@@Physicsduck He stole my comment, I literally feel like an excited little kid watching Newton's Apple all over again. I'm an IT nerd but I wish so bad I could work with stuff like this.
Not gonna lie, there's just something sexy and exciting about old school meters, gauges, buttons, switches and knobs that no GUI on a computer screen can ever truly replicate.
I prefer analog to digital... With analog, after using the panel for a while, you can just glance at it to see if everything is were it's supposed to be at. That pointer should be pointing that way, this other one next to that line, etc. With digital, you have to mentally decode the values and some of them can trip you up in a scary way... It is supposed to be a 9 or a 6? Or 8 versus 0. There is a place for digital - when you have to know what the value is, not where the pointer should be. My iWatch has an analog face.
@@fredinit I was entirely confused by your post until you started comparing individual digits. Just because something is digital, does not mean it needs to show numerical digits. You can put a dial gauge on a screen just as easy as a value read-out. And then, if you ever need a more precise value for whatever reason, the digital information, in precise digital representation, will be displayed below/next to/inside of the dial. Or, at least, it should be this way. I recognize it's often not, but that's a design decision, not a limitation of digital information.
@@kindlinthere are places where each one has its advantages. For instance sometimes its still nice to have the needle movement of an analog meter like when troubleshooting an oscillator. Its much more intuitive to see a meter sweeping back and forth than a bunch of digits flashing. But like I said each one has its merits
This is the content my ADHD brain desires. From the constant jumps back and forth, to the constant trivia, this is perfect. Also I'd absolutely love a deep dive on black starts!
Thank you! I'm thrilled you like the new editing style! It's a ton of work and I was worried that people would hate it. It seems everyone actually likes it. :) There's MORE COMING SOON! Thanks for being the most important part of all this! I appreciate you! :)
@@Physicsduck New viewer here, I could use slightly longer time between jump cuts, maybe with a bit more natural transitions. The cuts feel abrupt and needless sometimes. That said, if you are just now experimenting with a new format, you'll settle into a good rhythm and figure out what works best for you. Keep it up!
Any support is sincerely appreciated (check the link in the description to my ko-fi to help me make more videos). I'll give you a full tour of LOTS of power plants, in great detail, one video at a time. I'm already working on exactly that. Check out my recent longform video on it to get started. :) Thank you!
When I was in high school I job shadowed a civil engineer working on a new spillway at a local damn but he could only keep me half the day. So he dropped me off at the damn and pawned me off on one of the guys. He got busy with something and let me wander around for an hour before he started his tour and explanation again. The whole day was amazing.
My old man (RIP) was a Navy Electrician in the Royal Australian Navy, and I have heard fun tales of ship generators being dropped 180Deg out of phase when hooking up to shore power. Shore power wins, and a generator spinning clockwise becomes a motor going ANTI clockwise... for about a microsecond, before the generator drive shaft snaps, the mounts rip and the generator is launched through three decks, and onto pier next to the ship.
Shit that is the stuff of nightmares, now I see why Chris talks about syncing to the National Grid properly. RIP to the old man by the way, just like the old boy a few doors away he was a live liney.
I would wonder how accurate those tales are. RAN boats at least from the early '60s had load-shed protection in the power supply circuits. They would also have been the best engineered power units at the time. Synchroscopes have existed for decades and were present in the '60s. I have worked in power generation plant rooms with late '50s equipment and load shedding was present even then. You cannot physically connect an incoming source to a mismatched alternator.
@@greywolf271sure ya can, never under estimate the power of human stupidity....i can't tell you the number of times i have been the better idiot....metaphorically , pull the wrong levers in the exactly wrong order at exactly the wrong time and boom lights and sirens....
From a "knowledge per unit of time" perspective, that was the best damn description of power factor I have ever heard. I don't watch UA-cam shorts because of reasons, but I think that part would make a very educational short.
Thank you! I really appreciate that! I tried to make it a short, but couldn't fit enough of it into the 1-minute timeframe for it to still make sense like I wanted it to. There's just too much setup required. I could do it with animation, but I'm not that good an animator. Perhaps I'll take another crack at this when my skills have improved a bit. Thank you for GETTING it though! I appreciate you! :)
About the amperage - 3 phase power formula is P=√3*U*I*PF which in this case would make it P=√3*2440*46*1=194405W=194.405kW That is, if I see the meters in video right. Still, I took readings from different times in video, so it cannot be considered exact result.
Now THAT is an excellent comment :) Thank you! There's a shot in there that shows the entire panel all at once so that all the readings match up in relation to time. That way people can check their math and be sure they got it right. :)
@@Physicsduck which now causes this armchair idiot to ask: Would there be benefit to taking Vegas Mode to level 3: A, V, kWh for each phase? (how critical is it that the 3 phases be somewhat balanced?)
In the UK is becuase our grid completely covers the country in a single synchronous AC system and the frequency is constantly monitored and recorded you can, with a bit of analysis, use the variations in background mains hum on an audio recording of sufficient length to timestamp that recording to the second.
Only problem with that is that this is almost completely obliterated by the variation in timing of the recorder itself, from things like battery voltage drift affecting the crystal oscillator that provides a sample clock, to temperaure drift as well that make it vary. You get more of a graph of oscillator drift with time, and with analogue tape, with wow and flutter, it is even worse. Digital the hum is hard to recover, mostly because most recorders will absolutely actively remove 50/60/100/120Hz noise with narrowband filters in the DSP engine that does the pre encoding processing, simply to reduce data use recording hum, and then your typical Frauenhof encvoding to MP3, FLAC or even AAC, will strip out all the bass noise to a great extent, unless not masked by other sound energy, so the recording will have very little data to begin with. Even if you were recording using WAV or other lossless CODEC, the data stream would have very little hum imposed on it, and if recorded off a phone line, with all the equipment along the way adding in hum, and the SPEEX codec doing serious decimation to get all this data into a single 8kbs data packet system, you will be hard pressed to get anything. You can do it in theory, but need both a good recording, no digital to analogue conversions until the final ADC to record, a log recording using a very well disciplined ADC clock, preferably a Rubidium disciplined one, though an ovenised crystal that has been running for 1000 hours continuously is a close second, and really good dynamic range to be able to use DSP to do the narrow band filtering needed to remove all the rest. Yes there is a paper, but it is idealised, and real life is hard to actually implement.
