This electrical transmission tower has a problem • Hacker News Board

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#181

Post by imtringued » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:09 AM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #57

I've got a bit of a problem with articles like this one. I'll try and illustrate it with an analogy: Imagine some asshole puts an incendiary in an orphanage, and rigs it to go off when a nearby speed trap detects someone going more than 10mph over. Eventually, someone does, and the orphanage catches fire. Further, the group responsible for constructing and maintaining the orphanage hasn't looked at the place for 50 y…

I don't understand your analogy. It was the tower that was abandoned for "50 years". The transmission tower has an inbuilt failure that triggers after 100 years (the failed hook = the incendiary) except it wasn't some asshole that added the incendiary, it was the group (PG&E) responsible for constructing and maintaining the tower. The tower hasn't been maintained by PG&E for around 100 years (close to your 50 years) so all the trees trapped near or under the transmission tower die in a wild fire. You have picked your analogy in such a way that it is extremely confusing. Even after reading "To me, PG&E is the driver here." it still felt extremely forced because the entire "twitter article" is about the failure of PG&E to maintain their infrastructure. That also includes cutting down trees near power lines.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#182

Post by m-ee » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:13 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #176

jrockway wrote: post #15

I guess my takeaway from this is if you're a government building some sort of asset you're going to transfer to the private sector, overengineer it. Nobody is ever going to do maintenance, so your thing essentially has to last forever. Imagine that they made the hooks so they only lasted for 10 years -- we'd have 10 times as many billion-dollar fires. But some engineer in 1918 said "you know, let's make it a little b…

I feel like an easy solution to this could have been an additional safety wire. The safety wire will catch the insulator and thereby give maintenance crew a few days to arrive before the tower fails for good. There is also a general maintenance problem that could be solved by installing inspection cameras directly onto every tower. Those cameras may have to be replaced more frequently than the actual tower components…

I also found it bizarre that your average go-kart track (not to mention aviation) has the presence of mind to safety wire everything but a multi billion dollar utility company didn't

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#183

Post by skytreader » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:13 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #155

43920 wrote: post #60

This is definitely a failure on PG&E's part, but I'm still not sure how much sense it makes to assign them blame for this fire. The environment they're operating in is somewhat ridiculous - the forest is so dry and overgrown that pretty much any flame source will start a fire large enough to burn a huge area; this specific tower failure is basically just the thing that revealed a much larger issue. With proper engine…

> With proper engineering and maintenance, PG&E could probably reduce the frequency of fires significantly, but there's always going to be a non-zero risk of fire, both from power lines and other sources, and it seems basically inevitable that one of them would have started another fire at some point. I don’t understand. You’re conceding that if PG&E were a competent and responsible company they could significantly r…

I think the point is PG&E should be blamed for negligence but not for the fire[1]. They could follow all regulation to the letter and there will still be a non-negligible chance that their infra will cause a fire simply because existing regulation is not suitable for the environment their infra stands at.

[1] Although I think the thread is rather vague as to the damages assigned to PG&E no?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#184

Post by onetimemanytime » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:17 AM UTC

harha wrote: post #165

43920 wrote: post #60

This is definitely a failure on PG&E's part, but I'm still not sure how much sense it makes to assign them blame for this fire. The environment they're operating in is somewhat ridiculous - the forest is so dry and overgrown that pretty much any flame source will start a fire large enough to burn a huge area; this specific tower failure is basically just the thing that revealed a much larger issue. With proper engine…

Take driving as an analogy - there's a non-zero risk of having a crash, but it's significantly higher if you don't follow the rules (drunk, speeding, broken car). This feels like PG&E was betting it wouldn't happen to them. I think for a utility the risk should be very very close to zero, you can really do a lot of planning around it and make sure that if you're running infrastructure in a dangerous area to take suff…

>>I think for a utility the risk should be very very close to zero

They can lower the risk by a lot, but are you ready to pay 65 cents (or whatever) a KW ? PG&E, with all its faults, has been put in an impossible position: one fire (that is bound to happen no matter what because wires fail) can bankrupt them since it can burn hundreds of thousand of acres, thousands of homes, untold deaths and other property destruction.

