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Heads up – effectively offline for now

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Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#61

Post by paganel »

soco wrote: post #44
paganel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "oh but everybody has outages on the countryside". Everybody definitely still has outages in the Romanian countryside now, my parents (who live in the countryside somewhere in South-Eastern Romania) did have one for two or three days when there was that freakish snow-storm around last November - beginning of December. Not to mention the constant light flickering, I'm wondering how come all the electrical appliances…

I honestly don't know if we can compare - is it a matter of extreme events, or being prepared for extreme events? You know there's that running joke in Romania about authorities being surprised that it snows in winter, although I agree the article shows something quite extreme. So, how "rarely" is "rarely", and is it worth preparing for it?

I agree, but on the other hand Switzerland is on another level when it comes to infrastructure compared to almost any other European country, is not even fair (I've not been to Netherlands nor to the Nordic countries, maybe they come close to that).

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#62

Post by stetrain »

wkipling wrote: post #57
stetrain wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural Australia has its own extremes, but does it get much severe weather? I think blizzards, ice storms, tornados, and hurricanes are more common in North America and it's pretty tough to secure infrastructure against those with 100% uptime.

Bushfires, cyclones, floods, extreme heat and the biggest thunderstorms you'll ever see. Yeah I'd say that's severe weather.

And power stays up while all of those are actively happening?

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#63

Post by Flopoto »

pgt wrote: post #51
madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Here in South Africa we have had rolling blackouts every day for the last 18 years. Of course it has been rebranded as "loadshedding" by the government. The power is off for 2-9 hours every day, even in densely populated areas. Everyone who can afford it, has their own battery and inverter setup to keep lights, Internet, freezers and security systems running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis

Ssooooo everyone who can afford it uses now solar?

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#64

Post by NortySpock »

nvahalik wrote: post #46
NikolaNovak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air. Eastern seacoast areas in Canada and USA frequently lose power due to high winds - tropical storms or hurricanes making landfall. Similarly Winter blizzards. Thunderstorm do sometimes hit power infrastructure as well. North American grid is famously interconnected and fragile too. I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken tre…

> Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air > I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. While power lines above the air are more susceptible to disturbances, they are also FAR easier to deal with.

Easier to fix is a real win.

Europeans laugh at our cheap 2x4 houses too, but being able to demolish a non-load-bearing wall in two hours and build a different one in a day or two means I can literally reconfigure my house when living situations change -- like the college kid needing a quiet room to study in, or closing off a new bedroom area for the sister-in-law needing to move in for a few months.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#65

Post by seszett »

NortySpock wrote: post #64
nvahalik wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air > I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. While power lines above the air are more susceptible to disturbances, they are also FAR easier to deal with.

Easier to fix is a real win. Europeans laugh at our cheap 2x4 houses too, but being able to demolish a non-load-bearing wall in two hours and build a different one in a day or two means I can literally reconfigure my house when living situations change -- like the college kid needing a quiet room to study in, or closing off a new bedroom area for the sister-in-law needing to move in for a few months.

Non load-bearing walls are usually drywall on wood or metal studs in the Europe I know of.

They are probably as easy to remove as your (wooden?) walls, but I don't know anyone who would do it for just a few months.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#66

Post by theblazehen »

Flopoto wrote: post #63
pgt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in South Africa we have had rolling blackouts every day for the last 18 years. Of course it has been rebranded as "loadshedding" by the government. The power is off for 2-9 hours every day, even in densely populated areas. Everyone who can afford it, has their own battery and inverter setup to keep lights, Internet, freezers and security systems running. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis

Ssooooo everyone who can afford it uses now solar?

Not always solar, most have just the battery and inverter, and charge the batteries when grid is available

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#67

Post by kardianos »

throwbadubadu wrote: post #25

> Of course, this is Oregon, so "storm" here is what some people would probably consider "somewhat windy", and "winter" here means that the temperature is approaching -10°C. Hehe, I hope though his time estimate is not correct? Still baffled that certain power strategies and gas dependencies of certain other countries were not too long ago heavily discussed and criticized as the end, with people soon to be dying and…

This is a regional thing, not a "US" thing. There are lots of Dug fir trees (60-120 ft tall, often with shallow root systems. Also many power lines are above ground elevated lines, but shorter then the trees. Most power generation comes from hydroelectric, so plenty of power generation, but in the US Pacific NW, it doesn't freeze too often. Most of the time it is just wet and rainy all winter long. So two things: 1. people are willing to attribute power loss to storms 2. Trees are not generally used to such cold weather, so they will break and snap in this weather.

I'm not excusing such power outages. But this does come from a specific material reality.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#68

Post by Lalabadie »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #39
madeofpalk wrote: post #18

I cannot imagine losing power for an hour, let alone a week. I grew up in rural Australia and it's completely unfathomable to me that anywhere in the first world could go without power for so long.

Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air. Eastern seacoast areas in Canada and USA frequently lose power due to high winds - tropical storms or hurricanes making landfall. Similarly Winter blizzards. Thunderstorm do sometimes hit power infrastructure as well. North American grid is famously interconnected and fragile too. I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken tre…

Québécois here – we have nationalized our power company (it's actually province-scale), and by our current standards, residents having hours of outage is an emergency, and several days is newsworthy every time.

We have east coast weather, lots of empty land between villages, dramatic temperature changes, inhospitable terrain, etc. – we have most of the reasons power companies usually have for defending that days-long outages are normal.

It's possible to build a resilient grid, but not if profit becomes the only incentive (see Texas' issues). Hydro-Québec is steadily profitable, but not maximized for profit, which is key for utilities.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#69

Post by apothegm »

nvahalik wrote: post #46
NikolaNovak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air. Eastern seacoast areas in Canada and USA frequently lose power due to high winds - tropical storms or hurricanes making landfall. Similarly Winter blizzards. Thunderstorm do sometimes hit power infrastructure as well. North American grid is famously interconnected and fragile too. I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken tre…

> Majority of power lines in many countries are above ground in the air > I am amazed at the crews that are rapidly dispatched for broken trees and downed wires and fix it pretty quickly. While power lines above the air are more susceptible to disturbances, they are also FAR easier to deal with.

But when they’re buried they require access FAR less frequently. In cities with buried power lines, power loss pretty much only occurs when the entire grid is undersupplied or goes down entirely like in the 2003 blackout. And those situations don’t require access to the buried lines.

My city has areas with both buried and above-ground lines, and the above-ground areas see a week or two without power every year or so. Living in the buried-line areas, I haven’t seen an outage since ‘03. There’s one area of the city with buried lines that lost power a while back —- when an entire power plant went offline due to a bad storm. And again, they didn’t have to tear up the streets to fix that.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#70

Post by soco »

paganel wrote: post #58
Nullabillity wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read the comment as "and this never happens anywhere", but "and when this happens, it's due to shit infrastructure, and you can and should demand better". If you're in an environment that has strong enough winds to cause issues for power poles... you bury the fucking cables .

And then it becomes very tedious to service them. Or some guy digs a hole in front of his house and suddenly half of the county is without power, with that guy in intensive care. To say nothing of the fact than in 20 or 30 years' time everyone will have forgotten which cables are buried where, because that happens all the time, almost everywhere.

Here they are buried and even I have the map of the cables going in front of my house - and no I'm not from the power company. If it doesn't work in one place doesn't mean it cannot work. Maybe the infrastructure in some places is better because those places were more concerned with the infrastructure in the first place? Because nowhere on earth did those underground cables just pop into existence...
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