I didn't say it was easy 😀 I did kind of gloss over that with "a bit of analysis" which should have been a "complex piece of analysis requiring looking for a best fit taking into account variances in the recording fidelity". It doesn't always work and yes modern digital recording filters can make it harder but still often record harmonics that are usable with the right analysis. Tom Scott did a video a few years ago.
@@ThePoxun Yes I remember seeing a video from somewhere on this exact subject and it was to do with law enforcement from memory and Tom Scott rings a bell.
@@SeanBZA There's not such a big of the problem. What you need to measure from recording is the frequency fluctuations, and since they are relative - you can find the correlation between your fluctuations and grid fluctuations.
Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying them! More are coming as fast as I can make them, it takes a lot of time, energy, and money to make videos at this level. :) But I'm on it!
Hearing you scream about kilowatt-hours is fantastic. What an absolutely cursed unit. Our new electric car rates its efficiency in MPGe, or "Miles per gallon equivalent", with is based on miles per kilowatt-hour... and my brain nearly malfunctions any time I try to determine what that actually means.
Honest question - why is it bad? I'm no EE or anything but I have actually always been irritated by some of the other alternatives like Amp-hours for battery packs. In that context I think watt-hours is much more useful than amp-hours, right? What am I missing?
I don't really get it either, but it may have to do with the fact that the Watt is defined as 1 Joule per second? So 1kWh is just one thousand Joules per second times 3600 seconds, and the units cancel out and leave you with 3.6 million Joules. Which is all fine and good, but the Joule is a very small unit for measuring the energy consumption of an average household, whereas a kWh is about the energy an average household uses in an hour according to this video, so it makes sense to me that that would be the more popular unit here
I too hate the kWh unit. It's truly cursed. My biggest beef with it is using it in reference to electric cars and charging. You see, your car might have a 70kWh battery in it. Your charger might be 10kW. So, How fast does it charge? 10kWh per.... hour... um... So it returns 10kWh of battery capacity per hour. Yeah... having "hour" as part of your actual unit is terrible. I think joules would be the better unit, as others have said. Or, maybe megajoules for battery packs. Alas, we are standardized with kWh for both batteries and the grid. I hate it.
Can’t speak for Steve but I like the new ones and the old ones almost equally. I think the new ones come off as more polished. Also Blackstart plz! I noticed in one of your earlier videos a series of 12V batteries and while not ideal could be used to blackstart site 2. Has your site ever practiced a blackstart??
@@Physicsduck Of course! I find things like this very interesting. Even though I don't know a ton about power, it's still very interesting to learn some stuff!
As one of those audiophiles you mentioned, owning gear with a large amount of capacitance, I appreciate this. A fun thing now is that I own an amplifier with an old-school choke power supply.
Used to work for a major audio lab. Our speaker test racks had massive 1:1 inrush transformers just to handle to jarring voltage drop that a dozen subwoofers barking off pink noise at high dB's would pull. Even comcert hall PA's drop into protection mode without them.
my job for years was educating teachers attending a national technical education conference in major industrial process, and the local Edison company was my great friend, taking thousands of teachers over the years. in hours long tours of gas fired steam plants and even nuclear power stations (in more sane times) and with all this YOU have the lead in understandable cogent and amusing explanations in power plant operators, ( congratulations, you have beaten 30 years of excellent educating by southern california Edison, ( and they were the best at it) so keep it up, expand it out, rest assured in your excellence, and you have been unofficially certified in outstanding educational abilities by the second largest school in the csu system. now take your accolades and get going on more material, teaching is mostly a grind, with only etherial rewards.
Thank you, so very much, thank you. That means more than you might realize. I just spent the past couple years in the darkest places you don't ever want to see or know about, with a great deal of time to really focus on what I wanted to do with my life. This video is the first publicly visible tangible result of that plan. It was only with great trepidation that I finally published it, because it's such a niche topic and I have so little credibility. Who the hell would want to hear me talk about boring silly things like powerplant engineering? How could I ever actually make it worthwhile to spend so much time, effort, and money making videos that nobody will ever want to watch? My reputation is torched, and I'll never get any kind of sponsor support to fund this, it's all on my head. So to put this out there and see that people actually like it, and to see that someone with your perspective and experience truly gets it and thinks so highly of it........that's the whole ballgame, right there. Fifteen years I've been on this platform, thousands of videos published, and god only knows how many comments I've read. I've read comments that made me thankful, that have made me angry, and that have made me laugh. Yours is the first one that made me cry. Thank you, from my soul and with all of my heart, thank you. cb
Two panels that will keep you staring for hours are the old slate-backed panel in the Worthington generator shed at the Buckley Old Engine Show (now disconnected but AIP for your staring edification) and the DC knife switch panels for the old steam DC plant in the basement of the New Yorker hotel. Which I saw a video of ONCE and never found again. Skinner Una-Flow engines. Pretty sexy.
There's a couple of the old slate panels still in use out here in the wild. I'm trying very hard to be able to get some video of them, but the security guys have a problem with that. They DO exist though, and they're STILL IN SERVICE!
