There was a little cartoon on the small bulletin board by my advisor's door.
It was a little shack, not much more than an outhouse really. A sign on it read, "Dinkyville Power Company." There as a wire leading from an insulator on the wall up to a large power line. There was also smoke curling out of the window.
A speech ballon also emanated from that window. It said,
"I guess we shouldn't have tried to hook up to the grid 180 out."
Ever since the first AC grid, nobody could hook an alternator up to it without being very close in phase and in open circuit voltage,without hilarity ensuing. Think fractional degrees and fractional volts. Very early on, interlock circuits were applied to prevent it. Later, of course, automatic systems were developed with the same safeguards.
But are they now talking about eliminating these phasing and voltage safeguards.
Never did understand 3-phase power... or why we have it.