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Ask Slashdot: Why Is the Power Grid So Crummy In So Many Places?
An anonymous reader writes: I live in a relatively large college town that's within easy driving distance of several major metropolitan centers. In many ways, the infrastructure around here is top-notch. The major exception is the electrical grid. Lightning storm? Power outage. Heavy winds? Power outage. Lots of rain? Power outage. Some areas around town are immune to this — like around the hospital, for obvious reasons. But others seem to lose power at the drop of hat. Why is this? If it were a tiny village or in the middle of nowhere, it would make sense to me. What problems do the utility companies face that they can't keep service steady? Do you deal with a lot of outages where you live? I'm not sure if it's just an investment issue or a technological one. It hasn't gotten better in the decade I've lived here, and I can imagine it will only get worse as the infrastructure ages.
Aerial, or underground, that is the question.
Have a look see in developed nations.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Houston Texas - Lightning Storm? Voltage Sag. Loss of power for long enough for all clocks in the house to go to 0:00, and for computers to turn off. Never longer than for 5-10 seconds.
-Since the electric motors draw more current when they are starting than when they are running at their rated speed, starting an electric motor can be a reason of a voltage sag.
-When a line-to-ground fault occurs, there will be a voltage sag until the protective switch gear operates.
-Some accidents in power lines such as lightning or falling an object can be a cause of line-to-ground fault and a voltage sag as a result.
-Sudden load changes or excessive loads can cause a voltage sag.
-Depending on the transformer connections, transformers energizing could be another reason for happening voltage sags.
-Voltage sags can arrive from the utility but most are caused by in-building equipment.
An actual power outage on the other hand can be caused by ANYTHING.
-Tree branch fell on a power line.
-Someone drove into a utility pole and broke a wire. Again with the Houston Texas example....I work in Oil and Gas, and my shop was out of power for 7 hours because someone ran into a utility pole on the corner of the street that leads to my office.
-Ground short.
-Transformer either on a line or at the utility shorts.
-Everything in between.
-All the way to emergency outage with the base load generator at whomever your power production company is.
It's true that renewable power levels like wind-power rise and fall, but once you look at a larger area then it pretty much evens out.
Of course you can back it up with other types of renewable that have a more stable output like hydro-electric of geothermal.
You already pay for it - so how is it in their interests to invest in improvement? Nobody is going to build a better grid to compete on price or quality.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
You could take care of some of the daytime failures with solar (and evening if you get some batteries).
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The utility companies need to pay to the customers for power outages, and also can be held liable for damages, for example spoiled food in fridge, freezer. The ordinary payment is 10 % of yearly transfer fees for 12 hours...
Thanks to the underground cabling, in Finland the last time I witnessed personally witnessed a power outage was in 2006 in thunderstorm, lasting for 2 minutes.
>For one, the US is big.. really big.. So it's not cost-effective to run power cables and alike underground. So that makes them more vulnerable.
Again and again this fallacy! When it's about espionnage everything is cost effective, distance does not matter. But when it's about basic and primary need local infrastructure, it's always too expensive. What is wrong with you guys?
This is because the power co's have been paying their share holders too much money, and not renewing the hardware.
Either way, storage is the "next big thing" for the electric grid. For one thing, it's essential for integrating intermittent sources like most renewables. But it will also help to make the entire grid more "islandable" -- diverse and distributed -- and thus more robust.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Generally, a public company will invest only if there is an expectation of an acceptable return, or if they are forced to by actual regulation. Businesses like power, water, public transportation, telecommunication, and others require huge investments to get into the market, where possible at all, so there is no real competition either.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
As with internet providers, just change to a different energy provider. One that puts their cables underground.
The free market is the solution to every problem.
1) Espionage is anything but cost-effective. But cost isn't the primary (or even secondary) concern there for those who want to do the spying. (It's (technical) feasibility)
2) Running cable above ground is _always_ more cost-effective then running cable underground. So if you:
- don't give a shit about your customers
- don't have a lot of competition because you can gain a monopoly by buying senators
- and if you do a bare minimum of maintenance because you want more money (more so if you _do_ run cables underground)
then even in a city, local power stability is going to be shit.
