Ideal electrical systems (just idle curiosity)

[John Rumm]

Although you would likely burn/smoke that many to death instead ;-)

[Bill Wright]

That would fit nicely into the modern mindset then. Absurdity is all the rage when it comes to h & S.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Is that in Doncaster, nationally, or world wide?

Bill

[Nightjar]

That is the number of deaths and serious injuries in the UK every year. Around 2.5 million people in the UK also receive a mains voltage electric shock every year.

[harryagain]

There's no complete answer as it depends on the size of the system. Higher voltage reduce transmission losses. DC reduces transmission losses too. (But requires more technogly) Higher frequncys increases losses but makes more compact motors and transformers possible.

We are in the midst of a technological evolution when our powers systems will be linked to others abroad far more than at present, micro generation will be universal and we will have smart grid technology to control everything.

[Tim Watts]

How many would then die from fires caused by wiring problems?

[harryagain]

Our main link to Europe is not underwater, it is via the channel tunnel.

[Tim Watts]

High current = risk of terminations becoming hot and starting a fire.

High current = larger cables that are more difficult to terminate properly.

[John Williamson]

The main AC losses are inductive and leakage by capacitance to ground, not resistive.

That's what they told me when I took a group of trainee electrical engineers to the site a few decades ago. The guy was actually quite surprised when none of them could answer the question he asked of why they did it the way they do, but the coach driver could.

Assuming the power *could* be usefully transmitted that far through an underground/ undersea cable, it wouldn't be much harder to lock the English and French grids than it is to lock the French, German, Italian and so on grids.

[John Williamson]

It's capacitive loading. The capacitance per kilometre of overhead lines between cable and ground is low, while the capacitance per kilometre of underground cables is at least two orders of magnitude higher.

At the lengths of cable used for power distribution, some of the effects that normally only affect HF signals come into play at 50Hz.

[F Murtz]

And think of the size of the appliances and motors etc and the cost of the copper and the overall resources

[John Williamson]

Transmission lines have a calculable inductance per metre, and as the length approaches infinity, so does that inductance.

There is a characteristic impedance for transmission lines, which affects both transmission and losses.

[harryagain]

Drivel Capacitance does not cause any losses. It does cause phase shift and instability. When the cable is under load it will actually help with phase shift. Only resistance causes losses.

Where exactly is this arc drawn for 30 minutes and for what purpose.?

[Nightjar]

The biggest cause of electrical fires is overloading of circuits. As we are not upgrading any existing system, but are starting from scratch and designing everything anew, with the benefit of present knowledge, we could build everything to accept heavier overloads and to have much greater and localised integral overload protection. The result could well be a reduction in deaths from electrical fires.

[Nightjar]

That is a quarter of the capacity of the Sellindge to Les Mandarins underwater link and they were still only talking about it in April this year.

[Chris Hogg]

I remember in school physics lessons, late 1950's, being taught that electrons in wires moved at very roughly walking speed.

[charles]

but the higher currents involved could easily cause greater fire hazards - so an increase in fatalities .

[Andy Burns]

"IS" are you sure?

I read lots of "PLANS", "PROPOSED", "WILL" and "COULD". Facts harry, you should try some ...

ElecLink doesn't even seem to have started yet, and may never do

Proposed capacity is 1000MW (doubled from the initial 500MW capacity you linked to), isn't the existing French connector 2000MW, and the existing Dutch connector 1000MW, how would that make it the main link?

Seems they have greased enough palms as rules have now been bent for them

[Huge]

The coach driver had done the tour before ...

[tony sayer]

Wouldn't have thought it would be but the article alluded to was very comprehensive as to the reasons why it was a problem...