non ECC 2551

English is the remnants of a high-speed collision between German and other languages. :-)

We have historically-odd voltages aorund here: 440V 3-Phase and hence 254V single-phase. Nominal :-) voltage became 230V some years ago. But nothing changed. Some sub-stations running mainly a hospital was "trimmed" down to around 220V because the medical equipment kept cooking itself.

Diesel generators take a few more minutes to come up to load. The gas turbine is online at full load in under 2 minutes (IIRC). It was originally fuelled by oil; but the tank was too shallow so when it was placed under load, it'd suck air from the atop the fuel level (bad pickup design). It was later changed to gas to fix that problem; and probably to tap into the available gas pipeline so that topping up the tank wouldn't be an issue.

I believe that the environmental impact of about 30,000 litres of brew "exploding" would be somewhat undesirable. And let's not forget the government excise that'd be lost! Not sure what disaster plan would have been hatched by the chemists if the cooling failed for too long... I have the feeling that it would have consisted of dumping the brew into settling ponds which should have produced "memorable" results on a 40 degree (C) summer's day and the following week.

The secondary insisted on heating because it was too cold; or vice-versa. I wasn't allowed to fix the brain-dead controls to prevent it going into reverse-cycle - it was just a matter of fiddling with the electrical connections on the valves so it could only ever cool.

It's not like one would have a need to heat a computer room around here! -- "Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia ASCII ribbon campaign Economist E*con"o*mist-, n. X against HTML mail One with a ready explanation as to why and postings his last prediction was so wrong