OT: Don't mess with my AC

We had a freak 15 min storm that took out our power for five days. No internet , TV , A/C , cook on the barby, two refridgs/freezers full... all thrown out. We have a hillside ranch with city water & sewer, so we could use the water on the upper level but not on he lower level. Over 800,000 people were out of power. One tree came down on a xformer. It shorted out and caught on fire and sending the Hi Voltage ( 5kV ) down the 240v line, destroying all the electrical panels, and whatever else was in the path. Being without power is humbling

Don

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Originally Posted by mah

Beware, Bfish, you are venturing toward the Dark Side where economists ignore the laws of physics. :inkblot-smile:

What's wrong with the electric grid? - The Industrial Physicist:emot106:

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Very informative, thanks Marshall. That puts a lot of things into perspective. Primarily;

"...the key error in the new rules was to view electricity as a commodity rather than as an essential service."

The robber barons of a century ago were novices compared to the greedy bastages that own the law today. It would seem the lesson learned from Enron was that to keep it from being a problem again we merely needed to make it legal. (Contain the rant Brad, let it pass...)

Back to frequency... My previous numbers were an understatement. Actually;

"In the Eastern Interconnect, a 30-mHz drop in frequency reduces power delivered by 1 GW."

With that in mind, it would seem that any loosening of grid frequency standards will result in the kind of grid instability that causes devastating brownouts/blackouts long before we would notice an audible error in our turntables or tape drives. ;)

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Originally Posted by donaldpatten

...Being without power is humbling

Don

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Yeah Don, it certainly is. For some reason though, I can accept the occasional outage due to trees or equipment failure, but when it happens so some Wall Street types can buy (another) vacation home I get really p'd off. :(

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Originally Posted by tomt

can't think of anything good, about this.

have one of these, most accurate clock i've owned -

eBay - Telechron GE Clock book General Electric Art Deco Shelf, Similar items search

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Yup, best clock we have, also, absolutely silent and keeps good time:
http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc...2011/07/27.jpg