🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1262@island.uu.net> rich@island.uu.net (Rich Fanning) writes:
> Do the utility meters on the average house measure true watts

	Actually, they measure watt-hours, but you knew that; I'm just being
pedantic.  Large industrial users are not only "encouraged" to keep a
reasonable power factor, but they also get zapped with a hefty penalty if
their peak load (I'm not sure if kVA or kW) ever goes past some preset limit.

	Anybody know what the total average power factor on the power grid
is?  I would imagine it must be massively lagging, what with motors and
transformers being most of the load.  I can't think of any typical capacitive
loads on the power grid.  I know it is possible to make a synchronous motor
have a leading power factor with proper external excitation, but have no idea
how often that is done.

	If the above doesn't make sense, try interchanging all instances of
leading and lagging; I never could keep them straight.  Does current lag
voltage or does voltage lead current?  Pretty arbitrary, isn't it?  I think
of capacitive as leading and inductive as lagging.  Did I get that right?
I know about ELI the ICE man, but that's a pretty bad mnemonic because you
can interpret either way!

	Now, for another question.  A while ago, I was wandering around in
the basement, looking at the power connections.  No, not my basement, where I
work basement.  The building engineers are wonderfully lax about not locking
doors.  Anyway, behind the panels with the 5000 amp breakers were a couple of
rather ordinary-looking electric meters and boxes with wire seals on them.
Some of the boxes said "Con Edison" on them, which seems normal, but some of
them said "New York Power Authority" which got me curious.  Why would the
NYPA have a sealed box in a not-particularly-special building in Manhattan?
What's in that box?  Could the NYPA actually be interested in the few measly
MW our building must draw?  Isn't that sort of like the Federal Reserve
worrying about whether my personal checkbook gets balanced?
--
Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy
"My karma ran over my dogma"