ff wrote:

I remember an EE lecture in college about how they tried to assemble a
nation wide grid,
but that it was impossible to keep the whole thing in phase. IIRC, a low
frequency ripple
would start and slowly build amplitude until circuit breakers along the
line would pop.

The answer to this is to ditch AC for the grid. The only reason we use
AC is that you can use transformers to alter the voltage efficiently,
allowing high voltage long-distance links to be stepped down to
household mains.

There is talk afoot of developing huge transistors the size of
electricity substations, and thus building giant switched mode supplies,
in order to run a DC grid instead. The conversion to AC would occur in
your neighbourhood - purely for backwards compatability reasons.

Then the grid *would* behave like a gas manifold system! Replace
'voltage' with 'pressure' and 'current' with 'flow'! Feed pressure in
from the power plants, and it'll flow to where the drain is... nice and
simple :-)


Fred


ABS