For one, the US is big.. really big.. So it's not cost-effective to run power cables and alike underground. So that makes them more vulnerable.
That is not the problem - most of our long distance high voltage stuff is above ground here, but that is usually redundant (hence "grid"). The weird thing about the US is the way the last-mile low voltage stuff, which is more vulnerable and typically _not_ redundant, is above ground too. Many people are convinced that is why your power is more flaky - it is not actually the grid (although the US high voltage grid does not have a good reputation either).
So, how's our grid ? Well, a few years ago we started to get more power outages - by which I mean one every couple of months for a few minutes to a couple of hours. The distribution cable from the substation was either degraded or handling too much new load, anyway that was enough for them to dig up all the roads a year or so ago and replace / add new cables. Haven't had a single noticeable power outage since then.
Short lived for lead acid? last time I had a solar setup my lead acid batteries lasted 10 years.
And this was 15 years ago, today the newer lead acid tech is even better.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The more urban trees you have around the more problems you will see with the grid. Trees are the source of all kinds of grid problems
- When the weather causes damage to power lines, it is rarely direct damage but indirect damage caused by a nearby tree. Wind can blow branches into lines and transformers, shorting them out. And ice and snow can build up on tree branches causing them to bend into lines or snap.
- Trees attract squirrels and birds, who like to play around and nest in transformers and on poles and short them out. I have a squirrel related power outage at least once a year.
Ironically, at least in the north-east, the nicer the area you live in the more likely it is to have lots of urban trees. It's the price you pay. The only better system would be to bury all the lines but the cost for that is immense.
The metropolitan areas of the US have the same population density as Europe.
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Yes, but power companies have local monopolies, so there is no super capitalism there unless you equate super capitalism with monopolies. In this person's case, it is probably that his power company is an REMC, Rural Electric Membership Cooperative, they are state chartered and receive federal subsidies. They are also run by people who cut their teeth in electric power about 50 years ago. Being a cooperative and rural, they do not have the ability to raise rates very easily. They compensate by stiffing care and upkeep. So they do not go around cutting down trees near their line except if absolutely necessary. Also being rural, they have a lot of ground to cover and a lot of trees to clear. The easy consequence is that storms frequently topple trees onto their lines. Ice storms really kill them because they have so much ground to cover and now all the lines on that ground stand to receive ice and tree damage.
Comparing the U.S. the little toy countries in Europe is silly. They are about the size of one of our states. It is much easier given their pop. density to keep their little toy grids up and running. It is also easier to run the lines underground because there is much less distance to cross. The pop. density also makes it easier to spread the cost which is much greater than running lines above ground. It is impossible for the U.S. to run its rural lines underground given the cost.
For one, the US is big.. really big.. So it's not cost-effective to run power cables and alike underground. So that makes them more vulnerable.
This argument is only valid for long-distance transmission lines, and failure of those lines contributes to very few outages (the 2003 NE US blackout comes to mind). Customer-perceived blackouts are almost all due to failure of metropolitan and suburban distribution networks. Areas where population density is as high as any other developed nation.
A few years back, Maui Electric upgraded their power distribution system by replacing wooden poles with steel towers. The claim was that the towers are much more typhoon-resistant, and I'm sure they are. However, given the aerodynamics of round cable, it's a given that the lines will still part in a gale. Why not bury the line? Because for most parts of the island, you hit blue rock (solid lava) within a few feet, and it's expensive to trench through. On the flip side, you only need to trench once, but Maui Electric decided to play the odds and go cheap.
Luke, help me take this mask off
No - it's not even a question. Bury the lines and you will remove a large number of causes for power outages.
Quote correct. Thing is someone has to pay for the upfront cost of burying the cables and it is much more expensive. Where I live stringing wires on poles costs in rough numbers something like $1 per linear foot. Burying the cable costs about $8 per linear foot. (this is semi-reliable info from family who worked in the business and would know) Getting the funds to do any sort of meaningful program of burying wires would likely involve a rate increase which tends to be as popular as a lead filled life preserver.