Thanks Chris! Working on my second class power production worker rating as we speak, lots of Manuel starts, and more advanced learning about our units and plants. We have 6 hydros in 2 sites. 4x 2mw horizontal Francis runners from 100 years ago, 1x min flow unit which produces around 500kw and has a double runner incase of low flow we can drop it in half. Our other plant produces about 4mw and is a vertical Francis. We operate and maintain 4x 2mw catapiller diesel generators and a GE frame 5 gas turbine. Love what I do, and enjoy all your videos. Keep after it 💪
That's AWESOME! Thank you for being here! I love that you're getting into the industry and learning the trade! You're one of the COOL kids now! :) Thank you for being a part of this, and you're personally invited to the Discord! Check the link in the description for a place to come hang out with a ton of other people as weird as we are. :)
0:14 This editing is like hardcore drugs to me. Just ran into this goldmine of a channel and you’ve got me at the edge of my seat waiting for the “we’ll cover this topic in a future video” videos.
I'm glad to see this series back! And yes, in the broadcast industry there is a lot of "abandon in place". Old frequency meters that were no longer required to be operational by the FCC is one example. The most interesting was a Khan AM stereo generator that was AIPed when the FCC gave up on "let the marketplace decide" and said "Thou shalt use C-QUAM". And another vote for a video on black start
Thank you! It sucked, but we're on to the next chapter now and things get better. Besides, now I'm officially certified at the US Government as a "Gangster". So that's something. I'm a SCIENCE GANGSTER YO!
Check the Shorts section on here. I've been slowly ramping up making videos for a few weeks. and THANK YOU FOR STILL BEING HERE! :) I appreciate you, and your patience :)
200 kW / 2400 volt / sqrt(3) (because the ammeter is measuring one leg); = "just over 48A" which is what the meter shows. There would be a further error (which will be difficult to read given the scale of the instruments) where POWER could be different than kV * A because of non-unity power-factor.
Plus, the phases are never balanced. (the enduring problem of every power company. I pay attention to it in the data center, but there's not much I can do about it.)
Love this channel. The guy has the perfect personality for the stuff. I'm a master electrician on the other side of the power grid servicing the buyer side of power distribution. Listening to these videos I get valued insight on issues that most people in my fields don't know. This makes my services more valuable. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
niceeeee, i was sad when i found your channel a year ago or so going through you r entire catalog of videos and sad it ended, glad to see your back! you get a sub from me!
THAT IS SO COOL! Thank you for being here, I'm glad you're new in the industry and that these videos are able to help. :) This place is filled with industry professionals who are all happy to help answer your questions so you can learn and do better! :)
christ.... any time i think i'm smart or know a lot of stuff I get involved and start learning about something I realize I'm out of my depth in by a substantial margin. So glad there's people that understand this fully because I only know enough to get about a quarter to half of what you say lmao
Exactly! Thank you! Never forget that EVERY PERSON YOU MEET has something to teach you. We all have stories, and everyone out there knows stuff that you haven't learned yet. :)
THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE! If you see my video on TikTok please let me know where. I don't HAVE a TikTok (at least, yet....perhaps I should?). So that means someone stole my video.
As a mechanical engineer who’s worked in the electrical/power distribution service industry for 10 years I appreciate your content. I never get tired of visiting power plants and learning about their controls and processes. My favorite part is just seeing the vintage equipment that they have. Abandoned in place is a nice acronym. My whole world revolves around this type of equipment and keeping the old stuff going in some capacity or another (relay replacements, generator circuit breaker replacements, general switchgear bus/insulation replacement etc). It’s cool seeing you all still operating with all the old school tech!
Not sure how i found this channel but i just binged the series about Em. So glad to see i found it intime for the start of something new. Oh and yes please on as many deep crasy mindblowing dives as youve got breath for.
As a technical director, i don't need to look up Vegas mode. I remember when I first saw a automation demo and the faders moved on their own. Better yet, i remember my dad's JVC HiFi receiver back in the 90s. When you turned the volume up on the remote the knob turned on the receiver. That was the start of my control panel fascination.
Cant wait for the next episode! Love the old school cool stuff! Got all antique style H.A.M. equip myself. Like the new style as well! Came out awesome.
VARs are a fantastic thing. Former submarine electrician/electrical operator turned hydro plant electrical engineer turned power system apprentice trainer. Sometimes my ADD fights with my OCD.
Thank you! I'm so thrilled that people are enjoying the new style of videos. It's a massive amount of work, but it seems worth it. Thank you for being here! :)
Love it!! Thanks for the great breakdown of the panel and all the mysterious gauges...Looking forward to part two and of course we are going to bite on your teaser about the black start...Inquiring minds want to know!
Excellent! Thanks! Black start .... yes. I once had the opportunity to tour a hydro power plant under construction on the Tekeze River. I was on a self-guided whitewater rafting trip and the tour almost started by damn near floating over the top of the dam that was under construction .... definitely got the heart beat up.
As a child, a young child, I was in an auditorium and started taking note of all the enormous lighting, I eventually remember telling my dad that I would like to see the switch that turns those lights on and off. Lol now I do work on draw Bridges working around a lot of very similar equipment to what you are.
Thank you! I'm glad you're getting something out of this! :) Stay curious! and thank you for being here! You're the most important part of all of this!
Welcome Back! Thanks for the video! I really do want you to get started on why you believe measuring things in kilowatt hours is the stupidest thing ever.
YES! BLACK START! Iv allways wondered about how thats done, i know hydro power is used most often to get the grid back up, some gas plants to but mostly hydro please do
I've worked in a coal fired power plant for 14 years. In the last year I've been trained to control operator. Our plant is 580 megawatts. These videos are very informative. Ive a lot of these gauge and heard of lot of these terms before. But these videos are kind of a deep dive into some of these topics.
