Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped • Hacker News Board

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#351

Post by henearkr » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #348

henearkr wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then 4G or Wifi may be worse than 5G. Experiments with inter-cellular adhesion were, among others, at 900MHz and 1800MHz, thus closer to 4G. However I don't know if other frequencies were really investigated (or with the same care, with different effects observed on male and female rodents, etc). I appreciate that in your brief analysis you are considering several mechanisms of action besides just the heating. There…

The issue is that the energy absorbed is literally too low to do anything. We're talking about heating your body up by 0.1 of a centigrade, so little that it is only visible when using extremely sensitive equipment in lab controlled conditions. I'd worry more about standard heat given off by devices like laptops. The radio emissions aren't gonna do much but the 80C hot air out of the exhaust blowing into your lap is…

I admit that the more I think about your arguments, the more I lean to be convinced. It makes sense.

However, I really hope they find what was the flaw(s) that led to the surprising result on the BBB of rodents.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#352

Post by nanomonkey » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

nanomonkey wrote: post #51

war1025 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Serious question: How was this handled in pre-AC times? Is it just an issue because buildings are much better sealed than they used to be, or is there more to it than that?

Older, less insulated buildings, breathe better. The more your home "breathes" the more it transfers heat and humidity to the outside, which defeats most insulation, unless the breathing is done though a heat exchange.

As an update, as I'm getting a bunch of down votes for some reason (please comment!).

Newer homes and buildings have a vapor barrier beneath the outside cladding. This article on the Perfect Wall [0], explains the benefits and options.

Older houses, like the Victorian that I live in, didn't have modern insulation, which can deteriorate if it gets wet, so they were made to breathe, so that any moisture that got into the wall could be removed through air movement. Not to mention that fireplaces required a constant stream of new air to replace that which is pulled up through the chimney.

[0][https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...]

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#353

Post by gwright » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #321

gwright wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rocks. Frost. Not all locations are amenable to underground cables. Here is a white paper that lays out all the tradeoffs and includes some costs. New construction costs can differ between overhead and underground by 2-10x. Conversion costs aren't negligible either. https://www.eei.org/issuesandpolicy/electricreliability/unde...

From the paper it seams that overhead cables are also >10x more frequently failing, so I think that'll balance out easily. Where I live, 99.9% of power is delivered via underground cables, I get power outages like once every 5 years. Brownouts are more often but usually not related to cable issues. America needs to catch up to the rest of the world there.

I think that also depends on the location. Might be true in places with lots of trees. Not so true in other locations.

It is complicated, as are most things.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#354

Post by WWLink » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 12:48 AM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #291

WWLink wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I can't imagine anyone NIMBYing new power poles lol. Old poles get scary, especially when they start leaning over. And then when AT&T was mounting giant ass DSL VRADs on poles too lol. I'd be out there cheering on the linemen for replacing the old junk. :D

Depends. New poles proposed often carry not just electricity, but also a cellular station, 2 or 3 cameras, 'smart' blazing bright led street lights going on and off at irregular times and 1 or 2 sizable led advertizing displays constatly adapting their messages to perceived passers by. I can definetly see how replacing a lowly old pole with one of these annoyance towers can lead to strong opposition even for those no…

A lot of power poles have been replaced recently in my town and surrounding area. Most of the newer poles are a bit taller. Some of the A shaped towers were replaced with giant poles. Some giant wooden poles were replaced with towers. For the most part, the changes were aesthetically pretty minimal. Not a single one of the new towers has cameras, a smart LED street light, cellular stations, or sizeable advertising displays.

Most of those other things, I have seen, but on different projects lol. Like the LED street lamps have been phased in on most streets out here over the past few years. They also upgraded the light-up street signs to have LEDs and replaced the yellowed, cracked, faded glass with shiny new glass.

All of those things were super solid improvements though.

Of course, we could just act like the town is evil, defund everything, and then have them sell the rights-of-way to companies that would almost certainly squeeze the blood out of the infrastructure and place advertising on it.

Maybe they'd put cameras and use machine learning to determine which streets are the busiest, and find out more about the demographics of people who walk the street, so they can decide how long to leave the lights on - oh and sell that data to further profit lol.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#355

Post by bronson » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 1:20 AM UTC

davisr wrote: post #328

krageon wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do we need Why not? When we moved from 3G to 4G I felt like it was kind of useless, but now that I have it I definitely enjoy all the things that become possible with it (lower latency everything, mostly). It was the same way moving from ISDN to cable. It's never bad to have better stuff - you'll find a use for it even if you don't have one now. > can you explain some concerns you might have about 5G Frankly th…

I think your comment is off-base. One, because I posted a link to Scientific American, where an expert in the effects of cellular telecommunication on human health wrote an opinion piece on why we should tread cautiously with the rollout of 5G transmitting equipment. I'm not spreading misinformation, I'm not claiming 5G to cause COVID-19, and I'm not saying anything that should be controversial. However, I do think t…

> this is apparently a place where everyone's opinion counts as fact

You post a bunch of cherry-picked nonfactual stuff about 5G and then complain that HN doesn't have enough fact-based content?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#356

Post by zaarn » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

gwright wrote: post #353

zaarn wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the paper it seams that overhead cables are also >10x more frequently failing, so I think that'll balance out easily. Where I live, 99.9% of power is delivered via underground cables, I get power outages like once every 5 years. Brownouts are more often but usually not related to cable issues. America needs to catch up to the rest of the world there.

I think that also depends on the location. Might be true in places with lots of trees. Not so true in other locations. It is complicated, as are most things.

It's not complicated. Burying a cable costs more upfront and is cheaper int he long run. End of story.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#357

Post by gwright » Thu, Aug 20, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

zaarn wrote: post #356

gwright wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that also depends on the location. Might be true in places with lots of trees. Not so true in other locations. It is complicated, as are most things.

It's not complicated. Burying a cable costs more upfront and is cheaper int he long run. End of story.

You're being too simplistic. If it were that obvious there would be no need for white papers and it would have been done already.

The actual cost of construction and maintenance are going to vary from place to base based on geology, existing infrastructure, weather, labor costs, regulatory oversight, cost of capitol, etc. So there is no one-size-fits-all solution.