Ask Slashdot: Why Is the Power Grid So Crummy In So Many Places? 516
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 ? (Score:2, Informative)
Aerial, or underground, that is the question.
Re: Storage (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: Storage (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: Storage (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, when the utility company trims trees the residents raise holy hell.
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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 ove
Set up a 3 way call (Score:3)
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?
Re:Set up a 3 way call (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a feeling that if the GP did that, both companies would say that it's the phone company's responsibility....
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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 associ
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Re: Storage (Score:4, Insightful)
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'
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Re:Aerial or underground ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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IIRC underground cabling have another advantage over aerials; They can be made from far cheaper materials/alloys, such as aluminium, rather than just copper.
Re:Aerial or underground ? (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize most aerials are aluminum right?
Not only that but in free air both basically double their current handling loads. So you get situations were a 200amp rated line is being tied into a 200amp line that is half the size coming from the power company.
Once The power companies are allowed to massively over rate the cables compared to what building codes allow. think how much money they save by using cables half the size.
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I think you may have that backwards. Underground people run copper or similar due to the current carrying limitations. Copper is a better conductor than aluminium and when surrounded by insulation and insulating material (dirt) the cable is massively derated.
Up in the air it's a different story. Aerials are run in aluminium because of the weight loading of the cables stressing the supports. You not only recover alloy costs and can run them at far higher currents, but you also reduce the size and cost of the
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The last unexpected/unscheduled power outage was
Re:Aerial or underground ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Aerial or underground ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
8X cost increase up front (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:8X cost increase up front (Score:4, Informative)
Just to dive into this a bit more. I just got quotes to connect three of the farms on our campus.
$3.50/ft over the distance of about 15 miles for ariel. That includes sinking new poles, putting up the wire, purchasing right-of-way, etc.
> $900/ft over the distance of about 15 miles for buried. That includes concrete encasement, conduit, purchasing right-of-way, road construction and the engineering. We would also need power vaults every few miles for transformers and equipment to load the line properly.
So, in places where space is a premium and it's nearly impossible to have ariel (think of a downtown area like Chicago, NYC or LA), it makes perfect sense to bury. For other times the cost really is prohibitive. In a small downtown area with a very dense area there is justification to do it. You do gain some reliability, particularly from wind/snow/ice/car/hunter damage, but you lose some reliability if your undergrounds flood/overheat/catch fire. The chances of the undergrounds misbehaving are a lot less, but they still exist.
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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. Sure, the grate will get covered by leaves, and the trench will fill with water (have to have a way to drain that), but those seem like minor problems. The cable would be shielded from the vast majority of problems (falling branches, cars hitting poles, squirrels). And since it's just a grate covering, it's just as easy to find problems & service
Worst of both worlds (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I can only assume there is never any storm / flood water in these utopian locales, or that it remains so pure as to be incapable of conducting electricity.
Re:Aerial or underground ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The costs of the outage is to the community. While the cost of buried lines is to the power company.
Gee, I wonder which the power company will choose?
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That, and the installed capacity. It seems to me that power companies gamble with projected load, trying to rationalize less expensive cables, at least on new installations. Of course then there is the overall age of the existing grid. IIRC the current US grid is just getting old, designed for a time with a much lower load, and no amount of "smart grid" can magically increase available capacity sufficiently.
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Aerial, or underground, that is the question.
BOTH in the future, but keep in mind that none of these day to day repairs have anything to do with re-tooling the grid, which would will take $ trillions of dollars.
Aerial power lines are the practical rule in many towns and cities because space is tight and there is already ~80 years of infrastructure under ground. Ours has two electric utilities, in some intersections their feeders cross on two upper levels. In new subdivisions electric primaries have been buried in alleys with ground level transforme
Hide your cables (Score:5, Informative)
Have a look see in developed nations.
In Finland (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:In Finland (Score:5, Informative)
Similar in Sweden, where I live there have been maybe 5 outages the last 15 years, none of them long enough to create any problems aside from having to set the clock radio again.
And we have underground wiring. Areas with above ground wiring sees more outages.