In the long run buried lines will save money - even if you are in an area where the ground is filled with rocks.
That isn't so clear in a lot of places. Repairs on above ground wires are more common but cheaper when they occur. Roll a truck, look up and get busy. Repairs on buried cable is just the opposite. Even finding the problem is harder and many repairs involve a lot of digging. There are places near where I live (semi-rural 20 miles from a major metro area) where it might make economic sense to bury the cable but also quite a few where it most likely doesn't. You can do a LOT of repairs before you even break even on the buried cable despite its general higher reliability. Plus you are replacing infrastructure that already exists and lots of it so any sort of economically rational replacement program would take decades. Every place that truly needs reliable power has a backup generator anyway so it's not like you are gaining much in practical terms by burying the cables for quite a few customers.
Don't get me wrong, I think a lot more cables should be buried than currently are but it's not as simple an equation as buried = more reliable = cheaper.
You could compete with the power company yourself. Install solar or maybe a wind turbine if there is room, large battery pack for backup. Will pay for itself in 10 years anyway and no more outages.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The US also lacks them darn hippie commies regulating the industry in the consumer's favour from time to time.
Your domestic supply doesn't have an SLA, or penalties if there are outages. In truth, none of us will probably ever see such a thing. Instead though, get a regulator who penalises supply companies when they screw up. If it's force majeur, then you might let them off a fine, but warn them to toughen up their infrastructure because next time you will fine them. If it's just that they're scrimping on delivering, then fine them to 'motivate' them to spend the money when the consumers need it.
Contrary to popular belief, an awful lot of European power is run over ground. If there's an area prone to problems, then they either end up routing around it, adding more capacity to cope with outages or in extreme circumstances, go underground. I don't believe the US is unique in any important ways with regards to the logistics of power delivery - all of its problems have a solution, if you're motivated to find it. USians probably laugh at us Europeans who generally pay more for almost everything than they do, but at least our shit works most of the time.
The internet answer is to always have redundancy. have one shitty solution (like hard drives that fail often) then N+1 this solution. So implement RAID 4 Power, deploy shitty aboveground power cables, just do many of them!
Not cost effective.....Wrong. That's a misconception that needs to go away.
It would actually be more cost effective for the US. Europe as a whole is pretty much the same size as the US. And its by and large powered by buried cables. But rather than a single government, there's about 50. Which increases the costs in comparison with what a single government could accomplish thanks to economies of scale and better leveraging power in negotiating the work.
The short version is that nearly every "but the US is special" excuse for not doing something is total utter garbage.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
In most European places I've seen, the long-distance lines are above ground (which constitutes the "grid"), and in cities and towns the cables are below ground. The size of the US doesn't matter, as we are talking about cities. As others have pointed out, the grid is redundant, but the cabling in towns and cities is not. No-one is talking about running rural lines underground, just those in cities, where it makes sense and provides a first-world power supply. Trotting out the "but we so biiiig!" argument when someone points out that the US's infrastructure is sometimes laughable only perpetuates the issues, and ensures that they will never be fixed.
Comparing the U.S. the little toy countries in Europe is silly. They are about the size of one of our states. It is much easier given their pop. density to keep their little toy grids up and running.
The countries with lower population density in Europe has more stable power supplies. The countries with higher population density also have more stable power supplies. Those "toy" networks put together supply more than twice the US population wtih power. At least with ISPs the Chewbacca defense could say the US has more long haul domestic traffic, when it comes to the power grid....what? Snip all the interstate lines then and one state will be the size of one EU country and supply its own population and US power supply will be great. That's what you're saying, because you built one big network it must be crap. And it has to be crap, because...?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Blackouts appear to be the worst in smaller towns like Yiyang here in Hunan, one of Chinaâ(TM)s largest and most populous provinces. The power shortages are threatening to curb the explosive growth the province has experienced since the opening in late 2009 of a high-speed electric train link to prosperous Guangdong province to the south, which helped companies tap Hunanâ(TM)s cheaper land and labor force.â
Energy shortages have forced factories to cut production and ration their energy supplies. In some cases factories operate only a night when demand for energy is low. In other cases they have been forced to shut down completely for more than two weeks. The shortages were particularly hard on industries that need a lot of energy like aluminum, steel and cement and ones with furnaces that need a constant supply f energy or they break.
