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After Recent US Storms, Why Are Millions Still Without Power?
Hugh Pickens points out a report from Jamie Smith Hopkins that "The unusual nature of the 'derecho' is complicating efforts to get everyone's much-needed air conditioning up and running again as more than 1.4 million people from Illinois to Virginia still remain without power and power companies warn some customers could be without power for the rest of the week in the worst hit areas. Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages – the expense would send rates soaring – so they rely on out-of-state utilities to send help, says Stephen Woerner, Baltimore Gas and Electric's (BGE) chief operating officer. Hurricane forecasts offer enough advanced warning for utilities to 'pre-mobilize' and get the out-of-state assistance in place but the forecast for Friday's walloping wind was merely scattered thunderstorms. 'No utility was prepared for what we saw in terms of having staff available that first day,' says Woerner. But is it a given that a strong storm would cause this magnitude of damage to the electricity grid? 'Even without pursuing the extremely expensive option of burying all of the region's electrical lines, the utilities can and do take steps between bouts of severe weather to prevent outages,' writes the Baltimore Sun, adding that consumer advocates are concerned that utilities invest sufficiently in preventive maintenance. 'Tree trimming and replacement of old infrastructure — particularly in areas that have been shown to be vulnerable to previous storms — helps prevent outages.'"
Goddamn, napping on a man lift next to a downed livewire?!?! Who DOES that?!?!?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
And unwilling to dip into profits on a service that costs next to nothing to produce.
Hint: hanging wires on poles where they are subject to damage from wind and
falling trees might have something to do with it.
>> NEED I SAY MORE
Yes. You omitted the part about coming up witht he money for your solution.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It's because we never bother to maintain our infrastructure. We build bridges and let 'em fall down. We hang power lines off wooden poles, and never bother burying them. We sort of fix it when it breaks, but then it breaks again, but we don't really learn from it.
--Udo.
Because of privatization of the industry. They're too worried about profit margins to keep the staff at levels that serve the public's needs.
Boston Gas & Electric is owned by Constellation Energy which is owned by Exelon Corporation.
And where will they be put?
Many people are very NIMBY about solar and wind.
Utility rate regulation is a system of assuring the investors of their return in return for doing something the public wants done. US Utility Rate Regulation used to be aimed at making sure that the maximum generation capacity was present with adequate return for lines and repairs etc. Under the George W Bush administration this regulation shifted towards "Pipeline" design for power sales. This stripped the local Coop or supply company of its revenue for service and maintainence. Further changes in regulation changed the position of the large generators so that they have little or no incentive to build new facilities. As such the USA is losing its grid to a very finely tuned profit machine that has no instinct for self preservation. Everything is now and nothing is tomorrow. The result is that the USA is fast sinking into a 3rd world power grid with massive failures and stunningly stupid management. The power rating system optimizes the push towards insufficient demand and planned brownouts. The 1930's regulation design caused the largest expansion and most robust utility system in the world. The 2000's are seeing this systematically dismantled in favor of "deregulation" which in this case is a farce because the regulation exists this is only a matter of how it is designed.
I am not from USA but visited there recently for business.
I was really astonished by how it seems to be a third world country in terms of infrastructure. The power lines are not buried, they are just haphazardly strung up on big poles all over so they are acceptable to being knocked by winds or damaged by lighting. But it goes much further. There is no usable public transit system, and what there is smells of urine and feels highly dangerous. Even the internet is slow and expensive compared to modern countries. It felt like visiting a country stuck in the past and unwilling to join the present.
If millions are without power after a storm, it is because they did not join with modern nations in protecting their power infrastructure.
Here in Europe, the news reports a very simple reason: a totally dilapidated infrastructure. Most power wires still hanging off of poles, subject to lightning, wind and falling trees. Decades-old transformers and switching stations that fail catastrophically, and sometimes cause cascading failures.
I haven't lived on the East Coast for decades - any power engineers want to comment on the truth or falsity of these reports?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Half a dozen solar panels on the roof and a good inverter mounted will mean that you can power essentials (fridge, freezer, lights, etc) even when you're not on the grid.
Sure, it won't help if the storm cracks your panels or it stays really cloudy, but clouds often leave as quickly as they arrive and unless they're really thick, solar can work even when it is cloudy (just like you can get sun burnt when it is cloudy.)
Being green with respect to electricity has other advantages when it comes to your power supply aside from being green and seeing the monthly electricity bill drop.
In Florida since we get nasty storms all of the time the power companies have full time crews that trim trees near power lines. They are going to have to do it anyway when a storm comes and it's easier to do it when the weather is nice for 3/4 of the year than when the storms come in the heat and humidity of the summer. All you have to do is call them up to take a look at a tree near their lines and they will take a look and trim it if needed.
The rest of the country might not get this weather often enough to spend the time to maintain the trees so when a freak storm comes by you not only have had lots of tree growth but it's growth that hasn't been subjected to high winds.
http://www.fpl.com/residential/trees/index.shtml
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
As someone who was without power from Friday night to yesterday afternoon in Maryland (served by BG&E), I get that this was bad storm and outages are probably inevitable. My problem is: Why are there so many of these outages?
I moved to my current residence in 2006 and there have been at least 4 outages lasting longer than 24 hours. I think I'm missing one in that count, but I didn't want to put it down without remembering it better. But we've had one of these 24+ hour outages each of the last three years.
When I step outside during an outage, I'm greeted with the sound of generators all around me (including my own, but it's quiet enough that I hear several others over it). Why do we all have generators? Because we need them so frequently! I bet if I did a poll, half the neighbors would either have a generator or have power from someone that does. And a good portion of the rest probably have friends or family far enough that they might have power, but near enough to make staying at their place feasible.
Meanwhile...my water works fine. My natural gas service works fine - we were able to take hot showers throughout the outage. My FiOS worked fine after I hooked it to the generator. All of those things have one thing in common: the lines are buried. It's sad that my internet service is more reliable than my electricity. If it's so expensive to bury wires, how come Verizon just did it a couple years ago when they installed FiOS?
BG&E did a "reliability improvement plan" in our city a year or two ago, moving some main wires underground. It seems to have cut down on the shorter power outages, but no such luck for the longer outages. We're tired of it. My wife and I are going to write BG&E a nice letter that basically asks "WTF?" I plan to CC the city council and local papers as well.
Many people are very NIMBY about solar and wind plants that are stuck into communities using imminent domain when their is any opposition, and that are run at a profit for private enterprise using public subsidies to make sure that there is no risk to our beautiful corporate overlords.
FTFY
when you add an extra leap second...
Something y'all should keep in mind (and into Day 5 without power) is that burying the lines isn't a silver bullet. There's lots of stuff that can go wrong with underground wires, and it doubles, triples, quadruples the time, effort, and expense to repair an underground fault. With the lines overhead, access to the grid is quick and cheap, and many times, the fault is visible.
When I first came to US, I was shocked to see those wood utility poles. It is so ancient. There are many excuses for keeping those. People need to go to some developing countries, particularly BRIC, to take a look at their infrastructures. Where is the $$ for change?
^(oo)^pig~
I sat in on a town hall meeting where JCP&L fumbled majorly in explaining themselves after taking a week or more to restore power in northern NJ. They gave all manner of excuses, and the meeting attendees pointed out endless examples of dead branches hanging over wires. Their policy? Then don't touch the branch unless the branch is *hanging* on the wire. How's that for foresight? The moment a strong wind kicks up, they lose power. They're so fucking cheap that they fired all their linemen, and now out-of-state emergency support has become the ONLY support.
Shame on them.
Vote for Romney and privatize even more infrastructure and eventually Apple/Google/etc can afford high tech uptime, and the rest of US infrastructure (certainly rural area, without COOPs) will have India-like outages . . . (quote me in 5 years, and you won't laugh about this one anymore)
Nature happens. You guys are knee'jerk reacting. Next story.
My home state of CT had two storms that took out power to most of the state for over a week just last year. Get on our level.
On a serious note, it's kind of sad to see that even after our horrendous storms and massive consumer backlash against CL&P's near-monopoly, there are still power companies out there acting like it could never happen to them, not having a contingency plan for the worst case scenario.
For comparison, our computers have reset unexpectedly twice (iirc) in the past 12 years. I assume that both times it was due to a short power-blip. No other outages that I recall. I think occasionally about buying a UPS, but I'm not sure the UPS wouldn't actually decrease the reliability.
The difference is exactly what you expect: all power wires here are buried. Heck, our house was built in 1934, and the wires were buried. Why does the US still string them up on poles, almost a century later? Weird...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Yes, let's spend trillions for that extra 1% uptime instead of just let the people who absolutely have to have emergency power buy an inexpensive generator.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Peophttp://news.slashdot.org/story/12/07/03/1330239/after-recent-us-storms-why-are-millions-still-without-power?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=facebook#le need to start becoming independent from utilities. Drilling wells Solar Powered roofs Wind power NEED I SAY MORE
While I agree, it would be nice to do most of this, it's also not the be-all, end-all solution. Particularly in the case of the recent derecho. Where I live, we had sustained winds of 70 mph and gusts over 90. There are trees with 3 foot diameters that the trunks were snapped off. There are utility poles that were blown over (no trees on the lines). Shingles were blown off of roofs. Solar panels would probably have made for nice sails in this storm. Or been smashed by flying debris. Residential wind turbines have dubious value at best. In this area, I doubt you could generate enough power from one to justify its cost. It most likely would have made a nice projectile in this storm. Wells are only useful (or legal) depending on where you live. My town has a population around 50K. We can't drill a well here. Not that the water table could support this if everyone did. I can just see someone in NYC deciding to drill a well. Not that anyone in their right mind would drink water from a well there.
I lose electrical power at least once a year. Sometimes it's just a few blocks, sometimes it's a quarter of the city. It usually happens during thunder storms, but once in a while it happens for no apparent reason. It usually takes several hours for it to be restored. This is in a city of 200,000 in the Midwest. Several decades ago, this was acceptable; electricity was a convenience that gave us light and maybe ran some of our home appliances. But today it is essential to our daily lives; too many things now require electricity to work. And yet... we're still using the same basic infrastructure that my grandparents got their electricity from during the Great Depression.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
it's like the wal mart attitude of just buy the cheapest no matter what the hidden costs are of buying more products to make up for the crappy cheapest product in the first place
same here. dollar wise for the initial costs its cheaper to put up overhead wires. and the repair costs are probably low enough that digging holes is always too expensive.
and the fact that when you get to the republican areas everyone is always against higher taxes so they make due with crappy infrastructure
Remove regulatory barriers to small private, personal and community power generation systems and solve this problem!
It all starts at 0
Which would require multiple utility corridors all of which would need to be maintained, twice as many "unsightly" poles and twice the cost of running the service in the first place - read higher lot prices, twice the maintenance work to keep the trees cut back, twice as many unhappy homeowners as their trees that they planted to close to the right of way are cut back - "I didn't know it would grow that high!", lots of isolation and distribution stations where even more things could go wrong, and you'd still be at the same risk when a big storm hit.
If you don't like the situation, buy a big diesel generator and wire it in. Then have a big storage tank of diesel close by.
Of course the utility companies can take steps between storms to upgrade outdated equipment and trim growth from around power lines.
The trouble is, we don't want to spend the considerable sums of public money it'd take to make that happen.
This should come as no surprise to anyone. Our utilities are a hybrid of private enterprise and public good. Since today there is no greater fundamental evil in the United States than the public sector and maintenance is a generally unprofitable annoyance for businesses, don't expect any more expenditure on energy infrastructure improvements than is absolutely necessary.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
The US electric grid is a product of history much more than planning with bits tacked on or merged as short-term goals dictated without much in the way of long-term planning. (There are actually three main US grids, one for the East, one for the West and one for Texas). Maggie Koerth-Baker wrote an excellent book, "Beforee the Lights Go Out," which is about the grid and related issues that discusses this and how it creates a lot of these problems and what we can do about it. I highly recommend it.
We were without power for three days. What has struck me most is that the damage happened in 15 minutes while a hurricane blows for six or eight hours. Also, there was very little rain with this storm system. At the stables is was hard to water the horses with the well pump out. The stream was also dry. Lucky we'd filled all the buckets in the barn a week before.
Why are Americans so obsessed with air conditioning? Massive power failure you'd think there'd be more important priorities. Anyway you have slave labour in the form of prison chain-gangs so get them to bury the power cables.
Seriously. Look at a map for any densely populated urban area, and consider the scale and complexity any utility provider must face. The problem is enormous and the adverse conditions affecting the utility are highly varied. Also consider that it makes no sense for these utility providers to retain standing armies of workers and equipment to react to rare events.
