Posted on 07/05/2011 10:09:34 AM PDT by Dick Bachert
See the update, which answers a question about DC connected main lines below this report. The entire premise of my report is based on the fact that you cannot run multiple frequencies simultaneously on the grid without separating it into sections and running them separately. That is what the AP report clearly implies when it says that clocks will run faster and slower in various regions. ____________________________________________________________________________
A recent AP report states that there is a proposal in place to change the frequency various parts of the national electrical grid run at. The frequency differences will be minor, but will force an end to the national grid as we know it. The only way frequencies can be different at all in separate locations around the nation is to not have a grid at all.
They are attempting to childishly play this down as something that will mess up clocks. But what it really means is that they are going to dismantle the national power grid entirely.
And now I will dissect and shred this article
First of all, they are saying that this is going to be a "year long experiment". It won't be. Since dismantling the grid amounts to an act of war, once it is dismantled we will not get it back. This "experiment" is exactly what you would want to do to a nation as a pre-emptive measure before attacking it. When destroying a nation, the basics have to go. You need to destroy the water, electrical, and food supplies to force people to surrender. By running different frequencies in different parts of the grid,the laws of physics clearly dictate that it has to be run in sections, all isolated from each other.
Many readers know that one of the strengths of the internet is it's distributed data paths, which make it very difficult to take down. If a line gets cut, you can just re-route through a different line, and all is well. Our interconnected power grid, which has been in place and running synchronously with perfect phase and frequency matching across it's entireity since 1930, is an electrical equivalent of the internet, and is a marvel of the world.
Our intact electrical grid will feed power to areas that have lost it, and keep their lights on. So let's say a hurricane takes out Louisiana and all their generating facilities are damaged - the grid will provide power from Texas to help them get back on their feet. If you want to knock out power in a war, you would need to isolate Louisiana FIRST so that Texas could not feed them after you destroyed their infrastructure. This is the only truthful reason why anyone would suggest dismantling one of our greatest national treasures.
We have in America a system which would allow Hoover dam to provide power to Boston. But those days have to end before an experiment like the one this article discusses can even happen. Here is why:
The article states: "The group that oversees the U.S. power grid is proposing an experiment would allow more frequency variation than it does now without corrections, according to a company presentation obtained by The Associated Press".
Here they say they will allow "more frequency variation". Well, that means that after most of a century of having zero frequency variation, that there will now be frequency variation. America's power grid has been perfectly synchronized since 1930 and has never varied by more than 1/10th of a cycle (1/600th of a second) from coast to coast in over 80 years. This is due largely to the fact that the grid causes generating facilities to lock into each other, and mimic each other's phasing exactly. Any deviation in any one facility against the predominant phasing of the grid will cause it to lose efficiency and in extreme cases be destroyed.
To say they will allow "MORE frequency variation" is a lie, because it implies there WAS frequency variation. THERE NEVER WAS, EVER. That is why clocks have used the grid frequency as a reference for 4 generations.
Folks, you cannot have any frequency variation on an interconnected electrical grid. This is because our 60 hz AC is a rising and falling wave form which goes from negative to positive 60 times a second. Negative and positive ALWAYS have to line up. If you deviate from a 60 hz frequency by even 0.001 hz on only one part of the grid, all it will take is ten seconds for that variation in frequency to cause it to begin rising and falling opposite to the rest of the grid. That would represent a positive to negative electrical short right from within the fabric of the grid itself. So there is no such thing as a "slightly faster running grid" out east, it's a bold faced lie completely counter to the laws of physics.
HERE IS ANOTHER LIE TO SHRED:
"The North American Electric Reliability Corp. runs the nation's interlocking web of transmission lines and power plants."
No they don't. No one company manages the grid. It is managed via cooperation and understanding of the laws of physics. This company is merely now the face of the lie. The fact that they have a long history has been SHREDDED by this proposal of theirs, buisnesses come and go, and these people need to head on out the door.
I myself have had to make calls for power allocations to avoid regional black-outs when demand was predicted to be high, and I certainly never called these folks! I just called the facility feeding us and THEY handled it. If they could not handle it, they had the power routed from another area. So for the North American Electric Reliability Corp. to say they manage it all is quite a statement! How do we know they are not a front company, set up as a bogus pre-paid corporation with a purchased "history"? I have a LOT of experience, and NEVER HEARD OF THEM.
And now the math, which proves them liars. Here is how you prove that the real goal is to dismantle the grid.
