Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This electrical transmission tower has a problem

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 479 posts

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#241

Post by [deleted] »

sradman wrote: post #236
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.

I found this series of tweets a very succinct way of describing the failure. Ultimately the key evidence is contained in the images and we only need a few additional words to provide the context. A tweet storm built around a handful of key images serves as a poor-man's infographic. Maybe I just had low-expectations when I clicked through and I was pleasantly surprised that it represented a useful failure analysis.

[deleted]

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#243

Post by seapunk »

dredmorbius wrote: post #55
peterwwillis wrote: post #19

It would be great if the author had just made a blog post and tweeted it. This sort of seems like useful information, which will suck to lose when this tweet inevitably disappears and isn't updated later with new information. Tweets make excellent momentary entertainment. Let's stop using them for anything else.

Threadreader helps (as others have noted): https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1306359385656946688.html

Also better without ads: https://threader.app/thread/1306359385656946688

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#244

Post by petertodd »

formerly_proven wrote: post #225
petertodd wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swapping the wires around at the start or end of the line doesn't swap them frequently enough. It's actually quite like a twisted pair in an ethernet cable: you swap the order frequently to average out the different position-dependent electrical characteristics to get a uniform characteristic. The EU probably does that less frequently simply due to higher density, and thus fewer long stretches of transmission line. I…

TIL. Germans of course have their Verdrillschemata to place Verdrillmasten properly, but it seems they're quite rare. There's a Wikipedia article with an example transmission line, but it notes that all Verdrillmasten have been removed from that line over time.

TIL too! The German wikipedia articles are quite detailed: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdrillmast https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdrillschema

I'd be interested to know if the twists have been removed from the lines. It might be the case that they've replaced the special twisting masts with other ways of twisting, eg taking the lines into a substation and re-orienting them on the way back out. If they've added a lot of substations as the land gets developed more, that may be the case.

Also, I'm sure twisted masts are a bit more expensive. So this might just be a gradual process of saving money as equipment gets replaced rather than any specific engineering goal. There's many other things that unbalance lines, and twisting masts may not make enough of a difference compared to other issues.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#245

Post by throw0101a »

43920 wrote: post #60

This is definitely a failure on PG&E's part, but I'm still not sure how much sense it makes to assign them blame for this fire. The environment they're operating in is somewhat ridiculous - the forest is so dry and overgrown that pretty much any flame source will start a fire large enough to burn a huge area; this specific tower failure is basically just the thing that revealed a much larger issue. With proper engine…

> PG&E does ultimately have some responsibility […]

Don't stop there; remember they're regulated:

> California’s public utilities commission prioritized rates, green power; wildfires exposed shortcomings

* https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-caused-over-400-fires-in-2...

* https://archive.is/czAB3 (paywall)

> A state lawmaker on Wednesday demanded an extensive review of the California Public Utilities Commission to determine whether regulators’ lax oversight enabled neglect at Pacific Gas & Electric that triggered catastrophic wildfires, a messy bankruptcy and exasperating blackouts.

* https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/16/california-lawmaker-d...

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#246

Post by throw0101a »

harha wrote: post #165
43920 wrote: post #60

This is definitely a failure on PG&E's part, but I'm still not sure how much sense it makes to assign them blame for this fire. The environment they're operating in is somewhat ridiculous - the forest is so dry and overgrown that pretty much any flame source will start a fire large enough to burn a huge area; this specific tower failure is basically just the thing that revealed a much larger issue. With proper engine…

Take driving as an analogy - there's a non-zero risk of having a crash, but it's significantly higher if you don't follow the rules (drunk, speeding, broken car). This feels like PG&E was betting it wouldn't happen to them. I think for a utility the risk should be very very close to zero, you can really do a lot of planning around it and make sure that if you're running infrastructure in a dangerous area to take suff…

> This feels like PG&E was betting it wouldn't happen to them.

PG&E is regulated, like most utilities are.

Where are/were the regulators?

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#247

Post by mschuster91 »

Akronymus wrote: post #227
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…

The policy of not clearing underbush at all just seems ripe for even more wildfires.

A wildfire that regularly clears out only the underbush is what was the place historically (and the ecosystems have adapted to this), human prevention of these fires plus climate change has led to fires consuming way more material than they should.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#249

Post by mensetmanusman »

I have been reading about what this means for California, and it’s a really tricky problem of managing to create lots of little fires that make lots of people annoyed.

I hope they realize they can still play a role in fighting climate change with controlled burns, especially if they time a majority of their controlled burns during peak summer. This would let the smoke act as a reflector of radiation over quite a large area.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#250

Post by syshum »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #184
harha wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take driving as an analogy - there's a non-zero risk of having a crash, but it's significantly higher if you don't follow the rules (drunk, speeding, broken car). This feels like PG&E was betting it wouldn't happen to them. I think for a utility the risk should be very very close to zero, you can really do a lot of planning around it and make sure that if you're running infrastructure in a dangerous area to take suff…

>> I think for a utility the risk should be very very close to zero They can lower the risk by a lot, but are you ready to pay 65 cents (or whatever) a KW ? PG&E, with all its faults, has been put in an impossible position: one fire (that is bound to happen no matter what because wires fail) can bankrupt them since it can burn hundreds of thousand of acres, thousands of homes, untold deaths and other property destruc…

While I am a huge supporter of free market and capitalism, due to the massive regulations on utilities it is no longer a free market, at least for power generation and delivery.

Thus the better model for utilities are Coop's, member / consumer owned businesses where the goal is delivering reliable, safe power at a reasonable rate.

Utilities by their nature lend themselves to Market Monopoly, regulations added to that almost assures it so for most people having that service provided by a member owner COOP instead of an Investor Owned corporation will result in a better safer, more reliable outcome

Post reply on HN