On 2/14/10 12:34 AM, "Poul-Henning Kamp" phk@phk.freebsd.dk wrote:

Or Transit, or celestial nav for open seas, pilotage (perhaps with radar
assist) for coastal waters. After all folks did successfully navigate ships
long before electronics was common place (most of the time, anyway<grin>)

Jerry is a WW II and after Navy info collector. He has a really nice web
site on all sorts of things.

He also occasionally sends out really funny jokes. The LORAN site appears
to be a spoof, but it's not such a bad idea, IMO.

Best,
-John

=============

Hi

I wonder what just the electric bill is to keep a single chain (4 transmitters) up and running?

They automated away most of the on-site / hands on stuff back a while ago (80's?). I would guess that electricity is a significant portion of what it costs to keep things running.

Bob

On Feb 14, 2010, at 1:36 PM, J. Forster wrote:

In message B8DD8AD0-9A4D-4332-83A5-0669685A2671@cq.nu, Bob Camp writes:

http://phk.freebsd.dk/photos/L9007M/dscf0458.jpg.html

Looks like 40kW for a dualrated transmitter like Eidí

--
Poul-Henning Kamp      | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG        | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer      | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

At 20.04 14/02/2010, Poul-Henning wrote:

Possibly times 1.73, it's three phase. About 650
MW/h per year - 2500 MW/h for the chain. Approx. $250.000 ?
Real costs are not there... personal cost,
infrastructure, masts... are much higher.

73 - Marco IK1ODO

Take a look at the poor (but commonly low) power factor.
Much more volt-amps are being delivered than used to do effective work
as kilowatts.

Power factor correction would be a money saver if saving money were an
objective.

Stan, W1LE    Cape Cod

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

Power companies charge for KVAs, NOT KVARs.

-John

=================

Residential meters measure KW
Industrial meters usually measure KVARs along with KVAs delivered
and the utility bills for both.
There is usually a distinct economic factor to reduce KVARs

Stan, W1LE

J. Forster wrote:

On 2/14/10 12:54 PM, "J. Forster" jfor@quik.com wrote:

PF = 0.75 isn't horrible but not great.  The apparent power is 33% more than
the actual power. That's what lots of places with older motors and
conventional fluorescent ballasts probably run.

The electric company (at least here in southern california) doesn't charge
for KVA or KVAR, per se.  What they do is charge for kWhr, plus a penalty
for poor PF, but the penalty isn't proportional to the VARs. It's more of a
step function, based on the peak reactive load. (measured in some fairly
small time increment)

For instance, on Southern California Edison tariff RTP-3 Large Realtime
pricing
For service delivered and metered at voltages greater than 50kV,
including Cogeneration and Small Power Production Customers, the billing
will be increased by $0.18 per kilovar of maximum reactive
demand imposed on the Company. (you get a 10%+ discount for getting your
power at 50kV and above)

For service delivered and metered at voltages of 50kV or less, including
Cogeneration and Small Power Production Customers, the billing will be
increased by $0.23 per kilovar of maximum reactive demand imposed on
the Company.

On 2/14/10 1:05 PM, "Stan, W1LE" stanw1le@verizon.net wrote:

The last place I worked where I had access to the meters, the KVAR "meter"
had a "peak hold" feature (mechanical) that would remember the highest
reactive load we drew.  As described in another post, SoCal Edison tags you
with a fee for whatever that peak hold read, on top of your kWhr number.