Their claim was that they wanted an allowed deviation of 20 minutes per year on one coast in comparison with the opposite coast. So let's take 20 minutes and multiply it by 60 seconds. That's 1200 seconds. Then divide that by days in a year (365) which will give you 3.287 seconds of deviation PER DAY. Take that number and divide it by hours (24) and that gives you a deviation of 0.136 seconds per hour. Divide that by 60 minutes and the deviation is 0.0022826 seconds per minute. Divide that by 60 again. That gives you a deviation of 0.000038 seconds per second. Now MULTIPLY that by your cycles PER SECOND, which is 60. Right back to 0.0022826 phase difference per second.
Now here is where it gets interesting. Let's say I am running a 600,000 volt line. Since the frequency we are dealing with is 60 Hz, it fits perfectly into the equation. Multiply 0.0022826 as a representation of percentage by 600,000 volts. AC has a positive and negative cycle which effectively doubles that rate, for a total of 0.0045652% per second. Multiply that by 600,000 volts, and the voltage creep equals 2739 volts per SECOND. The math is pretty simple from there. One minute (60 seconds) x 2,739 volts will equal a 164,347 volt difference in phasing between interconnected coasts per minute. Major problems will happen within 15 seconds. Total phase desynchronization will occur in a little under three minutes.
This serves to prove that no frequency deviation at all can be tolerated in an interconnected grid and that this agency - the so called "North American Electrical Reliability Corp" is lying out their butt in this news release and therefore can only have been usurped by either paper trained idiots or an enemy that wants an end to the American power grid, because allowing "frequency variation" can mean only that. The AP article should finish them, OUT OF BUSINESS.
The bottom line? The American power grid, at no time ever in the last 80 years has ever been out of synchronization, by more than 0.001 second total per year coast to coast. The laws of physics will not allow it. We cannot allow ANYONE to disconnect our grid. 20 minutes a year would not cut it in tuvalu! Not even 1/60th of 1 second would. It is a mathematical impossibility to have ANY deviation on an interconnected grid.
And it gets worse . . . . .
When it comes to phase correlation, momentum can be the enemy.
The generators at electrical facilities are ENORMOUS. People may not realize how big they really are. Large electrical facilities need to be spun up before going online, it takes a long time to get the enormous mass of the generator moving and stabilized, sometimes even hours. Even modest generators are so big that the spinning mass can weigh hundreds of tons, and surface speeds of the armatures can be over 100 MPH. That's a LOT of speed on a LOT of mass. The massive size of these generators helps them be perfectly stable when running. There is so much momentum built up in a large industrial generator that even enormous peak draws from it can be soaked up without it being perceptibly slowed by the peaks at all.
If an enemy was running the government then, and people were happy to have frequencies changed for no good reason at all, electrical "tug of wars" between generators could be set up under the premise of "oops" to destroy them. Breaker disconnects under such situations are often unsuccessful due to contacts getting welded. I have seen problems happen in even tiny one megawatt units, where a controller malfunctioned and dropped them onto the same line when their phasing was only off by a fraction of a percent. One was going very slightly ahead the other, so it drove the other to go faster while the other slowed it down. The over-reactions were extreme; they ponged each other's speed up and down and the accelerations/decelerations were enormous, taking place within fractions of a second. I fully expected the windings to explode. I was blown away by how extreme their behavior was.
Even a pair of small generators can be caused to totally freak out from an initial phasing difference that is very minor. This problem would be greatly exacerbated in a power play between multiple enormous generators. Electrical explosions would no doubt result, in the case I witnessed, they both got the right bounce within a couple seconds and stabilized. It was a brief and exciting event. Things are normally not so lucky and the answer is obvious - If you want no problems in the electrical grid, a perfect standard frequency should be the norm, as it always has been for over 80 years.
However, if you were an enemy in posession of a virus like Stuxnet, a non-interconnected grid with all the switch gear from when it was previously connected still in place to play with could be lots of FUN!. To blow out two regions at the same time, all you would have to do is activate switch gear that is already in place from the old grid when both regions are out of phase with each other. Doing so would cause serious damage to equipment in both regions.
Want to blow a nuclear reactor? Here's a good way to try! SUDDENLY and without announcement, introduce a frequency difference on the grid. Suddenly that nuke plant would be forced to deal with a rapid phase inversion on the grid. With all the stored momentum in the generators available for a nice peak surge output, thousands and thousands of times higher than anything they could ever handle if suddenly the coupled phases were inverted, there would be at a minimum enormous explosions in the circuit breakers and switch gear, and most likely enormous explosions from within the generator windings themselves.