I used to overhaul aircraft generators 3 phase jobs no less. It was fun to play with the excitation One test was to short the output with a copper buss bar and crank the output to 300% for one minute. These generators were actually three generators in one... Thanks for these videos Chris
That disclaimer was absolutely unhinged! I feel like I read the Unabomber's manifesto 😅 Bravo Chris! Thank you for your insightful video and keep up the great work!
after finishing my chem bcs i plan on looking at working at a powerstation so this is a cool af insight. thank you for producing this video, I look forward to the other videos.
This is so awesome. I am very glad that the algorithm fed me your channel. One small minuscule point I want to say without being “that guy”- watt-hours are units of energy or work, not power.
what an excellent find your channel is! well done explaining such a cool, niche thing most people won’t get the chance to see otherwise. Kudos to you for welcoming someone teaching you about something! Helps everyone interested
Black start rabbithole! Yes please
Seconded! :)
I will join you lol 😆
Yes
Abso-lutely!
MOST DEFINITELY!
This is incredible. I feel like I’m watching PBS kids, but I’m 30, and this is the greatest thing ever.
Thank you SO MUCH! :) I appreciate you! There's more episodes coming!
@@Physicsduck He stole my comment, I literally feel like an excited little kid watching Newton's Apple all over again. I'm an IT nerd but I wish so bad I could work with stuff like this.
Not gonna lie, there's just something sexy and exciting about old school meters, gauges, buttons, switches and knobs that no GUI on a computer screen can ever truly replicate.
This person gets it. :) We call it "Old School Cool".
I prefer analog to digital... With analog, after using the panel for a while, you can just glance at it to see if everything is were it's supposed to be at. That pointer should be pointing that way, this other one next to that line, etc. With digital, you have to mentally decode the values and some of them can trip you up in a scary way... It is supposed to be a 9 or a 6? Or 8 versus 0. There is a place for digital - when you have to know what the value is, not where the pointer should be. My iWatch has an analog face.
@@fredinit I was entirely confused by your post until you started comparing individual digits. Just because something is digital, does not mean it needs to show numerical digits. You can put a dial gauge on a screen just as easy as a value read-out. And then, if you ever need a more precise value for whatever reason, the digital information, in precise digital representation, will be displayed below/next to/inside of the dial.
Or, at least, it should be this way. I recognize it's often not, but that's a design decision, not a limitation of digital information.
I have to agree!!! Flew on old S-58 helos, to myself the cockpits are sexy
@@kindlinthere are places where each one has its advantages. For instance sometimes its still nice to have the needle movement of an analog meter like when troubleshooting an oscillator. Its much more intuitive to see a meter sweeping back and forth than a bunch of digits flashing. But like I said each one has its merits
“Comprehensive and incomprehensible”
Put that shit on a pillow.
This is the content my ADHD brain desires. From the constant jumps back and forth, to the constant trivia, this is perfect.
Also I'd absolutely love a deep dive on black starts!
Thank you! I'm thrilled you like the new editing style! It's a ton of work and I was worried that people would hate it. It seems everyone actually likes it. :) There's MORE COMING SOON! Thanks for being the most important part of all this! I appreciate you! :)
@@Physicsduck New viewer here, I could use slightly longer time between jump cuts, maybe with a bit more natural transitions. The cuts feel abrupt and needless sometimes.
That said, if you are just now experimenting with a new format, you'll settle into a good rhythm and figure out what works best for you. Keep it up!
@@phillyphakename1255 I concur.
I would pay good money to have this guy give a 1 hour tour of a power plant.
Any support is sincerely appreciated (check the link in the description to my ko-fi to help me make more videos). I'll give you a full tour of LOTS of power plants, in great detail, one video at a time. I'm already working on exactly that. Check out my recent longform video on it to get started. :) Thank you!
When I was in high school I job shadowed a civil engineer working on a new spillway at a local damn but he could only keep me half the day. So he dropped me off at the damn and pawned me off on one of the guys. He got busy with something and let me wander around for an hour before he started his tour and explanation again. The whole day was amazing.
As a someone who builds industrial control panels and also does audiovisual work, I can confirm there is indeed something sexy about control panels.
Thank you! :) I'm going to do a video about exactly that very soon. :)
Hell yeah ive been waiting for this. Good to see you back.
Hey! So YOU'RE my subscriber! Thanks for watching! It's good to be back!
@@Physicsduck You was gone for a hot minute
@@Physicsduck Hey, there are at least 2 of us.......
I assure you, the past two years were the longest decade of my life. It's good to be back and I'm so very thrilled that you're here! :) Thank you!
@@Physicsduck sometimes it's good to take time off though to recoup
My old man (RIP) was a Navy Electrician in the Royal Australian Navy, and I have heard fun tales of ship generators being dropped 180Deg out of phase when hooking up to shore power.
Shore power wins, and a generator spinning clockwise becomes a motor going ANTI clockwise... for about a microsecond, before the generator drive shaft snaps, the mounts rip and the generator is launched through three decks, and onto pier next to the ship.
That had to be one hell of a show.
Shit that is the stuff of nightmares, now I see why Chris talks about syncing to the National Grid properly. RIP to the old man by the way, just like the old boy a few doors away he was a live liney.
Interesting!
I would wonder how accurate those tales are. RAN boats at least from the early '60s had load-shed protection in the power supply circuits. They would also have been the best engineered power units at the time. Synchroscopes have existed for decades and were present in the '60s. I have worked in power generation plant rooms with late '50s equipment and load shedding was present even then. You cannot physically connect an incoming source to a mismatched alternator.
@@greywolf271sure ya can, never under estimate the power of human stupidity....i can't tell you the number of times i have been the better idiot....metaphorically , pull the wrong levers in the exactly wrong order at exactly the wrong time and boom lights and sirens....
