This electrical transmission tower has a problem • Hacker News Board

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#411

Post by kwillets » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

jartelt wrote: post #396

macspoofing wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - you can have that discussion. What the Democrats are doing is blaming climate change and Trump's climate change policy. Surely you agree that that is just dishonest.

The only solution to the wildfire problem offered by Trump is that California should do a better job raking up leaves/pine needles and should remove more dead fuel from forests. I think that is much more intellectually dishonest, especially given that Trump is in control of the US Forest Service, which is the agency that would be in charge of raking the leaves and removing the dead trees... If Trump drastically incre…

I see Trump as largely out of the discussion; for instance during the Carr Fire he said they needed more water (besides the stupidity of using water, Carr Powerhouse is a major transfer point for the California water system).

Newsom relies on blaming PG&E and Global Warming; he seems to be the political version of the Deep Pockets Theory.

Neither politician offers help for people whose homes are in imminent danger.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#412

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #368

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The twitter thread makes this exact point. The camp fire would likely have happened with or without this maintenance error on PG&E's part. This is because a tree fell on a different power line and started the Camp B fire, and this was determined not to be the result of a preventable error. Just that fact alone suggests that the main component of the problem is not PG&E's neglect.

Do you believe we should not penalize preventable deaths just because non-preventable deaths also happen?

I think we should talk about how to design systems such that preventable deaths happen less often (supposing the costs to prevent them are appropriately scaled). I think hitting PG&E with arbitrarily large fines in this situation will not ultimately have much beneficial effect on the rate of preventable deaths. I think that their negligence happened to be the spark, but if not something else would have caused it. Like a tree falling on a line, a lightning strike, or a gender reveal party. Even if the fine led to perfect compliance on their part (it wouldn't/won't), that would not substantially reduce the rate of preventable deaths. This is because their negligence is not the central cause that most significantly raises the probability of large fires.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#413

Post by biztos » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #384

unexaminedlife wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how someone could have been alive, over the last 4 years, inside a real human body with a functioning human brain and not understand the sentiment of the post you're replying to.

The sentiment of the post is what confuses me. The idea that California wildfires are caused by forest mismanagement is being covered by many reputable news sources. The sibling posts contain four such links. Some of those sites may have ideological leanings such that they focus more on that mismanagement than climate change, but the other sources have ideological leanings so they focus more on climate change than fo…

When the leading lights of one major US political party are loudly denying the science of climate change, and in service of that denial are claiming that the current fires in Oregon and California are the result of mismanagement by the other major party and not due even partially to climate change, then yes, as a non-expert I would like to see some responsible sources backing up a statement that appears to support the former position.

Which bryan0 and zbrozek helpfully provided. I still call it disinformation coming from the President, but these sources do help make clear what CA's shared culpability here is. And no, I don't need it to be the NYT.

I think it was reasonable to ask for the backup, and the fact it was given makes me think at least some people agree. I absolutely give people here the benefit of the doubt about their good intentions, but there is a context right now of national political figures working against science, often by repeating lies that might sound reasonable to some at first.

I hope that helps clear up the question of sentiment.

edit: clarity

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#414

Post by dfsegoat » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #339

dfsegoat wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I appreciate the merits of chaos engineering, this comment lacks an understanding of the impact of these incidents, particularly in rural areas with a history of forest mismanagement. People die [like my neighbors here in Sonoma, CA] - it's not an EC2 instance that gets replaced. Further, one does not just 'restore' the power grid after an outage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_outage#Restoring_power_a...

You can do simulations, either run it in forward or reverse. Pick a random town, burn it down, run the flame front backwards and find the paths and lines that caused it. Then look at the probable failure rates of those lines. Run it forwards, pick and event and allow it to run its course. When designing simulation runs there are bunch of dimensions to consider * Fidelity or simulation resolution, spatial and temporal…

OK. I like the increased utilization of simulations idea.

Your Option A is basically how it is done already for Public safety power shutoffs: they (PGE) have an extensive forecasting department, and they de-energize certain areas for risk based on their analyses. It doesn't work all the time: E.g. Camp Fire [2].

B isn't really an option when many of these incidents occur overnight. Otherwise Cal Fire already fly's their spotters during the day during Red Flag events. And their is a network of remote cameras (alertwildfire.org) for surveillance.

This all is beside the point though: Controlled burns in CA have decreased by 50%+ since the 90s/2000s, and 90s era environmental policies killed logging operations in a lot of CA. Fuel built up, and after that, thermodynamics take over.

If we can get back to mitigating the fuel load - controlled burns [1], and require PG&E to put more budget towards brush clearance and line maintenance - instead of mandating they enter into losing renewable contracts [3] - then we can certainly avoid a lot of these issues.

1 - https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)

3 - https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-wins-ruling-allowing-it-to...

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#415

Post by anonAndOn » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #141

causality0 wrote: post #21

"Paying money to violate the law" is a fundamentally broken method of law enforcement. Do away with them. Justice should not be a line item in a spreadsheet. Maybe it's only twenty minutes in the county jail but every single infraction should fall personally on the individual who made the decision. Start hauling board members into court in orange jumpsuits and see how quickly these "unavoidable" fuckups stop happenin…

Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom are the top of the chain for PG&E. The The California Public Utilities Commission which is appointed by the Governor controls PG&E.

