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This electrical transmission tower has a problem

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Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#451

Post by joelkevinjones »

andromeduck wrote: post #272
stefan_ wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is PG&E in California we are talking about? The one that already has rolling blackouts ? California is just a failed state - an embarrassment for an economy so large it rivals most countries.

That's what happens when there's no viable opposition party.

The Republicans have a little more blame for the deregulation driven blackouts of 2000.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Wilson Wilson was the driving force behind the 1996 legislation that deregulated the state's energy market, which was the first energy utilities deregulation in the U.S. and aggressively pushed by companies such as Enron.[28]

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#452

Post by zelon88 »

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…

Honestly for what this cost in human loss of life and financial loss it would have made sense to clean the ground underneath the towers or perhaps install fire suppressor systems the entire length of the line. A few sprinklers at the bottom of each tower and a single water main to supply them can't possibly cost the same $16 billion that a wildfire costs. Even if you put a $100 Raspberry Pi with a temperature sensor, smoke sensor, and computer vision at the bottom of each tower to detect fires. 85 people would be alive right now.

But no. They won't even replace a $12 hook.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#453

Post by EricE »

resonantjacket5 wrote: post #217
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…

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…

> Blaming PG&E is missing the actual problem.

No, two things can be true at the same time.

1) CA sucks at forest management. 2) PG&G was grossly negligent in maintaining their power lines.

That both happened to be true at the same time just happened to be exponentially bad for all the people affected :(

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#454

Post by EricE »

zbrozek wrote: post #394
ComputerGuru wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about all the federally owned land in California suffering from the same “mismanagement?” It’s also not clear to me that - regardless of the party in question - it is fair to call it mismanagement unless credentialed people had pointed out the risk of not allowing controlled burns and the government insisted on doing them anyway because of different priorities, aka mismanagement.

It's not news. Fire management folks have been preaching controlled burns for decades. https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...

Whats even nuts is many types of trees only propagate with fire. Fires are required to open the cones and let the seeds out.

They are actively killing the native forests by over zealous fire suppression and lack of controlled burns. Environmentalism in name only - sound and fury signifying nothing.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#455

Post by bryan0 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #432
bryan0 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> All of these things are true. That's highly debatable. > They're not political statements: At least the first is a political judgement. > 1. CA mismanaged its forests by not doing proper controlled burns The vast.majority of the first within the State are not subject to state management; 3% of the forest land is controlled by the state or administrative subdivisions. 57% of forest land in the state (and 47.7% of to…

I’ll grant your final comment on #3 but on the others I disagree.

If CA was requesting that the federal govt do controlled burns to better protect their citizens from wildfires, and the fed govt refused, then you would have a point, but from the research I’ve done (and I cited 3 random examples above) that’s not what happened. In fact it’s the opposite where organizations which controlled the land desperately wanted to perform prescribed burns, but were prevented from doing so because of local regulations.

As far as #1 being a political judgment: That you think #1 is false and 2 and 3 are true, one can guess how you feel about a host of other political issues, most have which have absolutely nothing to do with forest management.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#456

Post by tonymet »

NamTaf wrote: post #129
tonymet wrote: post #58

this is a multi source problem. pgp failure is one facet. lack of land maintenance is the other . if the land were maintained the fire would have happened and been less catastrophic

Few failures in the real world tend to be a single-source problem. Hence the swiss-cheese model [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

Wow this is great thanks ! How do they distribute liability to the various failure modes? I think it’s dishonest (and problematic) to put all liability on PGE

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#457

Post by bsagdiyev »

biztos wrote: post #286
machello13 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible for more than one cause to contribute to an event. California needs to manage its forests better, but PG&E is also clearly at fault.

Does California need to do this, or the Federal government? Where I'm from in NorCal it's all National Forest except for the parts that are private land. A quick search indicates that some 58% of California forest is managed by the Feds and about 3% by the state. So -- in addition to PG&E being at fault, shouldn't we be talking about Washington more than Sacramento here?

California, federal had tried to do controlled burns and was rebuked at local air boards.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#458

Post by petertodd »

zaarn wrote: post #279
petertodd wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The lines themselves basically do not have twists anymore, it only happens at the special power poles (Verdrillmasten) and only statically (so no moving parts like in PGE/CA). They're more modern and safer but more expensive when you need to change infrastructure resulting in a different load on the 3-phase, so you have to rewire those towers. The upside is that rewiring them is somewhat safe and easy since you don't…

Wait, that doesn't sound right. It's a bit hard to tell with Google translate. But from what I see on the wikipedia article (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdrillmast) Germany is doing exactly the same thing as is done in the US - the US does not twist lines in midair. Only at poles.

What do you mean by "moving parts"? The US lines don't have any parts that move more than slightly, which EU lines do as well (they have too: the lines themselves expand and contract, and move in the wind, so the insulators have to have flexibility).

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#459

Post by undersuit »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #210
joe_the_user wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

>So what's the right answer then?

Fail safely. In this case the failure of the beam should have broken the cables or fallen in such a way to not create a pathway across the non-zero phases.

Re: This electrical transmission tower has a problem

#460

Post by kelnos »

kwillets wrote: post #411
jartelt wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Newsom relies on blaming PG&E and Global Warming

I'm actually very surprised we haven't heard him blame the feds.

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