research on the big scare of a nasty magnetic storm damaging transformers, they lay out the gory details of just how few of these can get manufactured a year.
Even if Japan had unlimited money and immediately ordered all the units they'd need, it would probably be at least 10 years before they got most of them manufactured. Cost was probably the big factor for them not standardizing 100 yrs ago, but now it's more a matter of calendar time required. And then you have to replace smaller units all over the place - at the substations, and the trashcans up on the poles too. It's a huge undertaking.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
They can't really change it now, can they?
The wire doesn't care very much. In the areas that are destroyed, they have to buy all new equipment anyway. Seems like a good time to standardize.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
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...
Can you actually cite some sources on this? Transformers are all about voltage changing. It is not immediately clear that the difference between 50hz and 60hz would affect them all that much.
I would guess that the larger problem would be with motors and other devices that rely on the power frequency to determine their performance characteristics.
They are screwed, this decision has fucked both parties.
At first I couldn't tell what you mean at all; then the staggering depths of this comment's cluelessness hit me. Japan was a feudal monarchy in the 1800's. There were no political parties then as known now. And now they have a bunch of political parties, not 'both', because it's a parliamentary system.
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.
Actually, the 50 Hz transformers would work just fine on 60 Hz (but they would be heavier than necessary). It's when you run a transformer on a lower-than-rated frequency that you need to derate its power-handling capacity.
Of course, there would be plenty of other problems with a frequency switch, especially changes in motor speeds. A whole lot of equipment would need to be replaced, or remotored and regeared. The logistics of switching half of Japan would dwarf that of Ontario's 1950s-era switch from 25 Hz to 60 Hz.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
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.
This earthquake/tsunami/meltdown/etc could be a Catastrotunity in that regard -- finally providing the impetus to modernize their grid. Laying new power lines should be far faster than building new power plants, and since we're talking high power/long distance and they'll need to match frequencies, I would expect that they'll be HVDC.
Another thing that they should be able to do faster than building new thermal power plants is to build power storage facilities to buffer day/night demand (battery storage, mini pumped-hydro, etc). China already uses these for demand buffering quite extensively. But they have a nice side effect of also helping support more intermittent power generation as well, because there is little difference between buffering supply and buffering demand. Which is great, because installing new photovoltaic capacity is also much faster than building new centralized thermal power plants (at least if global solar production can keep up).
If speed of getting new power into the region is of the essence, they may well end up with a very modern, very green grid purely as a side effect.
Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
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.
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.
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 :-)
Parties doesn't necessarily mean formal organizations.
In this case, the parties are "eastern Japan" and "western Japan".
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
Where do you get that? I just did a search for HVDC link construction times, and ran into this, which cites the time to build the whole Cross-Sound Cable (CSC) project, which involved two terminals and a 40km submarine cable to transmit 330MW HVDC, at nine months. Sure as heck beats building a new nuclear power plant or whatnot.
I imagine the limiting factor will be global high-power thyristor production and stocks.
Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
Who is "Sighonara"?
Santa Ana Winds: Like the Dustbowl, but with awards shows.
All of Japan is 100 VAC.
Most of the power generation and distribution hardware on each side is just fine still. However, perhaps this will be the impetus for them to start a slow project of national standardization, migrating the dividing line a bit in one direction or the other every year.
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.
That interpretation doesn't work in the context of the GP's text because the side that still has power isn't screwed at all, they just can't help their countrymen.
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.
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
But not transformers. They're magic.
Optimus Prime is, he rose from the dead.
Monstar L
Japan needs a Dagen H for electricity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H
Magic to you perhaps. To those who actually know anything about the subject, transformers take an AC source at a certain voltage and current, and generate an output of a different voltage and current AT THE SAME FREQUENCY.
There may be phase shifts, and there are always energy losses, but the frequency stays the same.
Most AC motors are frequency locked to the power source, hence will operate at different RPM at 50 Hz than at 60 Hz. If that is an issue in the application, then a motor change would be required. Many TVs were also locked to the power signal - PAL vs NTSC.
At first I couldn't tell what you mean at all; then the staggering depths of this comment's cluelessness hit me. Japan was a feudal monarchy in the 1800's. There were no political parties then as known now. And now they have a bunch of political parties, not 'both', because it's a parliamentary system.
At first I couldn't tell what you mean at all; then the staggering depths of this comment's cluelessness hit me. Parties are just abstract groups. Some parties are political, but they aren't even close to a thousandth of a percent of the full amount of parties.
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...)
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."