CPUC sets the regulations. PG&E finds the easiest way to maximize profits under those regulations. Sometimes those profits are maximized by by just dumping the hexavalent chromium rust inhibitor into the ground.[0] Other times by delaying maintenance on 100 year old towers.[1] Even executive personal profits can be maximized by diverting safety operations funds for executive bonuses. [2] Privatization of public utilities for the win!

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_groundwater_contaminat... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)#Infrastructur... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#416

Post by webnrrd2k » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #339

dfsegoat wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I appreciate the merits of chaos engineering, this comment lacks an understanding of the impact of these incidents, particularly in rural areas with a history of forest mismanagement. People die [like my neighbors here in Sonoma, CA] - it's not an EC2 instance that gets replaced. Further, one does not just 'restore' the power grid after an outage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_outage#Restoring_power_a...

You can do simulations, either run it in forward or reverse. Pick a random town, burn it down, run the flame front backwards and find the paths and lines that caused it. Then look at the probable failure rates of those lines. Run it forwards, pick and event and allow it to run its course. When designing simulation runs there are bunch of dimensions to consider * Fidelity or simulation resolution, spatial and temporal…

I suspect that the best results may come from simpler modeling, such as modeling the system with a physical model,like modeling aerodynamics in a wind tunnel, or boat hulls in a wave tank.

How much would it take to make a useful scale model in a warehouse somewhere? I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to understand how the smaller scale would relate to real-life fires, but it certainly seems plausible that, for a relatively small outlay, we'd have an important tool for establishing a much better understanding of wilderness fires. Given how much CA alone spends fighting forest fires, a 10 or 20 million project to build facilities and fund researchers seems like an obvious and much needed project.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#417

Post by justanotheranon » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

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.

agree. i hate when really interesting info is tweeted out. this belongs in a blog post hosted somewhere less ephemeral. the way it was pre-web 2.0.

twitter/FB/etc serve as infomation sinkholes. sure, you may get a million likes and RT'd by influencers such as Kanye, but after a few days, whatever you wrote is forgotten and no longer discoverable. then it's as if you never wrote it at all, because nobody else will ever find it.

i miss the old web. i miss web rings. i miss just casually surfing from link to link and stumbling across serendipitous information dense and concisely written essays about some thing out there in the world that taught me valuable knowledge.

social media must die. the old web must return.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#418

Post by justanotheranon » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #164

I feel that we are getting better at recognizing that complex failures can have multiple contributing causes. In this case: superficial maintenance, negligent management, ineffective regulation, forest management, climate change, housing planning, demand for living near trees... But I feel our approach to assigning blame still relies on finding a singular villain - and we end up with politically oversimplified narrat…

i think about this issue a lot. humans as tribal story tellers always require a meta narrative to put events into an understandable format. even if there is no story arc, no protagonist and no villian. as our world becomes more complex, with intractable dependencies between automated complex systems, our world becomes less understandable. more and more there are fewer and fewer "man in the loop" events. our infrastructure is on autopilot and we are at the mercy of its autonomous interactions. there is no one to blame for catastrophes or accidents.

it's like the line from the old RAW book: "there is no governor anywhere."

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#419

Post by baddox » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #282

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…

Suppose the government left barrels of leaky oil around, then you cause a small fire, which escalates into a huge fire as a result. It's fair to say that you caused the fire. It's probably also fair to say that the bulk of damages are due to government negligence. The debate is where we fall on that spectrum. I would think the power company should be punished as if it caused fires on an average managed forest but the…

But that’s not the full analogy. The full analogy would be that the government left oil barrels around the whole state, and you went around the state starting hundreds of small fires, and if you had not done that, there would still have been a few fires from other sources, but there would be far fewer fires overall.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#420

Post by scottlamb » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #319

lordnacho wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 65 cents is the actual cost then it should be the price. You can't be charging people 20 cents or whatever, but then they also have to pay to have their homes rebuilt every few decades, pay for insurance, and pay for firefighters.

Don't forget, at the current rate we're all subsidizing the rural power users. They should absolutely pay more if it costs more.

I think blaming rural power users is a dangerous idea for a couple reasons.

> Don't forget, at the current rate we're all subsidizing the rural power users.

I'm sure this is true to some extent—just as it is for telecommunications and mail delivery—but this tower wasn't just for rural power users, was it? I think it was some sort of high-voltage long-distance transmission line. There's a region-wide electrical grid, in part because power generation doesn't happen in city centers. Urban and suburban consumers depend on rural transmission lines.

> They should absolutely pay more if it costs more.

Rural areas produce the food urban areas need. I suppose your goal is to encourage people to move from rural areas to urban areas to lower total societal cost. Presumably you don't also want the food supply to fall and/or food insecurity to increase among the urban poor. So it'd be irresponsible to make this change without careful monitoring and matching policy changes to prevent those effects. You need to keep food affordable, to keep farming affordable, to keep providing services farmers need affordable, etc.