People need to grow up, and understand that sometimes they will be left without the conveniences of modern life. It is incumbent upon each of us to be prepared for these difficult times when we might have to go a full 48 hours without being able to watch The Bachelorette.
The NE neighborhoods are so old they predate power lines. Tearing up all the streets and sidewalks in the entire northeastern US would have cost ridiculous amounts of money.
Remember - government spending is bad. REGARDLESS of the outcome for us. Government spending = taxes, and as everyone knows, this country was founded on three principles:
1.God is in heaven, satan is in hell, and we are a Christian nation.
2. I have the right to own any firearm I wish, up to and including napalm.
3. TAXATION??? This country isn't designed to have taxes. Why should I have to pay for YOUR roads and YOUR power and YOUR schools? Socialist pig.
Seriously, though, it seems to me that infrastructure spending is one of those no-brainer things that shouldn't even be a question.
I'm not again alternative energy. But these storms would have ripped solar panels off of roofs. And you can go to youtube and see videos of wind turbines ripping themselves apart in high winds. But power plants dont get destroyed in a storm and power lines can be put in the ground.
A generator suitable for real emergency use for vulnerable people is not that inexpensive. For that situation you'd really need one powered by natural gas with automatic start if the main electricity supply failed. It would have to be powerful enough, in most areas, to be able to drive air conditioning, and perhaps other energy demanding systems.
Capitalism enforces ever rising levels of mediocrity. Like what's in Wal-Mart, every product or service is made to be *just* reliable enough to sell and beat the competition, if there is any. The power grid is *just* good enough so that no company will spend money to fix it. As for the actual physical grid itself, there's no significant competition.Thinking ahead to emergencies doesn't figure into this, and don't even start to discuss the national interest if it compromises profit somewhere. EMP anyone?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I'd be more than happy to hear wooshing if it meant sustainable power with less interruptions. Honestly I don't see what the big deal is here. Where I'm at there are 3 sets of train tracks about 100yds from my building and I get along just fine. Can't imagine that a few wind turbines would be that much louder..
You can't take the sky from me.
> Seriously, though, it seems to me that infrastructure spending is one of those no-brainer things that shouldn't even be a question.
Of course it's a question; why should it be any different just because it's "infrastructure?" If there is demand for it, let the free-market provide it... nothing dictates that "infrastructure" be provided by some entity that maintains a monopoly on the use of force. Note too that "free market" includes voluntarily assembled co-operatives and communes. Communal activity for common good is one thing... forced participation in some initiative, at the point of a gun barrel, is something quite different.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Because quick profits and millisecond gains are the king in US. The utilities are trying to save both on infrastructure and maintenance. Having the power lines been buried, like in pretty much every first world country, they would have had a lot less problems from a little wind. I am pretty sure that the next post would be how this is too expensive because of the 'low' population density and the 'rural' populations and I call this complete bollocks. The utility poles are as prevalent in urban areas as they are out in the country. So, you saved on infrastructure and this is probably OK, but then you need to maintain it. And this means keeping the trees away from the poles, not overloading the wooden poles to the point where a little wind will snap them and replacing them before they rot completely away. Now this makes the cheap infrastructure a lot more expensive, unless you skip on the maintenance, which is what most utilities cheerfully do. This is by no means the only utilities fault. Any investment cost will need to be passed to the consumers and they will have none of it.
It is a major expense to disaster proof all utilities, and doing so in a way that would prevent damage against 100-year high winds costs a ton. Would you pay double the taxes on electricity for 10 years to protect against something that statistically shouldn't happen again in your life time?
Combine that with insane amounts of damage. My electricity comes through underground wires in one direction, and that's why I still had power sunday. Sunday night, though, the wind took out more substations, and snaped a live line on the other side of the property. And with that, power was gone. It wasn't just the snapped line, but the trees that pulled up underground cables when they fell; it isn't just a single line broken, but 10s of breaks just to restore power to a few people. And the areas hit aren't all dense urban areas, but at least here it is lots of power lost in rural farms.
That's what it comes down to. DO it as cheaply as possible damn the consequences. After all the utilities don't have to pay the true cost of outages, the consumer does. This is called "externalized costs", a concept which makes even the most conservative Economist shudder because it means market forces break down.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
> Seriously, though, it seems to me that infrastructure spending is one of those no-brainer things that shouldn't even be a question.
Of course it's a question; why should it be any different just because it's "infrastructure?" If there is demand for it, let the free-market provide it... nothing dictates that "infrastructure" be provided by some entity that maintains a monopoly on the use of force. Note too that "free market" includes voluntarily assembled co-operatives and communes. Communal activity for common good is one thing... forced participation in some initiative, at the point of a gun barrel, is something quite different.
Except that utilities are a regulated industry so free market doesn't apply.
The broken window fallacy is a fallacy. Such action would only be constructive if the amortized costs for the installation were less than the costs from incidents like this.
I don't think I have ever heard of something like this happening before, so it is unlikely to be something that happens often enough to warrant such expenditure. Jobs are a means to an end, not an end of themselves. If they were, then there would be two jobs, people digging ditches and people filling them in.
Yeah, those hurricane force winds would get those windmills pumping out the power! Zoom!
Actually, I'd like to see that, preferably via video from a safe location.
Bob: Power's still out, man!
Bill: Good thing I had that solar power on my roof!
Bob: But your roof is somewhere in the next county.
Bill: Details, details...
I think you're right, except for the spin. The idea of throwing warm bodies at repairing high power lines is not a good one. The reason the liability would be high is because it would be carnage. The job is already dangerous - it's the 8th most dangerous job in the US. Work that is a safe distance from power lines won't be done by the specialized workers you're talking about anyways. As for those greedy unions, right now they're working 16 hour days in 100+ degree heat. I think they deserve every penny. Electricity is cheap.
As opposed to to the economic cost of constantly having power outages do to storms. In the long room it would be cheaper.
Not if they were properly installed. In addition to being quite heavy (being made out of sand and metal), most installations have panels bolted to metal brackets which are permanently fixed to the roof. The panels aren't going anywhere without the roof.
They can get smashed, but there are some types of panels that are resistant to such damage, and can even be repaired (a little solder to fix any broken connections and a new glass sheet over the top should be more than enough).
And individual merely needs to weigh the costs of having occasional/extraordinarily rare outages like this against the costs of the system.
in southern New Jersey. Cell phone service seems back to normal as of late Monday. Power isn't expected to be back until the 6th, don't know about cable/internet. Thankfully I purchased a generator after Hurricane Irene last year - were without power/cable/internet for two days after that. Generator will cover a good bit of our needs, just need to make sure we don't overload it - as my wife did this morning. While I agree that the local utilities DON'T do enough preventative maintenance to trim back trees, etc., the amount of trees that look like they literally exploded is amazing. We were lucky and only had minor damage in our neighborhood, my parent's street looks like a war zone - but they live in a more developed town and have their utilities all restored.
1) Burying the residential electrical lines in the Northeast is a large infrastructure project that must be done. 2) Unemployment is high Seems like a good opportunity for the Government to put unemployed folks to work. Of course it will cost money. Pay for it with a temporary utility surcharge for consumers, and increase in corporate taxes on the utility companies.
Problem with most solar installations were I live (and I have solar as well), this that we are currently required to have our solar shut down so it doesn't backfeed to the street. I understand there are ways around that, but we've got a generator and I'll live with that for now.
Go take a course in economics so you can speak from a position of actual knowledge. Large-scale projects for the common good are a common "market failure", in that a market is unable to provide them. This includes tangibles like roads, tunnels, and bridges and intangibles like policing and rule of law.
US has crappy infrastructure because of inefficiency and a lack of long-term thinking. By observation, you'd rather that cities get flooded and people die (New Orleans anyone) than invest ahead of time to prevent it. This seems to be true on a small scale as well (e.g. in Europe, the fire brigade will come and pump out your cellar after a flood - that doesn't seem to be the norm in the US). And before you come with the "high taxes" straw man, this works in Switzerland with tax rates hovering in the mid-teens.
that is evil socialism, collectivist action
a real captain of industry, which everyone should strive to be, builds their own electric lines, transformers, bridges, power plants, automobile factories, etc, and doesn't reply on charity from others, which only destroys character
besides, we privatize things like power plants and electric utilities, because capitalism is magic fairy dust that solves all problems
nevermind that competing against an entrenched player with a network effect requires huge upfront costs that won't realize a return for over a decade, and therefore, no one in their right mind competes. and that in the meantime, a monopoly or oligarchy exists without any effective competition. and there is no market pressure to respond to customer's needs, since they have no where else to turn, they are captive
no, we still talk about the magic of free markets, even though all we have created is rent seeking parasites that drain capital to middlemen and executives who offer nothing in return. no, the real problem is government, you see
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Third world countries don't have issues like this. They are used to the power being on for a couple hours a day, if the community generator is maintained.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
...the same press that roasted Bush over Katrina won't have a thing to say about Obama now?
We spent 4 trillion on a tax break and two wars and got NOTHING for it. Why not spend trillions on building a huge industry that would make us energy independent? Money spent on building shit benefits us all. The fifties were full of crazy ideas and huge projects and what did we get, the most awesome country in the world.
Also "inexpensive generator" do you mean one that can run AC? So in my house that is 4x40 amp circuits, plus a 15 amp for the fridge, two more 15's for the lights so a ~20K watt generator? So $5k plus installation, that's a two day job for an electrician so lets say $10k installed. Even if that is one in ten house houlds in America that is a fuck load of money. Why not spend it on something that will generate electricity for many many years and give us a hard currency export.
Print it. It is called stimulus. We need to bury all of our lines AND run fiber that is owned by the public. If we do not engage in physical infrastructure (data and roads/energy) soon it doesn't matter if you fix education, the job market or international trade. If we do not have the medium with which to facilitate economic activity it will be like taking the wheels off of a bus.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
My grandfather, a Dutch electrical engineer who was responsible for setting up most of the electrical and gas infrastructure in North-Holland shortly before and after WWII, visited to the US in the 1950s and was astonished to see all of the electrical lines hanging from poles above ground. In his view, this was so crazy.
Sure, the up-front cost of burying all of the electrical lines in Europe from the get-go was expensive, but everybody realized that it would soon pay off. Not so in the United States: apparently, they just wanted their electrical infrastructure as fast and for as little money as possible. Consequently, Americans have been paying a high price for that mistake ever since. It's really a tax on stupidity, only they've been living with it for so long that they've come to believe that it's perfectly reasonable and acceptable.
On the other hand, if the government (incl. State and local ones) were to finally make the decision to bury all of their power and communications lines (except for long-distance high-voltage), then not only would their children and grand-children etc. be very grateful, it would also create lots of jobs now and therefore be a much needed boost for the economy.
It might only be an extra 1% uptime per incident, but when the same thing keeps happening year after year, it begins to add up. Hurricane Ike left people without power for months. And what did they do? They hung up cheap crappy power lines on poles to replace the cheap crappy ones that snapped. We have hurricanes here on a regular basis, so at some point is has to be cheaper to simply bury the damn cables instead of replacing them all the time.
Given the quality of the wires they use around here, I'm just glad it never really freezes in the winter, because the ice would probably snap all the un-buried lines in the greater Houston area.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
First of all, the current outages are not in the northeast, they are in the mid-Atlantic region. Having said that, we did have some problems up here in the northeast last year, from Irene and from an early blizzard (while the trees still had leaves).
So, exactly how bad is the situation up here? According to the local utility, when there are no major storms the reliability of their service is 99.96%. When there are major storms (which is where buried utilities would help), the reliability plummets - all the way down to 99.92%.
So, how much would it cost to bury the lines to gain back that 0.04%? According to the utility, burying a mile of distribution line costs $1.6M (times 7300 miles = $12B), and burying a mile of transmission line costs $7M (times 600 miles = $4.2B). Add in another $530M to remove the existing above-ground stuff, and another $1.3B to install ground-mounted transformers (on private property) and equipment. Total cost to the utility, $18B. That would require a permanent annual revenue increase of $3.24B per year, or $10,000 PER CUSTOMER EVERY YEAR. In addition, each customer would be required to spend about $2K to have an electrician install the new underground service to their house.
If anyone really gave a shit they would just let the other political party take full credit for the idea and legislative implementation. Get it done. The greatest infrastructure planner/implementer ever used to say, "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you are willing to let someone else take the credit."
