twistor59 wrote:Balanced on the biggest wave you race towards an early grave....

Moving Water, Tucson
by Peggy Shumaker

Thunderclouds gathered every afternoon during the monsoons. Warm rain felt good on faces lifted to lick water from the sky. We played outside, having sense enough to go out and revel in the rain. We savored the first cool hours since summer hit.

The arroyo behind our house trickled with moving water. Kids gathered to see what it might bring. Tumbleweed, spears of ocotillo, creosote, a doll’s arm, some kid’s fort. Broken bottles, a red sweater. Whatever was nailed down, torn loose.

We stood on edges of sand, waiting for brown walls of water. We could hear it, massive water, not far off. The whole desert might come apart at once, might send horny toads and Gila monsters swirling, wet nightmares clawing both banks of the worst they could imagine and then some.
Under sheet lightning cracking the sky, somebody’s teenaged brother decided to ride the flash flood. He stood on wood in the bottom of the ditch, straddling the puny stream. “Get out, it’s coming,” kids yelled. “GET OUT,” we yelled. The kid bent his knees, held out his arms.

Land turned liquid that fast, water yanked our feet, stole our thongs, pulled in the edges of the arroyo, dragged whole trees root wads and all along, battering rams thrust downstream, anything you left there gone, anything you meant to go back and get, history, water so high you couldn’t touch bottom, water so fast you couldn’t get out of it, water so huge the earth couldn’t take it, water. We couldn’t step back. We had to be there, to see for ourselves. Water in a place where water’s always holy. Water remaking the world.

That kid on plywood, that kid waiting for the flood. He stood and the water lifted him. He stood, his eyes not seeing us. For a moment, we all wanted to be him, to be part of something so wet, so fast, so powerful, so much bigger than ourselves. That kid rode the flash flood inside us, the flash flood outside us. Artist unglued on a scrap of glued wood. For a few drenched seconds, he rode. The water took him, faster than you can believe. He kept his head up. Water you couldn’t see through, water half dirt, water whirling hard. Heavy rain weighed down our clothes. We stepped closer to the crumbling shore, saw him downstream smash against the footbridge at the end of the block. Water held him there, rushing on.

epepke wrote:Not sure what the intent of posting this is, but devices that correct your power factor are real, and they do save energy. They won't do anything for a pure resistive load, so if you are running, say, an electric Bessemer converter (though there are better technologies than this), there isn't much point. If you're running a bunch of motors, though, that's inductive, and you can use less energy by putting some capacitors in.

People don't usually do it for homes, because it won't actually make a difference in how your meter reads. However, if you run a factory, the power company may give you a break if you put in some capacitors. A net non-reactive load reduces the power going through their wires, so that they can get more power in with less waste heating the wires or, alternately, smaller wires, which are cheaper. There also will be capacitors sometimes at substations especially for residential distribution. It doesn't help much with the wires through the neighborhood, but it does help in the wires going to the substation.

campermon wrote:

epepke wrote:Not sure what the intent of posting this is, but devices that correct your power factor are real, and they do save energy. They won't do anything for a pure resistive load, so if you are running, say, an electric Bessemer converter (though there are better technologies than this), there isn't much point. If you're running a bunch of motors, though, that's inductive, and you can use less energy by putting some capacitors in.

People don't usually do it for homes, because it won't actually make a difference in how your meter reads. However, if you run a factory, the power company may give you a break if you put in some capacitors. A net non-reactive load reduces the power going through their wires, so that they can get more power in with less waste heating the wires or, alternately, smaller wires, which are cheaper. There also will be capacitors sometimes at substations especially for residential distribution. It doesn't help much with the wires through the neighborhood, but it does help in the wires going to the substation.

Get out of here with all your fancy science stuff!

"Balanced wave technology" sounds so cool that it must work!

I'm sending my $300 as we speak.