Grissess
commented
5 years ago Copied from elsewhere:
Additionally, I'd like to focus on #75 in general (which is breaking) in that it will cause cables that cross each-other, or through or near blocks, to short between each other if their potential difference is high enough. (Blocks other than cables are always considered to be grounded.) Furthermore, entities within those areas and in contact with the ground (a boolean known to Minecraft) should also be considered a grounding "fault" path and be essentially vaporized if they cross into this area. Implementation will need a fast spatial set datastructure, which should be achievable. (Most of this should go onto #75 itself.) That way, faults can occur anywhere, not just at these structures. Since breakdown is mostly linear with voltage, I was thinking of ~1m for 12.8kV which implies ~4m for 51.2kV--that's quite a large span, but hopefully encouraged people to really clear out their right-of-ways for transmission towers. Bear in mind that the "transmission breakers" above will interact duly with this system, probably needing to be quite large to span >4m to quench a 51.2kV arc eventually.
Note that the above numbers are in terms of potential difference, e.g., 12.8kV between mains and ground. If you have wires directly next to each other by virtue of being connected to the same pole, there's no risk of arcing, as in the real world--in theory, their potential difference should always be 0.
Note also that this has implications for building "grid" structures too close to each other: if two breakers are next to each other, where one is hot at 51.2kV and the other is cold at ground, an arc can span the two and electrify the "cold" network, vaporizing entities and players and causing all sorts of havoc with faults.
Arcs are hot: they should probably ignite flammable materials, vaporize entities (as discussed), and eventually cause thermal overload somewhere. (I'm not entirely sure where a good spot to simulate that is, though.)
Finally, arcs are conductive; in the real world, they're essentially a stream of plasma, which has remarkably low resistance and can take quite a while to quench. While doing so, they meander, mostly upward (because they've very hot, as above), occasionally twist into loops, and other sorts of weird fluid geometries that may be hard to simulate. Nonetheless, while arcing as such, if they cross into the territory of another potential difference that can break down, they should be treated as "another wire", and that phase should join the arc too.
Whenever arcs occur between surfaces (wires, the breaker posts, other arcs, etc.), they should be considered to have very low resistance and very high heat for thermal conductivity. The conductive properties of the arc should not be dissimilar to the regular HV cable, and, in essence, an arc will likely cause high-current shorts, which will probably destroy some equipment.
jrddunbr
Put aerial wires too close together?
BZZZZT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQQMK1Rvq0A