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Because most Americans (most people?) are not willing to "pay it forward", to invest in the future. They have a hard time imagining that something that has not happened to them might happen in the future. "I've done this lots of times, nothing ever happens." All they want is the cheapest whatever. Hence Walmart.
I am a member of a electric coop and there is no WAY we are going to subsidize a project of that magnitude. We will have to get by with replacing the broken sticks and go without power every now and then.
We used to be rural back in the 30s -- and somehow the coop has managed to thrive -- by being cheap? :) They (some other electric co) just built a new coal-burner a few years back -- that my coop buys electricity from... oh oh... can you say pending rate hike -- when the benevolent gmmt shuts it down to save our lungs... ?
NO RATE HIKE! Keep our pretty-good infrastructure! YaY for Cheap and unreliable electricity! It beats the other kind.
Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages – the expense would send rates soaring ...
Or profits plummeting.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If companies are being ``bled dry'', why is it that wages as a percentage of GDP peaked in 1972 and has been declining ever since, while corporate profits and payments to shareholders has been steadily increasing since then?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
When the economy hit the black water tank in 2008, China made a stimulus package. It didn't just go to replacing cars either.
They spent money adding airports, roads, rail, laying fiber, even adding chip factories so they can fab their own stuff if need be.
It has helped their economy immensely. Their factories are highly competitive because their government and business cooperate. They can get raw materials to where they need to go on a scale that couldn't be matched here in the states due to the government being told not to do it, and the private sector uninterested in funding it.
I would much rather hear the 'whoosh' of a windmill all day, than feel that skin crawling, bone tingling, feeling when I cross under the high tension power lines.
You're the first to mention tree trimming. That's a big debate in itself.
People complained about outages after Hurricane Whatever a few years ago so the utility came through and cut back everything. My neighborhood looked like a war zone when they were done. They even bush-hogged my flower garden. Then everybody complained about the trimming. Of course, we still lost power for 36 hours last weekend.
Every homeowner should have a generator, a water pump, and a gun. Waiting until you need one to get it is too late.
:wq
Because "free market" is a lousy way to provide essential services. If you do, then only high profit neighborhoods will have affordable power. Most rural communities are heavily subsidized by their denser neighbors.
If this was a free market, then utilities would pull out of poor and low profit neighborhoods.
I know; I work for a utility. We have neighborhoods where we will never, ever, "make a profit", because we had to sink so much into the infrastructure that at our normal rates we will never make our investment back.
On the whole we're "profitable" - as profitable as a public corporation can be. But we could be raking in the big bucks if we were private and allowed to abandon "poorly performing" or "unprofitable" neighborhoods.
So your "free market" would take us back to the days when the rich had power, clean water, sewer, and internet, and the poor lived in squalor and filth.
Guessing more large transmission lines were hit by this storm than usual. Our electric co-op has lines and substations repaired and ready which still cannot get power from the two big utilities. The co-op has 35,000 customers but does not generate its own power. It fills in nooks and crannies on the map out in rural areas, and may still get some kind of subsidy from the old REA, now part of the Agriculture Dept.
Similarly, phone went out even though lines are generally underground here. DSL was more vulnerable, and the word is the lost power from the big utilities.
(Not all 35,000 are out, but two substations are getting no power.)
I like the tech idea that they are working on at SolarRoadways. Turn roads, driveways, parking lots into solar cells. IF (notice its a big if) they can make it work in a resilient and affordable way it will not only solve the NIMBY problem, it will also reduce some of the national grid problems as well. Having power generated as close to the point of consumption as possible will reduce the amount of power wasted. Storage will still be an issue to address, but that's no different than any other solution.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Interesting that no one screams "save the trees" "bury the lines". Not to mention the poles are soaked in creosote so that makes them toxic waste.
At any rate, yes it's expensive to bury lines. But I always wondered why they'll dig up a road to put in new sewer lines or gas or whatever, yet no one thinks of burying power lines while it's dug up.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
" Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages – the expense would send rates soaring –"
No, they managed that level of staffing for years, but then started cutting because they realized that can make more money (exec. bonus) and they can blame the weather.
Now that are setting the stage for a price hike. IN which they will hire more people, and then let them go about 3 CEOs. later.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You should re-examine that. Solar costs are dropping VERY quickly. Sunelec.com has polycrystaline panels for 66 cents/watt right now. These should last for at least 25 years, barring softball sized hail, etc.
But if you are too far north, then it is probably not worth it. I would tend to argue that it is good to have a few around to power vital electronics. I have enough to power my well should the power go out for an extended period of time, and am now looking at going all solar due to the falling costs.
2000 W inverter - $150
Deep-cycle marine battery w/ plastic case - $125
Copper wiring - $50
Main battery isolater - $30
100 foot extension cord - $40
Install into vehicle. Isolate main battery from rear battery and inverter with the circuit breaker. Run extension cord into house. Able to power any home electronics you have, and can run an old refrigerator while the vehicle is running. Use only in case of emergency.
sudo make me a sandwich
The problem with it all is the "Lowest Common Denominator" aspect that is used. U.S. Mail was/is good. But it has to be there for everyone (according to cradle to grave government ruling). To include the infrastructure to support folks in the sticks. Roads, same deal. Power, ditto. Emergency services, Airline seats (ever see what we the people subsidize the airlines per seat for small airports just so those citizens can have access to resources?), etc, etc .
Not that I don't like living away from population centers, but supporting the "last mile" while trying to make the resources available equal to all is just not cost effective and needs to be sliced away.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
aka "Failed to CALL BEFORE YOU DIG" problem
with everything buried you run into problems where somebody decides to not CBYD and then puts his Backhoe across the line(s)
(maps are fictional and you always underestimate the power of a BackHoe run by a half drunk worker)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Exactly. Why did I lose my job to China? Hey, lets make ourselves feel better (momentarily) and go shopping at Walmart and a while later throw away the stuff we bought.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
It wouldn't help you. Windmills still have to be maintained. And, you still need reserve power when the wind dies down. If the reserve comes from batteries, the batteries will need periodic replacement, which is expensive. And if the reserve comes from offsite -- forget about the windmill and just bury your power lines.
I have a bunch of oak trees on a pretty small lot, including one that has power lines running through it. When we had the last wind storm, it was about 6 months after we'd had them all trimmed (and nicely), and had a tree that had abruptly died removed. Our total loss of branches was a piece about the size of a small shrub, maybe 2 feet across. There were hundreds of downed trees in the area, and even more that lost branches. Keeping them trimmed saved us an enormous mess. Our tree trimmer came by a few days after the wind with a big smile and said something like "See, I told you I'd do a nice job".
Another thing I don't understand is why aren't the owners of the land on which the trees grow that interfere with the power lines held to account if they don't trim their trees? Why is this suddenly the power company's job?
We don't want property owners cutting trees close to overhead lines. You think outages are bad now? You haven't seen anything yet until Joe weekend lumberjack gets out his new chainsaw.
At any rate, imposing this requirement on property owners would impose a maintenance cost on them. They shouldn't be responsible for system costs, particularly in the case of an investor owned (for profit) utility.
System maintenance is part of the power companies job. The problem is that this is an easily deferred cost. Particularly when a utility manager is trying to fluff up his/her resume. By the time this comes back to bite the utility, they have moved on and Rule #1 in corporate America is never to look back for the root cause of a problem.
Have gnu, will travel.
The solution is obvious, move to smaller distributed power plants. The limit as x goes to infinity would of course be no power grid, everyone has their own power generating capacity.
And how many trillions do you lose due to power outtages?
How many trillions would come directly back as taxes?
How many trillions could you make by selling more power because your grid is better?
How cheap exactly is a generator and the switching/gearing to connect it to your house?
Your point is very short sighted, indeed.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Below-ground installation is more costly to install and repair. It is more secure against wind damage.
But wind damage occurs infrequently and above-ground wind damage can be quickly repaired: all components are visible, easily evaluated visually and no digging is required. Parts are less inexpensive than those for below-ground.
In contrast, below-ground is a costly PITA when _flooding_ occurs. Repairs cannot begin until flood waters subside and the water table goes down..
Demand for below-ground installation is predominantly driven by homeowners concerned that poles and lines mar the appearance of their neighborhood.
As a telecom employee, I'm getting a kick out of these....nevermind. Anyhow, the process for burying lines is pretty straightforward. Look at any relatively new subdivision or business district. Do you see any poles? Probably not. Because most utilities WANT to bury lines. It's easier and looks better and most governments now request/mandate burying lines. Now, try to do that in an older neighborhood. With water/sewer/gas/fiber/copper/old steam pipes/etc. Try getting locates done in a busy older neighborhood. Oh, and in order to bury you are going to have to give some yard space to put in a ped. Watch people flip out as their front yards are shredded by boring machines (if they are lucky....) or that now there's going to be a slew of pads in their lilac bushes.
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
For the crazy amounts of power you're talking about (seven days worth of air conditioning, refrigeration, and life support systems!) you'd need dozens of deep cycle lead acid batteries filling your basement. You'd have to periodically maintain them (measuring and topping up their fluids) and you'd have to replace them as crystal growth over time would kill their storage capacity.
And plastic boxes filled with leaded sulfuric acid are obviously no hazard to your family, to firefighters, or any other visitor to your house.
A whole-house generator is a hell of a lot cheaper than the amount of battery storage you're talking about, and a buried tank of fuel is probably safer.
John
Wind turbines only fail in high winds if something is wrong with them (unless the entire structure gets knocked over somehow). A correctly operating wind turbine will adjust the blade pitch to either shut down safely or continue operating in high winds.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Because the difference between 'the greatest country and the world' and somewhere with similar climate, natural resources etc. is?
PLEASE PLEASE buy a real transfer switch. It will only add another couple of hundreds of dollars, but prevents the backfeed from killing the guy trying to fix your power.
We did the free market for utilities. It didn't work. You should know history, cities had the sun blotted out for all the overhead wires - literally.
Or having 14 water supply pipes from different providers...some things aren't free market compatible.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
This AM (four days after the storm), there are still giant trees lying across major roads.
This might be why the power isn't back on everywhere.
In several cases, homeowners were out Saturday and Sunday clearing away trees from state highways.
In at least a couple cases, trees have been removed and Pepco is starting to drill holes to put in new utility poles where the utility poles were snapped off.
Oh the irony. Meant to be 'greatest country in the world'. Meant to be...
You're arguing that Standard Oil and company towns were good for us? Just wow.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Or buy some candles. Seriously, the power goes out for a few days in the summer and it's such a big deal?
In the town I grew up in, the power used to go out in the winter sometimes. When it was -40. My friend's lizard died during one multi day outage, but other than that everyone managed to do just fine.
We had a windstorm (gusts probably over 130 mph in areas) last December that took down hundreds of trees within a few miles of me, and probably thousands all over SoCal, including a number of quite large trees. It also took down a lot of power poles without tree impact. People I know who have solar didn't lose any panels-- they're generally tied to the roof pretty well, and won't have trees above them that would cause impact. I'm planning to put in a small solar setup to run the fridge (I don't have enough view of the sky to go full solar).
It seems like the biggest correlation for damage was: native trees (around here, Live Oak) generally held up pretty well. I have a bunch of oaks plus an ~80 foot tall pine tree that's got a trunk about 3 feet across and sways a lot. We lost pretty much nothing except leaves and twigs. Planted trees (including many very large mature ones along roadways) fell like dominoes because they didn't develop root systems appropriate to the area. There were roads that had two trees across them per block.
As far as power reliability-- the municipal power systems had been doing a better job of doing maintenance and prep than SCE-- Pasadena had nearly everyone back up very quickly, and City of LA lost about the same number of customers as SCE, but had them back up about twice as fast. Their area is pretty well comparable and interspersed with SCE's coverage area.
I live in central Maryland. There is more to this than just a Derecho. We get every two to three years. They're not unheard of.
We had a mild winter and a cool spring. The winter did not have any significant snow or ice. So weak tree limbs didn't come down. There weren't many significant thunderstorms in the spring either, so no significant dead wood fell because of that. Here we are in early summer, and we get the first major storm of the season and all that weak and dying wood that hasn't been cleared out of the trees comes down at once. In many cases it takes the whole damned tree down. This wouldn't have been a big deal if it had been spread over a few storms here and there, but instead it happened all at once.
In so many ways, this was a perfect storm...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
So, how many of the following beliefs do YOU share?
