Category: High Voltage
SWER Line Monitoring
SWER Lines In rural distribution of electricity, Single Wire Earth Return (SWER) is used to reduce the cost of wiring by running a single wire for the active and using the Ground (Earth) as the return path. Because these lines run for long distances through sparsely populated regions it isn’t as likely that a fault…
Improving Power Distribution
Electrical Power Distribution Electricity is essential to the modern world. It is the power source behind the vast majority of modern appliances. And for large quantities of it, we are currently mostly burning things to produce heat to run generators to create AC power to transformers to high voltage power lines to more transformers, low…
Global Power Grid
Local versus global electrical power Up until recently, AC Power Distribution was the most efficient way to move electrical energy about. But right back at the beginning of electricity, it wasn’t obviously the case. Thomas Edison had favoured DC voltage and current distribution but was defeated commercially by almost all other comers because the technology…
Electricity Grid 2.0
What if we could start again In the days when DC converters didn’t exist, it made sense to base our electrical distribution system on transformers and AC voltage level shifting. It still makes sense to distribute at high voltage where resistive losses in the wires are a smaller issue than they are at lower voltages.…
High Voltage Power Electronics
Safety in High Voltage Power Distribution My thanks to Tim Heemskerk of ABB High Voltage Division in Lilydale for this clip. It shows how dangerous High Voltage power can be in Electric Power Transmission Systems and why ABB take so much care in how they handle High Voltage Switching, Power Factor Correction and Fault Isolation…