171–180 of 462 posts
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Why didn’t we think to regulate physics before!?
Does physics dictate how you build power lines? Where is physics the constraint on more hardened construction? Physics isn't saying, build above ground and 'low cost'.
Bro.
Come up with a plan and a budget for your buried cables and sell it to the people of Texas who will have to pay for it.
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This wasn't a "grid issue." It is a last-mile issue. It's specifically an issue with the sheer amount of above ground power lines and population density. There is no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this. Plus, what causes the same amount of power outages (wind damage) isn't going to be different between 90mph winds and 150 mph winds. The effects are going…
I disagree, and I speak from experience. We've been repeatedly hit by climate-change induced typhoons here (near the SF Bay Area), and hurricane-force gusts hit both of the last two years. Our area looses a lot of roads to mudslides, and of course we have extended power outages. Having said that, the first year, PG&E only delivered one nine of availability last year, and this year, they're closer to two nines. The di…
What we saw with the winter storms of 2022 and 2023 was nothing close to what Houston or even the NY area gets with a hurricane. Bay Area topography is hilly; most of the wind is broken by the Santa Cruz mountains. I'm in one of the SF Peninsula canyons that's known for being particularly windy, and we saw maybe 70mph gusts and 30mph sustained. A Cat 1 hurricane (like Beryl, Bob, or Gloria) has 75mph winds sustained with gusts up to 100mph. A Cat 5 (like Katrina at the height of its strength; it made landfall as a cat 3) has 150mph sustained winds and 200+mph gusts.
Hurricane Bob knocked out power to eastern Long Island NY for 2 days in 1991. Hurricane Sandy (also a Cat 1 at landfall, but a direct hit on NYC) knocked out power for 2 weeks. The problem is not unique to Houston or Texas. PG&E has plenty of its own problems, but the reason fewer poles went down our winter storms (and they still did go down; Cupertino was without power for almost 2 days) was simply because the wind was less.
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TLDR Texas is hosed as climate change accelerates and there is no will to pay to build resilient infra. Godspeed y’all.
I don't think it's really possible to predict what will become of Texas. One could imagine such a big, resource-rich state finding ways to work collectively for the better of all, though obviously that's naive to the point of nearly being a joke. Still there is a lot going for it in some sense. Politicians may not care about the people, but their beloved businesses also need infrastructure, so at least there's that.…
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What's wrong with below-ground power distribution for metropolitan areas?
Nothing, but migrating to it is very expensive. Centerpoint, the physical electricity provider in Houston, has said it would cost $2.5M per square mile. Houston is 640 square miles. Regulations allow them to claw back costs on the bills. (For example, repairs from past storms are often paid for over the course of several years in the form of a bond that is applied to customers as surcharges) https://www.houstonchroni…
On balance I think they're probably worth it for areas prone to wildfire, but undergrounding all power lines is not a panacea, and there are a lot of hidden costs to undergrounding that become apparent only after they get old and you have to do maintenance.
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New Orleans and Houston are basically built on swamps. In New Orleans, you can’t even bury people below ground, so I doubt you can do much with power lines underground.
It turns out we don't need to speculate: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/64650dded34ec179a83... Most of the wells they sampled are > 100 ft above the water table. Some are as low as 12. The lowest is 2.83ft. Here's the relevant bit of the schema XML document for the CSV the produced: DTW23 December 2022 through March 2023 depth to groundwater in feet measured from land-surface elevation referenced to NAVD 88…
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I'm struggling to come up with a Democrat run city that demonstrates they govern better than anyone else. Chicago? New York? San Fransisco? Baltimore?
Compare those cities to traditionally Republican run states.
Try it.
There is a very very good reason why the best and brightest leave rural republican areas and move to the big cities: it is better in almost every way we measure human wellbeing.
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Houston city government is largely comprised on Democrats and has been for some time. Also, California has dealt with issues related to electric reliability and is by no means a conservative state.
State government. Republicans.
That you for making an excellent point.
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Here's a comparison of Houston and Rome climates: https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/9247~71779/Comparison-of-... Note the temperature and especially the humidity sections.
I'm commenting on Rome though, my city. Not Houston.
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Underground electric distribution is considerably more reliable than overhead lines. Animals digging up the wire is much more rare than an outage created by an animal crawling up a pole and grabbing the line/transformer. Underground electric is quite widely used in the Midwest and is cost effective vs. overhead lines even in sparsely populated rural areas.
Below-ground power distribution is cheaper in sparsely-populated rural areas than overhead lines because utility companies can trench the lines directly through anyone's field or in any random ditch - there's no directional boring required (until customer delivery possibly.) Add in the fact that you no longer risk trees taking down lines when they are unkempt and ice-covered and it is probably much cheaper.