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Re: Cogeneration



Kristjan Valur Jonsson <kvj@rhi.hi.is> wrote:
>gary@ke4zv.atl.ga.us (Gary Coffman) writes:
>>nick@vu-vlsi.ee.vill.edu (Nick Pine) writes:

>>>The unit won't work in a stand-alone power mode. It won't start without grid
>>>power, and it won't stay running on a dead line. This is a "safety feature."
>
>>And an essential one, otherwise frying a lineman is a distinct possibility.
>
>Come on.  The utilities can easily adopt safer working methods.
>It's no harder than simply breaking the line on each side of the
>work side.  Simple really.

If I were a lineman, I would do that. Or treat a dead line as if it were
active, or could become so. Linemen do sometimes work on active lines,
sometimes on very high voltage lines, suspended by insulators in foil
suits to prevent corona damage, while they are charged up to hundreds
of thousands of volts...

>The argument about dead linemen is nonsense.

I do think that fear is overemphasized. I agree that there should be a fail
safe system that disconnects the cogen unit from the line, if the line
is dead, or makes it inoperable. Utilities generally accept that induction
generators excited by the grid are inherently safe. In fact, there is
a paragraph in the NEC to that effect. I'm sure these backwards lamp
dimmers could be made very safe too. 

Remember when you had to have all kinds of permits to connect something odd
to your telephone line, like an unapproved answering machine? Now,
post-Carterphone, it's pretty much your business what you do with your
phone line inside your house. It seems to me that that may happen soon
with electric lines. You don't have to tell the utility when you hook
up a 5 kW electric dryer or water heater. I see a time when you won't
have to tell them if you hook up a 100 watt synchronous inverter either...

Nick


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