You can't really blame them for everything. Manage forests, stop building a town in the middle of the freaking forest and raise electricity rates for a complete audit of all the lines. Otherwise, nothing can be done, just talk.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#185

Post by Zanni » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:20 AM UTC

harha wrote: post #165

43920 wrote: post #60

This is definitely a failure on PG&E's part, but I'm still not sure how much sense it makes to assign them blame for this fire. The environment they're operating in is somewhat ridiculous - the forest is so dry and overgrown that pretty much any flame source will start a fire large enough to burn a huge area; this specific tower failure is basically just the thing that revealed a much larger issue. With proper engine…

Take driving as an analogy - there's a non-zero risk of having a crash, but it's significantly higher if you don't follow the rules (drunk, speeding, broken car). This feels like PG&E was betting it wouldn't happen to them. I think for a utility the risk should be very very close to zero, you can really do a lot of planning around it and make sure that if you're running infrastructure in a dangerous area to take suff…

An even better analogy is Jenga. California's uncontrolled fuel load was going to result in massive fires at some point. Yes, PG&E could have reduced the chance of it being them, which would be great for PG&E, but would make no difference to California.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#186

Post by antihero » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:21 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #15

I guess my takeaway from this is if you're a government building some sort of asset you're going to transfer to the private sector, overengineer it. Nobody is ever going to do maintenance, so your thing essentially has to last forever. Imagine that they made the hooks so they only lasted for 10 years -- we'd have 10 times as many billion-dollar fires. But some engineer in 1918 said "you know, let's make it a little b…

So the government has to spend more, look more inefficient, and then when a private corporation and runs it dangerously at minimum cost, it plays right into the "private companies are more efficient, we should privatise more" lobby.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#187

Post by DanBC » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:22 AM UTC

umvi wrote: post #22

_jal wrote: post #2

PG&E is a public menace.

I would wager a lot of power companies run their equipment to failure. Anecdata, but Pepco in Maryland burned me once. When we first moved into our house motor loads (vacuum, disposal, etc.) caused all the lights in the house to dim. We called an electrician and he said the problem was the transformer in the green box outside our house and to call Pepco to fix it. We did and Pepco dragged their feet forever. Weeks la…

> We filed a claim with Pepco for damages, citing the previous incident 2 years ago as evidence they knew the transformer was failing but they denied the claim with no explanation.

I don't know how it works in the US but in the UK you'd put in a claim with your insurance company, and tell them that you'd told Pepco about the problem sometime ago and Pepco hadn't fixed it. Your insurance company has lots of lawyers and knows how to extract money from power companies.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#188

Post by stefan_ » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:24 AM UTC

kempbellt wrote: post #90

akira2501 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the lines cannot be shut down. Of course they can. A failure is an unplanned shutdown, and I doubt that leads to better outcomes than a planned shutdown. Also this thread demonstrates that PG&E replaced _other_ parts of the same tower. > I'm of the opinion that humans should not be living in areas that burn regularly. I'm of the opinion that climate change makes this a moving target, and this is simply one of t…

>Of course they can. A failure is an unplanned shutdown A pedantically accurate retort, but ignores the real point. Shutting down these lines for "inspection" is not feasible. These lines are the backbone of a grid that millions of people and services rely on 24/7/365, and there is zero redundancy. They are responsible for delivering power to hospitals, traffic lights, schools, airports, grocery stores, homes, busine…

This is PG&E in California we are talking about? The one that already has rolling blackouts? California is just a failed state - an embarrassment for an economy so large it rivals most countries.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#189

Post by imtringued » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:25 AM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #11

ctdonath wrote: post #6

Case study in importance of maintenance. 1 broken century-old hook => $16,650,000,000 damages.

Only a $4 million fine, though right? How much do you think a maintenance program would cost?

From an economics perspective I can't deny that PG&E did the right thing. Maybe they should have gotten a bigger fine?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#190

Post by extropy » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:32 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #170

legulere wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000 fires would actually be probably better than 10 because they help keep flammable material at bay and reduce the size of the fires.

So your saying we should introduce chaos monkeys into power grids to improve robustness?

Actually yes, since they have a huge incentive to Run to Failure. Chaos monkeys would provide a consistent source of failures to make them do their maintenance.

Similar to red teams in security.