Ask me about industrial electricity 2: electric boogaloo

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about industrial electricity 2: electric boogaloo

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Tellara posted:

A lot of the linked videos and posts in this thread talk about "VA"s which I assume is volts * amperes. Don't we call those watts (W)? Or am I confused?

Maybe it's just tradition to talk about volt-amps instead?

They're different. Volt-Amps are the product of RMS voltage and RMS current and measure the apparent power.

# ¿ Sep 5, 2011 00:46

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:04

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

TerryLennox posted:

An electric thread! I salute all electric engineers and technicians, you guys got real balls to work in that field.

I am an electronic engineer myself so I don't work with anything higher than 120v (not that it isn't dangerous).

I have a few questions related to residential power so if it is off topic let me know.

Why would a power bill increase monthly by 10% in less than 6 months?

Basically, our power bill has skyrocketed. I live with my dad and we both work full time so we are less than 12 hours at home each day. Yet we have seen our power bill go up 10~20% each month on this year.

I am aware we are running two ACs at night (non-inverters) but what worries me is the climb in our bill. We have 3 PCs running intermittently (they go to sleep mode when we are not using them) but most of the day, there is no one home to use that much power. Recently my brother has come to live with us and as a pilot, his work schedule is kind of irregular and he is a heavy sleeper so my AC is probably being used 12 hours a day. Is that the only cause of the power increase? Is there a way to calculate our power usage?

We are thinking of investing about 1200 to get new ACs (those Gen 2 beauties that claim to save up to 60% of a regular AC power usage) but is there something else we should check?

It's not unusual for usage to double in the summer. Can you compare the bills to the same months from last year?

# ¿ Sep 8, 2011 21:56

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

230 delta vs 208 wye: What are the pros and cons of each and how do you decide which is better for a particular installation?

# ¿ Sep 13, 2011 18:22

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Ibsen posted:

Take the Honda Portable Generator and all of the other listed equiptment and go out and hunt for a green base. Make sure it is one on the ground or hanging at head level from a pole, not the huge ones at the top of telephone poles. Open it up with anything convienent, if you are two feeble that gently caress don't try this. Take a look inside... you are hunting for color-coordinating lines of green and red. Now, take out your radio shack cord and rip the meter thing off. Replace it with the voltage meter about. A good level to set the voltage to is about 1000 volts. Now, attach the voltage meter to the cord and set the limit for one thousand. Plug the other end of the cord into the generator. Take the phone jack and splice the jack part
off. Open it up and match the red and green wires with the other red and green wires. NOTE: If you just had the generator on and have done this in the correct order, you will be a crispy critter. Keep the generator off until you plan to start it up. Now, sauder those lines together carefully. Wrap duck tape or insultation tape around all of the wires. Now, place the remote control right on to the startup of the generator. If you have the long pole, make sure it is very long and stand back as far away as you can get and reach the pole over. NOTICE: If you are going right along with this without reading the file first, you sill realize now tHat your area code is about to become null! Then, getting back, twitch the pole/remote control and run for your drat life. Anywhere, just get away from it. It will be generating so much electricity that if you stand to close you will kill yourself. The generator will smoke, etc. but will not stop. You are now killing your area code, because all of that energy is spreading through all of the phone lines around
you in every direction.

From: http://www.phreak.de/infos/english/blotobox.txt - Were these guys crazy or what?

Eight year olds, dude.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2011 05:29

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Frozen Horse posted:

That's a very interesting video. How do current-limiting breakers and fuses work? As I understand it, a regular fuse is a length of wire made of a low-melting alloy with sufficient resistance so that it will melt due to resistive heating above its rated current. Other added tricks involve the wire being under spring tension to widen the gap rapidly to prevent arcing. What gets added to give it magic current-limiting powers? If it's just a 1-ohm resistor in series, I'm going to be disappointed.

They just work faster. All "current limiting" means, in the context of breakers and fuses, is that they interrupt the circuit and extinguish the arc within 1/2 of a cycle from the beginning of the fault.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2011 04:28

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

On the topic of load leveling, is compressed air energy storage still a thing? We got a brief mention of it being researched while in high school but I've never heard if it panned out.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2011 06:24

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

If you've ever wondered how long it takes to boil the inside of a tree at 33kV, wonder no more!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IGOsDBlP0s

# ¿ Mar 29, 2012 08:33

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

I believe it's the power input, and 500MW Peak is also what it says in the introduction so yeah the labels are screwed up. Take a look at the chart on page 17, it settles into a nice steady 300MW consumption for 7-10 minutes at a time.

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 02:20 on May 5, 2012

# ¿ May 5, 2012 02:17

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Three-Phase posted:

The thing is that it's possible to prevent the grid from completely becoming overwhelmed by doing things like rolling blackouts and brownouts. What's bad is if something unexpected happens when the system is already very stressed.

Like having effectively a Cat-1 hurricane blast through the Ohio River valley and DC with 3 to 4 hours warning at best?

# ¿ Jun 30, 2012 19:16

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

schmuckfeatures posted:

Can you tell me what the hell happens in this video? It looks like they're trying to disconnect a breaker which arcs to earth, right? Shame about the quality, but it sounds pants-shittingly terrifying.

