Live data from Hacker News

7.1 Earthquake in Japan

data.jma.go.jp

121–130 of 253 posts

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#121
post #102
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely flabbergasted how we just piped gas everywhere all the time. Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.

Electrical is inadequate power delivery-wise and requires completely different cookware to the point that it's a different cuisine. For example to replicate a gas burner you have to have above 15KW continious power. Good luck wiring that into your apartment, or feeding this with local solar. Or even finding an induction stovetop that won't melt its insides in a year or two at a measly 5KW.

> For example to replicate a gas burner you have to have above 15KW continious power.

Where are you getting this from? 15K BTU sure, but 15K watts? Do you mean the entire stove?

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#122
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely flabbergasted how we just piped gas everywhere all the time. Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.

Replicating the power density of a gas pipe requires far more than 110v ac. The future might wonder why we accepted the danger of 5,000v power lines running through food courts just to avoid using gas burners.

I agree there's a huge amount of energy that would need to go into a commercial kitchen to replace gas, and I also agree its probably a bit unfeasible at a lot of locations with current technology to do it at any reasonable scale and have it be economically efficient.

However, you're not really being honest by suggesting things have to either be 110VAC or 5,000V. Even residentially, an electric range isn't often going to be operating at 110VAC aide from some portable single burner things, you'll likely see them operate at 208V or 240V. And when it comes to commerical equipment it'll likely be three-phase, so its not like you need a single massive conductor running thousands of volts to power it. For something like a shopping mall, you're already likely to have some pretty massive electrical infrastructure feeding the facility running at something like 13.8kV. At that step down point, do a few big 480Y three-phase runs over towards the food court, then do 208Y three-phase to the ranges.

To be fair though, I'm mostly speaking from a US-grid mindset here. I don't really know the specifics about what would be done in Japan, but I imagine it would be somewhat similar. I'm also not necessarily arguing they should do it, but its not as impossible or ridiculous as you're making it seem.

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#123
post #102
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely flabbergasted how we just piped gas everywhere all the time. Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.

Electrical is inadequate power delivery-wise and requires completely different cookware to the point that it's a different cuisine. For example to replicate a gas burner you have to have above 15KW continious power. Good luck wiring that into your apartment, or feeding this with local solar. Or even finding an induction stovetop that won't melt its insides in a year or two at a measly 5KW.

Something doesn’t make sense here because an electric kettle operating at 120v at less than 10 amps will boil water much faster than the large burner on my stove.

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#124
post #114
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electrical is inadequate power delivery-wise and requires completely different cookware to the point that it's a different cuisine. For example to replicate a gas burner you have to have above 15KW continious power. Good luck wiring that into your apartment, or feeding this with local solar. Or even finding an induction stovetop that won't melt its insides in a year or two at a measly 5KW.

https://www.impulselabs.com/ achieves this by storing energy in a battery. 120V15A in to charge, 10kW out for short durations. I don't have one, but it's an interesting concept. That said, I don't know what's better, a massive lithium battery in the kitchen that can be set into thermal runaway, or a gas line. But also, most Japanese styles of cooking doesn't need those levels of power anyway. 4-5kW induction hobs run…

I like how the video shows that you can detach the knob to clean the now flat surface ... instead of just putting the knobs somewhere other than the flat surface where food is likely to spill.

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#125
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely flabbergasted how we just piped gas everywhere all the time. Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.

Replicating the power density of a gas pipe requires far more than 110v ac. The future might wonder why we accepted the danger of 5,000v power lines running through food courts just to avoid using gas burners.

[deleted]

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#126
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely flabbergasted how we just piped gas everywhere all the time. Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.

Replicating the power density of a gas pipe requires far more than 110v ac. The future might wonder why we accepted the danger of 5,000v power lines running through food courts just to avoid using gas burners.

We use 400V in Europe (in the most modern infrastructure, probably since the early 2000s) and have roughly 1.7x the power of gas for cooking. Gas measures at around 4.5kW and the modern induction stoves are at 7.5kW (old "ceran" electric cooking fields are 3.5kW)

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#127
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hundred years from now people are going to be absolutely flabbergasted how we just piped gas everywhere all the time. Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards.

Replicating the power density of a gas pipe requires far more than 110v ac. The future might wonder why we accepted the danger of 5,000v power lines running through food courts just to avoid using gas burners.

[deleted]

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#128
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a collapsed roof of a shopping centre as well in Kumamoto. The Aeon Mall.

That mall was also damaged in a similar earthquake that happened in 2016.

And ironically in their press release for the re-open they said they re-built it with more disaster-proofing with the knowledge from the previous disaster...

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#129
post #26

I hope everyone is safe in Kumamoto. In my area, we have been repeatedly warned that a major earthquake called the Nankai Trough is likely to occur in the last few years or decades, so I am very scared of big earthquakes happening in other areas as well.

I've heard there's been a lot of redevelopment in Nagoya, in preparation for a possible future earthquake from the Nankai Trough.

Exactly one month ago, there was almost consecutive daily earthquakes in Kantō region. Always a good reminder the whole country lies on seismically active fault lines.

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electricity allows for so many more automatic safeguards. Since the mid-2000s there has actually been a push by Japanese utility companies for adoption of what they call "all-electric" オール電化. Adoption has been reasonably good with new-builds because they can also have solar panels. But adoption in older properties has been slower. First in general, electricity in Japan has tended to be more expensive than gas. Seco…

I see some places in the Japanese countryside where homeowners get propane tanks delivered to them for cooking? I believe in an earthquake prone country, this is safer than having natural gas piped to their homes? The problem I think is that Japanese culture values hot baths daily. Heating water for the bath using electricity is still too costly.

Propane tanks strapped to your house is common even in cities since it's cheaper to install (but then costs more per cubic meter).

The downside to propane tanks is they become fireworks if a neighbor has a fire which heats them up.

In Japan anyone who goes all-electric these days is getting a heat pump water heater ("eco-cute") by default, resistive electric heating doesn't really exist out of small plugin units like kotatsu and radiant heaters.

Post reply on HN