Interesting BATTERY article

[be80be]

I bet It still don't put out power when it cold .I have drills that have lithium ion battery in them don't work if you leave them in the truck at nite and get up and 32 deg. out side have to warm them up to about 60deg. to get them working . Oh and forget about charging them cold.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

What kind of wiring do you guys use to power an entire housing estate off the 230/400V? Seems like it would have to be pretty heavy gauge stuff.

How many transformers are used depends on how big an estate might be, larger ones would usually have more than one transformer.

As for wiring, bear in mind it's all three phase, so alternate houses are fed from alternate phases, this means there's little current in the neutral wire (as it cancels out), just the inbalance between the phases. So there's three thick phase wires, and a much thinner neutral wire.

The UK system works, and far more reliably, we don't have cascading power failures in the UK.

 

[Sceadwian]

It'll probably be a year or two before they work out a practical producible battery that uses the technology. Have to wait and see what the performance turns out to really be. And they don't answer what this does to the life expetancy of the packs.

 

[duffy]

How many transformers are used depends on how big an estate might be, larger ones would usually have more than one transformer.

Yep. I suspect there is very little difference.

The UK system works, and far more reliably, we don't have cascading power failures in the UK.

I was under the impression our cascading power failures have been from a lack of communication (or perhaps a lack of an element of socialism requiring such communication).

We have multiple power companies supplying different parts of the grid, and they each have different ways of monitoring and communicating loads to each other - badly, on some occasions, certainly, but I'm not aware of anything deficient in the overall design.

Are you saying this seemingly trivial difference in your service drop transformer arrangement leads to some miraculous protection against cascading power failure?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Yep. I suspect there is very little difference.



I was under the impression our cascading power failures have been from a lack of communication (or perhaps a lack of an element of socialism requiring such communication).

We have multiple power companies supplying different parts of the grid, and they each have different ways of monitoring and communicating loads to each other - badly, on some occasions, certainly, but I'm not aware of anything deficient in the overall design.

Are you saying this seemingly trivial difference in your service drop transformer arrangement leads to some miraculous protection against cascading power failure?

No, not the transformers, just the way the national grid is designed - failure of one section won't cascade and take more of it down.

As you say, the problems in the USA are probably due to the number of different companies involved - difficult to be otherwise due to the size of the country.

 

[be80be]

I work at a Plant where most ever thing is 460 volts even the light's we use small transformer to drop the voltage in offices to 240 and 120 volts. the only reason they used the higher voltage was the cost of the wiring you can run a 100 amp motor on 6awg