FYI, the "Practical Engineering" yt channel had several recent videos I found informative about complications connecting solar power to the grid, including the need for capacitors to balance inductance (e.g. motors) on the grid:
So far, I've found 4 utility posts in our area that have a capacitor bank, and, a bit farther away, a fifth one. The 5 are in areas that seem to have strong EV adoption and PVs.
Adding capacitors, and how it intereacts with utility poles, is a topic I had not thought about. In particular, it is very easy to add a capacitor bank to an overhead line but it must be significantly more expensive to do it to an undergrounded line.
I made a brief inventory of the utility poles close to our house. Ours is the only one with Capacitors. There are poles with only secondary lines (cul-de-sacs), and poles with primary and secondary lines, and poles with primary, secondary and step down transformer, but, so far, only us have the capacitors.
Tomorrow I'll do a neighbor drive and I'll report back.
Nice informative article. I learned something. I liked the Wikipedia article as it has a nice description of reclosers with an anecdote for how they are configured in Australia when there is high fire risk.
I didn't realize there were capacitors on poles but it makes sense, particularly for power factor correction. I found it fascinating they can switch them in and out depending on how much PF correction is needed. Heat pumps will exacerbate power factors; I was told the SANCO2 has a PF of about 0.8.
I'll do a quick map of the utility poles in my neighborhood. In a first pass i found one other pole with a capacitor bank but most poles just had a primary and a secondary, and sometimes a step-down transformer. Plus some poles with only a secondary, or only a primary!
I will not attempt to track the feeders. It is really hard to track the wires up there. PG&E has a map that supposedly shows that; maybe I'll create a new post with the poles and the feeder information
FYI, the "Practical Engineering" yt channel had several recent videos I found informative about complications connecting solar power to the grid, including the need for capacitors to balance inductance (e.g. motors) on the grid:
https://youtu.be/ZwkNTwWJP5k
https://youtu.be/7G4ipM2qjfw
Thanks. Joe. Added to my TOREAD pile.
So far, I've found 4 utility posts in our area that have a capacitor bank, and, a bit farther away, a fifth one. The 5 are in areas that seem to have strong EV adoption and PVs.
Adding capacitors, and how it intereacts with utility poles, is a topic I had not thought about. In particular, it is very easy to add a capacitor bank to an overhead line but it must be significantly more expensive to do it to an undergrounded line.
I made a brief inventory of the utility poles close to our house. Ours is the only one with Capacitors. There are poles with only secondary lines (cul-de-sacs), and poles with primary and secondary lines, and poles with primary, secondary and step down transformer, but, so far, only us have the capacitors.
Tomorrow I'll do a neighbor drive and I'll report back.
Nice informative article. I learned something. I liked the Wikipedia article as it has a nice description of reclosers with an anecdote for how they are configured in Australia when there is high fire risk.
I didn't realize there were capacitors on poles but it makes sense, particularly for power factor correction. I found it fascinating they can switch them in and out depending on how much PF correction is needed. Heat pumps will exacerbate power factors; I was told the SANCO2 has a PF of about 0.8.
Smart inverts can help with PF correction too.
I need to learn about PF!
I'll do a quick map of the utility poles in my neighborhood. In a first pass i found one other pole with a capacitor bank but most poles just had a primary and a secondary, and sometimes a step-down transformer. Plus some poles with only a secondary, or only a primary!
I will not attempt to track the feeders. It is really hard to track the wires up there. PG&E has a map that supposedly shows that; maybe I'll create a new post with the poles and the feeder information
The distribution grid is really messy!