Creationism
No such thing as (human caused) global warming
Birthers
Saddam Hussein had WMDs and worked with Al Queda (believe it or not, a lot of Americans still think this, especially Fox viewers)
George W. Bush was the right person to vote for the first time
George W. Bush was the right person to vote for the second time
Sarah Palin is an intelligent, thoughtful person worthy of the highest offices in the land
Being "elite" (definition: the best at anything) is bad
Deficit spending is bad in a recession (unfortunately the Europeans seem to really think this)
Teaching students critical thinking is a bad thing (well at least in Texas)
I could go on and on (unfortunately) but you get the point. I would imagine there is a high correlation between these beliefs, right or wrong. If you're not embarrassed by them, why mod me down? Anyway, may I add one last contentious point that may or may not fit this demographic?
These people are Apple haters.
Or, rather than insisting on a backup good enough that you don't even notice a power failure, if A/C is an actual necessity to life (due to infirmity for example) you pick an emergency room and put a small A/C in that room that can run from a more modest sized generator.
Don't forget that hose poor living in squalor and filth would be stealing from and infecting the rich, and periodically lining them up against walls and shooting them.
Subsidizing basics like power, clean water, sewer and education for the poor works out quite well for the rich overall.
There is this thing called a "MAIN BREAKER" ... that you should always turn OFF when you use a generator back-feeding your electrical system, of course it needs to be turned off, not only to save the life of a linesmen, but to save your generator when the power comes back on ...
they let you guys own guns and all, but fail to educate you on how electricity works ... mind boggling.
Well, that post was incredibly wrong.
Having untrained people around down power lines is likely to get someone killed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That 'IF' is so big, I'd need to consult the list of Yo Mamma jokes to express just how big it is.
You should be able to have a switch put in the stops back feed. With down' lines, back feed could kill someone, so don't 'get around' it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Can anyone tell me if equipment (transformers, etc.) not being manufactured in the U.S. contributed to the delay of power restoration at all? If not, could this be a factor in a larger-scale outage?
That whoosh of the windmill is horrid. I mean horrid. All day, all night. Sounds like a low power jet engine. I used to live about four blocks (or so) from one. Everyone thought cool seems like good idea. The people including myself thought it was a great idea.
Worst idea ever. I had to move just to be able to get to sleep. The noise is never ending. So until you live near the whoosh I would be careful of what you wish for. I live three blocks from train tracks, about a mile from the interstate, I will take those.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
And when the power goes down, people find their basement-generators have siezed up from years of disuse. Equipment requires maintainance. Large batteries and flywheels are also inherently dangerous. The electric car idea isn't too bad though.
Gov't spending IS bad regardless of outcome. ALL gov't spending is bad under ALL situations.
Sending First generation and low-income students through college is bad? I always assumed that more education = less money spent in the long run . . . . But I guess that decades of research (just google that) can be wrong. . . .
The productive USA was built without income taxes, without corporate taxes, without payroll taxes, without FDIC, Fed, IRS, FDA, FHA, EPA, CIA, FBI, SS, Medicare, EI, Medicaid, welfare, without dep't of energy, education, agriculture, small business, commerce, interior, HUD, etc.
Do you know why those things exist? To protect citizens. You can say what you want about the Gub'ment being out to get you, but it's true. Private enterprise in the 19th and early 20th century proved one thing, over-and-over, it will cut costs to the point of being dangerous to its workers, just to increase short-term profits. What choice do we have? Are you telling me that we can trust corporations to do what's in our best interests? If you say yes, please google anything with large businesses and the start of the labor movement.
But how does a country become a productive exporter, creditor without gov't building infrastructure? Because it's not true that gov't is needed to build any of it, what IS true is that WEALTH is needed to build infrastructure.There has to be a REASON to build infrastructure, there has to be wealth first, there has to be a promise of making a return - the profit motive is the driver, nothing else.
Okay, what about us who live where it wouldn't be profitable to run power, water or any other essential service? I guess we're just screwed. And Profit as the driver is an incredibly fine line. Today's attitude of bar-the-door short-term profits at the expense of all else doesn't exactly lend itself to developing long-term strategy. You know what does? Slow-moving government.
Infrastructure? How about the Keystone pipeline - the actual PRODUCTIVE infrastructure that private companies want to build, because they believe it's going to be profitable, it's going to make money. Is that the wrong thing today somehow - making money? USA was built by business, not by any government. USA was built by ABSENCE of gov't, people came to USA for freedoms from their totalitarian governments.
Keystone pipeline = 250,000 jobs is what we're told. NO, Keystone pipeline = 250,000 MOSTLY TEMPORARY man-year jobs. So, if it creates 20,000 jobs that last for 6 months, that's 10,000 jobs, correct? Nope. A job is a stable, long-term position. A temporary employment opportunity is what they're counting. It has nothing to do with long-term solutions. Granted, it's better than nothing, but change the discussion from how many jobs it will create by hyperbole, and actually give us a realistic number. I haven't been able to find one. And I'm not willing to trust someone who is driven by PROFIT to do what is in my best interest. No thank you.
The countries today that do the best are those that removed the most government controls from their economy over time, and USA is moving in a completely wrong direction.
Citation please? Are you talking about third world hell-holes? Or the pseudo-socialist Europeans?
You want infrastructure? You can't have infrastructure, there is nothing to build it for, and if there is something to build it for (like an oil pipeline) you are arguing against it, and it's not even a government project. You are not going to have infrastructure, because you don't have production. You are not going to have education and science, because you don't have manufacturing and engineering.
Wat? Are you saying that infrastructure necessarily equals profits and oil? Infrastructure means fixi
>But that would require money for infrastructure investment which would create lots of jobs which would help the economy...
Which in turn takes money out of the private sector making it more and more difficult for a real recovery. Keep in mind the average time for an economic down turn is 18 months. We are at what?
We tried this in 2009, what was result? I believe little to nothing. Even the president laughed about the idea of shovel ready jobs. Take the money out of somewhere else.
Dare I mention environmental regulations. It would never get done with the EPA alone.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
PLEASE PLEASE buy a real transfer switch. It will only add another couple of hundreds of dollars, but prevents the backfeed from killing the guy trying to fix your power.
More like $300-$400 US for the switch, an additional $300-$400 US to get a qualified electrician to install it properly, and $50-$100 for the proper permits. YMMV of course based on location.
Having said that, it is something you really should do if you are going to connect a generator to your house wiring in any way, shape, or form. To expand a bit, a transfer switch connects your house wiring to your generator's power while at the same time disconnecting your house wiring from your power company's feed. If you don't disconnect from the power company, power from your generator can back feed onto the pole and ultimately down the line to where a lineman might be working. At best the lineman will detect that the line is still live and it will take time to track down your feed. At worst he could be electrocuted. No matter what, switching your house systems to generator power should automatically disconnect those systems from the public utility. If it takes two separate actions then one of them can be forgotten and someone can get hurt or killed.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
but then the opposite gets the votes. By stirring discontent, they can blame everything on the president.
Remember, one sides stated goal is not to help the american people, but to get Obama out of office at any cost.
You should attend some of those rallies, the illogical, meanness and often underhanded racism is scary. Something I had thought was left behind with the 50's.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You apparently haven't spent much time in Washington DC during the summer. We were among the first adopters of air conditioning because summer is so insufferably hot and humid here. Before AC, the federal government had more "heat days" than snow days, and it was common for people to sleep in bathtubs full of cold water. When the power goes out in the summer in DC, people die from heat-related illnesses with alarming regularity. Most people also are not used to stockpiling non-perishable food, and businesses and public services are out of power in addition to homes, so life can get pretty difficult. Heck, my house has power but no Internet because the Verizon tech can't re-enable it until the central office gets turned back on. So yeah, losing power for a week in an entire region is about a lot more than camping in the basement in a snowstorm.
Valuable number 3. I've met many people on that line of thought. I wonder if they would be happy paying for each road they drive through. Perhaps, with GPS they can easily adopt such approach. (I'm sure they probably suck it up, just to make the point of not paying for someone else roads).
Imagine if trains never stopped running.
Wind turbine noise is grating. Like a child clucking her tongue. At first you notice it and don't think much about it. But 50 clucks latter and your ready to scream.
Plus, using that same land you could use industrial solar thermal produce more energy cheaper and quieter. Or 4th gen nuclear plants.
Not that there isn't anyplace for windmills.
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Low skilled workers and 7200 volt power lines, what could go wrong?
Can decide if crazy or trying to be funny.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It puts money INTO the private sector. How exactly does paying private companies to build infrastructure take money 'out' of the private sector?
What we tried in 2009 was sized for a specific size recession. Shortly afterwards we got new data that showed this recession was significantly worse than originally estimated. So the infrastructure plan was too 'small' for the problem and didn't do enough. On top of that, 30% of the 'stimulus' was tax cuts that didn't help anybody but the recipients.
Let me know what about this sequence you disagree with:
1. When the economy is in recession, both the consumers and the private sector are pulling back
2. If the consumers aren't buying, the private sector won't be hiring, yes?
3. If you give more money to private sector via tax cuts, they will pocket the money to pay bills because they aren't selling stuff due to #2 (some expenses/bills still exist, but they won't be expanding) Now you can wait until people start buying again, which means they need jobs. How do they get jobs is businesses aren't hiring? It's a chicken and egg situation. Jobs need demand but demand needs people with money which needs people with jobs.
OR you could do this:
4. Paying companies to build things is 'increasing' demand since the government is artificially buying stuff. (see below)
5. #4 creates incentives for companies to hire to fill that demand.
6. Companies pay employees who now start spending because they have a job and income coming in. (you have to eat, pay rent, utilities, etc)
re: #4, we need 'infrastructure' for society to exist as we know it. So it isn't really 'artificial' spending but it is deficit spending on something you need to do anyway. Just like you pay for a college education, few people pay cash upfront. It's an investment in the future that pays for itself over time. Roads, power grids, water systems, etc all do the same thing. They allow society and the private sector to operate and bring us the gains to grow our economy.
Right now, interest rates are so low as to be zero so it's essentially free money to pay back at no interest later. So since we need to redo much of our infrastructure and we need jobs and it's cheaper than it's ever been, why not do it now?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Why not spend it on something that will generate electricity for many many years and give us a hard currency export.
Generation isn't the issue, outages are caused by trees falling on wires, usually in the "last mile" to the house. No on-site generation system (PV, wind, etc) can be depended on to provide power when you need it.
A repeat of the super solar storm may take out power in most of the world. It may fry most satellites and computers too. It may takes months if not years to restore power then. Some ice core evidence suggests such storm happens about once per 500 years.
the fanatical organization, Equilibrium of Mankind. Originally Amarrian in origin, EoM can be found in most corners of Empire space, attempting to accomplish their devious plan of annihilating the human race.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Or carpet bombing. Having your cities all mostly destroyed by warfare is a pretty good excuse to rebuild. Unlike much of Europe, that hasn't happened in the northeast US in quite a while.
I would much rather hear the 'whoosh' of a windmill all day, than feel that skin crawling, bone tingling, feeling when I cross under the high tension power lines.
Nothing but your own illogical nervous reaction. If you disagree, I'd love to see any peer reviewed scientific evidence to the contrary.
Just another day in Paradise
If anyone really gave a shit they would just let the other political party take full credit for the idea and legislative implementation. Get it done. The greatest infrastructure planner/implementer ever used to say, "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you are willing to let someone else take the credit."
I wish. The modern day paradigm is more like "Death to the Infidels!" Nothing less than total destruction of the other sides. "Polar opposites". One side wants to steal your money, the other wants to give your money away. One side eats their babies, the other side wants to eat YOUR babies. But they're polar opposites.
We promote schemes of government and economic plans that - for whatever merits they may or may not possess - aren't going to work because their one fatal flaw is that they only work at all if everyone signs on. And then go to great lengths to ensure that only the True Believers are likely to sign on at all. And complain that we just need a little more time and a little more control.
Ideology is for idiots.
So why are we letting the idiots run everything?
Or you could just hire all the millions of unemployed people to dig and fill trenches and throw a power cable there inbetween these steps. It would solve this problem once and for all and kickstart the economy as a bonus, all without requiring people to buy ridiculously large, expensive and dangerous batteries.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It is rare for a heat wave in the US to be blamed for more than 20 deaths. The worst one that turned up in a casual Google search was 1936, where 5000+ people died. That was before the wide availability of air conditioning.
In 2003, a heat wave in Europe killed 70,000.
Europeans can complain about US infrastructure when theirs gets within an order of magnitude of ours at preserving citizens' lives.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
It is of course hard to point to any one thing, but one key difference is that Texas essentially has its own independent power grid with multiple link redundancy for overages. It evolved that way to reduce federal oversight from FERC.
We could take it out of the bombing brown people budget or out of the jailing stoned people budget.
