Re: Birds DON'T perch on high-voltage wires


"Gordon" <Gordon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3XBZv+MlJPFDFwJK@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Ron Verrall <ronverrall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>>
>>That's a thought, but many (if not most) of the very high voltage lines
>>(the
>>ones with the steel towers) are now DC, not AC.
>>
> They may be in BC, but not in Britain! If they were DC how would they
> transform the voltages down to local distribution levels?
> :-)
> --
> Gordon Harris

Hi Gordon,
You may be correct, and I may be ahead of the times in thinking that much of
the electrical transmission is High Voltage Direct Current, HVDC - as they
now call it. However, the technology is there. Don't underestimate your
fellow Brits. They can crank up the AC voltage to high levels, rectify it
to DC, transmit it for long distances and then turn it back into nicely
controllable AC. A search on Google gives you lots of articles. One is the
following, and I've clipped out a couple of sentences.

Regards, Ron Verrall

http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/em/transmission/technology_abb.pdf
The HVDC technology

The fundamental process that occurs in an HVDC system is the conversion of
electrical current from AC to DC (rectifier) at the transmitting end, and
from DC to AC (inverter) at the receiving end. There are three ways of
achieving conversion:



· Natural Commutated Converters.

(snip details)



· Capacitor Commutated Converters (CCC

(snip details)



· Forced Commutated Converters.

(snip details)






.