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This electrical transmission tower has a problem

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Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#291

Post by oftenwrong »

burlesona wrote: post #41

This is interesting but not really surprising. Most folks don't realize, because we don't stop and think about it, but the US has unbelievable amounts of infrastructure in this sort of condition. When things can last 40-100 years with little to no maintenance before catastrophic failure, there is _extraordinary_ incentive to defer maintenance until catastrophic failure occurs. For every mayor / governor / utility dir…

A contributing cause is the sheer amount of infrastructure in North America. Since the advent of suburban settlements, the amount of infrastructure has been growing at an unprecedented rate. One day all of it will reach end-of-life. The local governments haven't maintained it. They haven't been saving up to replace it. When it becomes an emergency, all of them will turn to their national government for help.

This is partly human nature. Short-term gains overshadow the distant consequences. I am confident that in 60-100 years China will have an even larger infrastructure crisis.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#292

Post by yostrovs »

biztos wrote: post #286
machello13 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible for more than one cause to contribute to an event. California needs to manage its forests better, but PG&E is also clearly at fault.

Does California need to do this, or the Federal government? Where I'm from in NorCal it's all National Forest except for the parts that are private land. A quick search indicates that some 58% of California forest is managed by the Feds and about 3% by the state. So -- in addition to PG&E being at fault, shouldn't we be talking about Washington more than Sacramento here?

Which parts are burning? The federal or state?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#293

Post by _snbc »

Dahoon wrote: post #284

I'm amazed how a nation as rich as the US allows things to fall apart as much as it does but maybe one of the reasons it is so rich is because of the lack of money used on fixing things? Last time it was dangerous bridges called out. What's next? If only state run wasn't even worse in the US it could be a better way. It baffles the mind that electricity, gas, internet, etc. is being run on a for-profit basis. Clearly…

Next? Dams. There are about 84,000 dams in the USA, and most of them are approaching their projected end-of-life - a hundred years or so (most of them are of the earthen type, not the concrete kind.) And ... civil engineers are going into retirement and their workforce is not getting refilled, about a 20% reduction.

The common theme is that this was all done a century ago in a progressive push that was unaware of any environmental consequences or long-term maintenance needs. For example, the Columbia river (NW) was so dammed up for electric generation, it impacted salmon spawning. Today, USACE spends something like $5 million a year to make salmon elevators and in many places, literally truck them upriver so that commercial fishermen can later retrieve about $450k worth of salmon a year downriver.

And as it turns out, we didn't need that much electricity to begin with and the demand never materialized in time to capitalize on it (manufacturing). And unlike salmon, we can't truck electricity elsewhere.

Edit: since I'm a dam dork, here's a construction type breakdown I did five years ago. Edit 2: dam_type not related to year_built, summaries just placed next to each other.

  count     dam_type        year_built  count

  70,278    Earth
Only 847 of those dams are tailings dams, used for industrial processing. More than 0, but less than 84,000. Of those, none are listed as concrete (730 Earth, 61 Unknown, 43 Other, 13 Rockfill).

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#294

Post by mannykannot »

himinlomax wrote: post #204
Tumblewood wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a poor analogy. Besides the distinction that arson is intentional rather than negligent, arsonists burn things that would not have burned otherwise. While PG&E's negligence sparked the fire, the brush in the area would have burned at some point in the near future regardless of their actions. The Twitter thread mentions the fire that started in the area around the same time because a tree fell, or some other i…

Negligent vs intentional is orthogonal to responsible. You could be responsible but just negligent, like an idiot lighting up a cigar at a gas station. You could intentionally light a fire but not responsible, such as if someone tricked you into doing it or you were poisoned with hallucinogenic drugs, or just plain crazy.

None of these corner-cases do anything for your arsonist analogy. Whatever else one thinks of the utility, it is not plausible that either it or its employees intended to start a fire.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#295

Post by Majromax »

tuna-piano wrote: post #65
nanodeath wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm...it's unclear whether you read the stream. They had reason to believe that the C-hook would fail after 97-100 years, yet weren't even checking the C-hooks on towers that were 100 years old. That seems willfully negligent.

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…

> I'm just not so sure that if you accidentally knock over one domino and a cascading whole room full of dominoes falls that you should take the blame for the cascading effects.

Yes, you do and should take the blame under the eggshell skull doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull). If the initial action was unlawful, then the perpetrator bears liability for the full set of consequences -- even if those consequences are more severe than normal based on unknown factors. Here, PG&E was clearly guilty of gross negligence in their maintenance, so they bear liability for the consequences.

Worse yet, this background situation wasn't previously unknown. The enhanced fire risk was widely understood, which would put PG&E under an even greater obligation to ensure their equipment was operated safely.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#296

Post by bluGill »

biztos wrote: post #290
resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the root of the problem is that there's too much forest that hasn't burned. Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem. For instance the Beirut explosion was the fault from the welders causing the explosion. Yes, but the larger and more important issue is why are there so many explosives in the first place? California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. These forests should be periodically burned t…

> California's mismanagement with its forest is the same issue. I agree that the forests should be managed differently, but if this being "California's mismanagement" is an actual thing as opposed to political disinformation, I'd love to see a couple links to back it up. Some quick googling suggests that it's mostly a Federal problem, which has very different implications especially right now. Am I wrong?

blame the feds, blame CA, blame the natural state of forests in CA... Any way too much blame is on PG&E.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#297

Post by mdavidn »

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217
tshaddox wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No the root of the problem is that there's too much forest that hasn't burned. Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem. For instance the Beirut explosion was the fault from the welders causing the explosion. Yes, but the larger and more important issue is why are there so many explosives in the first place? California's mismanagement with it's forest is the same issue. These forests should be periodically burned t…

No, the problem is that PG&E was relying on a century-old part of unknown metallurgy to suspend a 115 kV conductor.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#298

Post by biztos »

yostrovs wrote: post #292
biztos wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does California need to do this, or the Federal government? Where I'm from in NorCal it's all National Forest except for the parts that are private land. A quick search indicates that some 58% of California forest is managed by the Feds and about 3% by the state. So -- in addition to PG&E being at fault, shouldn't we be talking about Washington more than Sacramento here?

Which parts are burning? The federal or state?

AFAICT both, with more of it being federal. I also think it matters (in terms of response) where the fire starts.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#299

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Animats wrote: post #59
cco wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like a great use case for a drone, you could get closer, the video can be taken by non-inspectors and then reviewed later/stored.

That's how it's done now.[1] But seeing wear on a hook is tough even with high resolution photos, because the wear is between hook and eye and doesn't show clearly until the setup is disassembled. [1] https://youtu.be/7-JTqwUyD5o

Where a park can't be verified, its replaced regularly.

Replacing them every 30 years won't bancrupt anyone.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#300

Post by ClumsyPilot »

zaroth wrote: post #196
bhawks wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGEs own linemen were concerned about wear on these towers. They sent samples from the field to labs for metallurgical analysis. PGEs own scientists estimated that the components would wear out in 100 years. PGE took this information and did nothing . https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiErOkaUMAA178t?format=png&name=... This is not how you maintain critical infrastructure. This is embracing failure and simply not caring ab…

So they staff and run a metallurgical lab in house to which linemen can send samples for analysis, and then management simply throws away the reports?

Of I personally, knowingly caused this much damage throug negligence, i'd be in jail forever.
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