Defrosting Electrical Circuits

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W6SJK

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On the CBS Evening News 2/5/07 - "In Indianapolis, where the mercury barely topped zero, even underground power lines had to be defrosted with a blowtorch to keep the city's power grid online."

Gee, I thought powerlines liked the cold... I must have missed that class in college.
 
davidr43229 said:
At what temperature do electrons freeze ?
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According to the laws of physics, you can get close, but never stop the motion in matter. Close is absolute zero, which is 0 K, -273.15?C, –459.67 ?F. But as matter approaches absolute zero, it tends to get superconductive.
 
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Overkill said:
Close is absolute zero, which is 0 K, -273.15?C, ?459.67 ?F.
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You left out 0 ?R (Rankine scale). :grin:

Someone get my old Thermodynamics professor out of my head!!
 
sparkie001 said:
On the CBS Evening News 2/5/07 - "In Indianapolis, where the mercury barely topped zero, even underground power lines had to be defrosted with a blowtorch to keep the city's power grid online."
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That is too much to believe. I have heard of news reporters not checking their facts, but this is the worst I have seen in a while. Some utility employee may have actually reported this story to the reporter, but it would not have been a reliable source.

I am curious: did the utility employees have to dig up the underground lines, in order to apply the blowtorch? Or perhaps the utility employees walked through a cable tunnel with the blowtorch, not realizing that insulation materials are flammable? :-?
 
If you leave your coffee pot on, a trickle of electrons keeps flowing through the wire and it keeps the electrons from freezing and busting the wire open:)
 
While watching our local new here one evening, I listened to the reporter make the following statement: "The buildings electrical power had been turned off one week prior to the fire. For this reason, the cause of the fire has yet to be determined!:"
 
charlie b said:
That is too much to believe. I have heard of news reporters not checking their facts, but this is the worst I have seen in a while. Some utility employee may have actually reported this story to the reporter, but it would not have been a reliable source.
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I agree wholeheartedly. Nearly EVERY time that I have firsthand knowledge of an event or subject that I see on the news, the reporter gets it wrong. I'm not sure why I bother to watch...

The video is at www.cbsnews.com entitled Cold Wave Hits the North.
 
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