From a "knowledge per unit of time" perspective, that was the best damn description of power factor I have ever heard. I don't watch UA-cam shorts because of reasons, but I think that part would make a very educational short.
Thank you! I really appreciate that! I tried to make it a short, but couldn't fit enough of it into the 1-minute timeframe for it to still make sense like I wanted it to. There's just too much setup required. I could do it with animation, but I'm not that good an animator. Perhaps I'll take another crack at this when my skills have improved a bit. Thank you for GETTING it though! I appreciate you! :)
Agreed. Another rabbit hole would be to discuss exactly why capacitance and inductance affect PF but in opposite directions.
Fun fact, we used your videos in class of electrical engineering all the way in the Czech Republic in Europe. Really good stuff!
WHAT! That's AWESOME! I'm sincerely honoured, thank you! And hi to all the cool kids in your class! :) Děkuji!
Black start video please! These kinds of explanations are rare on UA-cam. Keep it up, looking forward to part 2!
Thank you! :) It's coming soon!
@@PhysicsduckThank You!
Disciples of the Plastic God rejoice. Chris is back to bring us new content!
lol, thank you! LOTS more coming!
Not entirely new, but we'll take it.
I would love to see more about a black start condition. There is a black start power plant about a mile and a half from my house.
The disclaimer is a must read 😂😂😂
The disclaimer needs its own thumbs up button!
Came here to say this. disclaimer is epic!
About the amperage - 3 phase power formula is P=√3*U*I*PF which in this case would make it P=√3*2440*46*1=194405W=194.405kW
That is, if I see the meters in video right. Still, I took readings from different times in video, so it cannot be considered exact result.
Now THAT is an excellent comment :) Thank you! There's a shot in there that shows the entire panel all at once so that all the readings match up in relation to time. That way people can check their math and be sure they got it right. :)
Also, there is a phase voltage vs line voltage argument and so on.
@@Physicsduck which now causes this armchair idiot to ask: Would there be benefit to taking Vegas Mode to level 3: A, V, kWh for each phase? (how critical is it that the 3 phases be somewhat balanced?)
Another fun one is delta-wye connections and wye-delta motor starters. It's amazing they figured that out and it can all be done with contactors!
@@Physicsduck thank you! Good thing that electricity works the same in America and Latvia. Just some parameters change.
Welcome back, Chris! Glad to see you're back to posting vids again.
AVITECH! YOU'RE HERE! OMG! THANK YOU! It's so very good to be back, and I'm glad you stuck around! :) Thank you!
In the UK is becuase our grid completely covers the country in a single synchronous AC system and the frequency is constantly monitored and recorded you can, with a bit of analysis, use the variations in background mains hum on an audio recording of sufficient length to timestamp that recording to the second.
Only problem with that is that this is almost completely obliterated by the variation in timing of the recorder itself, from things like battery voltage drift affecting the crystal oscillator that provides a sample clock, to temperaure drift as well that make it vary. You get more of a graph of oscillator drift with time, and with analogue tape, with wow and flutter, it is even worse.
Digital the hum is hard to recover, mostly because most recorders will absolutely actively remove 50/60/100/120Hz noise with narrowband filters in the DSP engine that does the pre encoding processing, simply to reduce data use recording hum, and then your typical Frauenhof encvoding to MP3, FLAC or even AAC, will strip out all the bass noise to a great extent, unless not masked by other sound energy, so the recording will have very little data to begin with. Even if you were recording using WAV or other lossless CODEC, the data stream would have very little hum imposed on it, and if recorded off a phone line, with all the equipment along the way adding in hum, and the SPEEX codec doing serious decimation to get all this data into a single 8kbs data packet system, you will be hard pressed to get anything.
You can do it in theory, but need both a good recording, no digital to analogue conversions until the final ADC to record, a log recording using a very well disciplined ADC clock, preferably a Rubidium disciplined one, though an ovenised crystal that has been running for 1000 hours continuously is a close second, and really good dynamic range to be able to use DSP to do the narrow band filtering needed to remove all the rest. Yes there is a paper, but it is idealised, and real life is hard to actually implement.
Thats just like... Marco Reps levels of zeros right there
I didn't say it was easy 😀 I did kind of gloss over that with "a bit of analysis" which should have been a "complex piece of analysis requiring looking for a best fit taking into account variances in the recording fidelity". It doesn't always work and yes modern digital recording filters can make it harder but still often record harmonics that are usable with the right analysis. Tom Scott did a video a few years ago.
@@ThePoxun Yes I remember seeing a video from somewhere on this exact subject and it was to do with law enforcement from memory and Tom Scott rings a bell.
@@SeanBZA There's not such a big of the problem. What you need to measure from recording is the frequency fluctuations, and since they are relative - you can find the correlation between your fluctuations and grid fluctuations.
More videos please! It is fascinating to see how an actual power plant works!!
Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying them! More are coming as fast as I can make them, it takes a lot of time, energy, and money to make videos at this level. :) But I'm on it!
Hearing you scream about kilowatt-hours is fantastic. What an absolutely cursed unit. Our new electric car rates its efficiency in MPGe, or "Miles per gallon equivalent", with is based on miles per kilowatt-hour... and my brain nearly malfunctions any time I try to determine what that actually means.
Honest question - why is it bad? I'm no EE or anything but I have actually always been irritated by some of the other alternatives like Amp-hours for battery packs. In that context I think watt-hours is much more useful than amp-hours, right? What am I missing?
