I remember at Plattsburgh State that some of the campus meeting rooms had these massive light fixtures with 300 watt bulbs. Each campus meeting room had two of these bulbs for lighting -- while bright, they sucked down 600 watts per hour, or a kilowatt hour every hour and a half in relatively small rooms. But they were getting a lot of cheap Canadian hydropower on the campus, so replacing these luminaries with modern energy saving fixtures probably wasn't worth the cost.
This video will take a close look at three-phase power and explain how it works. Three-phase power can be defined as the common method of alternating current power generation, transmission, and distribution. It is a type of polyphase system, and is the most common method used by electric grids worldwide to transfer power.
While most of a turbine can be recycled or find a second life on another wind farm, researchers estimate the U.S. will have more than 720,000 tons of blade material to dispose of over the next 20 years, a figure that doesn't include newer, taller higher-capacity versions.
There aren't many options to recycle or trash turbine blades, and what options do exist are expensive, partly because the U.S. wind industry is so young. It's a waste problem that runs counter to what the industry is held up to be: a perfect solution for environmentalists looking to combat climate change, an attractive investment for companies such as Budweiser and Hormel Foods, and a job creator across the Midwest and Great Plains.
A Wye (Y) configuration is when all the loads in an AC system are connected at a single point. Normally, the loads are unbalanced in a Y configuration. A neutral cable is connected at that centre point where the three phases meet. Most of the low voltage distribution lines that you see are Y configuration (Red, Yellow, Blue and Neutral).
The Delta configuration has the 3 phases connected like in a triangle. They don't normally have a neutral cable. In Delta configuration, the phase voltage is equal to the line voltage whereas in Y configuration, the phase voltage is the line voltage divided by root 3 (sqrt(3) = 1.732).
North American homes are not wired up with a single live wire, but two. The difference between them is that when one is pushing, the other is pulling, and vice-versa. The “normal” appliances and outlets in a house are divided amongst the two live wires, and all are connected to neutral. Because the voltage difference between a single live wire and neutral is alternating with a magnitude of 120V, appliances that run on 120V power can be connected to the neutral wire and either of the two live wires.
When you think about it, $30 a month plus 15 cents per kilowatt hour is a pretty darn good price for being connected to the electrical grid. A kilowatt hour is about 3/4th of a horsepower, produced over an hour of highly reformed energy that can be power even the most delicate of electronics or turn over large motors with ease and efficiency.
A typical house has a 200 amp feed in it, which means you have roughly 150 horsepower worth of electricity at your disposal to distribute throughout your house. Unlike a gas motor, it doesn’t cost you anything at idle, and your pay directly proportional to your use. You can flip a switch on and get instant torque or power from electricity.
Most electric appliances are quite efficient to converting electricity into useful work – almost all the waste is on the generating plant side, not on the consumer side. The generating plant maintains the turbines, buys the fuel, and disposes of ash. No smoke in your backyard or noxious fumes.
When at off-grid living, the truth is electric generated on site is far more expensive and less flexible than grid power. It might be much cleaner and the cost of use is fixed entirely by your capital costs – and is reduced each kilowatt you consume. But it’s still not as cheap and flexible as grid power.
