My grandfather who was born in 1900 and began work at age 13 installing red hot rivets in the steam boilers of an electric power plant to power a coal mine, said that it was a huge mistake not installing 3 phase electric power to houses.
My father took this a step further and said it was a huge mistake not to have adopted 400 Hertz AC instead of 60 Hz ( or 50 Hz).
He began work at 13 as a telephone repairman inside coal mines.
In airplanes where weight and power is crucial 3 phase 400 Hz is often used.
Tesla wants to sell you a “PowerWall” to store power from your intermittent solar cells and windmills to fast charge your 2 EV autos, EV motorcycle, EV ATV, EV farm tractor and battery boosted bicycle.
It is probably a mistake to not also consider mechanical flywheels or compressed air tanks.
My mechanical engineering senior class’s assigned “capstone” project was to split into 5 person teams and design flywheel powered vehicles to transfer suitcases from passenger terminals to and from airliners.
My niece’s bio-engineering senior class’s assigned capstone project was to design compressed air powered urban automobiles.
In mining the sequence of technology was -
harder stones to break softer stones - fire followed by water quenching to crack hard stones, metal picks to crack rocks - wooden railroad tracks so that women and children could haul heavy ore wagons - black powder blasting of hand drilled holes - steam powered water pumps to prevent deeper mines from flooding - explosion protected lanterns - steam engines to drive pumps, drills, fans and hoists, - steam engines to drive air compressors - compressed air hole drills- detonating high explosives - local steam engines to power local electric generators - electric generators to charge batteries for lights and telephones - electric motor hole drills and pick wheels - diesel engines to power mine railroad locomotives - grid electricity to power electric motors - computers to start and stop complex sequences of motors - robots to drive diesel or electric ore trucks - robots to core drill and sample rocks on Mars - robots to mine asteroids, moons and planets......