I don't really get it either, but it may have to do with the fact that the Watt is defined as 1 Joule per second? So 1kWh is just one thousand Joules per second times 3600 seconds, and the units cancel out and leave you with 3.6 million Joules. Which is all fine and good, but the Joule is a very small unit for measuring the energy consumption of an average household, whereas a kWh is about the energy an average household uses in an hour according to this video, so it makes sense to me that that would be the more popular unit here
@@theWONDERFULwizbecause we already have a unit to measure power over time. It's called the joule.
No, there's one worse: the kWh/year unit. used to indicate power consumption over an average year. Now you're mixing three time magnitudes!!!
I too hate the kWh unit. It's truly cursed. My biggest beef with it is using it in reference to electric cars and charging. You see, your car might have a 70kWh battery in it. Your charger might be 10kW. So, How fast does it charge? 10kWh per.... hour... um... So it returns 10kWh of battery capacity per hour. Yeah... having "hour" as part of your actual unit is terrible. I think joules would be the better unit, as others have said. Or, maybe megajoules for battery packs. Alas, we are standardized with kWh for both batteries and the grid. I hate it.
great to see new episodes chris!
Thank you! :) How do you like the new style?
Can’t speak for Steve but I like the new ones and the old ones almost equally. I think the new ones come off as more polished.
Also Blackstart plz!
I noticed in one of your earlier videos a series of 12V batteries and while not ideal could be used to blackstart site 2. Has your site ever practiced a blackstart??
What an awesome rabbit hole I’ve discovered.
Thank you! There's over a THOUSAND videos on this channel, and plenty for you to explore. :)
I read your entire disclaimer, and I think you forgot one:
Your call will be ignored in the order it was received.
Subbed.
This video was very interesting Chris! I can tell that you worked very hard on this. Really good job, the editing and video was very well done too!
Thank you so very much! This one was HARD to make, and I'm glad you appreciate all the effort behind the scenes.
@@Physicsduck Of course! I find things like this very interesting. Even though I don't know a ton about power, it's still very interesting to learn some stuff!
As one of those audiophiles you mentioned, owning gear with a large amount of capacitance, I appreciate this.
A fun thing now is that I own an amplifier with an old-school choke power supply.
Used to work for a major audio lab. Our speaker test racks had massive 1:1 inrush transformers just to handle to jarring voltage drop that a dozen subwoofers barking off pink noise at high dB's would pull. Even comcert hall PA's drop into protection mode without them.
Just found this channel through shorts. Already a big fan!
Thank you! :) I'm glad you're enjoying it! :)
Oh yes, I loved the former episodes of this series, and the sounds it makes when you tie the generator to the grid.
Welcome back, Captain Boden!
Thank you! :) It's AWESOME to be back! I'm so truly thankful that you're still here! :)
OH GOD YES !!! FINNALY AFTER 2 YEARS !! I've been waitin for agess so happy right now woot woooooot !!
I hope we'll get more of your amazing content
Thank you! The past two years were the longest decade of my life. Now we're back in action and there's LOTS of new content headed your way. :)
Hey Chris, welcome back. Looking forward to your vids on power factor and the stupidity of using kilowatt hours in measuring power plant output.... :)
Thank you! :) They're coming! Scripts are already in progress on both :)
Much appreciated. Being a retired civil engineer, I find your program fun and entertaining. Yes, I'm also a nerd at heart. Cheers!😅
Yesss welcome back!! Nice to see full videos again 😍
+1 for black start rabbithole ;)
It is good having Chris back to entertain our curiosity :D
my job for years was educating teachers attending a national technical education conference in major industrial process, and the local Edison company was my great friend, taking thousands of teachers over the years. in hours long tours of gas fired steam plants and even nuclear power stations (in more sane times) and with all this YOU have the lead in understandable cogent and amusing explanations in power plant operators, ( congratulations, you have beaten 30 years of excellent educating by southern california Edison, ( and they were the best at it)
so keep it up, expand it out, rest assured in your excellence,
and you have been unofficially certified in outstanding educational abilities by the second largest school in the csu system.
now take your accolades and get going on more material, teaching is mostly a grind, with only etherial rewards.
Thank you, so very much, thank you. That means more than you might realize. I just spent the past couple years in the darkest places you don't ever want to see or know about, with a great deal of time to really focus on what I wanted to do with my life. This video is the first publicly visible tangible result of that plan.
It was only with great trepidation that I finally published it, because it's such a niche topic and I have so little credibility. Who the hell would want to hear me talk about boring silly things like powerplant engineering? How could I ever actually make it worthwhile to spend so much time, effort, and money making videos that nobody will ever want to watch? My reputation is torched, and I'll never get any kind of sponsor support to fund this, it's all on my head. So to put this out there and see that people actually like it, and to see that someone with your perspective and experience truly gets it and thinks so highly of it........that's the whole ballgame, right there.
Fifteen years I've been on this platform, thousands of videos published, and god only knows how many comments I've read. I've read comments that made me thankful, that have made me angry, and that have made me laugh.
Yours is the first one that made me cry.
Thank you, from my soul and with all of my heart, thank you.
cb
Yes. Please. yes.
A black start video would be wonderful.
I keep coming across the topic, and can't get enough.
Two panels that will keep you staring for hours are the old slate-backed panel in the Worthington generator shed at the Buckley Old Engine Show (now disconnected but AIP for your staring edification) and the DC knife switch panels for the old steam DC plant in the basement of the New Yorker hotel. Which I saw a video of ONCE and never found again. Skinner Una-Flow engines. Pretty sexy.
There's a couple of the old slate panels still in use out here in the wild. I'm trying very hard to be able to get some video of them, but the security guys have a problem with that. They DO exist though, and they're STILL IN SERVICE!