Suddenly, with the windings and switch gear blown in an instant, there would be nothing left to load the generator, which needs to be held back from accelerating by the electrical system it is feeding power into. You would get a brief period of rapid acceleration before safety shutoffs re-routed steam from the generator's turbines to an emergency bypass. Things would get sketchy after this. YOU NEED TO GET RID OF THAT STEAM.
At a minimum, safety valves should open on the reactor or whatever else (coal fired boiler) to release the sudden steam pressure buildup resulting from the turbine steam not being needed anymore. If the system was infected with Stuxnet, (85 percent of our power generating facilities can be) and Stuxnet was programmed to over ride the emergency steam release valves as was the case at Fukushima, things WILL explode. Said explosions would not be minor. The worst possible case scenario would be a nuclear reactor which was running at full output suddenly not having it's steam be needed anymore, be kept at full thermal output by a virus that also forces all the safety related equipment to not activate.
Clandestine military action is the only reason any thinking engineer would want to suggest acceptance of variances in the grid frequency. There is no possible way to derive any sort of benefit from not keeping the frequency dead on, as it has always been.
But it gets worse, even
Every motor powered device depends upon the grid frequency to regulate how hard it runs itself. All of the design characteristics involving material stress and current draw are centered around an always reliable 60 hz frequency. If the frequency was increased to 70 hz, swamp coolers would burn up from trying to run too fast, as would air conditioners, washing machines, ect. The amount they are talking about in the article would not be that high, but I believe it is the end goal and introducing the concept of tampering with the frequency is like a toe dip to see if there are any pihranas out in the public sphere to look out for while they slowly weaponize the power grid. I will happily provide the first bite. What if they choose 90 hz? 100hz? Not much would survive that, and whatever did would not be the same anymore. Welcome to the third world.
Here is a great quote to rip, this is an outright lie
Some parts of the grid, like in the East, tend to run faster than others. Errors add up. If the grid averages just over 60 cycles a second, clocks that rely on the grid will gain 14 seconds per day, according to the company's presentation."
There is zero frequency variation on the grid between east and west coasts. It is physically impossible for them to vary by even 1/10th of a cycle (1/600th of a second) per year. ANY drift will cause immediate phase cancellation with other parts of the grid resulting in immediate grid failure. The entire grid HAS TO go up or down SIMULTANEOUSLY. There is NO SUCH THING as a frequency variation in relation to another connected area.
This entire report is such a bold faced stream of BS and lies, I am blown away to think they would ever consider trying. This is downright brazen
I know many readers believe the end is near for this nation. Proposals like this prove it. Even worse is the attitude of AP. Did they not consult anyone who actually knew what this would do, other than the enemy? Are THEY the enemy?
They will do this if we do not speak up. If you want this nation to have a future, I strongly suggest you make it perfectly clear that the GRID IS NOT TO BE TAMPERED WITH.
UPDATE:
These comments are in response to people who e-mailed me telling me the grid was now running DC, which would, if true, make my main premise irrelevant.
My response follows
I know that on many of the big transmission lines they are indeed using DC on VERY LONG RUNS of 400 miles or more because it allows higher RMS throughput and minimizes inductive losses, but it is not always the case. None of the big lines in my area are that way, and AC distribution is still so predominant that playing with frequencies on a grid as great as ours is the equivalent of handing a ferarri over to a tinkering teenager. I will not budge on my major premise, that phase conflict issues will indeed force the grid to operate in isolated pockets if an experiment with different AC frequencies is allowed, and that anyone who is suggesting it should be allowed to run with frequency variations should be the subject of GREAT scrutiny and suspicion.
How much of the grid, exactly, uses DC/inverter arrangements? VERY LITTLE. And it is ALL on remotely situated lines of enormous length. You will find few of these types of lines if ANY east of the Rockies. These are mostly in the desert southwest. East of the rockies, where long runs are not needed, whether or not DC will save you money has to be calculated against cost of equipment and losses of power in that equipment. Rectifiers and inverters do not run with perfect efficiency, there are losses and if those losses add up to more than what the AC inductive losses over a stretch of line would be it makes no sense at all to use them. Furthermore, if an arc ever starts on a DC line, there HAS TO be a short power outage to extinguish it. AC lines self extinguish in one cycle automatically.
Despite a few people saying DC makes my suspicions irrelevant, upon checking for recent technology changes I found I am completely correct and I am not budging on my main premise - that there is no rational reason to tamper with the grid frequency.
Also:
Phasing is everything. Get more than 30 degrees before or behind the phase and you are toast. If you do not understand why frequency matters, stay off the subject. It's not a matter of ideal or not ideal, it's a matter of POOF!. You may think you are doing a service by going around telling people I am full of BS, but it is very common for electricians to not understand what functions frequency performs and it is beyond virtually all of them to understand that you cannot have two dominant frequencies from different sources on the same line without encountering severe problems.
