[time-nuts] Features of a Precision Clock?

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Sun Oct 8 02:28:09 EDT 2006


In message <000001c6ea65$40156be0$0900a8c0 at cyrus>, "Bill Hawkins" writes:

>Think of the incredible amount of energy stored in many
>rotating generators linked by the synchronous network.

This is actually far less than you seem to think.

>If the load suddenly increased 10% [...]

Then all generators would trip and disconnect from the grid.  No
reasonably sized turbine driven generator survives a 10% load jump
without exensive repairs.

Your explanation was true about 30 years ago, not so any more.

After deregulation, electrical grids run very close to the
edge because nobody makes money on the reserve capacity and
therefore everybody only produces exactly what they are
legally required to.

The main reason for all the research into UTC locked grids
is that it would prevent produces from "cheating at the scale".

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.



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