Factories in Guangdong were told that their power would be cut one day a week, then two days a week, then five days a week, during peak hours. Under these conditions the factories switched production to the night and on weekends of bought their own diesel generators, which increased manufacturing costs by around 5 percent.
In Shanghai there have been runs on power generators and power has been cut to factories while neon lights were allowed to keep blinking on the Bund; decorative lights on skyscrapers are kept on late into the night; and air conditioning is kept on the fancy shopping malls so that everything seems to hunky dory to visitors ib Shanghai.
Power outages have been a boon for makers of diesel generators of all sizes. General Electric, Siemens and Mitsubishi heavy Industries have won large contracts supplying turbines and other technology for Chinaâ(TM)s power-generating plants.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Storage is the "next great myth" - a solution looking for a problem. And government handouts.
I was stuck behind storm Sandy in New Jersey and discovered that 99% of the problems there were self induced. Guess what - they don't trim trees away from the power lines. Every time you get wind, dozens to hundreds (or thousands in this case) or branches snap the lines.
To be fair, when the utility company trims trees the residents raise holy hell.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
We had two big trees in our backyard whose branches went around various wires in our backyard. We called the power company to trim them and they claimed it was the cable company's responsibility because it was closer to those lines. We called the cable company and they claimed it was the power company's job. Meanwhile, every storm we would worry about a branch snapping and taking out our power. (We wound up taking down our trees for unrelated reasons - one was dead and the second dropped berries all over our lawn rendering our back yard unusable and attracting flies.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The power grid is only under strain during peak use. The rest of the time it's got power to burn. If everyone charges their electric car at night there won't be any trouble.
Because bean counter walk over the engineers... Grid is built cheap as bossible instead of being reliable, maintained even cheaper and that means no alternative routes, no backups... All this in name of Maximizing profits... After all you cant sue them for not delivering, so wheres their risk of this gamble...
Sadly it's meaningless numerology without an indication of what the numbers actually stand for.
When I was in the power industry I had access to a wonderful series of books by ESRI with plenty of illustrated examples of what happened when you drove various power station components far beyond the realms of sanity - all US examples (compiled by a US based org of course, so that's why all US). Whatever the average is there are at least some utilities in the USA that drive their power plants to destruction through lack of maintainence or poor operational procedures. So many millions that could have been saved by employing one chemist or engineer instead of just an untrained Homer Simpson at the controls.
To be fair, you're A Moron.
That is a compelling argument. I yeild to your obviously superior rhetorical skills that oh so obviously counter actual knowledge of military EMP devices.
But seriously. You should really stop listening to to Alex Jones and Infowars (yes, Im aware of who fear mongers over solar super storms and specifically name drops the Carrington Event). Satellite would suffer damage. It would blow some of the main grid transformers, maybe. We wouldnt have lights or A/C for a week, maybe two, in regions of the country...maybe. But it definitely wouldnt be the dark ages. People wouldnt starve. Civilization wouldnt collapse. Its even unlikely that people would die in hospitals.
Unfortunately, my response isnt the common one: yours is. IE, the response informed by bad hollywood movies, bad science, the "History" Channel, and crackpots like Alex Jones.
Further reading for the ignorant such as yourself: http://www.realclearscience.co...
It even addresses The Newt's bill specifically.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I don't think that is going to happen any time soon. Electric cars are still too expensive and impractical for most people. Not everyone lives in a house where they can install their own charging system or can afford to buy a vehicle that's just for commuting. Battery production will need to improve quite a bit in order to supply that number of vehicles too. Hopefully by the time they are more practical, the utilities will have improved their side of things, not to mention home solar & wind generation should be cheaper by then too.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I've often wondered about the possibility of not re-burying the trench: make the trench shallower, cover it with a walkable grate, and just leave it that way.
