Ancient power problem

[thekillman]

mmmm. funny. i have never seen the use of lightning to calc ZPM power.

other figures are: 10^28 joules (using 10 000 years of submersion), 10^40 joules (using Trinity) and perhaps a few more

[Atlantean 7921]

So the arguments that have been made so far only support my original statement : that the Ancient systems are flawed and it would have been much easier to make individual systems self-sufficient instead of a grid relying solely on the ZPM.

Also, there is definitely a noticeable difference between a number of systems a ZPM could power during the time of the Ancients and the SGC expedition. You could account this to the writers trying to create suspense by limiting the ZPM's output as said above. Or you could say that the fact that a ZPM can't go as far do to the age of Atlantis. 3 ZPMs could power the entire city for years during the time of the Ancients but would only last a weak for us today. However plug a ZPM into a Dedalus class ship and you can take out 3 Ori mother ships or more (yes this was with the Asgard uber beams but I believe that if you were to equipt any ship using energy weapons that it would take out an Ori mothership)[plus we never saw the true potential of that ship in unending]. I believe Atlantis' ability to use the ZPMs' energy has Greatly been reduced over time.

[Giantevilhead]

If an Ancient device can be powered by a self sustaining low energy output generator then its draw on the ZPM would be negligible. That would be like if humans had a few hundred photosynthetic cells, it would reduce the amount of food we need to eat but not by much.

Also, the Ancients probably had mobile generators that could power individual systems in the event of emergencies.

[_Famrir_]

i always thought the ancients used some form of fiberoptics as replacements for copper wires also who knows maybe they may not even use electricity since ZPMs dont emit electricity just energy.

[Giantevilhead]

Tollan technology had no circuitry, moving parts, or chips, surely Ancient technology would be even more advanced.

[sunrek]

they may not even use electricity since ZPMs dont emit electricity just energy.

I thought that too, but the power conduits leading directly from the ZPM are explicitly refered to as "Electrical" by Zelenka in "The Seed"

[Quadhelix]

So the arguments that have been made so far only support my origianal statement : that the Ancient systems are flawed and it would have been much easier to make individual systems self-sufficient instead of a grid relying souly on the ZPM.

Actually, in my previous post, I pointed out that even if over 99% of all energy emitted by a ZPM were wasted, it would still be better to run the city off of ZPMs rather than than integrated power supplies.

To briefly go back over my reasoning, each ZPM has to contain at least 10^19 J of energy. This would amount to roughly 50 kg of anti-matter interacting with 50 kg of matter. You might suggest, if only 1% of the ZPM's power is reaching the systems, replace the ZPM with with half a kilogram of anti-matter distributed about the city's systems. The problem, of course, is that if any one of the many, many anti-matter storage tank looses power for even a fraction of a second, your city is going to explode. It would take less than half a gram of anti-matter (only a thousandth of the anti-matter distributed over the city) to match the explosive power of the Little Boy bomb.

If you're not going to use anti-matter, then you have to use some other fuel source, and anything else only a small fraction of anti-matter's energy output for a given mass of fuel.

Also, the 10^19 J figure is the lower limit on a ZPM's maximum output: ZPMs' maximum output could be orders of magnitude greater, requiring orders of magnitude more fuel for any given replacement.

Also thier is deffinetly a noticable difference between the amount of systems a ZPM could power during the time of the Ancients and the SGC expedition.

When has this been implied at all?

[Mongoletsi]

Most Ancient tech is IMO very efficient, however Atlantis isn't which is a plot hole.

This is not a plot hole.

[thekillman]

a single ZPM could power atlantis for all of eternity. however i do agree that -as time passed- the power requirements increased. it could be blamed on the fact that it was rebuilt and repaired many times, and in TLT it got another major Fckup.

[morrismike]

Okay, first, that is AC, which is an entirely different kettle of fish than DC.

Part of the issue is that the power lines actually have very, very high voltage (>100,000 volts). When it gets to your house, it converted to low voltages by a transformer. The 120-volt circuits are connected to a different transformer than the 220-volt circuits, so actually, they don't have the same voltage source.

Actually the entire house is fed by the secondary side of a 220v xfmr. The power choices are 220 (both hot legs) or two seperate 110 feeds (using either hot and the center tap neutral). Yes it is the same exact voltage source.

