Fault protection with a digital computer

A fundamental basis has been developed for the use of a time-shared stored-program digital computer to perform many of the electrical power-system protective-relay functions in a substation. Logic operations are given to detect a fault, locate it and initiate the opening of the appropriate circuit breakers, whether the fault is in the station or on lines radiating from the station. The instantaneous value of the station voltages and currents are sampled at a 0.5 ms rate, converted to digital form and stored for computer main-frame use. Operating times are compatible with the 25 ms breaker trip capability of modern two-cycle breakers. Computer speed in initiating tripping is a maximum of 4 ms for severe faults and a maximum of 10 ms for moderate or distant faults. Little attention has been given to hardware or programming aspects; instead this treatment represents the viewpoint of a protective-relay engineer who is attempting to answer the question: can it be done and what is involved? However, major emphasis was placed on minimizing computer main-frame duty

Traces of past activity in the Galactic Centre

The Milky Way centre hosts a supermassive Black Hole (BH) with a mass of ~4*10^6 M_Sun. Sgr A*, its electromagnetic counterpart, currently appears as an extremely weak source with a luminosity L~10^-9 L_Edd. The lowest known Eddington ratio BH. However, it was not always so; traces of "glorious" active periods can be found in the surrounding medium. We review here our current view of the X-ray emission from the Galactic Center (GC) and its environment, and the expected signatures (e.g. X-ray reflection) of a past flare. We discuss the history of Sgr A*'s past activity and its impact on the surrounding medium. The structure of the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) has not changed significantly since the last active phase of Sgr A*. This relic torus provides us with the opportunity to image the structure of an AGN torus in exquisite detail.Comment: Invited refereed review. Chapter of the book: "Cosmic ray induced phenomenology in star forming environments" (eds. Olaf Reimer and Diego F. Torres