3 ms·

Thanks for the analysis! I’m curious if there are any exotic materials that would be way better dielectrics? Also are there ways to step down really high volt

Thanks for the analysis! I’m curious if there are any exotic materials that would be way better dielectrics? Also are there ways to step down really high voltages? I can’t picture how the electronics would work without shorting?

Workaccount2 1y ago
>I’m curious if there are any exotic materials that would be way better dielectrics? There are, but like glass they tend to be rigid crystalline structures, and not necessarily formable into what you need. There also is the problem that the dielectric needs to be perfect, as any imperfection becomes a pressure point and once you get even a microscopic breakdown, the whole thing is junk. Any practical repair is going to be very imperfect on the molecular level, so see what I said earlier. Also gaps are imperfections, so usually layering layers of dielectric is a non-starter too (but can be done, it's just very engineering intensive). The HV will "leap" from imperfection to imperfection until it finds it's ground. Insulating HV is a totally different world than your typical 240V, 480V, even 1kV insulation. >Also are there ways to step down really high voltages? I can’t picture how the electronics would work without shorting Yes, they basically use stacks of thyristors or IGBTs to actively switch the DC "phases" which get fed into a transformer to step down. Wikipedia has a surprisingly good article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  > Insulating HV is a totally different world than your typical 240V, 480V, even 1kV insulation. Hell, even the difference between 600V (low voltage) THHN (thermoplastic) or XHHW (XLPE) insulation and a 2.4kV/5kV (medium voltage) cable is enormous.
anon_cow1111 1y ago
Also note this image in the sibling reply's article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pole_2_Thyristor_Valve.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pole_2_Thyristor_Valve.jp... Which is part of a transmission station bridging islands in NZ and probably one of my favorite pictures on the internet. That's the scale of the hardware you're looking at... for a voltage 40 times lower.
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  It's also the picture I had in mind when thinking about 14MV. The size of everything to space out the stages would need to be so vast I don't even know if it would be structurally possible.

Workaccount2 1y ago

>I’m curious if there are any exotic materials that would be way better dielectrics? There are, but like glass they tend to be rigid crystalline structures, and not necessarily formable into what you need. There also is the problem that the dielectric needs to be perfect, as any imperfection becomes a pressure point and once you get even a microscopic breakdown, the whole thing is junk. Any practical repair is going to be very imperfect on the molecular level, so see what I said earlier. Also gaps are imperfections, so usually layering layers of dielectric is a non-starter too (but can be done, it's just very engineering intensive). The HV will "leap" from imperfection to imperfection until it finds it's ground. Insulating HV is a totally different world than your typical 240V, 480V, even 1kV insulation. >Also are there ways to step down really high voltages? I can’t picture how the electronics would work without shorting Yes, they basically use stacks of thyristors or IGBTs to actively switch the DC "phases" which get fed into a transformer to step down. Wikipedia has a surprisingly good article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_converter

quickthrowman 1y ago
> Insulating HV is a totally different world than your typical 240V, 480V, even 1kV insulation. Hell, even the difference between 600V (low voltage) THHN (thermoplastic) or XHHW (XLPE) insulation and a 2.4kV/5kV (medium voltage) cable is enormous.

anon_cow1111 1y ago

Also note this image in the sibling reply's article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pole_2_Thyristor_Valve.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pole_2_Thyristor_Valve.jp... Which is part of a transmission station bridging islands in NZ and probably one of my favorite pictures on the internet. That's the scale of the hardware you're looking at... for a voltage 40 times lower.

Workaccount2 1y ago
It's also the picture I had in mind when thinking about 14MV. The size of everything to space out the stages would need to be so vast I don't even know if it would be structurally possible.