Mains power voltage drop to reduce usage?

That can in fact be done. And was done. And it wrecked equipment in German factories, so they installed their own exactly 50Hz inverters.

I think the problem originated in one of the ex eastern bloc nations.

Yes, the European mainland grid whilst it is not all of Europe, is synchronised. I believe Norway, the UK and Ireland, are definietly totally separate.

Yes. Unfortunately if the UK grid frequency drops too far, those inverters feeding it from the undersea DC will disconnect, as will all the wind farms and the solar panels, making everything worse.

It has already partially happened. Fortunately a large section of grid could be isolated and blacked out saving the rest.

There cant be. In practice if the generator isn't being fed enough torque, its phase lags and the grid drives the generator!

Its very simple. You run your generator with no load. match the phases and connect to the grid. The generator is now locked to the grid as surely as any other synchronous motor is.

Then when you push the steam into the turbines all that happens is that the current rises and the phase advances slightly. Very slightly.

Don't think you really understand how it works.

Actually I wouldn't mind living in Leiston at all.

Great bird sanctuary just behind Sizewell. Only thing that spoils it is the transmission lines to London. And they start a few miles away - the rest is under-grounded. Bring back Battersea I say.

https://earth.google.com/web/@52.20823174,1.62121092,6.4416399a,0d,62.29112534y,343.61894492h,80.00264945t,0r/data=CkoaSBJCCiUweDg5YjAwZjBjZmQ1YTFkNGY6MHg3NzE5YTE0NDAwMTI1MGNkGaPipNU1XUJAIdir2RRZJVPAKgdTdWZmb2xrGAEgASIaChZldjRLMUpaRFFZVEZ1SUVUYmVYUUtnEAI I've lived in worse places than that, Crouch End Broadway for one.

https://earth.google.com/web/search/Criuch+end+Broadway+London/@51.5802479,-0.1239559,44.03263474a,0d,60y,233.52984167h,90.16814788t,0r/data=CoUBGlsSVQolMHg0ODc2MWJjN2VhOTQxZjMzOjB4YzQ1YTI0Y2ExN2FiMzQxYxmbaz3ofspJQCF4-lKJ_ES_vyoaQ3JpdWNoIGVuZCBCcm9hZHdheSBMb25kb24YASABIiYKJAnCrblWZ8ZJQBHpayvuosRJQBlg2PlUdra-vyGo4_xHI3HDvyIaChZQNElfd1dEc3VsTzFiYVZDc0hfOFlnEAI

And no one who lives in the shadow of one is happy.

In Denmark it renders your house unsaleable.

Noise - especially infrasound generated by blades passing the tower - and flicker are deeply disturbing to many people.

Excellent plan!

It sounds like what he saw was a spent fuel pond. The blue glow is Cherenkov radiation. You can swim, but don't dive deep.

I don't think any bugs would survive it.

And a puny domestic inverter will die horribly if it stays on too long.

The semiconductor electronics are certainly capable of that but the transformer will saturate and then get hot ultimately catching fire if the frequency drops too low. Some US kit built for 60Hz only would get awfully hot on UK 50Hz mains. A cheap and nasty US brand of shavers sold mostly at Xmas relied on a 60Hz mechanical resonance for good measure.

Japanese kit can pretty much always be relied upon to work on either 50 or 60Hz since roughly half of their country is on each frequency.

There us a good map of the various synchronous networks in Europe in

The CIS (Russia etc) has an own synchronous network. The situation in Ukraine is currently unclear.

Heating a lot of houses from one heat source. Could be a furnace or stray heat from a power station.

Worse, it was explosive.

Sounds dangerous, especially if room heating is done directly by steam radiators. (The ones I've seen are the same size an electric storage heaters with insulation, grills and lagged steam pipes.)

In this country for domestic installations they use water at a lot higher temperature than normal central heating I think. Still could be dangerous if a pipe bursts.

When I worked for the University of Michigan, it had a central power plant that served steam throughout the campus. Although my duties were mostly typing from dictation and fetching files, twice a year I had to go to the basement of the building in which I worked and slowly turn the big valve handle to either open or close the valve. I received about 2 minutes of instruction from the administrative assistant who supervised me.

You were a bionic thermostat?

I was an analog-to-digital converter once.

I extensively explored the steam tunnels at an unnamed midwest university. Live steam was distributed to each building on campus through the tunnels, and pumped through a heat exchanger and an air handler to condition the building. No radiators were used. Chilled water was distributed in the summer for cooling.

In the older (pre WWII) buildings the air handlers (a large squirrel-cage fan) were two stories high.

You can't around the fact it moves air around.

You can't around the fact it moves air around.

That's tropical. Is someone in your house ill?

Irrelevant, the air is still moving about causing draughts which presumably cool you a little, and disturb dust.

Why don't UK houses have basements? We're wasting so much space. And we have less space on this tiny little island.

Furthest. Do you also say farther away? That sounds like you're telling your dad to go away.

I just have a heat pump in one room and leave the doors open to any room I want heated or cooled.