PG&E Shutting off power.

[jjeff]

My father drag-raced Volvos, and he had cast aluminum wheel blocks that never deformed a millimeter. I suppose that like everything now made in China, those standards are out the window...

My wheel chocks are a pair of cheap-ass slippery plastic ones I purchased from JC Whitney, when I was ordering from them......35 years ago so even back then standards were out the window
God, when I think of all the cheap Chinese (or, was it Hong Kong or Taiwan?? back then) crap I purchased from Whitney......it was almost all junk and would break within weeks or months but I guess the wheel chocks held up......well I probably only use them a couple times/year(at most) but they really are cheap. More often than not I use a 4x4(prefer it over a 2x4 because it's higher and I figure harder for the tire to accidentally drive over) but I also use those cheap Whitney chocks too.

[cwerdna]

https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1183167024622645249 has an some examples of damage that PG&E shared supposedly during a recent press conference.

[danrjones]

I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

[Nubo]

I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

[DaveinOlyWA]

I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...

[SageBrush]

I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...

.
Don't be so sure. It comes down to transformer costs. Only recently are solid state inverters changing the rules.

[SageBrush]

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

.
If the previews are anything to go by it is Hollywood drama. Remember that 99%+ of America struggle with kW Vs kWh so an exploration of the facts is just out of the question.

[danrjones]

I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...

Plus just imagine the train set you could have had, no puny 12-18 vDC, you could have had a HO scale train running at hundreds of volts DC.

[Nubo]

I'm not sure it would make any difference to the fire danger, but I've often wondered if life would be better if we were all using DC instead of AC. Not far from me are some high voltage transmission lines, and sure enough some of the biggest of them are DC not AC. Turns out for very long distances at high voltages, DC is more efficient, enough MORE that its cost effective to convert the AC to DC and back again. You can spot DC transmission because it has only two large wires, or two pairs of two, aka no 3 phases of transmission.

Not sure how accurate it is, but a movie on the AC-DC war is suppose to be coming out soon.

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...

The choice wasn't arbitrary.

[GRA]

As I understand it, extremely high voltage DC can be the way to go for long-distance, but at residential voltages even a typical distance to the substation is too far for DC.

That is "reverse chicken/egg" theory. If DC had been the choice, I am sure we wouldn't be using AC voltage standards...

Plus just imagine the train set you could have had, no puny 12-18 vDC, you could have had a HO scale train running at hundreds of volts DC.

Most streetcar systems ran at around 500VDC. But AC won because it could cover a much larger area, so was far cheaper in terms of wire, and you could move the generating stations out of the city. As others have noted, technology has moved on.