Several years ago an engineer from Minnesota Power (now called Allete) came
to our ham meeting and explained how they are using D.C....they have a
generator at the mouth of the coal mine in Montana which sends very high
voltage to
Duluth...the A.C. conversion is done at Adolph,MN...Most of the equipment is
made in Sweden....he said that years ago the Russians had some big hydro plants
in Siberia on big rivers, and the A.C. was sent several thousand miles to
Moscow...they couldn't figure out why they had huge power losses, and it turned
out
that the transmission lines were so long that they were acting as antennae
and
the power was being radiated.....they had similar problems in Sweden, thus
the D.C. scheme came about...the Swedes are way ahead of us in many ways...the
Duluth line runs two wires and ground...two wire is 95% efficient , and if one
wire is out, they can run one wire and ground at 92%.....the station ground is
located some distance from the plant, and consists of huge pits filled wth
salt .....how they convert it back to A.C. at those levels is a mystery to me...
Bob....W0PQX.....(since 1945 ! )
_______________________________________________
Amps mailing list
Amps@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps
|