Thickness of the cables

[martin007]

The cables in a home's electrical system are usually much thinner than those in a powerchair.
The wires in a home's electrical system carry 230 volts and a few amps.

Why the thickness of the cables of a powerchair?

[Burgerman]

The thickness of a cable, or a fuse etc depends on current. Amps. Doesent matter if thats 5000 volts or 0.1v.

And... For a given level of power which is watts, the current is less when the voltage is higher. Simple ohms law.

Our cables are thicker in a powerchair because they need to be able to intermittently carry 120A on a 120A controller per motor.

Lets say we need to power something that is 1000 watts.
240V x 4.17A is 1000 watts.
24V x 41.70A is 1000 watts as well. Ten x the current! Thicker cables.

[martin007]

I understand.

[ex-Gooserider]

Even more extreme example - take a look at "High Tension" power lines... Compare the size of the wires to the size of the birds that are sitting on them.... The wires are skinnier than the birds and are carrying a lot of current, but are doing so at very high voltages (usually thousands of volts)... If the were running at "household" voltages they would need to be a few FEET in diameter, in order to carry the same amount of power...

At least in the US, even the local power is carried by the relatively skinny wires at the very tops of the poles, at high voltages... It gets stepped down in those garbage-can size transformers you see every few houses to the actual household power.... (Semi-amusing note, there is a perpetual problem with "suicidal squirrels" that try to step between the wires on those transformers... Squirrel makes a brief welding arc, and mostly vaporizes... Problem is he usually blows the breaker on the transformer, which takes out the few houses it's serving until the power company can get a truck down to reset the breaker... It's so common the line guys I've talked with refer to it as a "squirrel outage". Biggest risk is that the flaming squirrel remains have been known to set fires to growth at the base of the pole...)

ex-Gooserider

[Burgerman]

In the UK the only place you see those can transformers or poles is out in the middle of nowhere to farms.

All our wires in cities, towns and even small villiages are all 3 phase via a big /medium sub stations and cables are all underground.

In the countryside there are the usual big 750k 500K and 264 and 132k volts high tension lines. And some 33k and 11k ones going to small villiages/farms.

[martin007]

I find it curious to see (in USA) wooden electric poles with transformers.

[iansp]

Not that strange we have the same in the countryside in the UK.

[Burgerman]

Same in spain. I travelled there lots. In places in europe where there is a farm or something that makes it not economically viable, they run 11kv cables on poles. Teres not so many in spain. But you dont see these in villiages, towns, or cities in he same way you do in the US.

[iansp]

But he lives in Spain? BT have people going round in Norfolk testing the poles, they have a hand held tool with a spike on it. Depending on how far they can push it into the base of the pole determines if the pole needs replacing, if it needs replacing they nail a red D on it to mark it as dangerous so engineers don’t climb up it if there’s a fault. I expect you know that already. Nice little job.

[Burgerman]

BT?

[martin007]

British Telecom?

[iansp]

Yes British Telecom. Had a customer some years ago who worked for them and that was his job.

[martin007]

We were talking about electrical cables.

[iansp]

The same wooden poles are used for supplying electricity to properties, so the same applies, also the same poles at times carry both electric cables and the telephone cables.

[Burgerman]

Never seen that. Actually its a company called openreach that are in charge of connectivity for phones and internet on behalf of BT now. All undrground around here. Theres at least 4 compaies all busy burying fibre cables around here right now as well as vermin.

[martin007]

In Spain, electric and telephone (wooden) poles are different.

Today the entire fiber optic network is buried.
Including rural areas; I live in a village.
Wood telephone poles can be seen but they are abandoned.

[Burgerman]

Its all a waste of time now anyway.
I used to do cable, with terrible companies, occasional downtime, slow upload speeds and too much £££.

Now I bought a decent 5G antenna and never get slower than 450mbps and frequently get 700 down, and half that up. For £10 a month! And no limits. I regularly exceed 1TB download bandwidth a month and they dont care.
You just need a GOOD 5G router like the 3 branded one I got off eBay and a 3 sim card (£10 a month, unlimited, 5G).
Then tell the cable internet companies to get lost!

