TV: The Secret Life of the National Grid Wiring the Nation

[PeterC]

It was too much like 'Grumpy Old Farts', with most of the same irrelevant people in it. Some interesting bits though.

[Andy Burns]

Yeah, lots of stuff I suspect most of us already knew, I did notice that during the Eastenders/Corrie peak, wind was providing 177/42000 of the demand.

[Man at B&Q]

Lots of teasing shots of grid frequency display but no detail of what the varying frequency means or how and why it is controlled.

MBQ

[Dave Liquorice]

I donno, it highlighted the fact that in a persons life time we have gone from basicaly no electricity in the home to today when most could not cope with out it, even for a few hours.

I found it quite interesting but then I didn't know much of the history of the grid before hand. A bit more technical stuff would have been nice, they did tend to gloss over those aspects.

[Andy Dingley]

I thought they did mention it? Although it was indeed 20 years, some of that was owing to a war going on.

Took me a while to find one, but in the end I did track down a photo of it

[Andy Dingley]

"Droop Speed Control" is your search term

[Andy Burns]

I didn't thinks so, I wasn't aware of the planned 8 chimneys version, and was waiting for them to show the 2 chimney version, but they leapt straight to 4.

The handy URL I posted in the message you'vce quoted had a couple!

[PeterC]

And how many Viagra ads. ...?

Yes, the sequence showing the changing frequency and bringing supply on stream to correct it didn't explain the significance. Back in the 70s I had a boss who'd worked on a pumped storage scheme installing control gear and he told me some of the aspects of this. He also explained what would happen if a genny was put on line when only a small amount out of phase - sounded 'interesting'.

[Man at B&Q]

I know how it works. Just thought it would have made the prog more interesting to others.

MBQ

[ARWadsworth]

I have just watched it on iPlayer.

Excellent.

I am not sure about the electricians that were running diagonal cables in a wall at 23min 50 seconds though.

[Owain]

Cleverly scheduled against a BBC1 recreation of a victorian ironmonger's this coming week. :-(

Owain

[Dave Liquorice]

Was that in the new house with several hundred odd light fittings? All down lighters I bet it will be like the black hole of calcutta. Not to mention for ever changing bulbs unless they are are LED...

[ARWadsworth]