Did you know that all the generators on the power grid are spinning in sync with each other? The grid has a heartbeat and each and every machine connected to it must follow the rhythm.
This includes the machines in your home! Your buzzing fridge compressor is beating in time with the same heart.
This includes the machines in your home! Your buzzing fridge compressor is beating in time with the same heart.
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(by big and powerful, I'm talking 6MW and up).
The link is high voltage DC. Due to the distance involved, this is the best way to do it.
That's a beautiful image (though I'd think your fridge has tachycardia since I'm on a 50Hz grid).
https://youtu.be/xGQxSJmadm0
But now you've made me wonder. I must resist the temptation to get the screwdrivers.
Single coil players know…
Great Britain and the island of Ireland each have their own separate grids. Sweden, Norway and Finland also share a Nordic grid, with Denmark split between the Nordic and continental networks.
There is also quite a lot of HVDC between all of these.
But with more sparks and melting.
You are such a mine of useful
Information
❤️❤️
If you want to make a video about it, the topic could be around net stability and net congestion, balancing the net with solar variation etc...
I've never heard it put so poetically before.
Happy Pedantic Sunday!
Honestly I could totally imagine some areas being a cycle behind because of speed of electricity.
The idea that the synchronous motor on the turntable was rotating in sync with the frequency of the mains supply to drive my record round. And the massive turbines at the other end. And the coal piling in on conveyors
The majesty of the whole thing
I mean, now my fridge feels like a tell-tale heart, reminding me of all the produce I've left to die alone in the dark.
"YOU WANNA SEE SOMETHING COOL?"
A national power outage sits almost at the top of the National Risk Register for seriousness of impact.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-risk-register-2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid-tie_inverter
An ac synchronous (extra powerful) clock motor spins a bank of toothed wheels that sit next to pickups.
I've never done it myself, but I've heard the semi-humorous horror stories.
You want to be really careful where you're standing for starters...
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The other one I know about was a pump station where you could switch on the generator without first shutting down and locking out incoming mains power.
After that switch turn, the station was completely electrically dead for over 6 months due to how many electrical components had to be replaced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w&list=PLTZM4MrZKfW-ftqKGSbO-DwDiOGqNmq53&index=12&pp=iAQB
This is the miracle of the power grid.
If I could figure out how to make this into a compelling video, I would.
Don't worry about the right way to do something. Worry about enjoying making it.
I'd definitely watch a video on how that works.
The only thing I can think of is to just record the video as one long free form poetry session type thing because it feels like you are already partially there.
https://youtube.com/shorts/ahhv8YRxnAA
*Unfortunately, 246 humans did not....
https://www.foxweather.com/extreme-weather/great-texas-freeze-killed-nearly-3-times-more-people-than-hurricane-harvey
The buzzing of your fridge, the motor in a garage door opener, the humming of a microwave.
You are hearing the heartbeat of the grid. And many electric motors run in sync (or near-sync) with that heartbeat.
https://youtu.be/e0elNU0iOMY
Not meant as commercial advertisement, but it's just awesome how it represents electricity in mechanical components.
Thanks, Nicky T. & Georgie W.!
Bonus points: partner with ElectroBOOM for a demonstration of what happens when they get out of sync.
My day just got better
https://bsky.app/profile/electroboom.bsky.social -
Start on a single power plant, zoom out to the city level, then slowly country. Zoom in on a single house and show the appliances pulsing.
Then add a new factory, show the rippling wave of effort, and everything syncs up.
Show's a realtime display of the frequency drift occurring in the power grid.
(This may have been removed now nearly all clocks don't work that way)
Back then nobody at home understood why it was running slow. It was simply 'broken'.
Much later I learned about 50 hz vs 60 hz grids.
If it was running slow, that might've been 220v vs 120v?
This is a description of those:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_motor
If you have a timer with a synchronous motor and the gears to divide AC frequency by 50 to count seconds, and you connect it to a 60 Hz grid, it would take 5 seconds/minutes/hours for it to count to 6.
You’re what I watch these days like in pandemic days to get good info and relax.
I used your videos to buy an EV car too!
Take a cue from Mythbusters, use the attention from a good explosion to teach people.
Believe in yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bij-JjzCa7o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0elNU0iOMY
Japan with its two frequencies is an interesting hook.
