Talk:Load management

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[edit] Proposed Improvements

• I think an improvement would be to have a "jargon" dictionary. If you see an industry jargon word, perhaps you can add it to my list below:

-- Dispatchable Load

--68.89.149.2 20:34, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Good point. My impression is that it is like 'delta VA' or the amount of 'capacity' that a systems operator has control over or can vary at any one time. I don't know about today, but many years ago electric clocks could have lost as much as a second or more towards the end of the days period of maximum demand, and then slowly catch up again during the periods of low demand.

This is also why, I suppose, heavy users had to have a car-sized capacitor on there main step-down transformer so as to reduce the tendency of hundreds of rotating motors running in factories, from slowing down the speed of the big rotors in the power stations (a phenomenon called 'phase lag' I seem to recall).

Factories kept their mechanical 'clocking in' clocks until 'standard time' referenced synchronised electric 'clocking in clock' systems were developed.

In some countries, the load control is so bad that voltage regulators are needed if you wish to watch television; and even then the picture goes smaller and larger all the time. The regulators are sometimes just simple solenoids moving a contact arm along a rheostat. In north America one needs UPS's on PC's so that the spiky mains does not keep crashing them. In Europe however, the PC's power supplies own smoothing capacitors are sufficient for their already smooth and well regulated supplies.

Inserting some explanations along these lines might help in getting across why it is important in a 'non technical' way.

If someone can remember how, starting with a singe rely, all of New York got blacked out a few decades ago, that too, would show the dangers of a poorly built system. --Aspro 13:56, 31 August 2007 (UTC)