this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Memes

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yeah you are. You can’t use electricity without it.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

From the first sentence:

[...] uses direct current (DC) for electric power transmission, in contrast with the more common alternating current (AC) transmission systems.

So, actually actually. ;)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How do you run your appliances?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I don't, I'm actually Amish. I'm writing to you from a steam powered thinking machine

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

TIL I'm an HTML developer because I'm surfing on the internet

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

The meme said they didn’t use it not that they didn’t apply it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You use HTML but don't develop in html when surfing web

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nah, I hired an electrician to handle all that for me. Now if I want electricity all I have to do is stick a plug in a socket, or flip a switch. It's way more convenient.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If the power into your house is off from 60Hz (or 50 depending on your region), an electrician isn't going to do diddly.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Neither am I cause I don't know what that means.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How could it be off frequecy at house level? Aren't the generators at the powerplants being spun at 50 or 60 times a second?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not exactly. There's a ratio of RPMs of the drive motor to the specific input of the alternator that generates the correct frequency. It depends on the way the alternator is designed (ie number of poles) that will yield the correct frequency, almost like a gear ratio, that is optimized for efficiency, and power plants have to constantly make slight adjustments to the drive motor speed the keep the frequency exact (usually done automatically within the drive control system).

I've never seen frequency be an issue in a residential system, but in theory it could happen.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It used to be common for clocks to be driven directly off the electrical frequency. The US Navel Observatory would call up generator plants and tell them to slow down or speed up a little to make a correction to all the clocks. I'm not sure if that still happens, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I've heard that trope before, same reason clocks in US schools/govt institutions were always plugged into a wall, hence these. Nowadays, NTP has rendered that obsolete.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know how it's in 60Hz regions, but here the generators are in 3 phases, 120 degrees apart. The voltage gets transformed to up to 400kV, still in 3 phases, and then down to 400V when it's distributed to peoples' homes. Then you can pull 400V 3-phase or 230V 1-phase from your wall.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's the same here, though we have varying degrees of transmission and distribution voltages via transformers and regulators. In my area, power comes into our valley from the 500kv lines through the open desert, into the valley at 33kv, and stepped down to 5kv for neighborhood distribution that the single phase 240/120v transformers tap off for the EOL.

More of what I was getting at was that generation is more or less the same across regions. Some external fuel source (whether it's diesel, natural gas, nuclear, steam, etc) does its thing to drive a rotor that's connected into an alternator which is essentially an electric motor but instead of the electric motor doing the driving, it's being driven which generates power, and the RPMs of whatever given fueled drive mechanism are not necessarily 1:1 with the alternator speed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

My understanding is that if electrical demand starts outstripping supply the sinewave can start getting badly mishapen.

From watching videos about synthesizers and playing with VCV Rack I've learned far more about waveforms than I ever did from any electrical education or research