nanog mailing list archives
Re: East Coast outage?
From: David Lesher <wb8foz () nrk com>
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 08:33:24 -0400 (EDT)
Speaking on Deep Background, the Press Secretary whispered:
Maybe a stupid question... But what if the huge distribution systems used DC and the whole thing was only converted to AC close to the users in small installations? This would get rid of the frequency problems.
True, and it's done. There are two very large DC lines in use: The Pacific Intertie, from Washington State down to Califunny A line from the Great Frozen North down to Minnesota. There's also a short tie between 2 grids; I think it strattles the Mississippi but I don't recall for sure. DC has multiple advantages, but they don't shine through until the line gets large and long. There are fixed losses in the AC->DC and DC->AC conversions you need to make up for. Plus, it's only in the last decade or so that we've had the power semiconductor technology to do the conversions well. But we've been doing AC lines for eons, so there's considerable inertia. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz () nrk com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
Current thread:
- Re: East Coast outage?, (continued)
- Re: East Coast outage? Iljitsch van Beijnum (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? Jay Hennigan (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? David Lesher (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? David Lesher (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? Michael Painter (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? hackerwacker (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? Chris Lewis (Aug 17)
- Re: East Coast outage? Chris Lewis (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? Chris Adams (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? Randy Neals (ORION) (Aug 17)
- Re: East Coast outage? David Lesher (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? Chris Lewis (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? Geo. (Aug 16)
- Re: East Coast outage? W.D. McKinney (Aug 14)
- Re: East Coast outage? Crist Clark (Aug 15)
- Re: East Coast outage? Fred Baker (Aug 14)
- Re: Microsoft to ship new versions with firewall enabled Jack Bates (Aug 14)