Energy Spells & Electricity

[whswhs]

Some years ago, when working on GURPS Thaumatology: Urban Magics, I came up with lower-end spells that provided 1 FP/minute per 6 kW. You can find the details on p. 26 of that book, if you have it. You would need a really huge water mill for that, but it's in the range of fairly early steam engines; or if you had eight draft horses or a dozen oxen harnessed to a millworks they'd provide comparable energy.

[Tigrah2k]

Out of curiosity... is there a way to work a spell like Pull, so that once an object (such as large quantities of water) reached its center, the water maintained its current velocity and fell through? Would that require the GM to allow research into a customized version of the spell? Looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of water in a hydroelectric power plant.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Tigrah2k

Out of curiosity... is there a way to work a spell like Pull, so that once an object (such as large quantities of water) reached its center, the water maintained its current velocity and fell through? Would that require the GM to allow research into a customized version of the spell? Looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of water in a hydroelectric power plant.

In general, if you used magic to put energy into a thing (by raising water to a height, moving it at a high speed, raising its temperature, or whatever), you cannot then turn around and convert that energy back into fatigue points/magical energy. That just creates too many options for clever players to try to gain infinite magical power. My advice is to accept that as a binding restriction and work within it.

[Tigrah2k]

Originally Posted by whswhs

In general, if you used magic to put energy into a thing (by raising water to a height, moving it at a high speed, raising its temperature, or whatever), you cannot then turn around and convert that energy back into fatigue points/magical energy. That just creates too many options for clever players to try to gain infinite magical power. My advice is to accept that as a binding restriction and work within it.

hadn't intended to turn it off and convert the energy back... I was hoping to change its form from a sphere to a hemisphere, so that the water would fall through the center, once it reached that point, and hopefully maintain some of/ all of its velocity.

[The Colonel]

I'm now getting visions of some high end caster plugging themselves into the national grid ... perhaps it would be useful to have a limit on how much power you can run through yourself without burning out...

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

perhaps it would be useful to have a limit on how much power you can run through yourself without burning out...

RAW has one:

Originally Posted by M180

The maximum power a mage may safely serve as a conduit for is (HT) x (Magery squared)/4, in megawatts.

The number really should scale with the FP / watt ratio the game uses. It might be useful to also express it as an FP limit.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

RAW has one:

The number really should scale with the FP / watt ratio the game uses. It might be useful to also express it as an FP limit.

Technomancer also has numbers on how much energy you can get out of common sources. 250 FP is a magic number for the setting because that's how much you can get from an industrial grade power-line. An Enchanter could get one run out to his place of business or even home workshop.

If you ave enough friends with Magery 3 that's about a 4 mage Q&D circle. There are a lot of things you can get enchanted for 250 energy.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Technomancer also has numbers on how much energy you can get out of common sources. 250 FP is a magic number for the setting because that's how much you can get from an industrial grade power-line. An Enchanter could get one run out to his place of business or even home workshop.

At 1 FP/second equal to 360 kW, that's 90 MW for an industrial grade powerline. I think that comes to something in the neighborhood of 200 kA, which seems like a lot. Wouldn't you need a really huge factory to draw that much power?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by whswhs

At 1 FP/second equal to 360 kW, that's 90 MW for an industrial grade powerline. I think that comes to something in the neighborhood of 200 kA, which seems like a lot. Wouldn't you need a really huge factory to draw that much power?

Sorry, can't answer the one about size of factory directly.

It would be about 90 MW at 2.77 energy per MW (which is te number I find handier to work with).

However I think this is a special Technomancer power line with Ectoweave insulation that allows you to transmit both mundane and magical energy on the same line. Those (and the NEMA reactors they probably start from) give double energy for magical purposes.

So a purely mundane power line might only have half the raw energy measured in mundane units.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Tigrah2k

Out of curiosity... is there a way to work a spell like Pull, so that once an object (such as large quantities of water) reached its center, the water maintained its current velocity and fell through? Would that require the GM to allow research into a customized version of the spell? Looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of water in a hydroelectric power plant.

Yes, that's pretty much the definition of custom spell. It would have a lot of uses, mono-directional pipes (no need for backflow valves), magic elevators, etc.