Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "How Electricity Gets to You" video.

  1.  @Cembadyx  It's not quite all. In 2019 the share of hydro was 93.4%
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  2. "I always thought AC power is best for long range power transfer and that's why it won over DC." AC won over Edison's DC idea which was to not step up or down the voltage at all but rather use low voltage all the way from power plant to the final consumer. It's this low voltage which would have entailed high transmission losses.
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  3. Pun intended?
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  4. "Why would you convert electricity to AC after reaching destination (city), when most electronics use DC?" Because you need to step down the voltage using transformers.
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  5.  @Skullair313  "nuclear plants are just bad for environment" No, they aren't. They're way less harmful than coal.
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  6.  @Nwtrino  Even if you can control the output of a nuclear plant it usually doesn't make economic sense. Nuclear is cheap to run. It's usually more economical to first reduce the output of an energy source with a more expensive fuel. Therefore nuclear plants are usually kept as close to maximum capacity as possible. France is an exception and uses load following nuclear plants because the share of nuclear there is so high that using other forms of energy for load following wouldn't suffice.
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  7.  @SecularSynthesis  He's probably referring to the phenomenon called "TV pickup" causing surges in demand. That phenomenon is real even if he's exaggerating how much it requires preparing for.
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  8.  @whuzzzup  In recent years all biggest the TV pickup demands listed by Wikipedia have been during football games. Those are still something that people watch at the same time.
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  9. They have some HVDC connections but their capacity is not that large.
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  10. Do you have a source for this? I tried googling the efficiency of hydroelectric plants and found numbers around 90%.
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  11.  @newrenewableenergycontrol5724  Do you have a source for that? I have a hard time believing it.
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  12.  @newrenewableenergycontrol5724  You should still give a source or else the claim remains unsubstantiated. I can't go measure those water velocities myself.
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  13.  @jamesmnguyen  I don't think that could be practical even if you had to start from a clean slate anyway. I don't think there's a practical way to step up the voltage of DC other than to first convert it to AC so you can run it through a transformer and convert it back to DC. Basically every transformer would need to be replaced with a full converter station. I don't think that would make economic sense.
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  14. "which would cause a fall in RPM - if the load were large enough in turn causing a vane to open to allow more water through the turbine" Additional load can also cause additional turbines to be spun up.
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  15. "One issue with offshore wind is the extreme variability." I would think that offshore wind is less variable than onshore wind.
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  16. It still makes sense to connect large areas into a single grid because that brings stability to the system.
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  17. "The premise is misleading." How is it misleading? Your comment doesn't explain.
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  18. No.
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  19.  @richdobbs6595  They can at least be made controllable. France uses load following nuclear plants.
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  20.  @richdobbs6595  Highly controllable might be an exaggeration.
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  21. The result is still mostly the same. Usually it's more economical to first reduce output from sources with more expensive fuel than nuclear so in practice nuclear output stays flat. France is a special case because the share of nuclear there is so high that nuclear plants also need to participate in load following.
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  22. For DC the cables are cheaper for a given amount of capacity. "increasing frequency" No.
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  23. "The millions of TONS of concrete poured would make me think otherwise." I would think the emissions coming from this are not high per kWh produced.
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  24. "battery capacity is not measured in MW, but MWh" Maybe the figure is for the maximum charge/discharge rate?
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  25. France has load following nuclear plants.
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  26. It's still 120V because that's the voltage of a live wire relative to neutral. That's how the voltage is measured.
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  27. Lol!
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  28.  @Xylos144  "Yeah, his representation here was pretty disingenuous." While his explanation was flawed the result is still mostly the same. The cost of nuclear is mostly capital cost and it's cheap to run. Therefore you usually want to keep it running as much as possible and rather reduce the output of some more expensive to run energy source such as some fossil sources. Thus the result is still mostly as his graph showed, i.e. nuclear output is constant. France is a special case because the share of nuclear is so large that it needs some of its nuclear plants to do a part of the load following.
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  29. It is stepped down to 120V because that's the voltage of a live wire relative to neutral. That's how the voltage is measured.
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  30.  @bowez9  But the voltage number (if only one number is given) refers to the phase-to-neutral voltage. That's why it's called 120V.
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  31. I think that $500,000 savings is supposed to be after the cost of the battery is paid off.
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  32. It's 120V relative to neutral for a live wire. That's how the voltage is measured.
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  33.  @brunovilela3619  If a forested area is going to get submerged wouldn't it make sense to log all the wood there and use it?
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