Yet every new thing we put on the grid tries to slow the generators down. They must work harder, together, to keep up the pace. But they do.
This is the miracle of the power grid.
If I could figure out how to make this into a compelling video, I would.
This is the miracle of the power grid.
If I could figure out how to make this into a compelling video, I would.
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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.
The best I could come up with was:
Picture the generator¹ side axles, and the axles of your consumers turning, connected via a transmission belt².
Add more consumer load, and the generator has to work harder, slowing down a bit. I think that works at intuitive level.
² belt for a bit of elasticity, to resemble the delays in power lines
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