I don't believe these internal photos are faked. While I haven't opened one of the new machines myself, I've seen the service manuals, and it matches the photos posted at kodawarisan. Very ugly though.
Where I am (Australia), the main interconnected transmission grid just ignores daylight savings (and times zones for that matter) entirely. All transmission grid operations and generation disaptch are run to "Eastern Standard Time", which doesn't change during periods of daylight savings.
In states or regions of the grid that don't use this particular time zone, the clock on the wall just doesn't agree with "system time". The operators get used to it pretty quickly.
These devices don't have much to do with the recent US blackouts. They are intended to help manage high short circuit currents in electricity transmission and distribution networks.
As electricity transmission networks grow larger and more interconnected, the current that flows following a short circuit also grows. The maximum level of this short circuit current is a critical parameter when selecting circuit breakers, as all circuit breakers you have must be rated to interrupt the highest possible level of short circuit current that can occur. As transmission networks get larger, eventually you begin reaching circuit breaker short circuit ratings, and the fun begins. You can either start wholesale replacement of your circuit breakers at around $100-200k each, depending on the voltage, or you start splitting up your transmission network to reduce maximum short circuit currents.
What the devices in this article are intended to do reduce short circuit currents, without affecting normal load current. Under normal load conditions they will behave as a super conductor, but under fault current conditions they will rapidly revert to a high resistance, and hence reduce to fault currents to within circuit breaker ratings.
Unfortunately the 'liquid nitrogen' aspect of them makes them impractical for real world, large-scale use. Power transmission equipment routinely has uptimes measured in years (recent blackouts excepted of course), and until room temperature, uncooled superconductors come along, I believe this technology is unlikely to be more than an academic curiosity.
One of the power distribution businesses here in Melbourne Australia - http://www.citipower.com.au/environment/rooftop.ht m has a scheme running where you can get a heavily subsidised 2-2.5kW solar setup on your roof feeding a grid interactive inverter. These systems feed power into the grid if you are generating more than you use, and will literally spin your meter backwards at these times.
At the moment they will pay you the same rate for the power you generate as the power they sell you, but this is only really for simplicity for the pilot scheme, and ultimately will use a more sophisticated meter that would use different rates in each direction.
No battery backup, so if the grid goes you only have what you can generate at the time, but this does remove most maintenance problems. Not really economical without significant subsidies
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I don't believe these internal photos are faked. While I haven't opened one of the new machines myself, I've seen the service manuals, and it matches the photos posted at kodawarisan. Very ugly though.
According to the service manual, no diagnostic LEDs on the motherboard.
Where I am (Australia), the main interconnected transmission grid just ignores daylight savings (and times zones for that matter) entirely. All transmission grid operations and generation disaptch are run to "Eastern Standard Time", which doesn't change during periods of daylight savings.
In states or regions of the grid that don't use this particular time zone, the clock on the wall just doesn't agree with "system time". The operators get used to it pretty quickly.
These devices don't have much to do with the recent US blackouts. They are intended to help manage high short circuit currents in electricity transmission and distribution networks.
As electricity transmission networks grow larger and more interconnected, the current that flows following a short circuit also grows. The maximum level of this short circuit current is a critical parameter when selecting circuit breakers, as all circuit breakers you have must be rated to interrupt the highest possible level of short circuit current that can occur. As transmission networks get larger, eventually you begin reaching circuit breaker short circuit ratings, and the fun begins. You can either start wholesale replacement of your circuit breakers at around $100-200k each, depending on the voltage, or you start splitting up your transmission network to reduce maximum short circuit currents.
What the devices in this article are intended to do reduce short circuit currents, without affecting normal load current. Under normal load conditions they will behave as a super conductor, but under fault current conditions they will rapidly revert to a high resistance, and hence reduce to fault currents to within circuit breaker ratings.
Unfortunately the 'liquid nitrogen' aspect of them makes them impractical for real world, large-scale use. Power transmission equipment routinely has uptimes measured in years (recent blackouts excepted of course), and until room temperature, uncooled superconductors come along, I believe this technology is unlikely to be more than an academic curiosity.
One of the power distribution businesses here in Melbourne Australia - http://www.citipower.com.au/environment/rooftop.ht m has a scheme running where you can get a heavily subsidised 2-2.5kW solar setup on your roof feeding a grid interactive inverter. These systems feed power into the grid if you are generating more than you use, and will literally spin your meter backwards at these times.
At the moment they will pay you the same rate for the power you generate as the power they sell you, but this is only really for simplicity for the pilot scheme, and ultimately will use a more sophisticated meter that would use different rates in each direction.
No battery backup, so if the grid goes you only have what you can generate at the time, but this does remove most maintenance problems. Not really economical without significant subsidies