Mains power voltage drop to reduce usage? (2023 Update)

Only useful if you know what a dipole is, and an insulator.

Of course taking into account, there is no such thing as a perfect insulator, and no such thing as a perfect conductor, superconductors excepted.

Certainly. Every insulator has a dielectric constant.

If you mean "is every insulator suitable for manufacturing cables and capacitors?" some aren't. Gasoline and crumpled newspaper might be poor choices.

But then, capacitive liquid level gages use gasoline as the dielectric.

A negative permittivity would be fun, but violates conservation of energy. Negative capacitors are easy; I did one as a school project but it had a battery inside.

Vacuum is a pretty good non-polar insulator. Er = 1. Insulation resistance is excellent.

Its breakdown voltage is impressive, but enough voltage gradient will rip atoms off any metal electrodes. Around 1e10 v/m as I recall.

When I tourismise, I take my car.

It seems the French are no good at such calculations. My Renault's fuel guage is very non linear. The second half of the tank is used twice as fast as the first half according to the guage. As for the digital "miles left before running out" reading, it seems to think I can get about 90mpg from a petrol engine. But luckily the average speed since you last pressed the button guage is very very accurate, so I use it for cheating the average speed cameras. People just don't get why I can go 100 in a 60.

Everything goes through a computer now. Gas gages are probably programmed to be alarmist.

Ours don't and that would be too much farting around imo.

Mine is the wrong way round, both the guage and the predicted miles left. Both are telling me I can go further than I can, risking me running out of fuel.

? Looking at yesterday as a quick example on gridwatch wind is nowhere near 40%.

True enough, I've often seen it only 30%. But if it's lower, another country will be higher. Lots of big wires between us, the whole world could run off wind.

I'm quite sure the engineers making the inter-country connections do.

It doesn't have to a be a perfect insulator, just one that's rubbish at being a dipole.

It must be possible to make a vacuum in a big tube across the English Channel. Actually.... why don't they run the cable in the Chunnel?

I think we have discovered the problem in your understanding. An insulator rubbish at being a dipole, would normally be called a conductor.

Idiot. Different insulators have different dipole properties.

That's a good point. Locos are parked up with their pantographs lowered. Surely it doesn't need an engineer visit to power them back up?

I don't think a monatomic gas is considered to be a dipole, but their Er > 1.

There's nothing new about a cap with a negative incremental c:v slope. I doubt that one is going to revolutionize computing.