Cuts and jumpers on a different scale (1989)

stuff.mit.edu

76 points·mhb··7 comments

Discussion from the last time this was posted (about 1.5 years ago, linked from a 2002 post on JWZ's blog): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4948768

I liked it so much I not only read it last year, I read it again. I lost one of my coworkers when he left to go work for LA power. I like to think he gets to work on cool stuff like this from time to time.

JWZ's post contains more updates than the email posted here: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2002/11/engineering-pornography/

And from 6 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=193112

with the more descriptive title How to repair a 230KV, 10 mile long coaxial power cable. Talk of cable size in the power inverter contest post reminded me of this.

This is amazing technology - but I'm curious as to how unusual it is? The article says "It feeds (fed) power from the Scattergood Steam Plant in El Segundo to a distribution center near Bundy and S.M. Blvd."

Are most power stations and distribution centres connected in a similar way? Or are they typically co-located?

i.e. are there loads of cables like this, and if not why did they do it in this case?

It could be a jargon thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Sub...

If the email is using distribution in the sense that the Wikipedia article is, then it's because the consumers of the power aren't next to the power station.

symbolics.com was the first dot com.

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