Over the last 30 years, electric distribution has become much more automated and fault-tolerant. It is designed to route around local faults almost instantaneously. However, that same design makes it much less tolerant of widespread faults. When there are numerous hits to the distribution grid, entire substations must be taken offline, both to protect the substation equipment (which is very expensive and can take weeks to replace) and to maintain stability on the transmission grid.
Once repairs are underway, it is much safer for the people working on the lines to keep large sections of the distribution grid powered down than to have individual circuits coming on-line as they are cleared.
Following Hurricane Ike in September 2008, we were without power for 10 days while Centerpoint Energy put the distribution grid back together. Everyone needs to be aware that this is the nature of the automated distribution grid and it is wise to plan for such situations.
So can somebody here tell us just how much it costs to lay a 100ft run of underground power wire? I've seen internet cables laid around here, and they do it by digging a hole every 100ft or so, using a horizontal drill to connect them, and then pull the wire through. This way the wire can go under any surface pavement and the amount of digging involved is very small. I have a really hard time believing that this costs more than wires on poles, even without considering the different maintenance requirements.
Even when hurricanes pass by they don't cause this much damage. The straight-line winds gusting to 70 MPH (115 KPH) for over 15 minutes is what brought a lot of things down that wouldn't normally have come down in a storm.
As it is, I never lost power (for a change) but I'm working from home due to the office complex where I work is in autistic mode because of Verizon not being able to get some central system online.
I hate to think what would happen if we were ever hit full-on by a Category 5 hurricane...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
I think a lot of our European friends continue to underestimate the size of the US. There are over 160 million utility poles in the US. The distance from Seattle to Miami is like the distance between London and Tehran. Changing all of those poles to steel or moving the lines underground is unnecessary. Powerlines are underground where they need to be--newer residential neighborhoods, newer towns, and downtowns of most cities--and they are above ground elsewhere. The reliability of power is already great. Big cities don't have power outages. Suburbs may have rare power outages from severe storms a couple times a year. It also depends on your area. Trees in Miami are stronger against wind than trees in Virginia, for instance. And though people in the US typically don't want powerlines running to their house (and most people don't have them unless they're in a 60 year old house), nobody cares if there are lines running down the road.
Additionally, to those saying that "Europe doesn't have power outages, even in storms," I think you fail to understand the power of storms in the US, and I think you glob the whole US together as a single place. There's not going to be a power outage in a city from gale-force winds, but there may be in the suburbs. I'm a grad student, and I see the international students routinely just sitting upstairs doing their work when the tornado sirens go off. No matter what I do, I cannot drive into their heads the power of severe storms, here. I've been told that they thought tornadoes were kind of like in the Wizard of Oz. They're not. Europe is no stranger to high winds and strong low pressure systems, but the US gets storms of these strength routinely. Hundreds, maybe thousands of supercell thunderstorms of these strength hit the US every year. They pop up along or in front of huge cold front systems that come through. It usually happens where the cold, Canadian air and the warm, moist Gulf of Mexico air meet--in the Midwest and South--and the Midwest and South are thusly well-equipped to handle them. The Gulf states are also well-equipped to handle hurricanes. The states on the east coast are not as equipped for handling these kinds of disasters because they do not need to be. Likewise, Alabama is not as well-equipped to handle snow as New York might be.
I live in Columbus, OH. Absolutely every storm of any significance here, and plenty of seeminly minor ones, results in a power outage.
It seems evident to me that AEP does not invest in preventative maintenance. If they did, there would still be outages in major storms, but the effects wouldn't be nearly so wide-spread, and the repair times would be much shorter. The problem is that with an undermaintained infrastructure, minor damages and weaknesses accumulate, leading to more weak links that are more easily damaged in a storm.
So why don't they invest in preventative maintenance? Money. If they did better up-keep it would reduce their profit margin, and as a highly regulated monopoly, they are very constrained on how much they can raise rates for any purpose. So they pinch every penny.
On the other hand, if they wait for catastrophic failure, they can whine to state and federal governments for emergency aid money. Now, they can perform the repairs, but they don't have to pay for it. We do, out of tax money, rather than our electricity bill, so it doesn't affect AEP's bottom line.
To make matters worse, light bulbs don't last more than a week here, due to ubiquitous voltage spikes. We have surge protectors on electronics, but the surge protectors get damaged periodically. We have to mail-order 130V light bulbs just to get a little extra life out of them. (Yes, the CFLs get fried too.) I can't even begin to estimate the real costs of being an AEP customer, but they don't stop at the energy bill.
Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages - the expense would send rates soaring - and so they rely on out-of-state utilities to send help ..."
So the CEO says it's a choice between soaring rates and prolonged outages. These outages cost something too. If your business depends on electrical power, you're shut down. We're liable to end up with backup generators everywhere.
They used to have adequate numbers of linemen. But ever since the waves of mergers and the CEOs began lining their pockets, they cut way back on the staff.
So now, widespread T storms knock out power for a week. I shudder to think of how long power would be out now after a cat 3 hurricane or a widespread ice storm. It could be weeks.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Even in rural germany (Hessen/Pferdekopf/Taunus, Sachsen), in deep mountain, the most I see are the high voltage transportation (the big metal tree you see as high as 10 or 20 meter). As soon as a new line is put or an old one renovated , it get buried. There is an excellent reason for that with respect to some very harsh winter with lotta snow. That even happens for phone line. As for France, even there all the poles which were there in my youth in the rural zone (north of compiegne, and another zone west of macif central) are gone.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Why doesn't it?
Because severely catastrophic storms are rare, and because it costs. Yet people want cheap energy. If you are fine paying 10 times as much for power, then the electric company can retain 10 times the usual staff.
Also, it wouldn't be "Armies"
Not sure what you would call those long lines of people and equipment rolling in from five surrounding states, but we can use another word if you like.
You need to grow up and stop making excuses.
Uh, okay. How about I am not petulant about not having 100% uptime on a fairly cheap service that faces huge challenges brought on by forces of nature.
There is no reason not to have high expectation
Why?
and considering the response to these issues is getting worse over the last 25 years maybe something else is going on?
It is?
like exec. being more focuses on bonuses then long term quality.
Citation needed.
we are talking about weeks, not 48 hours.
My power was restored in less than 32 hours. Perhaps the lines around my home were not so damaged as others. Infrastructure sustaining heavier damage will likely take longer to repair.
Oh, never mind. Forget all this reason and sense.
Fuck the man!
What about the people that choose to live in a bit better location, away from train tracks, airports...etc.
I'm sure they would be bothered possibly by noises you aren't...since you already live in a noisy (and to many, less desirable) area?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Undergrounding could be a solution. Sure it's expensive at first but think about it. How much money does it cost when power is down and you have to fix it ? The men to send on the field to fix it, the equipment to replace, the time to replace it (labor), indirect cost such as companies and people who can't operate without power which no money goes to the city they operate. I think the cost of undergrouding can cut those costs especially in area's where the risk is high for severe weather and for me that makes lots of sense to use underground wires insteads of traditional poles.
$2500 for a 12kW Honeywell natural gas generator at Costco (not including installation).
Just another day in Paradise
It wouldn't help you. Windmills still have to be maintained. And, you still need reserve power when the wind dies down. If the reserve comes from batteries, the batteries will need periodic replacement, which is expensive. And if the reserve comes from offsite -- forget about the windmill and just bury your power lines.
For those of you where wind is inconsistent try something else.
Here on the Texas Panhandle wind NEVER dies down.
With a vertical axis wind turbine the sound level remains fairly low.
With cut ins from 2 m/s and most without a cut out speed all you need are sustained winds of around 8-10 mph.
I have trains running about 3 acres away so any noises would not be a problem even right in the back yard.
Major difference in noise levels between horizontal and vertical axis designs. Also in the size. Do you really need a free standing 200 foot tower or would a small VAWT that pumps out 2,3,4, or more KWh be better?
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
remember that whole Stimulus thing that the current Dem and previous GOP whitehouse both supported? That was supposed to fund short term infrastructure projects to improve long term health of the country's backbone infrastructures? I recall we got a few repaired roads. I remember a lot of people talking about funding 'the smart grid'. I don't recall anyone saying "hey, lets bury the lines so we don't lose millions every time a storm comes along. we predict there will be more storms..."
hindsight is 20/20, but still...
How gracefully do underground power lines age? Are there any (of a statisically significant amount) that are even 40 years old? Yes, hanging wire does seem like folly, but the critics seem to be screaming 'free lunch' as a care-free alternative. I have to wonder how prevalent underground placement is in earthquake-prone areas like Italy or Turkey. And replacing underground wire runs would be even more expensive than replacing sewer lines (assuming here the cables are in housings, not buried 'naked').
On the other hand, underground power cables could really help thin the heard of slack-jawed idiots running rented backhoes without getting the utilities marked out first.
I think I'll just hop in my new Nissan Leaf and.. oh.. Never mind.
Organization? You must be joking..
imminent domain
LOOK OUT!
It's about to happen.
What's about to happen you ask?
Domain. It's imminent.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
You realize that a lot of regions and other countries already have buried lines, right, and hence those numbers are completely, flatly, delusional?
Also, while I have in no idea how much it really costs to bury cable (Except it cannot be a damn 1.6 million dollars a mile, or sewer systems simply would not exist. And building subways would bankrupt the country.), I do have some basic idea how much electricians charge, and in no universe does it cost an electrician $2K to move the cable to your breaker box from from your old meter to a new meter. (We are assuming for some reason that the power company did not hook the new buried lines up to the old meter...why, I don't know.)
$2K is enough to have an electrican walk up and install inside power (with a few outlets, and a ceiling light) to a house with just a meter! Moving a _cable_ from one meter to another for a house already wired for power is trivial...you're basically just paying for the electrician to show up. (Although, again, as I said, if the power company changes how power gets to my house, part of that job is to hook it into my _existing_ systems at that time, like to my actual existing power meter, at which point I'd have power and wouldn't have to hire anyone at all.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
China has two day traffic jams because of all the _trucks_ used to move coal from the mines to the cities.
Think about that and let it settle in. They don't build power plants at the mines and power lines, they use small trucks to haul the coal.
That kind of distortion is a sign of a broken market. Bet someone with much power owns the existing power plants.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When you've got temperatures around 100F and humidity over 90%, you become very keen on air conditioning.
Under those conditions, air conditioning provides a significant increase in comfort, but it is not essential for anyone who is not in an especially vulnerable physical state (elderly, infirm etc.)
Americans are obsessed with air conditioning because they are conditioned to believe that a neutral physical environment is the only acceptable state. Any concession to physical realities beyond their control is an affront to their God-given dominion over nature.
In the hottest places in the world people have learned to live without technological crutches, but Americans can't hack a few sweaty days without AC (again, not counting the infirm for whom special considerations are reasonable). American dwellings are built as though technology can provide complete impunity over climate, and thus they lack all the features that thousands of years of human ingenuity have developed to manage hot climates (shade, air flow, etc.).
Of course, it is also much cheaper to clear cut land and build cookie-cutter suburban tracts, rather than work around trees and other natural features that might provide a more inherently livable environment. Screw it, we're always going to have more power and we will always get paid more every year to buy it!
And bury every last bit of aerial cable? Where I live it's a mixture of it - phone and cable almost always run on poles except downtown. Electric is the one that is seriously mixed. Atwells Ave, Broadway, Westminster St. all have buried electric cable. But they should bury ALL of it.
There are people that trace the ruin of America's federal government back to the invention of AC.
Before that they were pressed for time and only did important things.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ah. Enlightenment. I finally get it. roman_mir is a Sith. Only they deal in absolutes. Also, evil.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
What in 's name are you doing with an electric furnace for your house...in Canada? Was there ever a time in the last fifty years when such a thing was economical?
Though more expensive, adding a permanent gas powered generator to your home's electrical line helps as well. Power goes out, generator kicks in.
No, an "inexpensive generator" is for necessities. For 99% of people out there, air conditioning is not a necessity. If you lose power for a few days, it is for most people a prolonged inconvenience, not the f$&king apocalypse. You adapt and live without your precious air conditioning for a few hours or days, like humanity has for all but the last century, and like 3/4 of the planet today.
From when I put our solar install in, as far as New Jersey goes, you can't do that. Perhaps soon, with the number of outages and number of installs both going up.
It's there property, and any loses after a flood are also theirs (and their insurer).
If they don't like it they can move. Many locations are desirable enough (e.g. Barrier Islands) that people take this deal.
But don't expect anybody to build a brand new slum in a flood plain to replace the old one.