Really detailed, exactly what I want to hear about, love it. Digging this format and I'm locked in for your next videos Chris
That's awesome! Thank you! :) I was worried about making such a radical change in format and I'm really glad you're enjoying them! :)
Thanks Chris! Working on my second class power production worker rating as we speak, lots of Manuel starts, and more advanced learning about our units and plants. We have 6 hydros in 2 sites. 4x 2mw horizontal Francis runners from 100 years ago, 1x min flow unit which produces around 500kw and has a double runner incase of low flow we can drop it in half. Our other plant produces about 4mw and is a vertical Francis. We operate and maintain 4x 2mw catapiller diesel generators and a GE frame 5 gas turbine. Love what I do, and enjoy all your videos. Keep after it 💪
That's AWESOME! Thank you for being here! I love that you're getting into the industry and learning the trade! You're one of the COOL kids now! :) Thank you for being a part of this, and you're personally invited to the Discord! Check the link in the description for a place to come hang out with a ton of other people as weird as we are. :)
0:14 This editing is like hardcore drugs to me.
Just ran into this goldmine of a channel and you’ve got me at the edge of my seat waiting for the “we’ll cover this topic in a future video” videos.
Excellent! I'm glad you're here! :) You might want to check out the Discord too, link in the description! :)
I'm glad to see this series back! And yes, in the broadcast industry there is a lot of "abandon in place". Old frequency meters that were no longer required to be operational by the FCC is one example. The most interesting was a Khan AM stereo generator that was AIPed when the FCC gave up on "let the marketplace decide" and said "Thou shalt use C-QUAM". And another vote for a video on black start
Glad you're back Chris. What was done to you was freaking criminal.
Thank you! It sucked, but we're on to the next chapter now and things get better. Besides, now I'm officially certified at the US Government as a "Gangster". So that's something. I'm a SCIENCE GANGSTER YO!
Hey I was thinking about your channel a few days ago, nice to see you upload!
Check the Shorts section on here. I've been slowly ramping up making videos for a few weeks. and THANK YOU FOR STILL BEING HERE! :) I appreciate you, and your patience :)
200 kW / 2400 volt / sqrt(3) (because the ammeter is measuring one leg); = "just over 48A" which is what the meter shows. There would be a further error (which will be difficult to read given the scale of the instruments) where POWER could be different than kV * A because of non-unity power-factor.
Plus, the phases are never balanced. (the enduring problem of every power company. I pay attention to it in the data center, but there's not much I can do about it.)
Respect to the dude.
I learn something every video I watch.
Short and sweet.
This is absolutely amazing. The content, the editing, and even the ironies, pure gold! Greetings from México
Gracias Felipe! I'm so glad you're here and enjoying these! Thank you! :)
Love this channel. The guy has the perfect personality for the stuff. I'm a master electrician on the other side of the power grid servicing the buyer side of power distribution. Listening to these videos I get valued insight on issues that most people in my fields don't know. This makes my services more valuable. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
this is all so over the top of my head and yet i find it supper interesting.
welcome back Sir.
I've been seeing the shorts and been waiting for a long form. Welcome back!
Thank you! :) I'm glad you caught the shorts! It seems that they're two different audiences, but I'm glad you made the crossover :)
@@PhysicsduckAnd also thank you for vegas mode, the more control panels the better.
Your intro describes me well, as a kid I loved playing with knobs, buttons, switches and sliders. The sound equipment at RadioShack was a favorite.
Really enjoyed the tour, looking forward to seeing the control tour, and the black start. Be careful out there.👍
Thank you! There's more coming soon! :)
Great to have you back!
Thank you! It's good to BE back!
If you put power in the shower....to get it clean....now hang on ..i was all ways told i couldn't cook toast in bathtub 😆😆👍👍👌👌 great video 👍👍
niceeeee, i was sad when i found your channel a year ago or so going through you r entire catalog of videos and sad it ended, glad to see your back! you get a sub from me!
THANK YOU FOR THE SUB! :) It was a rough ride, but now that I've been to the bottom I can teach people which way is up. :)
@@Physicsduckim happy to tag along for the ride!
this is great. i just got hired on at a small hydroelectric plant as a technician and all of this information is very helpful and relevant
THAT IS SO COOL! Thank you for being here, I'm glad you're new in the industry and that these videos are able to help. :) This place is filled with industry professionals who are all happy to help answer your questions so you can learn and do better! :)
Great to see you back, interesting new format (cut-shot from the lab) since the last authorized personal video a year or so ago (thumbs up).
Thank you! :) I'm glad you like the new style! The last episode of APO was actually two years ago. A year ago I was still in hell.
Glad to see you back.
And I'm glad that you're still here! Thank you! :)
christ.... any time i think i'm smart or know a lot of stuff I get involved and start learning about something I realize I'm out of my depth in by a substantial margin. So glad there's people that understand this fully because I only know enough to get about a quarter to half of what you say lmao
Exactly! Thank you! Never forget that EVERY PERSON YOU MEET has something to teach you. We all have stories, and everyone out there knows stuff that you haven't learned yet. :)
@@Physicsduck It's quite the most beautiful and humbling thing, for absolute sure!
Thank you Chris!
You are sincerely welcome :) THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE! :)
Chris is back! This is a very good thing. Thanks to you I know what a wicket gate is and what it does.
I'm BACK! And even better, you're still here! HOW COOL IS THAT! :) Thank you!
Saw a clip from this video on tiktok, glad I found the youtube channel!
I love the format. Subscribed, look forward to binging later.
THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE! If you see my video on TikTok please let me know where. I don't HAVE a TikTok (at least, yet....perhaps I should?). So that means someone stole my video.
These people make the world go round
As a mechanical engineer who’s worked in the electrical/power distribution service industry for 10 years I appreciate your content. I never get tired of visiting power plants and learning about their controls and processes. My favorite part is just seeing the vintage equipment that they have.