Uh. Smart meters don't fix shortages of electricity. All they do is cost the consumer more money when they're using it at peak. That's a retrograde punishment system. The solution is to build more power plants, or import more when you need it. If you live in Ontario and Quebec you already know this, since we sell most of our power to the US. Because Americans can't be bothered to build more power plants.
Om, nomnomnom...
You've just described how supply and demand prevents shortages, while claiming that it doesn't prevent shortages.
Think about it this way. Would you use less electricity if it cost more? If electricity cost enough, wouldn't it lower demand for electricity below the level of supply?
A shortage exists only when demand exceeds supply, and when that happens, it means the price is too low. Smart meters bring real-time price information to consumers, which helps reduce demand for electricity during peak times, and that eliminates the shortage.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Jump starting him wasn't magic, its was automotive know-how ;)
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!
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?
The UK has off-peak electricity (white meters), while the regular-rate electricity goes through the standard meter (black meter). It usually means that people run their dish washers, washing machines and dryers in the early hours of the morning, and cook their evening meal after 6.00pm.
Smart meters in the UK let you know how many Kilowatts of electricity you are using at any moment, which encourages home-owners to switch off lights or to purchase dual motion-sensor/dimmer switches. One setting has the light off, another has the light on only if there is motion, and the third has the light permanently on.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
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
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.
Sorry doesn't work that way. Because people are billed in blocks, or as prices fluctuate at peak. Meaning when everyone is at home from 1600-2300, you're going to be screwed out the ass. Unless you're one of those people who works nights, in which case you get a nice break on your hydro rates.
People won't use less electricity if it costs more, because they're always billed at peak when they're at home. They have no real 'choice' in reducing consumption. Because they have no way to do laundry/cook/etc at 3am, when they're sleeping.
Om, nomnomnom...
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...
Uh. Smart meters don't fix shortages of electricity. All they do is cost the consumer more money when they're using it at peak. That's a retrograde punishment system.
Your "retrograde punishment system" is also called the free market. Smart meters by themselves don't fix anything, but they do enable real-time energy pricing (or its simper cousin: time-of-use metering).
Market forces then move energy consumed at peak demand times toward the demand valleys. Closing the gap between min and max daily demand makes more efficient use of the grid, and that is often a more cost-effective solution than building new infrastructure.
If you live in Ontario and Quebec you already know this, since we sell most of our power to the US.
We buy your energy (not power) because you have a surplus of cheap energy. It is far from a frictionless market, but these are basic market forces at work.
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.
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.
If you lived in Ontario or Quebec you'd know that it's a retrograde punishment system. Everyone here pays a higher rate because Hydro-one screwed up so badly that they had to disband and reform it as OPG(yet keep hydro-one around for maintenance), to set the market price. The higher price, plus the "debt retirement charge" goes exactly to that.
There's no driving market force behind prices here. And ah yes, you buy power. In raw kwh's, not engery. We don't measure in electrons here.
Om, nomnomnom...
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....
I do my laundry when I'm sleeping, because my washer has a timer on it. I can cook when I'm sleeping, because I can run the crock pot overnight. And if the peak happens when the sun is up, it might encourage me to put up some solar panels.
So not only does peak-hour pricing allow me to economize, it also saves us all the cost of building a new electrical plant just to provide enough additional electricity for the peak. So peak-hour pricing saves us money in two ways.
The alternative to charging what people are willing to pay (i.e. freedom) is, as you can read in the article, rationing (not freedom).
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
If you lived in Ontario or Quebec you'd know that it's a retrograde punishment system.
I have no idea how broken your utility is, but it doesn't invalidate the concept of smart metering or TOU metering.
And ah yes, you buy power. In raw kwh's, not engery.
Nice try, but kWh is a unit of energy, not power.
Power is instantaneous. Energy is power integrated over time, and is measured in units like watthours, or kilo-watthours. Go look it up sometime.
No, starvation in those countries is caused by political problems that prevent the free market from working.
Would you put up some solar panels? Turn down the heater and wear a sweater? Turn the A/C up a couple of degrees?
But they won't pass 100% of the cost onto the consumer. Why? Because the cost increase will justify changing the way they do a few things, in order to save peak hour electricity. Maybe they'll shut down the oven during the peak period. Things like that.
Meanwhile, every electricity user will save money by not having to pay to build a new power plant just to provide enough additional electricity for the peak period.
So people will realize 100% of the benefit, while paying <100% of the cost, of peak hour pricing. This results in a net benefit.