Yep! Better question: How the gently caress is that guy alive?

# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 05:04

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Is just walking up to the thing with 1000s of volts running through and flipping the switch how this normally works or just a"lol, eastern Europe" procedure? Obviously that huge arc flash isn't supposed to happen but given the possibility that it could wouldn't it be wise to use a 100 foot long stick and some PPE?

# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 23:11

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Nerobro posted:

He does commercial power installs for a living. Working with high power electrical systems is literally what he does.

He flipped out and deleted his old videos because people didn't understand that he IS THE EXPERT and knows what he's doing. He even understands where what he's doing will cause things like say.. spontaneous x-ray generation and the like.

Most of what he does involves very, very high currents, more than very, very high voltages. Which mitigates the risk somewhat. Unless you're going out of your way to provide low resistance paths to either side of your heart, you're not going to have a heart stopping experience around a couple volts. Big sparks, lots of fun magnetics, hot things, sure. But nothing worse than working around an engine.

I know who you're talking about about and he's awesome, I was asking about the crazy Russian guy in the post above mine who walked up to a live transmission line and did... something.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2012 22:13

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Three Olives posted:

So what's the deal here? I thought electricity was an all or nothing type thing but when I got home everything was working fine. Any idea what actually happened here? Can a transformer just kind of blow and gently caress up your electricity in a way that made some stuff work and others not or act weird? And why were they replacing everything on the pole that just has wires running down into the ground including stuff like insulators?

You were experiencing a brownout, where the voltage coming in is lower than it's supposed to be. Those can be caused by trees contacting the power line and creating a path for electricity to flow to the ground, effectively "leaking" electricity and lowering the "electricity pressure" to your apartment. If they were replacing that entire pole, it's possible one of the insulators had failed or something else about the pole was grounding the line.

# ¿ Jul 11, 2013 00:38

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

DC clamp meters are indeed a thing

# ¿ Sep 17, 2013 22:06

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

I spend my days at work standing on a stainless oil catch pan and grate decking that's two feet from the back of some switchgear which is bigger than my kitchen. Am I likely to be exploded horribly?

# ¿ Mar 24, 2015 09:04

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

TheFargate posted:

If its a metal clad switchgear you're OK, if not you better stay further away. Do you have any idea what voltage its running?

I finally walked around the other side and looked at the nameplate today, it's a 1MVA 4160>540 transformer.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 01:42

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Siemens claims to have crammed a 350HP electric motor into a 100 lb package.
http://www.siemens.com/press/en/feature/2015/corporate/2015-03-electromotor.php

# ¿ Apr 29, 2015 17:21

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

4160 rules errthing around me
VAREAM get the current
mega mega watts yall

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 07:44

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

I can't understand what made all the gibs stick to the intake cowling

# ¿ Feb 2, 2017 23:36

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

So today in the greatest moment of inexplicable retardation of my entire life, I managed to cause an arc flash while sitting at my cube. Preparing to test a rail- mount 24v power supply at my desk, I plugged my power cable with the bare leads for screw- terminal devices into the wall before connecting it to the equipment being tested.

Don't be a goofus. It can happen to you.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 21:40

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

Lost in all the insanity coming out of the white house today, Santee Cooper and SCE&G are abandoning the AP1000 reactor projects in South Carolina.

$14 Billion USD says what

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 05:18

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

SeaBass posted:

Some contractors found this fine piece of work the other day.

480?

# ¿ Aug 24, 2017 23:55

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:04

shame on an IGA: Apr 8, 2005

unknown posted:

I got asked a couple of questions last night about a situation that a friend of the family was having in regards to their business and their local electrical inspector who came by as they were finishing up replacing the lights in their new office space. The company builds highly specialised scientific gear ($1-10mil devices), which requires obviously very specialised electrical gear.

Evidently the inspector came, and all the standard work they did (lighting - they replaced florescent lighting with led because the ballasts gave off too much electrical noise) and that part was fine.

Then the inspector saw the scientific gear and went nuts.

Demanded things like replacing AC/DC inverters (<.0001% noise) with "industry standard" ones (~10% noise), wire coils that do EM/gravitational counter measures must be encased in steel conduit (making them completely useless) and fun things like that.

And then left when he starting arguing with the dozen or so (accredited) engineers on site without signing off on the work permit (ie: lighting change) - so there's now a lovely impasse happening. Also, the inspector is actually an outsourced agency from the municipality, so every time they (try to) talk to them, they get a bill for like $500.

Anyone run into stuff like that and have any advice I can pass on? (The company is based out of Ontario/Canada.)

The only thing I could come up with was to get the scientific gear to be "out of scope" to the inspector so he couldn't comment on it. Is it possible that the electrical engineers on site can do sign offs?

Make a loving lot of noise with the elected officials about moving to a J with a different AHJ

E: Maybe things are different in Canada but here in the states industrial machinery is covered by an entirely seperate codebook, NFPA 79, and you either demonstrate a safety management program and engineering capability to participate in a self-certification program, or point to a UL / TÜV / other NRTL certification sticker on the equipment and tell the inspector to gently caress off

shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Oct 24, 2017

# ¿ Oct 24, 2017 20:30

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