Its never actually down. Because on the odd occasion that one 5G mast is not working for a few mins it just connects to a different slower one for a while. Its like having your own backup internet!

[iansp]

Yes Burgerman you are right. It’s now open reach but I was recalling from memory from a time BT was doing it. Yes we have the fibre companies doing the same but they have been installing some sections of the fibre overhead. Norfolk has some funny quark’s during the 2nd world war and because there were so many air forces bases around here they took down the signposts. They still haven’t replaced them which causes drivers not familiar with this to get confused and slightly lost.

[Burgerman]

Soon we will all have one of these.

Unlimited bandwidth, 700mbps, £10 a month...

No wires needed!

See above 2 posts up...

[iansp]

I have seen your post and picture of your antenna or as you said erection. Many rural locations round here have connectivity problems, I’m ok as I live one mile away from the exchange.

[Burgerman]

I used to get 500mbps and sometimes it dropped to 300...
So I fitted a 4 x 4 mimo wideband antenna...

Now its super fast.

[iansp]

That’s pretty good. I’m fibre with EE a package with 1 gig fibre and two mobile sim only unlimited for £66pm. Wife is a head teacher so she needed the fibre setup.

[Burgerman]

Why?
I had fibre. This is MORE reliable, faster, £10 a month!

[iansp]

As I said when I pm you I enjoy reading your posts and articles, I never know what I will read next bikes, cars, rc planes, helicopters it seems endless, hope you keep it up, I laughed when I read about you flying one under the Humber Bridge.

[iansp]

Women!!! Did you know that wheelbarrows are based on women.

They are hard to push and easy to upset!!!

[Burgerman]

I do FPV with long range gear, digital goggles, super high quality, I flew those things quads and planes all over the place. Low is more fun and so you follow roads and farm tracks etc. Now they drastically changed the law and you get locked up for flying further than you can see. Which ruins a perfectly safe hobby...

[iansp]

Totally agree. Trouble is some pratt sitting in an office somewhere dreaming things up that they don’t understand. I got stop once in my Austin 7 to tell me I hadn’t any brake lights, to which I replied it’s not a requirement and was never fitted with any. After a argument I told him to get no his radio and check, result he didn’t like it.

[Burgerman]

My mind has gone. Its £20 a month... Not 10.

3 unlimited bandwidth 5G sim. Ebay 5G router with 4x4 MiMo external antenna ports.

Wife is a head teacher so she needed the fibre setup.

I am curious.
Why is that better than 5G?

Tried EE and their 5G was slow.

[iansp]

I’m not saying it’s better. Wife went to EE store to upgrade her sim deal and got roped into a package deal, we were with BT who apparently are going to migrate all domestic broadband users over to EE. Currently using three routers the EE one, my vpn router and an older BT own reconfigured as some of my machines WiFi cards don’t work with the EE router Mesh 7 configuration. My desktops are all networked.

Often found depending where you are in the county that mobile networks coverage is vastly different. Can be very annoying as we all should be able to connect to your services you pay for anywhere. Not far down the road for me is Thetford forest which is virtually a dark area for mobile networks, also within this area is a massive military training area which is actively used day and night.

[Burgerman]

Amazingly enough 3 network is crap on a phone and slow here @ 20mbps average. Because to get fast 5G you need to connecto to 3 towers, on 3 bands and a 4th stream all at different frequencies at once. It works, wherever you point that antenna. But not super fast. With careful aiming, and internally blocking certain stronger but slower towers you can get fast internet! Better still if any of the towers/streams fail, the rest stay connected. You lose a little speed but woldnt be any wiser unless monitoring. So when looking at a 5 router you want one thats highly internally configurable. And with 4 internal (4 x 4 mimo beam forming) antennas with external connectors. Many are not. It MIGHT not matter. Or it might!

Either way you can with a high gain external antenna get fast internet even if your phone cant see a 5G signal...