Also note that the important parts of NO (the bulk material port and the oil terminal) were back up and running in a couple of months.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
. . .the fact remains that the US is significantly behind where it should be in terms of infrastructure, education, healthcare, etc. given its wealth and natural resources.
Which, frankly, is worse than being an actual Third World country. We are underperforming despite a total lack of excuses for doing so, exhibiting the lack of initiative that Americans love to blame for the problems of the genuniely poor.
Hypochondria certainly can be a bitch. The mind is a powerful thing.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Because Americans despite knowing better are seemingly not working to decentralizing their power and utilities, it seems they are not interested in taking responsibility for their own lives but are happy watching soaps on tv asking why when something goes wrong.. Americans it seems do not want to be independent any longer but are happy being milking cattle for power/utilities. The spirit of independence seems to have faded and is nowhere in sight. Which is sad for someone looking in from abroad. Where are all the solar panels on your rooftops, heck in China where I've been travelling extensively the last few years, the building code in many cities even requires newer buildings to have solar roofing etc. I find it funny and sad, that it seems that the Chinese price energy independence and energy stability higher than Americans who price themselves as supporters of independence and freedom. There are benefits to thinking independence into the equation - Imagine the jobs you could create if you bough "homegrown" or foreign made solar panels and put them on every rooftop,.. Windmills that extract water from the air exist - I believe are even manufactured in the US... Take a step into the future and become free again! And do so while personally winning big financially at the same time!!! What are you waiting for ?
MS, ALS, Aphasia ? http://globability.org - Me http://einarpetersen.com
The ACs just get stupider and stupider. Please tell me you are still in middle school.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
> Seriously, though, it seems to me that infrastructure spending is one of those no-brainer things that shouldn't even be a question.
Of course it's a question; why should it be any different just because it's "infrastructure?" If there is demand for it, let the free-market provide it... nothing dictates that "infrastructure" be provided by some entity that maintains a monopoly on the use of force. Note too that "free market" includes voluntarily assembled co-operatives and communes. Communal activity for common good is one thing... forced participation in some initiative, at the point of a gun barrel, is something quite different.
Back in the early 2000s, Ontario (that's in Canada) de-regulated the power market. A few months later, the government had to step in again, because your much-vaunted free market had more than doubled electricity rates in the space of a few months.
You do realize that there are differences between places, right? The challenges and costs associated with burying a cable in a flat location with sandy ground are going to be considerably different than those associated with burying a cable in mountainous area made of granite.
More importantly, you do realize that there is enormous difference between doing work in an area where there is currently nothing and retrofitting an existing area, right? Yes, if you are building a NEW area you can just dig away, bury your cables, and lay the new road over it. Easy and cheap. Now do that in an existing area. First, you need to map out where every gas line, water pipe, sanitary sewer, and storm sewer already are. Then, you need to dig very carefully, often by hand, around all that existing stuff. Then you put in your tunnel or conduit, again avoiding all the existing stuff. Then you cover it all back up, and repave the road you destroyed.
You think $1.6M a mile is expensive? The third NYC water tunnel is costing $100M/mile. Near me is a city street with a sinkhole because of a collapsing storm sewer. Estimated cost to repair one tenth of a mile of the storm sewer is $2M.
I'm sure if you can do it for under $1.2M/mile the power companies will be more than happy to hire you.
And lastly, no, it is just 'moving a cable'. The cable is currently 15 feet above ground. Moving it means digging a trench (and repairing the subsequent damage), putting a hole in the foundation for the wire to pass through, doing proper bonding, etc. $2K is not at all out of line. I don't know where you got the idea that the power company is responsible for wiring to your house, they aren't. They do the actual work, you pay for it.
There is generally FEMA funding available for burying wires.
Every time a hurricane hits St. Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands - an unincorporated U.S. Territory), they allocate funding for burying the wires. 80% of it finds its way into various pockets, and the 20% left over goes to balancing the wires back up on poles for the next hurricane.
Quite the little income generator, for the people with the pockets.
A car battery will be dead. Even if kept charge, it'll run an inverter for a couple of hours at best. For me, a cheap used generator will run the well pump (all the clean water I'll ever need), the fridge, a window unit A/C (my wife is 38 weeks pregnant - 100 degree heat is NOT an option), and the blower in my wood stove (I have 5+ years of fire wood stacked in the yard). Oh the wonders of gasoline! Even better would be a diesel generator that I could hook up to my 500 gallon heating oil tank. That would definitely carry me through the zombie apocalypse.
What has surprised me during this weather event is that you can't beat a landline phone. Verizon Wireless was out for two days and still isn't reliable and Vonage/Skype wouldn't work without cable internet service. I had no way to contact anyone.
:wq
We never had any brownouts, despite record usage of electricity last year.
Whoops, try again. I got family in Austin, Dallas and Houston. I bought everyone Surefire flashlights last Christmas specifically because of the power outages they'd experienced. Everyone kind of looked at me funny ("Really? You bought me a flashlight for Christmas?") until repeat power outages this spring turned me from a gadget geek into a prophet. :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Well, a cheap generator worked for me.
This guy is way out there
They skipped the process of getting the money to the governments, who would contract with the construction companies who paid the union members who then paid Union dues and just gave it directly to the Unions.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
In central Texas, you don't just bring in a backhoe and dig a trench. You have to bring in a large trenching machine and grind through the rock...at about a few yards an hour or so.
And you would need a smaller version to get the power to your house, perhaps having to cut through your driveway, fences, etc. And then perhaps going around your existing gas, sewer and water lines. It's not like Cable TV where they bury it a few inches below your lawn. There are rules about depth and location lest some homeowner planting a bush be electrocuted.
Much cheaper in a new development. But in an existing one it is a giant pain in the ass.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Funny...Plus 1 please.
But just for interest sake, almost half of Texas is either piney woods or rolling pastures and savannahs. North (Panhandle) and West Texas is where you find the tumbleweeds.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If I have time maybe I'll reply to you later, but right now I'll give you a good source to listen to for a few minutes that explains why the personal income tax in USA is unconstitutional and is collected unconstitutionally, the only constitutional 'income tax' is not an income tax but is a tax on corporate profits.
This is an argument similar that I made a while back.
You can't handle the truth.
A. I was talking about times of peak demand during the heat wave last summer, and B. I live in North Texas (in the south plains), and haven't experienced any blackouts of any length of time in five years, where the last one I had was where the transformer on my street blew up, but maybe our power is more reliable here than it is in the big cities. I certainly haven't heard anything about repeated power outages from friends or family throughout the state. Power going out here is a big deal, due to the heat.
You're way overestimating the size needed for the generator. I have a 20kW unit that easily powers the whole house, two large AC units and all. I also have a 1000 gal propane 'submarine' - thankfully it's underground.
The maximum continuous load for a breaker is 80% of trip current. Get a clamp-on ammeter and poke around in your panel box CAREFULLY! You'll be amazed at how low your current consumption is for each circuit.
Many generators are rated at 150-200% surge current, which is exactly what you need for starting big AC compressors.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
The heck with A/C. I want something that will power my water pump (220V 50A). Oh, and something to run my furnace in the winter (100A 220V). Yeah, I live in a rural area in Western Oregon and it's not unusual to go without power for 5 to 10 days in wintertime. We suck it up and move on.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Again, you could probably pick one room and power a space heater in it. The water pump is a different matter. Perhaps a small auxillary pump is in order.
Of course, given the apparent size of your house, the generator should be affordable to you. Your furnace apparently draws more power for the pump and blower than my entire house typically uses.
but maybe our power is more reliable here than it is in the big cities.
Oh, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot. Amarillo and Lubbock are the "Real Texas," filled with Capitalist Heroes pf Rugged Individualism while San Antonio, Austin and Houston are the Socialist hellholes filled with lazy, grasping welfare cheats who are too stupid to keep their power on.
Just one thing though. The next time we're fighting for our independence, could you guys up there do me a favor and actually get in the fight? The good people of San Antonio and Houston are tired of carrying your water for you. It's a little like listening to people in Alaska talk about how people in Philedelphia and Boston aren't part of "the Real America."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
First from a Eurelectric PDF is the subject of compensation:
Finland
Compensation is paid after an application is filed by the customer. The compensation is based on the duration of the outage and the annual network fee.
United Kingdom
Functional demands are defined for normal operating and weather conditions and three different categories of abnormal conditions. At normal operating and weather conditions, 99.5 % of the customers should be reconnected within 18 hours. Outages >18h give a compensation of £50 for households and £100 for other customers. The Netherlands
For unplanned outages more than 4 hours the network company has to compensate household customers €35, small companies €910 and large industries €0.35 per kW subscribed power up to €91000.
Ireland
For unplanned outages, the network company guarantees reconnection within 24 hours. Customers without supply for more than 24 hours are compensated with €65 for households and €135 for companies. For each additional 12- hour interruption, €35 is paid additionally.
France
According to a 2001 law, all customers have a right to compensation. From 6 hours outage and for each following 6-hour period the transmission and distribution companies pay compensation corresponding to 2 % of the fixed annual charge.
----------
And next, on improvements. Here in the U.S. here is information from a PDF from Galvin Power.org
In the early 1990s, Naperville’s municipal utility was not performing well and the city council held a vote on whether to sell it to the larger, area-wide utility. At this time, three or four customer outages per year were common. The sale was defeated by onlyone vote in the city council and the municipal utility leadership decided instead to pursue perfect power reliability without raising costs. They started applying the concepts behind what is today known as Six Sigma or quality improvement. Over a period of almost 20 years, the local grid was transformed into one of the most reliable suburban grids in the country — without raising rates.
Primen. (2001). The Cost of Power Disturbances to Industrial and Digital Economy Companies. Consortium for Electric Infrastructure to Support a Digital Society. Madison: EPRI.
Galvin Electricity Initiative. (2010, April). Naperville Case Study. Retrieved from Galvin Electricity Initiative
I have a 5 kw system on my roof. I put it on last year, when there were fairly good subsidies and tax credits. It will pay for itself in 6-7 years. I think of it as pre-paying my electric bill for 7 years, then reaping a nice upside for a decade or two.
Uhhh, a little butthurt there? All I said was that we didn't have power outages, while you claimed you did. I never said anything about "Real Texans" or any such BS.
And I don't know why you are bragging about where you live. You didn't fight in the War for Independence, and I lived more than half my life in southeast Texas, including some time in Houston.
And for the record, it is true that Lubbock and Amarillo are filled with capitalist heroes. This actually came as a major surprise to me, as it always seemed to me like they spent a lot of money on police, but their budget is really and truly bare bones, and they stay within their budgets, cutting as soon as there is an income shortfall. Also amazingly low property tax rates in the county. I pay maybe 1/10th of what the guys two blocks down in the city pay. But this area didn't get this way because I moved here, nor did I move here because it was that way. But I do respect them for it, more so than I do any other place I have ever lived.
I have trains running about 3 acres away
How many parsecs do they go?
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
And for the record, it is true that Lubbock and Amarillo are filled with capitalist heroes
Yes, Capitalist Heroes who survive on massive welfare subsidies from the government. Left to the vagaries of the market, they'd be gone in a heartbeat.
The New York Times: "HARVESTING POVERTY; The Fabric of Lubbock's Life"
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/opinion/harvesting-poverty-the-fabric-of-lubbock-s-life.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
"Lubbock is a rock-solid, conservative kind of place, located where northwest Texas meets the southernmost part of the great American plains. Its citizens like to think of themselves as self-reliant straight talkers. It seems strange, then, to think of this region as a sprawling welfare case.
But the cotton farms that give Lubbock much of its identity thrive from huge government subsidies that drain the federal treasury and shelter the industry from the discipline of the market. ...."
It's like listening to people who survive on Medicare rail against the evils of "socialized medicine..."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The NE neighborhoods are so old they predate power lines. Tearing up all the streets and sidewalks in the entire northeastern US would have cost ridiculous amounts of money.
But they've also got lots of people to pay for it. (Being in an old neighborhood isn't a reason to not bury. It's an excuse, and a poor one too.)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Failure is the new acceptable. Nothing really works all that well on a good day in America anymore from power companies to cell phones to cable to hospitals to airlines to local government to anything else. America is a country where getting a D+ is good enough and if that means that your city of a million people can't have power for 3 weeks after a hailstorm then that's what it means. And if you press them on the point, the answer, like the one I get from Duke power - is that they'll have to raise rates 19% if we actually want to have electricity.
That's why.
Why would you derail the argument like that? What purpose does that serve?
