421–430 of 479 posts
https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2020-07/Sch%C3%A9m...
"RTE France" is the entity in charge of those lines.
Plenty of lenghty docs for 10+ years plans:
https://www.rte-france.com/analyses-tendances-et-prospective...
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Do you believe we should not penalize preventable deaths just because non-preventable deaths also happen?
That's not the question here. Rather, it's about which causes contributed to the problem—blaming everything on the most proximate cause is convenient but doesn't reflect the situation. An extreme analogy: if a car is built in a way that a fender-bender causes a fire[1], how much of that is on the person who cause the fender-bender? Fender-benders are preventable by better driving, but the consequences were massively…
In the fender-bender example, I can see how you would structure your logic the way you have. As an example of how I and others might structure it: The car causes the accident when a wheel falls off, and the accident happens to happen where there was a prior gas spill. The presence of the gas spill is unfortunate, but the car caused the accident, and that should never happen with good design and maintenance. The accident was exacerbated by the presence of gas, causing a fire and injury and death, etc.
Now, to bring it full circle. Replace a car with a train (the situation is largely under the control of a single company), the accident with a train falling off the rails and hitting a gas pipeline, AND the company knew the gas pipeline was there, and knew the danger all along, and still managed to not put on a proper maintenance plan to ensure the train didn't derail especially in a place that has a gas pipeline right there.
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"over-engineering" something can't make it last forever, can't prevent it from eventually wearing out. If that's the plan, it just postpones the day when people suffer. As you say, these things were engineered for the long haul but the people harmed in Santa Rosa fire that the collapse of a pylon caused probably aren't impressed by shear lifetime. Father: Son, some day, all of this will be yours. And since we don't e…
So what's the right answer then? If you build something to last 100 years, you leave little incentives for maintenance and all but guarantee a catastrophic failure a century from now. If you build something to last 10 weeks, you're creating a lot of waste - wasted labor, money, energy and natural resources, involved in producing and shipping replacement parts, as well as performing the maintenance job. You're also ma…
-- My comment about a family above was sarcasm, not a picture of reality. A large organization is quite capable of determining what maintenance is needed for its infrastructure and doing that maintenance. PG&E knew quite a while back that they were in trouble here. It wasn't the long time frame but profit and regulatory incentive structure that drove their decisions. They'd have done the same for short-lived infrastructure. They've done the same thing in the case of tree-trimming; something they should be doing constantly and haven't (note, living in Portland, or, the local utility, Portland General Electric (called PGE for kicks), trimmed trees with abandon, which is better than the alternative).
Sure, designing for maintainability is a nice strategy but fixed lifetime + replace is an effective strategy too.
Basically, the whole line of reasoning about short versus long lifetimes is a complete red herring and the neglect and decay of PG&E's infrastructure was an explicit on the company's part and documented as such and has nothing to do with how infrastructure was designed.
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…
> I'm of the opinion that humans should not be living in areas that burn regularly. Along similar lines of thinking, humans should not be living in areas that flood regularly, or that have earthquakes regularly, or that have hurricanes regularly, or that have tornadoes regularly, or that have insufficient water, or that have excessive heat or cold regularly, or that have high rates of animal-transmitted disease. This…
But people like living near the oceans, mountains, and where weather is nice. That should be okay, but the government shouldn't be throwing money at them. Let them know the area is dangerous, and if they want to live there, they're on their own.
I get miffed when we bail these people out with federal funds for disaster relief. They should be required to have private insurance, with insurance free to set rates based on risk. If it's too expensive to get insured, don't live there
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It actually leaves quite a lot of places to live. Yes an asteroid could hit anywhere but the notion that suburban sprawl out into every corner of the wilderness is justified by that is ludicrous.
It would be a really fun map though, to determine where is "safest" based on an individuals risk profile.
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That's not the question here. Rather, it's about which causes contributed to the problem—blaming everything on the most proximate cause is convenient but doesn't reflect the situation. An extreme analogy: if a car is built in a way that a fender-bender causes a fire[1], how much of that is on the person who cause the fender-bender? Fender-benders are preventable by better driving, but the consequences were massively…
There are laws about negligence and inspection for utilities. There should be laws about forest management, I suppose, but the law is what determines culpability, not the cofactor analysis of the actual problem root. In the fender-bender example, I can see how you would structure your logic the way you have. As an example of how I and others might structure it: The car causes the accident when a wheel falls off, and…
We are talking about what ought to be, not what is. The law falls under the category of is, and does not imply ought. I think everyone in the conversation understands that PG&E bears some amount of legal liability for these fires.
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> When PG&E wants to spend $100M on maintenance, it has to ask government for permission, and CPUC needs to approve this expense. ...and did they ask? It's their job to ask. You can't blame the oversight organization's interference if it didn't interfere.
If you have to ask a government committee every time you go to washroom, you will notice a significant drop in your washroom visits.
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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 specifical…
4 is unavoidable
5 is maintenance
6,7,8,9 are not PG&E
10 is "bad management"? Sure, that's a root cause, though a massively vague one.
11 is not PG&E
So yes if you're concerned about external problems then there are things you can mention. I'd never argue that housing location and fire management and climate aren't factors! But in a discussion of what PG&E did wrong it's basically all maintenance.
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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,…
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> 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?
Here are some articles explaining California's role in forest mismanagement.[0][1][2] I think what's interesting, and a real problem, is that all reasons about causes of the fires is seen as a political stance, when the factual causes of the fires should be not a political issue. All of these things are true. They're not political statements: 1. CA mismanaged its forests by not doing proper controlled burns 2. Climat…