over in India yet all I hear is horror stories about their power mains? I don't quite understand how they could chance running anything over there without completely reconditioning their lines at every point along the way - that's one heck of an amount of high $$ electronic equipment at stake.

Considering that a vast amount of customer support originates over there I can't begin to fathom what's involved in setting up a datacenter.

All these wind generator problems too.

Seems to me I'd set up my own power generator operating off whatever fuel is readibly available. Even cow dung can fire a boiler to run a steam turbine.

 

Oh great, now I'm envisioning the customer support for THEIR power problems... (With a Texas twang) "Heeello, maah name is Pashta, ah am from India eelectric, How may I help eewwe...? " I would LOVE to hear the complaints about OUR accents...

 

You'd have to have generators with digital sine-wave inverters to be used as backup for when the power goes out, and a few good UPS's and Line filters, then attach the equipment... not sure what's so difficult about that?

 

I get many telephone calls from people from (or in) India selling something. But their "Engrish" is so bad that I don't know what they are talking about.

BUT, I was helped by a young lady in India who spoke almost perfect English for a problem I had with a Microsoft update and she solved the problem quickly.

 

I suspect the power companies are not regulated in India. To hear about these 60v swings throughout the day is NUTS.

At noon you may have 205v and at 3pm you have 262v

I have heard about a power company in Australia who was in bed with the largest appliance retailer or manufacturer...and apparently they were jacking the power up to the top edge of the allowable limit at all times.

This was causing appliances to burn out left and right.

I would have to look into it again to find the facts of the case, but I believe the lawsuit is ongoing.

A couple of folks who knew how to meter their outlets found that the POCO was setting the transformers at the homes to run high.

They couldn't come up with a reason the POCO would do this.. They were not changing anything from the power plant to the pole, just the pole to the homes meter.

There is big business in bad power.

 

India, Nigeria and a few other 3rd world countries did not plan for future electricity use like all the civilized countries, so now they have shortages.
They either do not know how to regulate the voltage and frequency or they do not care.

 

My opinion is that they don't care..
I have been to India, all over, stayed there to study, so I know. They still have over head power lines and cluttered cable connections at every pole.
With in 8 months time I saw 2 transformers emitting smoke at arms length.

Problem is they steal power in rural areas by tapping into over head lines.
The authority have a hard time understanding why their calculated load is no where near the actual value after a few years.

One more thing. In India each building where business is done does have a backup genset.

It's mostly the civilians and villagers who have power dump issues

 

I can't see it being such a big issue to have a automatic/remotely switched multitap autotransformer on every 10th power pole.

The poles and the wires already cost plenty, so the transformers are a fractional added cost.

Power distribution Nets are a fairly mature science, but they are ready to go through some changes so India and other developing nations might skip to the next generation which is likely to be cheaper as well as more effiicent.

The industrially overbuilt power net is expensive. Making it smarter will allow brains to make up for brawn. You can do things like go to higher grid voltages with lighter gauge wires, cutting your weight of aluminum in the wires and getting more miles out of every spool.