I don't care if it's unconstitutional. I care that idiots want to privatize everything at the expense of the lowest common denominator in the world, because fuck poor people, right? If they were any good, they wouldn't be poor - just pull your bootstraps a little harder you lazy poor people.
Because 1.) that money is gone, already spent, and 2.) the only real energy independence that you can possibly hope for with current technology involves an RTG (and the DoD / DoE / DHS all frown on people inquiring about radioactive fuel sources).
I am John Hurt.
Obvious Rand is obvious.
According to the experts on 60 minutes, the stuxnet code can be modified to strike back at the US, and their experts thought it was likely to happen.
Did it?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
If you took away my electricity right now, I would not be living in "squalor and filth." I would be living without electricity. Since I already grow my own vegetables and eggs, and most importantly, I brew my own beer...... I and a lot of the other poors outside of your "area of profitability" will be living quite comfortably.
Do you want it spoon fed to you?
You can Google for '220 household wiring' and learn. I expect most /.ers learned how household wiring works sometime in high school. I think we touched on it in physics, but I had a practical knowledge before that. This isn't rocket science, it doesn't involve transformers, but does include advanced concepts like phase angle. Google and learn.
Seriously, your teachers have failed you. You haven't yet learned to learn without help. A 220 plug is made up of two 110 lines and a ground. Those two 110 lines have a 120degree phase angle between them so they don't exactly add up to 220 (all those values are nominal anyway, YVWV). Your home electric service is deliberately crippled (short 1 phase of 3) to prevent you from running industrial (3 phase) stuff in your garage. This stops no one, but adds cost.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Our Corporate Lobbiest who keep paying our Congress and Senate to pay more attention to Wars for Oil and Wars for Supposed Profit.
Instead of funneling the money back home, to help the people who's money it is actually, they are more concerned with spending money in the Middle East, and on stupid ass crap, like movie and music pirates. Fuck Joe America and his family that is homeless and jobless thanks to the banks, lets kill us some more Terrorist. Oh ya, and we got to get them horrible criminals over here to America so we can try them. Ya, we talking about you rapist and you MR. Mega.
The USA policy is so far from where it should be at, it's not even funny anymore.
Our government has shown it does NOT care about it's people, only about making money. And in case you don't understand the Oil situation, the USA wants to drain rest of the world of it's Oil, so we can then rule the world on our vast reserves.
Be seeing you...
Automatic transfer switches would prevent some caring person from picking up the neighborhood load. However unless their Honda cann generate megawatts that would be a very short time indeed.
Knowing this, an experienced lineman might not ground potentially live wires according to protocol. That would be a tragedy, but so would be falling from the cherry picker basket.
True but... remember this all being talked about because of the D.C. power outage and AC is a necessity for many fat lazy people who feel they are entitled to everything. Also remember how many people dies in the Paris heat wave a few years ago.
I ain't forgetting shit. We had 1/2 of the planet's liquidity at the time a fact that I mention often to old people who think we can go back to teh the 1950's. My point is exuberance, bullshit and balls will get you a long way no matter what. We can afford space based power PGE is already contracting for it.
Because budgets are yearly, and it always costs less to throw up the crappy poles. They probably budget for it, in fact. Next year's hurricane will be the next guy's problem.
Americans have a chronic problem with planning. We continually prefer small, short-term gains over long-term stability and profit. It will be one part of our downfall.
We are arguing the exact same thing, but from different angles. Your belief is that the free-market is the cure, not a perfect one, but better than government. Mine is the polar opposite. I do understand what freedom is. My freedom is to choose to not let the free-market make my decisions, based on what would be profitable this month. I choose to be altruistic and not say fuck the rest of you people. I choose to think for myself and not just consume. I choose to get involved in government, because believe it or not, you can impact it if you want to. I understand the accumulation of wealth and power, economics, production, money and freedom. believe it or not, my views are just different from yours. Am I wrong? Maybe. Are you? Also, maybe. There are advanced degrees sitting on my wall. That doesn't necessarily mean I know everything, or that I'm right. It just means that I have done my homework.
Realistically, we are hashing out the chicken versus the egg argument. Did business screw up the government, or did government pervert the businesses? My opinion is that government started regulating business, it was less profitable, so businesses put their money where they could have the most impact - fucking up the system.
My argument is that MONEY and business have corrupted what we have here in the US. My morals tell me that the law is in place for two reasons: To make sure the government doesn't step over the line - absolutely; and to make sure that businesses leave me alone, don't screw up too much, and do good by the public.
What you call greed, I call basic desire of humans for better life. Individuals address that by working, that's what they do absent gov't. Gov't destroys the ability of people to be self-sustainable, self-respecting individuals, breaks their legs, hands them crutches and says: see, without me you wouldn't be able to walk. Vote for me.
And NOPE. Government exists to make sure that itself, you, and everyone around can't fuck me into the ground. It exists to make sure that Joe Billionaire isn't employing children because they're cheaper. Is it always good? No, absolutely not. Is it better than letting profit figure out what's best for me? Yes, absolutely.
I have never seen complete state control, but I honestly don't believe that we are anywhere near that right now. Anyone who would argue that is just fear-mongering. BUT, you are right, I have made up my mind --- I've seen what privatization and profit motivation can do. Granted, it was briefly, but I was present for the dismantling of the public sector that took place in South America (I got the F out before SHTF). As you said in your post, I will never, ever see that happen again. Ever. My family won't suffer like that, and I won't go through it again. YOUR profit doesn't allow you to starve my family.
Constitutional. It doesn't mean what you think it means. To you it is a barrier against getting something you believe you are entitled to from others.
No, it means exactly what I think it means. Allowed by the constitution. Is there another definition? And no, the constitution is not a barrier for my entitlement. It is a barrier that keeps businesses, churches, cults, and yes, the government, from living my life for me. It has nothing to do with entitlement. It has everything to do with you throwing out an off-topic response that still seems out of place, thanks.
Either way, you say tomato (short 'a'), I say tomato (long 'a'). We see the same problem, but from vastly different angles. There really is no convincing either of us to the other's belief system, but it's a beautiful country whose government allows this rational discourse, correct?
Thanks for the debate!
Exactly why I suggested air conditioning one room for those who might die from the heat otherwise.
This is a good point. Tons of people are crying now because their A/C doesn't work and it's hot, but the power demands for whole-house A/C are huge, whereas a small room air conditioner uses much less power.
Only is that same land is next to a big river, lake or sea. That's not a huge deal because economies of scale mean you don't want a lot of little nuclear power stations anyway, just a few huge ones (maybe small reactors but several to make a large installation and share turbines etc), so there's more than enough sites to fit the cooling needs. However we do have a rather stupid and entirely pointless myth that the things can be placed anywhere, and comparative land use arguments like the above are skating pretty close to that.
Anyway, IMHO, a mixture of energy sources makes sense, and I had that one confirmed in the mid 1990s when I was one of many trying to get around the problem of diminishing quantities of cooling water for an inland power station. The "quick fix" took more than five years and was then lost after about six months when politicians gave all the water away to local farmers, so nearly twenty years later another pipeline was built for another "quick fix" and a new government is probably going to take the water away as soon as it's dry enough to need it.
Unless you live in a flat, treeless desert, a chain saw is another must-have post-storm survival tool
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
We had a HUGE ice storm a few years back. Some were without power in the dead of winter for 2 weeks. Bunch of crybabies. That is the problem with most people, without "creature comforts" they will die...so perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing, kill off those in the lower end of the gene pool!
Isn't the damage done by the falling trees and flying debris rather than wind load on the wires? Wires are thin and present very little wind resistance. Same goes for utility poles.
My neighbors have a tall and extensive but dead tree: not a single leaf on it. In spite of natural decay, no branches have ever snapped from it, even in the aftermath of various hurricanes. All that while the trees right next to it have lost probably 40% of their mass. I don't buy it that wind breaks power lines. Every downed power line I've seen in the urban area where I live was due to stuff falling on the wires. Usually trees, only once did I see a very old advertisement on a tall post toppling and taking down the power line.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Yeh sure man thats why it has been successfully taken to court and taxes are now illegal. Oh wait it hasnt.
Why are you randites so incredibly moronic. Go move to Somalia where your libertarian paradise exist!
but during 19th century it became largest producer and exporter and thus largest creditor,
Ermmm...no. Just NO. In the 19th century, Germany had us handily beat in terms of export and pace of industrialisation (whom do you think was responsible for industrialising Japan? 'Tweren't the US!), and we were merely tied with the UK. We didn't become the largest producer and exporter until WWII (repurposing our automobile factories to pump out all of those tanks, carriers, planes and other materiel), and the largest creditor until immediately after WWII (Bretton Woods, anyone?). Stop engaging in historical revisionism to suit your warped Randian view of the world. You seriously need to pull that shit-logged copy of Atlas Shrugged from your rectum. I'm getting sick and tired of reading your Objectivist apologetics in every single fucking one of your posts.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
We spent 4 trillion on a tax break and two wars and got NOTHING for it.
You got nothing for it -- but the rich white men that run the show got 4 trillion out of it...
Except it wasnt an infrastructure issue, most Europeans did not have and have never needed air conditioners before that event.
Not at all. Just build all the power infrastructure in loops. You have to run power lines down both parallel streets anyway. Just run an extra line every so often between the two streets and make sure you keep the wires the same length. Better still, use switching hardware so that you can detect a cable break on either side, automatically send a signal back to the home office that the line needs repair, and switch over to the other side.
The bigger problem is that the lines are overhead, causing the need for tree trimming in the first place. Every time a power line goes down because of trees, they should temporarily patch around the damage, but they should immediately send out the trenchers and begin running permanent replacement lines underground. There's simply no excuse for overhead power lines in areas where trees are present.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'd heard the comments about "whooshing" before I ever encountered a modern windmill. It's B.S. Now that I've been around several (of varying sizes) I know they are nearly silent. Warnings about windmill noise are purely F.U.D.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Power out for a couple of hours a day is one thing, but take out the power for two, five, or fifteen days at a time and you see an entirely different class of problems. Funny thing is that this kind of outage is almost completely avoidable, if power lines were underground. As far as I am concerned that is the real issue here.
--Udo.
In many states, it's illegal to install grid-tie solar panels without an automatic cut-off to prevent backfeed. Many inverters designed for home use come with that feature built in. (Which is why they're called 'grid-tie inverters'.) Your house continues using power from the panels, while your house wiring is disconnected from the grid. The good ones keep a detector on the grid connection and automatically reestablish your grid connection when the grid is repaired and starts delivering power again.
Such devices aren't cheap. $400-$500, usually. More expensive than they should be, but they don't enjoy much in the way of volume production.
Or alternatively, they have so much demand that even at the additional cost and inconvenience of trucking they still can't meet it. It means continued investment in rail and powerlines is going to yield guaranteed growth.
The US is in the same boat, with Texas being the Germany and Norway (combined, as we export oil) of the US. If we don't find some way to extricate ourselves, we will go down with the ship, I fear.
That's why. People like you give Texas a bad name, and I'm tired of me and my friends getting looked at askance when we list UT or Texas A&M on our resumes.
Of course, what's really ticking me off is the double amputee veteran I met who was begging by the side of the road the other day. The man gave our country his legs, and in return we gave him a chunk of cardboard to beg with. No, don't even start, the VA is a bad joke.
It's shameful, and maybe we as an electorate might be able to do something about that if we didn't have a bunch of Fox news parrots screaming "SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM!" every time we try to talk about our country paying its debts and looking after our own...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Any number of people are credited with that quote, or variations.
Could I trouble you to be specific as to the person to whom you refer?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It's obviously the fault of the unions.
Ask any right-winger.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Don't underestimate yourself. You're stupid in many more ways.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You do know that Standard Oil reduced the price of kerosene by 90%, invented corporate R&D, and was probably the first company in the US to offer paid vacations, right?
Oh, I see, you went to PUBLIC school.
Watching the news, I notice most all of the trees that have fallen have some type of rotten wood exposed. The utility is not responsible for private property trees that have fallen due to lack of attention, "nurturing."
Nature's way of culling such defects have accumulated in wide-spread tree failure due to lack of attention.
Distribution line pruning is regulated within ten feet of each side of the power conductors, fifteen feet is more desirable, however this is not allowed by many customers resulting in large areas experiencing power outage.
Don't you think...? Or don't you?
Powerline workers came in from surrounding states to help restore power. We were without power for around a week. While I'm not sure that the Power industry is prone to this, but these days, most outfits toend toward having minimal staff for the work at hand. Then when there is an emergency, they have to rely on this imported labor situation.
