ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades AC/DC standards war

And for the North Island Haywards in the Hutt Valley is a must too, although the DC is converted here back into AC (220 kV) to go 660 km North to Auckland.
On dry periods of the year the thermal stations from the North will generate power back to the South Island.

But i admit that the 50 Hz hum at Benmore Powerstation with the flowing blue turquoise water is fanstastic and relaxing and very grunty too

Ray,
Now there are quite a few actual "Cook Strait Cables" between Marlborough and Haywards, do you know what the actual split between cores is?.(Voltage wise)
Down at Tech when I did my time, they had a section of one of the actual cables.
Twice the diameter of a beer can and it had a hole in the centre for the Nitrogen gas.
Hole was about 15mm diameter.
A year later a boat owner was fined after dredging one of the cores up with an anchor.

Mike,

It is - 350 kV and + 270 kV.

So the potential difference is 620 kV dc.

I am pretty sure that the negative value is higher than the positive value.
it has something to do with the semiconductors used, although some of the ASEA rectifiers have mercury in them too.

if i find that link i will post it on ECN.

I found it and my memory served me well.

here are the details and the link.



Cheers
Raymond

Another advantage of HVDC transmission is that it eliminates the need to synchronize two large regional grids. Here in North America we have four major regional grids: Eastern, Western, Quebec, and ERCOT (most of Texas). These regional grids sometimes interface using DC interties of only a few meters in length. For example, I am looking at my ERCOT map, and I see a 345kV DC tie from Eagle Pass, TX across the border into Mexico.

We also have two major HVDC lines on the West Coast, the Pacific Intertie and the Intermountain. For years, when I lived in Southern California, I drove by the Sylmar converter station without knowing what made it special!

HVDC also has an unlikely following among all those people who are paranoid about electromagnetic fields, although the extra expense means it will not replace AC transmission anytime soon.

What makes it even more revolting is that it wasn't experimentation per se. It was propaganda.

Nor was this Edison's only fault. After he remarried, he all but disowned the children of his first wife.

Djk

I worked for years with Scottish Power first as an apprentice then in Grid Telecoms. I knew of the link to NI but having never visited the Ballintrae site I was unaware it was HVDC. Thanks for that info

The more you look into the subject the more sense it makes for inter connecting systems as “yakta” says