Then we should stop subsidizing fuel.
You're only thinking from the supply side. It's a supply and demand problem, not just a supply problem.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Transformers are effectively radio transceivers. The transmitter and receiver are so close together that energy is transmitted from one to the other with high efficiency. Every transformer is wound to work at a particular frequency so when talking about big power transformers you can't just change the frequency. Having said that a lot of consumer equipment would cope fairly well. Computers, light fittings, etc are pretty tolerant. Big electric motors in factories, not so.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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!
Cripes, 25Hz? How big were their transformers?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You've just described how supply and demand prevents shortages, while claiming that it doesn't prevent shortages.
Think about it this way. Would you use less electricity if it cost more? If electricity cost enough, wouldn't it lower demand for electricity below the level of supply?
A shortage exists only when demand exceeds supply, and when that happens, it means the price is too low. Smart meters bring real-time price information to consumers, which helps reduce demand for electricity during peak times, and that eliminates the shortage.
But you can only reduce your demand up to a point. After that, you will need to pay the electricity no matter the price. Is like trying to live without air conditioners in Phoenix's summer or heaters in nordic countries at winter. You don't have choice. Even so, for the Japanese market, the least significant component of demand will be household demand; industry, transport and commercial customers have a far higher demand of electricity. That's why with the current energy shortages are many train lines stopped. If you had ever been in Tokyo, you will be aware that the city without trains will collapse, just like is happening at the moment.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
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"...
Like eBay, right? Where the final price is set based on how much you and the other bidders are willing to pay.
Well, that's exactly how smart meters work. Everyone bids on the price of electricity simply by using it, so everyone gets to help decide how much electricity ultimately costs for each time period.
But the alternative, communism, just doesn't work very well.
Not exactly. When the price is high, people will want less of it.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
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.
You're thinking of things like food. Demand for electricity is much more elastic.
Before air conditioners came to people's homes in Phoenix, people would hang wet sheets up in their windows, or they would go to the air conditioned movie theaters to cool off.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
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.
If you hook up AC sources in parallel, which is what a grid does, then a frequency difference would have the two fighting each other part of the time.
Superimpose a graph of a 50 Hz sine wave and a graph of a 60 Hz sine wave. Take note of where one is going down while the other is going up. That's not good when you're trying to re-enforce one power source with another, and who knows what kind of sum or difference frequency (heterodyning) currents will wind up causing who knows what kind of problems.
Transformers are designed for particular frequencies, and aren't very happy or efficient with anything outside of spec.
The higher the frequency the less metal you have to use in them by the way. Aircraft have been set up to use 400Hz AC for years, to enable lighter transformers. Switch-mode power supplies in computers and now in home entertainment equipment are smaller than the old "big heavy transformer feeding a rectifier assembly followed by big capacitors and maybe a big choke coil as well" type. The switch mode supplies rectify the incoming AC first, then chop the resulting high voltage DC at a much higher frequency so as to be able to use a much smaller transformer.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
No reason they couldn't if all the clocks were on their own circuit.
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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.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
>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.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Betamax is the way to go, I tell ya.
Table-ized A.I.
Your plan would only screw over poor people. Think of heating, for example: Someone who enjoys the temperature at 80 degrees indoors in their poorly insulated home, but makes money above his means, will continue to do so even when the price gets bad.
Meanwhile, you will have people living paycheck to paycheck burning newspapers in a trash barrel in their living room.
Also many people rent; they do not have the luxury of installing any fancy things like solar panels for their high rise, or even controlling their own thermostat. Landlords would either turn the thermostats to a very uncomfortable level or pass on the increased costs to the renters at the first opportunity. They have no immediate pressure (until there is legislation) to improve things; since all landlords in a geographic area would be affected equally, it would take some time before "supply and demand" pressure applies.
Raising the price is *not* the solution.
Any book on power transformer design can tell you why a transformer designed to work at 60 Hz and some voltage will be at risk of damage if run at 50 Hz and the same voltage. The problem is this: any winding of a transformer is essentially an inductor. The current through an inductor is the product of the voltage across it and the time that voltage is applied, and the magnetic field inside that inductor is proportional to the current. At the lower frequency (50 Hz) the time is longer. Magnetic circuits in power transformers can get only so strong before the magnetic material saturates, at which point the current increases VERY rapidly. The higher current means more power loss ( I^2*R ), which heats the transformer until something burns.
