I DO believe it could. Maybe not "all of Orlando", but certainly nearby rides and possibly the surrounding area. Remember, the launch on Hulk is a near-instant draw of a LOT of current (which is why huge capacitors would be well-suited for the job. The may take a while to build up a charge, but that means they don't draw much at once, and when you hit them, look out!)
Such a sudden change in current does indeed cause brownouts. Heck, the lights in my apartment dim briefly (and the UPS on the computer beeps) every time the air conditioner's compressor kicks on...
-----------------
--Greg
"Are you justified in taking life to save life?" -- The Great Debate, Dream Theater
My page
So let me get this straight, ConstIpated...
Superman ran two trains side by side all the way up until the Enron fiasco of about 6 months ago? Not positive, but I think they've been just running one for longer than that, partner.
Impressive that the Hulk could take out all of Tampa Bay (I'm guessing you're talking about Tampa AND St. Pete) when it's over an hour up the road in Orlando.
-----------------
Sorrrrrrrry folks! Parks closed. The moose out front should have told you.
-----------------
If your really evil in this life, do you come back as toilet paper????
ladies and gentlemen, due to an increase in line jumping, people caught cutting in line will no longer be ejected from the park. u will be ejected from the ride
-----------------
There is NoLimit when it comes to Roller Coasters.
NoLimitChic's Coaster Page
Okay. And now to install a little reality into the thread. If we take it as a fact that hulk has ~200 motors that do the drive and take it as a fact that the total power draw of the launch is 8 MW (which really isn't that much) then we're talking approximately 60 horsepower motors. A 60 horsepower motor might be 460v/~100A but is more likely to be around 1000v/~50A. So the total current draw of hulk is likely to be at max 10,000 A. This is about the same max draw as ~400 homes. It's non-trivial, but certainly not going to black out a major metropolitan area.
The reason they used a bunch of small motors instead of one or two large ones is almost certainly spin-up time.
-----------------
--Greg
"Are you justified in taking life to save life?" -- The Great Debate, Dream Theater
My page
-----------------
Sorrrrrrrry folks! Parks closed. The moose out front should have told you.
Ok guys lets do a little engineering here instead of just repeating old wives tales.
A coaster train weighing 20,000 pounds takes about 3300 HP to accelerate it at 2Gs at 60 mph. (Note: only S:TE, Hypersonic, and Dodonpa exceed any of these parameters that I know of.) Assume that your drive is only 50% efficient (Which is pretty poor), and you've got about 5 megawatts of power required. In terms of the power requirements of a major city this is a drop in the bucket. The industrial plant where I work draws several times that much power continuously. Power plants are generally sized in hundreds or thousands of megawatts. Portable generator mounted in truck bodies run up to about 2 megawatts. Skid mounted portables can exceed 10 megawatts.
The problem with launched coasters is that they draw their power in sudden bursts. This means that all of the electrical equipment installed must be very large and expensive relative to the total amount of power used. This includes the equipment belonging to the power company supplying power to the park. (Unlike homeowners, businesses are charged for the peak power that they use, not just the average power. Also the short bursts of power beat up the equipment severely. Take a 5 megawatt transformer from idle to full power in a few milliseconds and the windings will try their best to jump right off the cores. (Can't actually do this, but major thrusts are generated.) Do this several hundred times per day launching a coaster train and you have a great system for destroying transformers and switch gear.
This is the real power problem with LIM or LSM coasters. Launching only one side at a time reduces the peak loads on the power system making it last much longer. Generators eliminate the need for transformers and a lot of the switch gear.
My uncle is an Electric engineer, and beleive it or not, he helped design the generators that launch the Incredible Hulk. And the reason for the Generator's is so that there aren't any power outages in the park. Not the city of Orlando. They may have said in Orlando but it's actually just the park. My uncle had the chance in 1999 to get on the Hulk at 10:00 at night when the ride was officially "finished" but being the coaster phobic that my uncle is her turned down one of the first afficial testings with people on the ride down. Which was a stupid decision in my opinion but oh well.
Homey G. said:
Greg.. did you win that Banshee shirt on eBay?
Yup. It's mine, and it's gorgeous. :)
-----------------
--Greg
"Are you justified in taking life to save life?" -- The Great Debate, Dream Theater
My page
Hulk notes:
The generators eliminate the voltage drop that would result from the very high instantaneous power demand of the launch. Actually, they don't eliminate it, they just confine it to the Hulk and it's generators. so it doesn't affect the rest of the park. This could also be done by an enormous power supply system, but it would probably cost much more than the generators.
Most of the motors on the Hulk are not actually involved in the launch. Most of the motors just advance the train up the lift hill untill it reaches the launch point. Then the actual lanch motors fire the train out of the tunnel.
-----------------
If your really evil in this life, do you come back as toilet paper????
ladies and gentlemen, due to an increase in line jumping, people caught cutting in line will no longer be ejected from the park. u will be ejected from the ride
You must be logged in to post