[morrismike]

i always thought the ancients used some form of fiberoptics as replacements for copper wires also who knows maybe they may not even use electricity since ZPMs dont emit electricity just energy.

How did you come to the conclusion that zpms cannot be used to generate electrical current? What is this mysterious energy you speak of - plot hole power?

[Quadhelix]

Actually the entire house is fed by the secondary side of a 220v xfmr. The power choices are 220 (both hot legs) or two seperate 110 feeds (using either hot and the center tap neutral). Yes it is the same exact voltage source.

I stand corrected.

[K^2]

Actually the entire house is fed by the secondary side of a 220v xfmr. The power choices are 220 (both hot legs) or two seperate 110 feeds (using either hot and the center tap neutral). Yes it is the same exact voltage source.

Yeah, we had a power outage when just one of the two 110V lines went out. It puzzled me for the longest time why the 220V outlet suddenly became a 110V outlet. Then somebody mentioned this bit to me. Makes sense now that I think about it.

Right, but like I was saying, the only way to control where that power is going to go is by adding in resistors that "block" too much current from traveling down circuits that require only small amounts of power.

No. That's not how it works. If the device is connected to correct voltage, it will draw just the power it needs. The problem you might have is maintaining required voltage across the device, but you can easily trade voltage for current and vice versa to fix this issue. The most trivial solution is a transformer on an AC circuit, but you can construct a DC solid state device that will do the same thing.

For example, say you want to power a 12V 6W light bulb in parallel with 120V 100W bulb. You would attach a 10:1 transformer in parallel with the 120V bulb. Transformer will draw 50mA of current at 120V (RMS, of course) and output 500mA at 12V for the 12V bulb. The total power consumption will be about 106W (some minimal losses in transformer are unavoidable, just like losses in wiring.)

If your supply is DC, you can either convert to AC, run it through transformer, and then rectify it; or use a solid state device. In both of these cases your losses will be somewhat higher than if you started with AC, but nowhere near what you'd have with resistors. (With resistors, 12V bulb + resistor will take 120V * 500mA = 60W of power, with 54W going to waste heat.)

We don't really know what carries the power in Atlantis (some of it seems to be electrical, but not necessarily all of it), but whatever it is, you can always find a current equivalent, and that would allow you to define a voltage equivalent. Once you have both, you can trade one for the other to provide as much power as needed to each part of the city. Ancients would not have gotten as far as they have with their tech if they had no ability to do that.

[morrismike]

Yeah, we had a power outage when just one of the two 110V lines went out. It puzzled me for the longest time why the 220V outlet suddenly became a 110V outlet. Then somebody mentioned this bit to me. Makes sense now that I think about it.

No. That's not how it works. If the device is connected to correct voltage, it will draw just the power it needs. The problem you might have is maintaining required voltage across the device, but you can easily trade voltage for current and vice versa to fix this issue. The most trivial solution is a transformer on an AC circuit, but you can construct a DC solid state device that will do the same thing.

For example, say you want to power a 12V 6W light bulb in parallel with 120V 100W bulb. You would attach a 10:1 transformer in parallel with the 120V bulb. Transformer will draw 50mA of current at 120V (RMS, of course) and output 500mA at 12V for the 12V bulb. The total power consumption will be about 106W (some minimal losses in transformer are unavoidable, just like losses in wiring.)

If your supply is DC, you can either convert to AC, run it through transformer, and then rectify it; or use a solid state device. In both of these cases your losses will be somewhat higher than if you started with AC, but nowhere near what you'd have with resistors. (With resistors, 12V bulb + resistor will take 120V * 500mA = 60W of power, with 54W going to waste heat.)

We don't really know what carries the power in Atlantis (some of it seems to be electrical, but not necessarily all of it), but whatever it is, you can always find a current equivalent, and that would allow you to define a voltage equivalent. Once you have both, you can trade one for the other to provide as much power as needed to each part of the city. Ancients would not have gotten as far as they have with their tech if they had no ability to do that.

The lantian tech can probably use whatever electrical energy is availaible. The ckts needed to recognize ac/dc or adjust voltage are really stuff available here in the 60s.

[Buba uognarf]

Mark I naquadah generators are compatible with 21st century Earth tech, so output electrical energy. These same generators can also be used to power Atlantis (albeit very poorly), electricity is therefore used by Atlantis. Whether thats all it uses or not is ofcourse debatible.