A huge power transformer designed to work at 50 Hz and some voltage but run at 60 Hz and the same voltage may or may not have problems (this is beyond my area of knowledge). There may be a problem with reduced skin depth at the higher frequency causing higher losses (I doubt it). There are probably higher "iron losses" in a core optimized for 50 Hz run at 60 Hz.
My educated guess is that if they have to unify the country, they should raise the frequency.
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There are better ways to provide welfare than through artificially low energy prices. When people are insulated from their costs, they have no incentive or ability to economize. THAT is what screws poor people.
When peak hour electricity prices rise high enough, why wouldn't those landlords install solar panels and charge their tenants for the electricity?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
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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My water comes from a well. In the US.
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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.
http://notanumber.net/
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?
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
IIRC, 25hz power is still available to industrial customers in Ontario, but on a very limited basis. The Sir Adam Beck station has frequency converters to supply 25hz power to Stelco in Hamilton (45 mins to 1 hour north by car) where it is used to power their blast furnaces.
The NYC subway used 25hz power for their trains supplied through power substations using rotary converters... not sure if they still do
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.
Program Intellivision!
Right. Keep telling yourself that when you're not paying for power lost over the line.
And as for screwed up you can read this:
http://www.moneyville.ca/article/956001--power-companies-paid-millions-not-to-generate-elecrtricity?bn=1
So yes it does invalidate smart metering. If you can't figure out why, then you can ask the UK why they're not walking towards mandatory blackouts.
Om, nomnomnom...
it's 1.21 jigawatts
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
When people are insulated from their costs, they have no incentive or ability to economize. THAT is what screws poor people.
What? What screws poor people is what has always screwed poor people: corporate types who rip off those who have no disposable income, and have to choose between necessities.
When peak hour electricity prices rise high enough, why wouldn't those landlords install solar panels and charge their tenants for the electricity?
Show me a landlord willing to make a major capital investment for his tenants and I'll show you a saint. Not going to happen. The reality is that rental property owners operate on fairly narrow margins (getting narrower here in my State where property taxes just keep going up, and you can only charge so much for your units.) Besides which, providing enough power to offset grid costs in any meaningful way is going to require a. a LOT of space for a LOT of solar panels, which aren't exactly cheap, plus a heavy-duty synchronized inverter and switching gear. Unless banks make cheap credit available for such investments, and assuming a reasonable payback period, there's no reason for a landlord to bother. This is not his problem.
And in the U.S., at least, most rental properties don't include electric power as part of the rent anyway: that's billed separately to the tenant by the power company. Consequently there's not motivation for a landlord to do squat in that regard. Many do include heating, but that's usually natural gas not electric.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You're thinking of things like food. Demand for electricity is much more elastic.
Before air conditioners came to people's homes in Phoenix, people would hang wet sheets up in their windows, or they would go to the air conditioned movie theaters to cool off.
Tha's ridiculous. How far back do you want to go? Caves?
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"!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Wooooosh.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You have some school-level physics revision to do: *energy* is lost from the lines. Power is an instantaneous measure of the rate of energy loss, but energy is what really matters in terms for the "paying" above.
And smart metering apart from anything else means so many things to different people that you can't possibly invalidate all of those concepts and their utilities, never mind what you think you're talking about.
I am in the UK. I have spent a little time looking at demand control of various flavours (industrial and domestic), wholesale and retail pricing, suppression of peak demand to reduce infrastructure costs, allowing more intermittent generation on to the grid, etc, etc. You simply cannot airily wave your hand and say "it's all crap." In fact it's already happening and useful and we're only arguing about how much and what form.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Yeah, eventually they'll all adopt some descendant of GSM.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Yes, but only if there's 1.21GW of power available available.
You don't understand. He wouldn't put up solar panels for the benefit of his tenants, but for the extra income.
In the same way, the energy from the solar panels would also be billed separately, at market rates, by the landlord.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
With the kind of subsidies you seem to prefer, there would be no innovation, because there would be no incentive to find cheaper sources of power, or to build more energy-efficient appliances and buildings.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
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.'"
I'm sure it worked well in spain too. Ask people there how much they're enjoying the 40c/kwh that they're paying 'on peak' in order to 'offset' the lack of proper generation.
Om, nomnomnom...
They're offsetting a completely crass centrally-subsidised energy pricing scheme which is bankrupt. You can't blame the metering for the failure for the market to be operating sensibly at all at the retail level (as I understand things).
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Yes. Yes, I am.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Cart? Horse? Cause? Effect?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
As like as america would stop using inches and miles. All the neon lights are working only in the 50 or 60Hz.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
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.