Frequency matters a LOT MORE THAN VOLTAGE, INFINITELY MORE because excess voltage does not go on a continuously proceeding march forward. A high voltage on a line will stay where it is, but a different frequency will walk forward on a phase until it lands directly opposite. Things will trip out long before that happens. Any frequency deviation between two signal sources will put one source wave form negative to the other source positive very rapidly. A full phase misalignment will represent an RMS voltage difference between both sources that is TWICE the RMS voltage of each source if they are the same voltage to begin with, and they are 180 out from each other. Yes I know 3 phase is 120 degrees per phase but I was not all too excited about trying to explain three phase power in an article mostly read by people who do not deal with electricity.
I have seen countless electricians mistake harmonics for "frequency variation" and then run around saying the place runs on "70 HZ!". Harmonics can be pesky, but they are NOT the root frequency, and if your meter is telling you there is 70 hz on a 60 hz line, there is either a severe overspeed on your generator or you are picking up a harmonic. Suspect a harmonic. Meters will often do that, and it has nothing to do with root frequency. Not understanding this is very common among average electricians.
My reference was for single phase AC because I did not want to try to explain 3 phase power to average people. My report was not written for electricians, it needs to hit the masses to make a difference.
I am dead right about inverted phases and frequency creep, interconnected systems have to hit the EXACT SAME FREQUENCY DEAD ON, even being off a fraction of a percent will quickly be the equivalent of shorting opposite phases.
Leading the phase and lagging the phase DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A FREQUENCY DIFFERENCE. Lots of places might try pushing the phase to get more power out or correct a lagging power factor. That is not the same thing as producing a different frequency altogether. That is something I did not put in the report because it is far too complex for average people but I know there are plenty of electricians out there who actually think that pushing the phase requires you to run at a higher frequency; it does not. It changes the shape of the ouput wave form unless too many power facilities do it simultaneously, and then they all go up together, there is NEVER a "different" frequency on the grid in one location in relation to another. The entire premise of this report is that there can never be two different root frequencies present on the grid. It is not possible to have that happen, and if the East ever does run up to a different frequency it will require being disconnected from other parts of the grid which are running slower. On an interconnected grid that should not happen, it should all stay at the exact same frequency between interconnected regions. The AP report clearly states that they want DIFFERENT FREQUENCIES ON THE SAME GRID. THAT CANNOT HAPPEN UNLESS REGIONS ARE NOT CONNECTED.
I am sure there are a few who will comment about the fact that capacitors are used to correct a lagging power factor, but there are many ways to do it. Capacitors are ONE WAY to correct lagging power factors but when it comes to heavy duty correction, they are lacking compared to running a synchronous motor with an over excited field or a generator dedicated to pushing the lag forward. Linemen do not come across anything other than capacitors. There are other ways.
And even if short distribution lines were running isolated regions by inverter only, For what reason would we have to accept frequency inaccuracies amounting to 14 seconds a day? Cheap dollar store watches can hit that accuracy, so what plausible reason could be offered to support accepting it when any inverter used on a distribution line would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars? Can't put a $30 part in it to keep the frequency to within a half second a day? HOGWASH! They ALL have the ability to output very accurately. Nowadays we should be demanding a MORE ACCURATE GRID FREQUENCY, if it could be done; IT CANNOT.
Don't allow scammers to "fix" what is not broken!
And here's a aspect of this PLOT that the author sort of hid between the lines: If these TRAITORS do succeed in sectioning the country into smaller, unconnected and UNCONNECTABLE, stand alone grids, it would make it easy for Obozo or some future tyrant to quell an uprising by angry citizens by shutting off their power for a few months or until they surrendered. Given our dependence on electric power, life would get pretty miserable.
If you fail to get up to speed on -- and SHARE -- this one, you'll most likely find yourself shivering or roasting in the dark until your canned food runs out and you have to start collecting rain water and shooting squirrels in the back yard, dying in the local hospital because they ran out of diesel for the emergency geny, etc., etc. -- or you surrender and resume your life as a good little serf.
Paranoid? Perhaps. But if you don't think the present criminal crew in D.C. is capable of this, you simply haven't been paying attention to what they've already pulled off with nary a whimper from the citizenry.
You a sparky?
I quit here, since it is clear the writer didn't do his homework. There are 3 grids in the continental US - Eastern, Western, and Texas. No significant amount of power can be transferred from the Texas grid to either of the other two, or the other way around.