Abandoned in place is a nice acronym. My whole world revolves around this type of equipment and keeping the old stuff going in some capacity or another (relay replacements, generator circuit breaker replacements, general switchgear bus/insulation replacement etc). It’s cool seeing you all still operating with all the old school tech!
Great to have you back. I've always enjoyed your video for the technical, educational and hilarity values.
Thank you! I'm glad that you appreciate all of the facets of these. :) You rock!
Not sure how i found this channel but i just binged the series about Em. So glad to see i found it intime for the start of something new. Oh and yes please on as many deep crasy mindblowing dives as youve got breath for.
Thank you for being here! :) I'm glad you're enjoying the series! LOTS more deep dives coming! :)
From a sound engineer and a curious mind, thank you!
As a technical director, i don't need to look up Vegas mode.
I remember when I first saw a automation demo and the faders moved on their own.
Better yet, i remember my dad's JVC HiFi receiver back in the 90s. When you turned the volume up on the remote the knob turned on the receiver.
That was the start of my control panel fascination.
Glad to see you back. I can’t wait for Pt.2 and I’m on board for a black start video.
It's coming! and THANK YOU! :)
Cant wait for the next episode! Love the old school cool stuff! Got all antique style H.A.M. equip myself. Like the new style as well! Came out awesome.
I've missed you man
I missed you too, more than I'll ever have the words to express. Thank you so very much for still being here. :)
VARs are a fantastic thing.
Former submarine electrician/electrical operator turned hydro plant electrical engineer turned power system apprentice trainer. Sometimes my ADD fights with my OCD.
I greatly look forward to all the future deep dives!
Thank you! I'm so thrilled that people are enjoying the new style of videos. It's a massive amount of work, but it seems worth it. Thank you for being here! :)
welcome back Cap. Missed you. Glade to see you back.
Love it!! Thanks for the great breakdown of the panel and all the mysterious gauges...Looking forward to part two and of course we are going to bite on your teaser about the black start...Inquiring minds want to know!
Great vids, love your presentation
You’ve come back smashing it brother! All the best for the future. Aussie Mike
Thank you mate! And thank you for sticking around all the time! :) I'm so glad you're HERE!
My Airplane 2 brain says you need more beeping, blinking, and flashing!!! Haha great video
Excellent! Thanks! Black start .... yes. I once had the opportunity to tour a hydro power plant under construction on the Tekeze River. I was on a self-guided whitewater rafting trip and the tour almost started by damn near floating over the top of the dam that was under construction .... definitely got the heart beat up.
oh I'd absolutely love to sit and eat popcorn learning about black starts!
all hail the plastic god!!! nice to have you back
LMFAO, thank you! and thank you for STILL BEING HERE! :) I appreciate you!
As a child, a young child, I was in an auditorium and started taking note of all the enormous lighting, I eventually remember telling my dad that I would like to see the switch that turns those lights on and off. Lol now I do work on draw Bridges working around a lot of very similar equipment to what you are.
I'm super stoked you're making videos again!
THANK YOU! :) I'm thrilled that you're here and enjoying them! Even if your vacuum tube video hurts my soul a little bit. ;)
@@Physicsduck Just having a little fun with a worn-out horizontal deflection amp from an old TV :) My future videos will be repairs, I promise!
I enjoy watching and learning from your videos! Keep up the amazing work. 👍
Thank you! I'm glad you're getting something out of this! :) Stay curious! and thank you for being here! You're the most important part of all of this!
So happy you are back! I love your videos, lots of good information.
Thank you! :) I'm glad you're enjoying the new videos! MORE COMING SOON! :)
Seeing this video alerted me that you were back to the land of the living. Welcome back!
Thank you! :) It's good to be back!
Welcome Back! Thanks for the video! I really do want you to get started on why you believe measuring things in kilowatt hours is the stupidest thing ever.
Too muc fun! I am looking forward to part 2. :)
keep up the good work. thanks for sharing. a black start sounds neat.
Thank you! :) I'm glad you're enjoying the videos! Black start script is in progress!
Missed you Chris. Glad you are back man.
YES! BLACK START! Iv allways wondered about how thats done, i know hydro power is used most often to get the grid back up, some gas plants to but mostly hydro
please do
Delta-wye connections (GET-3388B) and wye-delta motor starters. It's amazing they figured that out and it can all be done with contactors!
Oh THANK YOU! There's my bedtime reading tonight.
I've always loved this channel
Thanks for sticking around! It gets better! :)
Thanks and glad you uploaded!
Thank you for being here to enjoy it! I appreciate you! :)
Absolutely love these videos. Shorts are awesome too.
I've worked in a coal fired power plant for 14 years. In the last year I've been trained to control operator. Our plant is 580 megawatts. These videos are very informative. Ive a lot of these gauge and heard of lot of these terms before. But these videos are kind of a deep dive into some of these topics.
I used to overhaul aircraft generators 3 phase jobs no less. It was fun to play with the excitation
One test was to short the output with a copper buss bar and crank the output to 300% for one minute. These generators were actually three generators in one... Thanks for these videos Chris
That disclaimer was absolutely unhinged! I feel like I read the Unabomber's manifesto 😅 Bravo Chris! Thank you for your insightful video and keep up the great work!
I’m so glad to have found this channel
after finishing my chem bcs i plan on looking at working at a powerstation so this is a cool af insight. thank you for producing this video, I look forward to the other videos.
This is so awesome. I am very glad that the algorithm fed me your channel. One small minuscule point I want to say without being “that guy”- watt-hours are units of energy or work, not power.
I seen most of the shorts I'm happy to see them together. Thanks
what an excellent find your channel is! well done explaining such a cool, niche thing most people won’t get the chance to see otherwise.
Kudos to you for welcoming someone teaching you about something! Helps everyone interested