This is also what annoys me whenever I have been visiting the US - the air is filled with wires high and low, which definitely destroys the scenery of the otherwise picturesque towns that are common in New England among other places.
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Similar in Sweden, where I live there have been maybe 5 outages the last 15 years, none of them long enough to create any problems aside from having to set the clock radio again.
And we have underground wiring. Areas with above ground wiring sees more outages.
This is also what annoys me whenever I have been visiting the US - the air is filled with wires high and low, which definitely destroys the scenery of the otherwise picturesque towns that are common in New England among other places.
This is one thing I have never quite understood about the USA. Even in places where hurricanes and earthquakes are common they put electric lines on wooden poles with the result that when an earthquake occurs or a hurricane blows through the streets are literally covered with downed power lines. I live in an earthquake prone region where we almost exclusively use underground wiring. We've never had an outage because of an earthquake. Come to think of it we've never had more than minor damage to buildings as
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As for wooden houses, wood is cheaper than concrete. Often when you buy a house in America, the house is already built and you're just purchasing it. I live in a town of 10,000 and I only know two people who built their own houses and they were wood. Most of the middle class cannot afford anything but a house built of wood.
In Florida, there are concrete blo
Re:In Finland (Score:4, Informative)
Wooden houses as opposed to what? I don't think a well built wooden house is at all a problem in an earthquake zone. It is better than brick, probably worse than reinforced concrete or steel, but who builds single dwellings from reinforced concrete or steel?
I'm from New Zealand, where we have quite high earthquake hazard, and an overwhelming majority of our houses are wooden. Fatalities in the Christchurch earthquake were (mostly? entirely?) not due to wooden buildings but to poor quality 1980s high-rise and ~100 year old brick low-rise commercial buildings. People did die in wooden houses, but in the cases I am aware of this was due to boulders or cliffs falling on them, which no reasonable house would withstand, or heavy furniture falling on them, again independent of house construction.
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... but who builds single dwellings from reinforced concrete or steel?
Just about everyone in Iceland. There are some houses built here out of wood, but the VAST majority are built using reinforced concrete (sometimes with a wooden roof though).
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Re:In Finland (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In Finland (Score:5, Insightful)
As an American married to a European, I've often been asked by puzzled Europeans as to why Americans build houses from wood. Alexis de Tocqueville probably said it best (Democracy in America Vol II, Chapter VIII):
"I accost an American sailor, and I inquire why the ships of his country are built so as to last but for a short time; he answers without hesitation that the art of navigation is every day making such rapid progress, that the finest vessel would become almost useless if it lasted beyond a certain number of years. In these words, which fell accidentally and on a particular subject from a man of rude attainments, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a great people directs all its concerns."
Americans regularly get second mortgages and put additions and improvements to their homes, expanding and adapting them. The less this is true (inner cities) the less likely the home is made of wood. And that may turn out to be true of many high-line wires. I'm not sure about power lines, but would assume we'd pay for telephone cables to be buried at the same time, and that seems incredibly wasteful. If the USA paid to put all the telephone cables underground, how will it pay off if everyone goes wireless, as has happened in most rapidly emerging market cities? When I had my home rewired in 1998, I thought it would be wise to pay for double phone lines, put in for DSL cable. I wish I could get that money back and put it into a savings bond.
Re:In Finland (Score:5, Informative)
Structural engineer here. Wooden structures survive earthquakes best because they flex. Contrary to the story of the three little pigs, stone masonry is the worst because it has no lateral strength. They're fine in static loading when all the forces are pointing straight down; but the moment the force vector tilts a bit sideways they collapse. The huge death tolls you hear about from earthquakes in developing countries is almost always from collapsed masonry or concrete structures. Mud huts simply don't have the mass to kill residents, and wood homes survive most earthquakes relatively intact. In the 1933 Long Beach earthquake [wikipedia.org] most of the brick schoolbuildings collapsed. Fortunately the earthquake happened in the evening when the kids were home from school, or it could've been a disaster rivaling the 1906 San Francisco quake. But that's the quake which made California realize brick buildings in earthquake country were just plain stupid. If you drive around Los Angeles or San Francisco and look at the older brick buildings [muscache.com], you'll often see a regular pattern of square metal plates on the outside. These are the end ties for steel rods which retrofitted to masonry buildings. They run through the entire length of the building and connect all four sides together into a rigid box. Without them the walls simply fall over in an earthquake.
