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Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com.

 

Mysteries Of The Power Grid

5:48:02 am mst / 12 March 2001 found by diana / filed in science / source ABC News 141 hits / 2 comments / 0 e-mails

The Answer Geek explains how our delicate and complex power grid works.

Let's just hope that the grid gets beefed up in the next few years. Unfortunately, the government can always be counted on to deliver substandard goods at high prices!

Comments

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Transmission lines by MysteriousStranger 3:23:52 pm mst / 12 March 2001 / # 1

My dad used to work for the Corps of Engineers in Portland, and he told me some things about the system. He'd know because he was an EE helping to design the power generator systems at the big hydro projects in the NW. There's a big transmission line which goes from The Dalles Dam (on the Columbia River) to LA, passing through Nevada (because the terrain is easier on the eastern side of the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas). When they first tried sending power down it, they started pumping power at Oregon, and nothing emerged in LA. So they shut it off and started thinking, and realized that the line was a quarter wavelength of 60 Hz long, and that they'd set up a standing wave. No power came out at LA but there were huge coronas near Reno; it's lucky they didnt melt the line. They'd turned the entire line into a big Tesla coil. They ended up having to use DC, and I gather that's pretty common on long transmission lines. --- Steven C. Den Beste

Source of UFO reports? by paul 4:31:04 pm mst / 12 March 2001 / # 2 / reply to # 1

I wonder if phenomena like that is what give rise to UFO reports from witnesses that seem credible?

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