Jeff Wisnia wrote:
David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 6/1/2008 1:43 PM Rod Speed spake thus:

David Nebenzahl wrote

Rod Speed wrote

Bill wrote


The clock on my range has never kept correct time, yet it keeps
running and using electricity. (Small amount, but many little
things like this can add up.)


No they cant.


Yes, they can, and do.


Nope, not with an electric range where the time you have one of the
plates on for has a MUCH more important effect on the electricity used.


The fact that the burners use a lot more electricity doesn't change
the fact that things like clocks, wall warts, etc., still use small
amounts of electricity, and when added together constitute a
significant fraction of energy usage.

The point is that if the clock isn't serving any useful purpose, then
disconnecting it to save electricity (an admittedly small amount, but
see above) is a good thing to do.



Has anyone thought about how much wasted electricity we'd be saving now
if the utilities could have forseen the eventual spike in energy cost
and used heavier conductors for their runs?

I'd expect that the added cost of the copper or aluminum needed to
reduce resistive losses in all those distribution wires by making them
thicker would get paid off pretty fast at today's fuel costs.

They generally deal with that by increasing system voltage levels and
keeping the voltage as high as possible until they reach the point of
utilization. For example the two transmission lines that come into my
area used to be 120kV and last year they increased them to 240kV.


(It's a good thing Edison didn't win out, or we'd still be distributing
electricity at 110 volts DC throughout our power systems, with even
greater transmission losses. G)

Jeff

DC high voltage transmission lines have lower losses and are less
expensive to build. They use solid state convertors at each end. 500 kV
was the max for a while and I know the Canadians have a line in service
for at least 20 years that operates at 735 kV DC and I read that the
Chinese recently started construction of a 800 kV DC transmission line.