Metal would be better, but is much more expensive. And its strength is not needed for static loads in smaller structures. Static loading is the reason skyscrapers are made of metal, not because it's more resistant to earthquakes. Skyscrapers are naturally resistant to earthquakes because their height gives them a much lower natural resonance frequency than most earthquakes, and they just kind of shimmy in place during a quake. The highest-risk structures are about 3 stories tall - that's where your resonance frequency matches that of a typical earthquake. If you look at the buildings which collapsed in the Loma Prieta quake [nbcbayarea.com] and the Northridge quake [wordpress.com], the vast majority were 3 stories. Both were relatively moderate quakes so give you an idea which buildings are the first to collapse, unlike larger quakes which destroy a larger variety of buildings.
In earthquake country like California, the two places I would never live in are masonry buildings, and 3 story tall buildings.
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Unfortunately the resonance frequency of buildings is not affected by hight but by the length and the width of the building.
Not for side-to-side movements.
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I personally get a lot of brown outs, power surges, and flickering. I've had multiple pieces of electronics go even on surge protectors as they get a charge higher than they are rated for... And full home UPS is out of my price range, but seems to be my only solution.
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I have long felt this way too. As others have pointed out, the US is all about capitalism, so take away some of the shareholder dividends by making the power company rebate money paid for service when the service fails and the problem will solve itself in an efficient manner. Gradually increase the penalties on a fixed schedule so the companies can plan for long term upgrades where the infrastructure is at the highest risk (rathe
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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.
I can confirm this. In Finland you get premium electricity in most places. On the other hand, the amount of "sick" buildings is cropping up: there's moisture in structures, improperly configured ventilation, poor heating, and whatnot. :( But hey, you get proper power to read Slashdot.
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Hmmm...here in Tokyo a lot of the power is coming in through overhead lines. Our building gets fed off a pole and we haven't had an outage in years. That includes during the multiple typhoons that come through every year. They tend to insulate the wires and wrap them with steel cable here, though, so maybe that's a big difference.
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Hmm, live in the USA, near a metropolitan area (New Orleans is across the lake).
Had a power interruption here this year. Long enough to reset the clock I'm looking at.
Only power outage I can think of that was long enough to be notable (more than momentary) was Katrina....
Course, the fact that my computers are either laptops or on UPS means I really don't care all that much about power outages.
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Underground cables are reliable, robust and requires minimal maintenance when properly installed.
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Outages happen! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Also, this has useful information, including a Customer Average Frequency Index, which lets you measure your utility against others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Super-capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Also, the US enjoys a form of super-capitalism, where the almighty dollar stands above things like quality of service and stability. So companies do the bare minimum of maintenance, also worsening outages.
Re:Super-capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
>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?
Re:Super-capitalism (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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We have a sense of perspective and don't pull facts out of our ass.
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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
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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
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there is no super capitalism there unless you equate super capitalism with monopolies.
That's the goal in super capitalism - become a monopoly with a guaranteed income.
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Even China has a far more reliable power supply than the USA. Virtually no outages due to normal storms or lightning or so; occasional outage after a particularly destructive typhoon (hurricane on your side of the Pacific) or a massive earthquake.
Can't really call China a small country.
It's just the sad truth that the richest country in the world has one of the most unreliable power supplies.
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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.
Re:Super-capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Super-capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
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...?
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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.
Re:Super-capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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I lived in Central Finland for a while - population density of 36 people per square mile. No power outages experienced.
I think the problem is the capitalism thing - you can't pretend you'll get this kind of service out of a free market situation. It's a natural monopoly that needs close public oversight unless you enjoy the kind of crappy and overpriced service you are getting right now over there.
