Can electricity conduct through a fine spray of water?

[Commander Kinsey]

Yet everything is super expensive over there.

Indeed, so why the fuss about GFCI over there?

[John Larkin]

Because it's super good and there are too many over-paid engineers. We just got back from the Alemany Farmers' Market and that stuff is both good and cheap. The seasonal stuff, fresh from the farm, is cherries, peaches, beans, corn, and Romanesco (broccoli or cauliflower, nobody seems sure.)

Scardey-cat politicians mostly.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Recently, I went to visit someone with a very extensive outdoor Christmas light display. He said he never uses GFCIs, they are too annoying with all those nuisance trips.

[micky]

I never understood 60 Hertzes.

[micky]

FWIW, there is a difference, because afaik there were no words for the measurements named after them. Unit of resistance, unit of power, unit of [voltage?], unit of current.

[micky]

So does that mean the water is all backing up into Lake Erie?

[Ed P]

Does not matter, Hertz made his fortune in the car rental business.

[hubops]

They do not waste the Niagara water ! It's money-in-the-bank. The underground tunnels were expanded ~ 10 years ago - they feed water from above The Falls down to the generating plants at Queenston.

Near Queenston, they have a generating plant that reverse-pumps the water up into a reservoir during low demand and uses that same water to generate power during high demand.

John T.

[Ed P]

Electricity from humidity

‘It was an accident’: the scientists who have turned humid air into renewable power

[Commander Kinsey]

We have some bullshit over here called "Fair trade" which pays farmers a "fair price" instead of what the market decides. Look, it's a business, they compete. If the farmer can't make a profit, either he's not as good as Mr Jones next door, or there are too many farmers.

The last 240 shock I got was through my finger, touching the live input by mistake while feeling the temperature of the transformer in a UPS. Stupid grounded crap. If it wasn't grounded I wouldn't have got a shock, don't they realise you need to complete the circuit?

I know many Americans who believe it's necessary. And for some reason you guys fit them seperately to outlets where you think you need it. At least in the UK they just stick one in the fusebox for the whole house. Why do something more than once?

[micky]

I opened your links but have not read them yet.

Sounds good if it works. It's more than average humid here sometimes, and where my brother lives, Florida, is worse.

The comments are just as stupid as elsewhere. The first two claim they could do that in the 50's or 60's and another one claims even if it works they'll hide it. I coudn't bring myself to read anymore.

[John Larkin]

Do you get many false trips?

The GF outlet in our kitchen occasionally trips when I use my hand blender, but I think it's from emi, the switch sparking, not actual ground leakage. No big deal, the reset button is right there.

[Martin Brown]

Not very and at the moment when they do enough current will flow to dry them out again PDQ but no more. Condensing fogs and dew or sticky snow are more likely to cause trouble for them than rain.

If an arc develops then the breaker on the line should interrupt supply.

They are designed to have a rain shadow, but even if it did there is enough power in the line to evaporate small amounts of pure water away (which isn't a very good conductor in the first place).

This explains the mechanics reasonably well:

[Carlos E.R.]

Not even once per month. I get one now and then with some rainfalls, I suspect somewhere in the laundry room (a hut in the patio) there is some fault or faulty equipment.

[Harry H]

[snip]

They're like 50 Hertzes, but hurt more :-)

[danny burstein]

Of course, for real torture, there are the 400 Hertzes the aircraft industry is so fond of.

(Are they still using it in current [a] planes?)

[a] I see what I did there..

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Not so easy if you have a whole house protector. You have to find the device that caused the trip. Maybe find a flashlight first.

[John Larkin]

That's one advantage to a local GFI outlet. You're right there.

[Rod Speed]

None of those do, essentially because the insulators have an inverted section at the bottom of each bulge which never gets wet in that situation.

And you never get line dropouts in that situation.

[Commander Kinsey]

I have fuses, I was speaking for the sissy majority.

My parents have one, it's not tripped since they moved there in 2005, even when my dad touched live plug prongs (because they can't detect live to neutral shocks).

Why would it trip for that?