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This electrical transmission tower has a problem

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Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#231

Post by ajuc »

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…

At some point there's going to be a lightning or something and the fire will happen anyway.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#232

Post by thejeswi-nk »

leahshule56 wrote: post #228
boobsbr wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1306359385656946688.html

Nice, but no in-line images which are important in this case.

I can see the inline images. Perhaps it's blocked on your browser?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#233

Post by ClumsyPilot »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #184
harha wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 destruc…

I think that's a very poor argument, for a few reasons:

1) We are talking about criminal negligence, saving money is not a good reason of not dealing with crime.

2) we are talking about parts not being replaced in 100 years, the OP is not asking for some crazy level of maintenance thats going to break the bank.

3) once you take into account collateral damage and potential punitive damages, is it actually any cheaper?

4) whats the point of having cheap electricity if ut's inreliable, and ready to fail at any moment?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#234

Post by michaelt »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #37
umvi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the thread points out though, maintenance is just one piece of the puzzle. There were multiple points of failure here, not just the hook. That's like blaming the welders for the Lebanon explosion when in reality it was a combination of like 4 different fails over the course of many years.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Unless you count "power lines active during dry conditions" which is unavoidable, the only meaningful failure here is repeated lack of maintenance. The design was fine, and it was installed fine; it lasted a hundred years! Lack of maintenance will kill anything eventually, all by itself.

> the only meaningful failure here is repeated lack of maintenance

The proximate cause of the fire was a broken hook.

The other failures were:

* Hook was not maintained

* Tower was not adequately inspected

* Record keeping was insufficient to recognise the need for maintenance

* Power lines were built in hard-to-maintain, fire-prone places

* Nobody within PG&E sounding the alarm about this the hook problem specifically, or the lack of maintenance more broadly (or not sounding it loud enough)

* Lack of controlled burns (or equivalent forestry management) that would have reduced the spread of fire

* Homes built in fire-prone areas

* Low population density, with higher per-capita costs of infrastructure maintenance

* Dry conditions, due to climate change, due to energy policy(?)

* PG&E's bizarre blend of the worst parts of public and private business, and their perpetual bankrupt-but-still-operating status.

* Lack of political leadership able/willing to come up with and enact a master plan to stop wildfires

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#235

Post by laumars »

thu2111 wrote: post #203
xyzzyz wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you understood my comment. PG&E is as regulated as you can possibly get without literally being part of government. When PG&E wants to spend $100M on maintenance, it has to ask government for permission, and CPUC needs to approve this expense. My point here is not to argue that with less regulation, PG&E would do better job when it comes to maintenance — I don’t know if it would. However, considering ho…

There's definitely an observable issue with Californian electricity supplies being significantly worse than in other parts of the world, which have more liberalised transmission operator firms.

Is it more liberalised in other parts of the world though? That’s not usually the case for Europe and China (the next two biggest global economies). Perhaps it might be true specifically with regards to electricity supply but I would be very surprised if that were the case knowing how the U.K. likes to regulate similar services which I have directly been employed by.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#236

Post by sradman »

blunte wrote: post #220

Tangential, but Twitter is a very poor medium for delivering this kind of information. It's really a drag for the reader.

I found this series of tweets a very succinct way of describing the failure. Ultimately the key evidence is contained in the images and we only need a few additional words to provide the context. A tweet storm built around a handful of key images serves as a poor-man's infographic.

Maybe I just had low-expectations when I clicked through and I was pleasantly surprised that it represented a useful failure analysis.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#237

Post by piker »

mrbabbage wrote: post #43
throwaway189262 wrote: post #28

Interesting. I'm kinda sympathetic to PG&E on this though. These big lines don't have much under them, inspection is by helicopter, and the lines cannot be shut down. I would not be surprised if "fix it when it breaks" is a nationwide phenomenon for high tension lines. What makes it bad is how fire-prone California is. I'm of the opinion that humans should not be living in areas that burn regularly. And in PG&E's def…

There is no defense for PG&E for the Camp Fire. This is an organization that is notorious for under-maintaining its assets. Its state of repair is so shoddy that it regularly turns off power for many days at a time ("public safety power shutoffs") to huge swathes of its service area. No other comparable utility does this - not San Diego Gas and Electric, not the Victoria Electricity Cooperative (Australian utility),…

None of this information is relevant to whether PG&E has a defense for the Camp Fire.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#238

Post by jsymolon »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #218
viraptor wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It lacks context, but the idea itself is not ridiculous. That's pretty much how original Australians dealt with fuel buildup. Move and burn often. Given specific ecosystem, in a very literal sense, 1000 fires are better than 10 in the same area over the same time period.

I lived in Africa. The parks used to run controlled burns, every year or two, of the savanna grass. They tended to do this during the [very] wet season. But PG&E is still on the hook for taking better care of their infrastructure. It all comes down to dollars and [non]sense. Some actuary has determined that an occasional lawsuit and rotten press run is cheaper than maintaining the wires. Here in New York, many of the…

> water mains that transfer water to the city from upstate are well over a century old. ... They just wait for them to fail, then replace the small part that failed.

At some point, all the older parts will get so old that it fails frequently and at a greater rate, that the fix cost will greatly exceed the budgeted amount.

Being a quite cynical person, I would say that up to that point management will have collected fat bonuses, then cry poverty and push for ruinous rate increases.

Along the same lines, CT just had an issue with a rate increase that doubled most bills.

The point being spreading out the cost over years and limiting "downtime" is a lot better than 1 huge event that leaves customers without. (re: Detroit and bottled water)

https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/eversource-and-ui-a...

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#239

Post by jsymolon »

nullc wrote: post #86
tuna-piano wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that PG&E negligently caused sparks. But many things can negligently cause sparks, including dozens of human and natural causes. Even among power operators, sparks seem to not be too rare (for example, the tree that fell on the line). So while PG&E can be blamed for that specific fire that doesn't really address the root cause of "why can some sparks in one place cause such huge destruction and c…

> But many things can negligently cause sparks, including dozens of human and natural causes. My favourite: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mendocino-compl... Someone tried to stop an angry yellowjacket nest by driving a concrete stake into the hole in the ground and their hammer thew off sparks and started a 459,123 acre fire-- the largest recorded in state history at the time.

Aside, I use a very large clear glass bowl to kill the nest. Flip it over the hole, leave it for a little over a week and the nest will be dead.

It has to be a clear bowl to trick the wasps to think that they can still get out otherwise they will dig a new exit.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#240

Post by seapunk »

NavinF wrote: post #205
isclever wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try this: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1306359385656946688.html

Is there an alternative unroller without ads? Seems like a fun project to build (Yes I have uBlock Origin on my desktop, but I'm not on my desktop)

Yes with Threader: https://threader.app/thread/1306359385656946688
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