[GTALUG] Dirty Power and Wi Fi Far field effect

[Russell Reiter]

I'm not sure what happened here but I just replied to Lennart's post and
then got James and the others posts on this thread. Toasted tower = New
tablet = New learning curve.

I see that most don't buy into my theory and in fact I have a hard time
with it myself, which is why I posted it to the list. Clean power is
important to people, perhaps more so today than at any other time in our
development as human society(ies).

We tend to think of most of the aspects of technology that we use today to
be cut and dried ie. Doctors provide medicine, lawyers provide legal
services etc. However, when you read the fine print you find that a person
is engaged in a medical or legal practice and I simply extend this
postulation to electrical practices.

High tension electrical engineering is a quantative and qualitative
science. However, there is an almost mystical quality to electricity which
only first responding power workers experience first hand. Historically
this resulted in many deaths. Science recorded those experiential outcomes
and has adjusted it's own theories and practices accordingly.

Here is one of my war stories of sustainable development and the grid.

I was working as a lead hand in the construction of a recording studio. One
of my responsibilities was to ensure the control room was acoustically
accurate. ie conforming to specifications. The mixing board was a half
million dollars of solid state logic circuit clusters.

Ontario Hydro promises +- 3% flux in power but when we tested power on our
side of the isolation terminals we were spiking to 7%. Hydro took some time
to sort out what the problem was. Turns out that a auto body shop on the
same street had wired one leg of its welding unit out of phase and it was
sending spikes out all over the place. So instead of directing the owner to
wire it correctly, Hydro ran a new clean leg up to our unit. They did it
hot and in the rain, kudos to their skills and training.

Why, because the cost of using the courts to cause conformity was more
expensive than the kludge they actually implemented. So whenever I'm
discussing power and someone tells me this is the way it is, I find myself
saying, no that is the way it should be.

What a thing is and what it should be are two different things. One is a
theory and one is a fact. Facts which are uniformly agreed upon are
considered to be the status quo. Here is the status quo of north Americas
power grid as expressed by a British engineer lo these many decades ago.
"North America was wired with a great deal of optimism and little regard
for the common earth."

So in my mind every poorly grounded home or miswired factory on the load
balanced grid is a potential source of problems which are not necessilarly
going to manifest themselves in an easily discernable manner. Converting
60hz to 50hz can be done at any point in the grid if the proper equipment
is installed and could do a lot to clean up errant spikes which could
adversely affect expensive computer controlled equipment.

One of the first things a welder learns is how to orient themselves in
respect to the unit so they don't cook their liver when they operate the
equipment.
If a programming environment may be described as an ecosystem, which it
often is, can we not also allow for mystical qualities - that some things
happen behind the scenes and they may be things of which we, as end users,
are not fully aware.

One further point. The current state of EM warfare is so advanced that any
major municipality who is not hardening its grid is doing a significant
disservice to its population. Nothing of what I have said is beyond the
possible realm of the current state of things.

In fact recently 27 US sailors asked to be relieved of duty after a soviet
jet disabled their warship in the black sea. The soviets used an EM weapon
to disable all command and control systems and flew simulated attack
sorties over the ship till they ran out of file and went home.

My theory is that this wired world is not the wired world of even a few
years ago.
Rußell

On Friday, March 13, 2015, James Knott <james.knott at rogers.com> wrote:

> On 03/13/2015 08:24 AM, Russell Reiter wrote:
> > I live close to the exhibition grounds which is near to one of the
> > city's major grid switches. For example, they were testing the new
> > streetcars, the ones with three sections for navigating tight turns
> > and they browned us down to (I assume) 50hz. This was visible as all
> > the lights dimmed and the streetcar appeared to navigate the loop a
> > short time later. As I don't have ups I had powered down my tower. The
> > next time I powered up the breaker in the power supply tripped and
> > when I reset it and booted, my 1.5v agp video card was toasted, at
> > least I hope its the card and not elsewhere on the bus.
> >
> > So that's not so bad, there's no enterprise stuff at risk, I just hack
> > together another box and carry on. However, now I have a real problem
> > and I'm in need of a solution. Yesterday I fired up the WiFi while my
> > SO was drying her hair. I toasted her salon quality hair dryer. Not
> > good. :-( There is no gfi outlet and at this point I'm wondering if I
> > need UPS, for the hair dryer, if not the computer.
> >
> > So my question is, does anyone on this list have similar problems and
> > a low cost hack they have used to deal with Toronto's iffy grid.
> > TIA
> > Russell
> >
>
> Something seems wrong here.  If that's actually happening, there's a
> problem with the power distribution network and you'd need a TTC power
> station nearby.  Streetcars run on DC, not AC and those stations are
> used to convert 60 Hz (not 50) to DC.  I suspect that power dip was
> caused by something else.  If it was caused by streetcars, you'd see it
> happening frequently.  A UPS is always a good idea, but I really doubt
> your WiFi damaged the dryer.  A GFI outlet protects people against
> electrical leakage.  It does not protect equipment.  However, it's a
> good idea to have one for safety with outlets nears sinks etc.
>
>
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