Why IBRs like wind and solar make grid stability hard to mange and why their lack of inertial energy is a problem
Westinghouse vs Edison: How AC power made long distance transmission economical.
https://youtu.be/e0elNU0iOMY
Did you know that if parts of an interconnect split off, the parts with more generation will speed up, and the parts with more load will slow down, both mechanically and electrically?
That's the part that took me the longest to realize. It's almost like a massive, nation-wide tug-of-war.
Show a pic of generator with a big bassy sound - a bassy sin wave.
Then pop in pics of other loads, and play the same sound, in same rhythm, but with different pitches according to size of load.
Eventually screen full of pics and full of sound.
In some an RC oscillator circuit at 32 khz is used for timekeeping. But, small appliances with an electric timer do count on the frequency of the grid.
Smaller scale but the grid works the same way!
And yes, it is fine and normal.
Even odds he was bringing up heat pumps even then. Been a minute since I watched it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMmUoZh3Hq4
That resistance means the generator needs to push harder to maintain the same frequency.
It's possible that we're going to end up needing some flavor of gigantic spinning masses attached to generators which serve like inertial capacitors.
IIRC it's kinda expensive and wasteful to have this phase angle shifted because grid has to send additional(passive) energy to compensate it
I think this one will do fine.
And when I saw your video I remembered that those things exist and are interesting.
https://youtu.be/uOSnQM1Zu4w?si=uahsJJgG_5haXDPX&t=284
https://youtube.com/@practicalengineeringchannel
These are the kinds of reasons I can never get behind the 'being bad is human nature' crowd, because we're capable of such amazing things! We make miracles happen, and then make them reproducible!
And juggle a lighting bolt.
While praising ode to the wonder of modern electricity. "See how far we've come."
Thata be a hoot.
For the European grid you can watch it live here https://www.mainsfrequency.com
https://youtu.be/2AXv49dDQJw?feature=shared
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGQxSJmadm0
https://youtu.be/sAV2Ft2w928?si=6tgMXsgqWTsi0pOT
Syncing to the grid on start up and then maintaining through tiny fluctuations is one thing. Maintaining synchronization when
Edit button when
Just build into the inverter a subsystem that syncs to the grid signal, then generates that signal to itself. Upon disconnect from the grid, the subsystem draws power from the solar to sustain the signal.
Backup power requires isolation by transfer switches.
The grid-tie inverters don't just do that because linesmen: It's because the ability to shed or boost power takes more electronics.
(Just like a portable generator doesn't have the ability to sync frequency, either.)
Battery systems tho...
SMA makes the sunny boy/sunny island system to do exactly that.
They had no response. I just figured they wanted to upsell batteries.
Nuclear plants run at lower temperature steam, so to compensate they often run at 1500/1800 and use a quadrupolar generator.
Non-syncronized sections of AC grids are connected via HVDC inrerconnects such as Path 65.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
This isn't an "um actually" it's just really cool to think about how the greatest machine humans ever created works.
the movie version of this should be done by that
Terrence Mallick guy
European frequency, obviously.
Years ago I worked at a building with the emergency generators. One for critical load, the other to provide enough electricity for the rest of the building.
If they didn’t sync up the second would power down for safety.
Up to the mid 70s, it was common for household clocks to plug in, and have synchronous AC motors; they kept perfect time. Battery quartz-crystal clocks replaced them.
The Euro version needed a different 240V/50Hz motor.
Can't run that from a 120->240 transformer, it will turn too fast on 60Hz.
They had a synchronous motor that turned a sync. generator with a flywheel on it, just for this purpose. Similar to below, not as big.
Presumably the clock mfrs generally had a pair of gears in the reducing train that could be swapped out for a different ratio, to cover both markets.
Thanks for sharing this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGQxSJmadm0
https://youtube.com/shorts/ahhv8YRxnAA?si=vaH1LTx0jOtHt7f9
(i.e., I reached the point all my home appliances have an inverter/VFD. Fridge, heat pump, washing machine... oh wait! the dishwasher doesn't have one!)
If they get out of sync, their output actually starts cancelling each other out.
Which is annoying in a sound, and super dangerous when electricity ^-^;
Self-sufficiency is awesome.