We need to isolate nuclear facility control systems from the internet, so that they can’t be infected by viruses, if we haven’t done so already.
Most digital devices these days have universal power supplies 90 - 240VAC, 50 - 69Hz so that you can have sales in the US 120/60 europe 240/50 and Japan 90/60.
Although it can be fun to tell a Democrat with an Analog watch that the line frequency varies and they should check their watch several times a day. Yes the watch has nothing to do with Line power but it’s a great judge of their stupidity.
Oops 60Hz
The author is an ALLCAPS fruitcake. He is NOT an EE....or at least not much of one. I couldn’t bear to even skim much of it, but he doesn’t even seem to grasp that voltage and current at any given point are not always exactly in phase, either.
What’s the frequency, Kenneth?
The strange thing is the Political effect, It would indeed give control of power grids to the Feds. All this freq mismatch would have to be carefully controlled, and where there is control, there is political power.
As it is now, the control is set to the need to provide electrical power not political power. Everyone syncs to each other, the goal is to get and receive power. There is no technical advantage to degrade power-line sync or freq, there is indeed quite a lot of reasons we worked hard in the 1930’s to overcome that very problem.
If this article is true, is shows a very concerted political effort to destroy the infrastructure of the Nation. Something like discovering you have an axe murderer as a nursery school superintendent, and he is demanding a raise in salary with your daughter on his knee.
This statement, even thoguh made out of ignorance, is false.
There are small amounts of variation constantly that is why an army of technicians is at work constantly making corrections. The only requirement being that there should be no cummulative variations over a 24-hour period.
Incidentally, I am of the opinion than non-synchronized networks are a good thing. In addition, why would we want to feed New York in case their system crashes? Let them take it up with their Congressmen.
heh heh heh!
Voltage Regulators and control of MVARS are essential for line stability and are done regionally and by system. If one group (of generators or transmission lines) threatens the stability, they are already cut off by breakers to prevent instability. So far our system of automatic relays and breakers have done a wonderful job of protecting both the generator side and the transmission side. For me, for them to screw with this now is very very suspicious to me.
FYI, this just in from a friend to whom I sent this piece. It would seem to buttress the argument that, unconnected, non-synchronous systems ARE or COULD be used in the manner I mentioned.
“My wife and I spent a year in China - and, at times, when the students got out of hand and protested about their school conditions (with every right to do so) the water - and/or electricity - was purposely shut off. If you have never seen school toilets with mounds of shit drawing flies in the middle of monsoon summer, it is a sight - and smell -to behold. It tends to shut down protests in fairly short order.”
And, yes, portions of the current system CAN be selectively cut out (city blocks, subdivisions, individual streets, etc. BUT, with non-synchronous systems abutting one another, connecting to another is not possible.
If you don’t think this crowd is fully capable of doing this, by all means vote for them — again.
Like the man said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Maybe we need a few more?
I work more on the process control side than the power distribution side. That said, the lead and lag in phase from a generating station is not that much. There is a great deal of finesse involved, where the 60Hz reference frequency is essential. Letting everything float will raise merry hell on the grid.
I will come back later, I have an appointment in 5 minutes.
It was initially presented as having the trivial results of making clocks unrelieable, as well as microwave ovens, coffee makers etc.
And it was presented for action by a group of ignoramuses that thinks that a nation can spend itself out of a recession and depression by simply printing money.
What's to keep them from embracing the "savings" to have more money to "redistribute?"
There are a very few things on the list of Federal tasks tha are essential for the benefit and welfare of everyone in the United States. I would think this should be among them.
But such a list would leave "wealth dredistribution at around 898th in the priority list limited to 100 items forever.
Can't have that.
Ditto - what is the driver on this? Trying to kill the grid?
Good lucj to you all, I live in Ak, so this is mostly a news story up here - you will have to live with the fallout and outages.
For Later.
Bookmark
We are so glad we have decided to put in an alternative off grid electrical system in our mountain house. We have been afraid the grid would go down for various reasons. But maybe Barry has plans to be President for Life and he knows he is not going to get re-elected. It would not suprise me even for a minute. Especially since he seems to be totally ignoring the Congress, the Constititution, Federal Judges and most Federal Law. Maybe he thinks he’s not going to have to worry about it soon. Mmmmm Mmmmm Mmmm!
LET ME TRANSLATE:
1) “Deregulate” the grid and cause a crisis
2) Take advantage of crisis by creating a nationwide smart-grid with a new, massive federal program/agency to implement it...including thermostat control for all new construction/renovation. Old style controls will go the way of the incandescent lightbulb.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.