Power Failures

In most parts of the world, local or national electric utilities have joined in grid systems. The linking grids allow electricity generated in one area to be shared with others. Each pooling company gains an increased reserve capacity, use of larger, more efficient generators, and compensation, through sharing, for local power failures.

These interconnected grids are large, complex machines that contain elements operated by different groups. These complex systems offer the opportunity for economic gain, but increase the risk of widespread failure. For example, a major grid-system breakdown occurred on November 9, 1965, in eastern North America, when an automatic control device that regulates and directs current flow failed in Queenston, Ontario, causing a circuit breaker to remain open. A surge of excess current was transmitted through the northeastern United States. Generator safety switches from Rochester, New York, to Boston, Massachusetts, were automatically tripped, cutting generators out of the system to protect them from damage. Power generated by more southerly plants rushed to fill the vacuum and overloaded these plants, which automatically shut themselves off. The power failure enveloped an area of more than 200,000 sq km (80,000 sq mi), including the cities of Boston, Buffalo, Rochester, and New York. Similar grid failures, usually on a smaller scale, have troubled systems in North America and elsewhere. On July 13, 1977, about 9 million people in the New York City area were once again without power when major transmission lines failed. In some areas the outage lasted 25 hours as restored high voltage burned out equipment. These major failures are termed blackouts. The term brownout is often used for partial shutdowns of power, usually deliberate, either to save electricity or as a wartime security measure. To protect themselves against power failures, hospitals, public buildings, and other facilities that depend on electricity have installed backup generators.

Voltage Regulation

Long transmission lines have considerable inductance and capacitance as well as resistance. When a current flows through the line, inductance and capacitance have the effect of varying the voltage on the line as the current varies. Thus the supply voltage varies with the load. Several kinds of devices are used to overcome this undesirable variation, in an operation called regulation of the voltage. They include induction regulators and three-phase synchronous motors (called synchronous condensers), both of which vary the effective amount of inductance and capacitance in the transmission circuit. Inductance and capacitance react with a tendency to nullify one another. When a load circuit has more inductive than capacitive reactance, as almost invariably occurs in large power systems, the amount of power delivered for a given voltage and current is less than when the two are equal. The ratio of these two amounts of power is called the power factor. Because transmission-line losses are proportional to current, capacitance is added to the circuit when possible, thus bringing the power factor as nearly as possible to 1. For this reason, large capacitors are frequently inserted as a part of power-transmission systems.

World Electric Power Production

Over the period from 1950 to 1990, annual world electric power production and consumption rose from slightly less than 1 trillion kilowatt hours (kwh) to more than 11.5 trillion kwh. A change also took place in the type of power generation. In 1950 about two-thirds of the electricity came from thermal (steam-generating) sources and about one-third from hydroelectric sources. In 1990 thermal sources still produced about two-thirds of the power, but hydropower had declined to just under 20 percent and nuclear power accounted for about 15 percent of the total. The growth in nuclear power slowed in some countries, notably the U.S., in response to concerns about safety. Nuclear plants generated about 20 percent of U.S. electricity in 1990; in France, the world leader, the figure was about 75 percent.

СОДЕРЖАНИЕ.

Unit 1

Text A “Scientific Method” p.5

Text B “Automation” p.13

Text C “Feedback” p.18

Text D “Automation in Industry” p.22

Unit 2

Text A “Automobile Industry” p.28

Text B “The Internal-Combustion Engine” p.35

Text C “Rise of US Automaking” p.42

Text D “The Modern Auto Industry” p.48

Text E “Pollution and Oil shortages” p.54

Unit 3

Text A “Iron and Steel Manufacture” p.61

Text B “Pig Iron Production” p.66

Text C “Basic Oxygen Process” p.73

Text D “Finishing Process” p.78

Unit 4

Text A “Building Construction” p.88

Text B “Construction Industry” p.93

Text C “Foundations” p.98

Text D “Structure” p.105

Unit 5

Text A “Electric Motors and Generators” p.113

Text B “Direct Current (DC) Generators” p.119

Text C “Alternating Current (AC) Generators” p.126

Unit 6

Text A “Electric Power Systems” p.134

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