Too bad the engineers who left us with this legacy were boneheads.
Thanks for your polite and respectful contribution to the discussion.
There are 3 grids in the continental U.S...
This has nothing to do with the size of the grid.
What law of physics requires that a grid be large in order to maintain a steady voltage?
...the system is flawed.
cyotha wrote:You didn't design the system; Edison and Westinghouse did. Set up a big central power station and hook everyone into the same long-distance distribution network. Engineers since then have been refining the technology, but the basic structure was set in the early twentieth century. It was more economical for power companies, but that doesn't mean it was a better design.
MonteQuest wrote:
Laurasia, Here's my 2 cents. Using natural gas to heat water, to create steam, to turn a turbine, to generate electricity, transfer the electricity over power lines to heat water for showers or for cooking is just plain inefficient. The rules of thermodynamics results in an energy loss as heat each time the energy is transferred from one form to another. Notice that at the beginning and end we are heating water? Electric hot water heaters and electric stoves need to be replaced with natural gas or propane. I have retrofitted many of my friends homes this way. An initial capital investment sure, but you are ever more free of the grid and power failures, and you can fill the tank when you can afford it.
Power System Analysis and Design
by J. Duncan Glover, Mulukutla S. Sarma
Laurasia wrote:Thank you for your answer. That makes a lot of sense to me. I knew the UK was having problems, since they use a lot of natural gas for their power-plants (I'm worried about that, too - my mother, sister and all other family members live there); what I did not realize was that the US was now building mainly natural-gas powered plants. I know that natural gas will also have its own Hubbert's Peak, so that makes it clearer to me.
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DavidM wrote:With Natural Gas, since it is lighter than air, it has a natural tendency to push itself out of the ground and into our drilling equipment.
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