Looks terrible, creates a safety hazard (grates WILL be pulled up and people electrocuted), creates a metal theft problem, doesn't adequately protect the cable from freeze/thaw problems, doesn't protect from rodents & wildlife adequately, still vulnerable to weather, etc. Problems with doing this are legion. The biggest is safety. You do NOT want the general public to have convenient access to power lines because someone will inevitably do something stupid.
It's actually cheaper and safer to bury it. A grate like you propose would be kind of the worst of both worlds in practice.
We called the power company to trim them and they claimed it was the cable company's responsibility because it was closer to those lines. We called the cable company and they claimed it was the power company's job.
Does your phone service support three-way calling?
That's because what the utility company calls "trim", most people call "cut", if not "butcher". The root of the problem goes further back: The telephone/power poles are all placed just off the edge of the road, between the curb and the sidewalk, and the town plants trees IN THE SAME STRIP - directly under the wires. Trees belong further away from the wires, but people have this idea of a "nice lawn" (which nobody ever uses, at least not in the front of the house). I see this being done in brand new construction, too.
But dimensioning the grid for average power draw is cheaper than dimensioning the grid for peak power. During the night, power consumption is low, and batteries can be recharged. When everyone wakes up, and makes coffee peak power occurs. With local storage the consumption can always be kept at the average level.
This also means that when there's good wind, you can save the energy for consumption later, without transporting it. Yes, batteries have a 5% energy loss, but so do long haul transmission. And long haul transmission technologies like HVDC costs a lot of money when you get into high effect converters.
I'm currently involved in a project where the conclusion was that a local battery storage was cheaper than renewing the power grid for peak load. The point where it's cheaper to install a Smart Grid Solution instead of bigger grid is only gonna move in favour of smart grid the next few years...
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
Any power company will tell you where to avoid planting trees, this includes anywhere in the utility easement and anywhere that they may grow up under overhead service lines. People of course ignore this because they have no common sense. Yes in many cases the trees were planted by previous property owners but ultimately if you own a tree and it is causing a problem for your power, phone or cable, why wouldn't it be your problem? Many power companies will do minimal trimming because of the dangers associated with downed power lines, but cable and phone lines are much less likely to be a danger if downed, just a service loss. Unless the trees are actually interfering with the distribution system, don't expect the telco or cableco to do anything. They will replace the service drops when they get pulled down by trees, but won't pay to maintain your trees for you.
That's because they don't properly trim trees, they hack off whatever might be near the lines. If they would actually trim the trees so they don't look like the crippled survivors of a war, people wouldn't gripe.
There are a couple trees near me that they 'trimmed' such that they will almost inevitably fall over onto the road sooner or later. That's what happens when you cut all the branches off of one side. It's a classic "somebody else's problem now" sort of 'solution'
July 20, 1969 was, possibly justifiably, the biggest national ego-validation event in human history. The problem was after that when it came to national achievement, our eyes were firmly pointed back in time. We no longer do things "because they are hard". We're more focused on cashing in on the achievements of past generations.
When you tell Americans we have a backward mobile telephone system, a technologically primitive electric grid and distribution system, and Internet connectivity that lags behind the rest of the developed world, the reaction is usually disbelief. How can that be? We put a man on the Moon -- although by now it should be "grandpa put a man on the Moon."
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It costs money to upgrade and stabilize the power grid. It costs money to stay ahead of the failure curve.
The current infrastructure sucks mainly because it's unpredictable and takes too much effort to synchronize disconnected sections of the grid before connecting them. You can't just "route around" a dead transmission line if there are generator stations active on both sides of the break. You must wait for the two sides to synchronize in phase before connecting them, which can take several seconds to a minute. If you don't, you'll cause even more breakers to trip.
None of this would matter if we switched distribution to HVDC. We have the technology, but again, the cost to convert everything to employ DC-DC switching converters is prohibitive. The biggest upside to switching everything to DC (all the way to the end-user) is that you could add standby capacity by simply connecting batteries to your mains circuit between the main breaker and load panel. The more people in a neighborhood using batteries to buffer their power source, more aggregate protection the neighborhood has against blackouts.