Re: Alternative to conventional wi-fi network?

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

J. J. Lodder <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Paul Russell <prussell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

J. J. Lodder wrote:
Paul Russell <prussell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]

No - you missed the point - the current is lower.

It isn't the current that matters.
It's the dissipation, current times voltage drop,
from the consumer box, through all those fuses
to the appliance,

Power loss for a given resistance circuit is I^2*R. Therefore if you
reduce the current you (dramatically) reduce the power losses.

You seem to be obsessed with fuses - did you have a bad experience with
a fuse once ?

No, I merely tried to explain that the idea
that the British idea of ring wiring
was conceived to save power is mistaken.
It was invented to save a few pennies on copper.

<sigh> It was done *primarily* to save copper, of course - but they
wanted to save on electricity too because it was all designed by
engineers, and of course `the bosses' were in favour of anything like
that because energy in the UK was in short supply.

I got the impression it was done mainly
to install as many 3 KW electric heaters as possible.

And since it was proper old-fashioned engineers who sorted it out, they
got it very well sorted to save on both copper and electricity.

It was an engineering disaster,
which forced remedies downstream
such as lots extra fuses to remedy
the inherent lack of safety.

That's how it often goes: the penny-pinching
which motivated the original decissions have become irrelevant.
Being stuck with an inferior and inherently less safe remains.

Now, the point is that you have to have a certain amount of copper to
send your `juice' with acceptably low losses. With a ring main, you
need less copper than with spurs.

Depends on your layout. With some layouts you need more.

And with the regulations we have the
current limit for a ring main is such that the losses in the ring main
are /far/ less than they'd be in a spur setup. It's that I^2 term, you
see.

That works only when their is one appliance on the ring.
(the infamous 3 KW heater for example)
In the modern situation with more appliances on the ring
the difference vanishes.

Fuses should be mentioned in this context,
because people tend to forget that these consume power too.

<sigh> Trivial, compared to the load; and if the contacts are clean and
so on (as they should be), even less.

Your spur wiring consumes so much more power than our ring main setup
that I very much doubt that our fuses make up for that difference.

So you are just guessing,

Jan
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Alternative to conventional wi-fi network?
    ... even without having the silly British 'ring main', ... if you use less copper you will waste more power. ... from the consumer box, through all those fuses ... reduce the current you reduce the power losses. ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: Alternative to conventional wi-fi network?
    ... even without having the silly British 'ring main', ... if you use less copper you will waste more power. ... from the consumer box, through all those fuses ... reduce the current you reduce the power losses. ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: Alternative to conventional wi-fi network?
    ... from the consumer box, through all those fuses ... reduce the current you reduce the power losses. ... With a ring main, you ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: Alternative to conventional wi-fi network?
    ... even without having the silly British 'ring main', ... if you use less copper you will waste more power. ... from the consumer box, through all those fuses ... reduce the current you reduce the power losses. ...
    (uk.comp.sys.mac)
  • Re: On the Ainur
    ... directed specifically to the situation where the One Ring was ... *destruction* of the transferred power. ... Sauron retained that ability as long as the Ring existed and no-one ... but the truly significant weakening of Sauron's ...
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