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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.
Have a look see in developed nations.
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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.
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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?
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.
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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.
No - it's not even a question. Bury the lines and you will remove a large number of causes for power outages.
Even more important - realize that each outage costs money for the community. In the long run buried lines will save money - even if you are in an area where the ground is filled with rocks.
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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.
Conversely, where I live everything is buried. We lose power for a second or two almost daily, with at least one outage longer than a minute per month.
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In the long run buried lines will save money - even if you are in an area where the ground is filled with rocks.
Hahahhaah. That was a laugh. Sorry but no. The cost of digging is astronomical for no reason other than the fact we can't look underground and we're super screwed when we hit something.
About 20 years ago I would have agreed with you hands down, but since then the cost of trenching has increased 10fold for any public works or works conducted in hazardous facilities. Dig a hole in your back yard? No issue. Dig it in the street, you may as well file for bankruptcy.
It's actually quite comical, we broke our lead in phone line on our property when raising a house and the conduit underground was broken so they couldn't easily run a new one. The options were pay $10000 to the telecom company for the cost of trenching + install, or pay some third party $500 to trench, and then pay the telecom company $500 to install the new line.
It's ludicrous.
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.
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.
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.
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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.