Those places might be hit also. So there are only so many workers to go around.
This is the new USA folks. Minimize labor costs wherever they may be. The present power infrastructure and maintenance is not designed for any large scale outages.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
A generator suitable for real emergency use for vulnerable people is not that inexpensive. For that situation you'd really need one powered by natural gas with automatic start if the main electricity supply failed. It would have to be powerful enough, in most areas, to be able to drive air conditioning, and perhaps other energy demanding systems.
Folly.....
There is a short list of things ....
* Insulation.... Folks in AC country need MORE insulation than folk in the northern regions.
* Ventilation.... Homes, apartments, offices are not designed for secure ventilation.
* Water.... A cool water tank about the size of a hot water tank belongs in most homes
flash heaters + a cool water tank would be about the same physical size.
Apart from and after the above, electric vehicles have the generation and storage capacity
to cool a room and maintain a refrigerator freezer for a couple days on a 1/4 tank of
gas if and only if insulation, ventilation and water was available. They do need a converter
to tap into them.
Points to anchor on, we all know that a car left in the sun will get so hot it will kill. Insulation
and ventilation would temper that and while uncomfortable the worst midday heat in the shade
is tolerable for most if an adult is well hydrated.
Ventilation... we hear it over and over summer after summer folks sealed up
in their home die from heat because they are afraid to leave a window or
door open at night. From Wikipedia: "Transom windows which could be opened to
provide cross-ventilation while maintaining security and privacy (due to their small size
and height above floor level) were a common feature of office buildings and apartments
before air conditioning became common." Retrofitting and installing these or the equivalent
should be a priority in all housing especially low income housing. Without modest
ventilation a home becomes a sweat lodge on common days and a sauna on hot
summer days.
It is possible to put on blankets and "bundle" in the winter but body temp +5 at 99%
humidity is near lethal.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
There is the concept of a "public good" - a good which would have too high a cost/benefit ratio for an individual or company to create but could be created if the society pooled its resources. Plus the benefits would be much higher to the individual than his contribution.
Then there is the concept of a "natural monopoly" - a business which has very high barriers to entry. Think of the infrastructure of a utility or water system, or a railroad.
So, yes - the private sector would probably come up with a few private roads, the use for which they would charge monopolistic costs.
Ultimately, society needs to determine what is best for the most people. Not just blindly espouse principals or concepts for which the rationale does not lead to the most public benefit. The Mafia is a business. It is left as an exercise to the reader why the Mafia business is prohibited by the society yet other businesses are allowed to exist.
It's not altruistic. Trying to raise the standard of living for all of society means they're less likely f-ck with me. It means they're less likely to be hungry and diseased and prone to civil unrest. Seeing them better off means they have fewer kids, they're less anti-social and hopefully more informed. These things are in MY benefit. And yours.
No, you'd need diesel. Why diesel? Because if it's to be for emergencies, what do you do when the electricity and gas fail at the same time (say, an earthquake braking the lines)? And diesel because it is stable over long periods, and it would likely be turned on once a year for testing, and not much more.
Learn to love Alaska
In all cases, linemen handle lines as if they are live, even when tested to be de-energized. What you are more likely to do is fry your neighbor or someone else being stupid in an outage.
Learn to love Alaska
Unfortunately, maintenance tasks are often like this. Executives see them as only money sinks, not yielding any benefit. The public doesn't perceive any benefits when "things continue to work as normal." So maintenance gradually sinks. It's only when SHTF does the focus come back on maintenance.
The fifties were full of crazy ideas and huge projects and what did we get, the most awesome country in the world.
Partly on an economic boom brought on by a World War a mere 10 years prior, yes.
Just sayin. The great depression didnt exactly go away on its own.
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Not untue. But if you look back at the list of suggestions (roof-top solar ; wind power) then by definition you are looking at people who are willing to put the solar panels in their back yard (well, on the sun-facing aspects of the roof, probably requiring temporary scaffolding in the back yard) and to put a windmill on a pole in the back yard.
(Which may work in America, but wouldn't work for me - I live in an apartment, and don't either own a roof or have full control of the back yard.)
While it is possible, with sufficient capital, to make houses that can be permanently off-grid, it's expensive. However, to produce enough power to run a fridge/freezer, a computer and a single air conditioner is a much more realistic prospect, which would considerably mitigate the effects of grid-power loss.
I do wonder ... how did cities like Washington get built in the couple of centuries of their existence before the invention of the air conditioner? I've not spent much time learning the details of foreign history, and I've never heard this question addressed. I suppose that there were annual migrations of workers ("transhumance") from the habitable Northern States to the uninhabitable South to work on building the cities during the winter. Then when the South became uninhabitable in the summer, they'd all move back north again.
Must have made it difficult to prosecute the Civil War. Or was that after the invention of the AC?
(HINT : I may have different interpretations of "uninhabitable" to most reporters on this subject. I've lived and worked without AC at 48deg (Centigrade, of course) ; it isn't fun, but you can do it.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Just FYI there are many neighborhoods which have a HOA, and set rules saying that you cannot have a solar panel, even if it's not visible. If they find out they can fine you or even have you evicted.
Lots of people would be willing, but there is this taboo about them and people think they will lower property vales, so they get these HOA's and cities to set rules about not being allowed to have them.
I would much rather hear the 'whoosh' of a windmill all day, than feel that skin crawling, bone tingling, feeling when I cross under the high tension power lines.
Nothing but your own illogical nervous reaction. If you disagree, I'd love to see any peer reviewed scientific evidence to the contrary.
Peer reviewed 2,109 times.
There's no place like
Wind power
NEED I SAY MORE
Yup, A lot more. When those high winds blow down your windmills by the thousands, how long will it take to fix? When those high winds break up your solar panels with tree limbs and bricks from the neighbors now busted chimney, how long will it take to replace half the solar panels in the neighborhood?
Maybe you'll be the lucky one and your power will be OK, but there will still be millions without power for weeks if they all rely on solar and wind. Now maybe if they all had a natural gas or propane driven generator, they'd all be OK too.
Thanks for the troll. Please post again if you come across something of actual value.
Just another day in Paradise
Thanks for the troll. Please post again if you come across something of actual value.
Troll? Seems plausible to me. If static charge can raise the hair on my arms, why can't high voltage lines do something similar? I am not an electrical engineer, but it seems pretty obvious from the video that electricity can cause an effect in things not directly in contact with the wire.
Also: That's how radio works.
And since my UID is lower: Stop telling people it's their 'own illogical nervous reaction' and post something of actual value instead of trolling.
There's no place like
>> NEED I SAY MORE
Yes. You omitted the part about coming up witht he money for your solution.
I was NOT the anonymous poster...FYI.
Drilling wells ~ not sure what he was going after here... my guess is either water or gas... Fracking must be stopped, as 100% of fracking pollutes ground water which we MUST have to live. I can get my power from other sources...but clean fresh drinkable water...that is more precious. Many just do not realize this fact yet. But they will in the near future.
geothermal ($10K - 20K pipes in ground, less than $5K if you do it yourself, renting a ditch witch type digger) requires burying pipes (cooling heated water with ambient ground temperatures, having water returned for A/C usage) Cost of device to transfer heat I have not checked into.
Solar Powered roofs (I would like to know, esp the newer 3D solar cells that work when its cloudy)
Battery packs to store energy...cost?
Hardware to convert to/from home...cost?
Wind power $800 (barrel type) - $15K (vertical type, blades wrapped around vertical pole, not normal windmill type). All the device I have researched have in excess of a 20 year life...which makes even $20K cheap. $1,000 per year / 12 months = $83.33 per month. I know many people with $300 plus per month electric bills for both heating and A/C....12 months per year.
Hydrogen ($1K - ??K) Big cost is the storage tanks (propane type storage tanks, in a cold climate for heating you might need 6 or 7 tanks to have enough Hydrogen to get you through a winter without sun light. Of course that would depend on how many units you have separating hydrogen from water (clean water not required) and how long it takes you to fill up a tank. If you had enough hydrogen extractors to fill up a tank in 1 day, you would have to have a tank big enough to provide heat for 48 hours and you would only need 3 tanks to meet your demands.
Worth repeating...NO FRACKING ~ as 100% of fracking sites pollute ground water and make it un-drinkable unless you wish to die.
No Nuclear Plants ~ They are NOT cheaper and they are NOT safe. As proved by Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and even in spite of Fukushima some liars attempt to spin it. An "thoreum(sp?)" is as insane as Nuclear...its still a radiated material that has to be stored for over 200,000 years at what cost? And this crap CAN NOT be stored safely, cheaper than ALL alternatives, as the dry casks rated at 100 years, start to crack within 30 - 50 years. How much does it cost to re-cask one dry cask? How is that cheaper? It is NOT.
Cesium-137 is documented to have a half life of 30 years, meaning it should take 10 to 20 halflifes (10 X 30 ~ 20 X 30) to get close, but not exactly, zero radiation wise. Yet 25 years after Chernobyl, scientists have determined that Cesium 137 does not appear to be going away at the rate expected...either that or there was much more radiation released than reported....either way its unlivable within 200 miles of the plant for multiple generations.
Finally keep in mind that we know that over 4,000 energy patents have been secretized, which means the person who imagined it can not create it, can not sell it, can not do anything with it. If you have a new energy device, forget seeking government approval to use as the corporations have locked that avenue down as those 4,000 secret energy patents prove. Just use it yourself, share it with family and friends and warn them to keep it secret or risk losing it for their posterity.
Run for office and remove any impediments to individuals and families from owning their own power, getting off the grid and becoming 100% energy independent.
Before you can help others, you must help yourself, and by all means share it with others.
Let them enjoy hearing "whoosh whoosh" all damn day.
Not all day unless they are on the seaboard and can catch the sea breeze, most likely every other day or one day in three: most of the time the wind is either too weak or too strong. Wind power is useful if you can afford the big pile of accumulators.
I am not an electrical engineer
Obviously. There's plenty of info on this available, and a simple google can be your friend...I won't. Oh, and your UID means squat.
Just another day in Paradise
"fairly good subsidies and tax credits", "reaping a nice upside for a decade or two"
you mean somebody else paid for a large part of your 5kw system and will pay for two decades of feed-in tarrif ?
you know that electricity is not like water that you pump in a reservoir, do you ?
yes, all those supplies used in the wars made themselves, there was no labor involved, no energy consumed, no taxes paid ...
Sounds to me like something whose very existence would lower property values in an area. I'm looking at moving at the moment (OK, the wife etc etc), and I'd consider the existence of such an agreement to devalue a property by 10 of thousands of £££.
Actually, I'm not sure that I'd agree to such an agreement at all.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Obviously. There's plenty of info on this available, and a simple google can be your friend...I won't. Oh, and your UID means squat.
Yeah--I found a youtube video showing how electricity can affect stuff outside the wire. So once again--how does your statement hold up where you bash the original poster for saying his skin crawls when he is under a power line? I could really care less about the answer--if it's psychological or a physical effect--I'm a tiny bit curious why you're freaking out when I jokingly posted a youtube video as a citation and then joked again about having a smaller UID. (Slashdot: The only place where the contest is over whose is smaller...)
There's no place like
We can plan for the normal stuff, but like the 100 year flood or 500 year flood (had one of those about 15 years ago) you can't have enough people on hand to take care of those 500 year events or storms that are far beyond the norm without making your product prohibitively expensive. Normally the power companies would just bring in help from neighboring areas, but when an atypical storm covers as many as 4 or 5 adjoining areas the extra help just isn't there. We used to live way out in the boonies. Never did have a power outage of more than a few minutes. Since we moved here which is only about a 2 miles from the city limits we've had many failures. After the Year 2000 scare I waited for generators to go on sale. in less than 12 years I've put over 120 hours on that generator. Much of Michigan is swamp (that's wet lands for the PC crowd, but it smells like a swamp, looks like a swamp, and grows one Hell of a crop of big Mosquitoes ...It's a swamp!) That means fast growing trash trees. IOW the wood isn't much good for anything. They can completely clear the right of way and in 10 to 15 years the dead falls are getting into the power lines so they have crews just about all year that are cutting trees. If they hired enough people to do all the regular maintenance and keep the right of ways clear, our electricity would be much more expensive. Almost as much as they pay in California.
It's wires and electricity, not nuclear waste. By your logic, maybe we should be afraid of balloons that we rub on our hair too.
And you don't need to be an electrical engineer to get a basic understanding of the difference between static charge and radiation.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/exp/lighting-bulbs-without-wires/
And no one is trolling you. People are calling you out for your stupid, uninformed, FUD-mongering.