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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 sp
Market forces don't work on essential utilities. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Market forces don't work on essential utilitie (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Have a look at getting your own power source (Score:3)
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You could take care of some of the daytime failures with solar (and evening if you get some batteries).
Be aware that for a solar installation feeding power into the grid, you are generally required to have a control system which immediately shuts down your solar generation if the power grid fails. This is for safety reasons (chaps working on the line don't want to find there are still unexpected volts there after they've shut off the supply) and because your system will start to go blue in the face very quickly if it tries to power your entire neighbourhood.
You could have a more sophisticated control system
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Grid intertie systems are available that failover to local battery storage.
Re:That's always an expensive option (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Low tech (Score:2)
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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...m
paying share holders too much (Score:2)
That's unchecked capitalism for you (Score:5, Insightful)
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Simply put: money * greed + lack of political will to do anything about the money * greed situation.
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Then the answer is having a couple of military in full battle dress holding guns to the heads of the CEO.
Yes I said heads. One gun pressed into the forehead, the other a shotgun jammed into his junk. The marines must YELL at full volume all the time at him.
Does your state have a Public Service Commission? (Score:2)
Have you complained to them about the power reliability?
I live in a conservative suburb of a southern city. The state is "blue", hates taxes, and lets the power, telephone and cable companies run their lines on poles. (Part of the justification is that the water table is pretty high, and it rains a lot.) But... my house went more than a year without a clock-resetting power flicker, and that one lasted only a few seconds.
One thing that I do know that the power company does is make an annual drive through e
The Internet answer (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
- most people will use the provider with cables above ground as he's much cheaper
- the one that puts cables under ground is much more expensive compared to other countries that have only the kind of provider putting their cable under ground
- you still have these ugly cables above ground
- and s
Re:The Internet answer (Score:4)
whooosh!
also: Poe's Law
Re:The Internet answer -- Raid 4 power (Score:2)
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Simple answer. (Score:2)
Why is the power grid so crummy?
Simple. Pure unadulterated greed. The power company does not want to spend the money making it not crappy.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would they? Companies exist to make profit. Their greed is the same as your greed when you cash your paycheck, or whatever it is you do for your profit. Adulterated or no.
They are doing only what they are supposed to do. And the part where they generate and sell power for a profit is wonderful. There's no real limit to the number of power generators that could compete in a 'free market'.
But that ain't the grid. How is it that the public doesn't own the grid in the same way they own the interstates? Ther
Its Urban Trees (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
We have trees lining every street in the city, even in commercial and industrial zones. It is only a problem if your utility is lazy. Our temperate climate is squirrel heaven, and they're not even a real problem for transformers. Your utility company might be ignoring maintenance and blaming squirrels, and you might have fallen for it. We have almost 100% overhead lines, too. Squirrels use them as roads. No problem.
My advice to communities... have a public utility that isn't controlled by the city or other
WW2 (Score:2)
American infrastructure was untouched during WW2, hence we still have draped lines on sticks in many places. Cutting edge tech... from the 1880's.
If you can afford it, get a whole house generator (Score:2)
Case In Point: Maui Electric (Score:3)
Maximizing profit (Score:2)
Although they are regulated to death, power companies want to maximize profit, and there are no rules that say they have to invest in improving infrastructure "as long as everything is working fine." They have no motivation at all to seek out aging sections of their power grid and replace them during normal operation. Rather, they are entirely reactive. When power goes out, they fix it on demand. Nothing more. Moreover, whenever there are major storms that take out massive swaths of their network, they
No easy fix? (Score:2)
I live in a large village or small town. I get a lot of power outages. Some of these last for hours. Most of the rest of the village does not get these - just a small clump of houses around the church. Our cable comes underground from Hemel Hempstead. The rest of the village gets power from the pylons that run alongside the M1. We can claim back money for the power outages.
I would imagine our group of houses has problems because (a) we are at the end of a spur (b) we got electricity before anyone else, a
I blame it on the Moon landing. (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Because money and the inherent problems with AC. (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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
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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 thro