Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Serious Amperage !
Most of you have probably seen that video clip of a 3 phase mains grid circuit opening and the 100ft high arcs that result .
Well, this page http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm has the explanation of *why* it happened, plus a heap of other cool stuff as well.
Apparently, that arc was a "little one" of only a 100 amps (at 500,000 volts - thats still a hell of a lot of power !), but it was a "test" to locate a problem. Had it been a *real* switch-off under full load conditions (2,000+ amps), the result would have been even more impressive. to quote..
"A break under load conditions (~2,000 amps) would have created a MUCH hotter and extremely destructive arc. Imagine a fat, blindingly blue-white, 100 foot long welding arc that vaporizes the contacts on the air break switch and then works its way back along the feeders, vaporizing them along the way"
The page has lots of other cool arcs and sparks videos. go there and check out the video of the "Arcing substation and Exploding Transformer"
- Scroll down the page and click on this photo
from their page (not here) to see a cool example of why electricity is not your friend when out of control..
And I thought 50-100 amps of motor power was an impressive amount of power. Being a microprocessor engineer, I was more used to microamps, not mega-amps.
Well worth a look..
http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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