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Heads up – effectively offline for now

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Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#71

Post by Twirrim »

dukeyukey wrote: post #53
raesene9 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really not that uncommon in rural areas. I'm in the Scottish highlands (only an hour from Glasgow) and when the winter storms come in, we can be out of power for some hours, there's been a couple of instances in the last year, so not common, but not unheard of either. That's not a major surprise as the power company often has to fix lines in pretty stormy conditions in thinly populated areas. Our solution to it has b…

I'll say though, I grew up in rural West Wales, and I don't think we ever had a power cut lasting longer than an hour or two, and even that only happened a few times a decade. It's not an area known for nasty weather though.

I live just outside of Seattle. Major urban area.

I got so tired of multi hour power outages, I paid something like $20k to have a natural gas generator installed in March 2022. Since then it has run 16 times (based on a quick read of the monthly summary emails), of which maybe 5 were short term couple of minutes.

Even when I've lived in other parts of the US, I've experienced more, and longer, power outages than I ever experienced in the UK, in areas of comparable urban density.

But, you know, what's lots of inconvenience to customers when we could be making more profit for our shareholders, instead of burying our power lines!

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#72

Post by mortehu »

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.

Easier to fix is a lot more important when things are breaking all the time.

This reminds me of people putting water pipes outside the house to make them easier to thaw when they freeze, rather then inside the wall where they never freeze.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#73

Post by madeofpalk »

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

Would you consider this "first world" if you don't even get electricity for a full day?

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#75

Post by hn92726819 »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #13
mvc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a power outage scenario, you're gonna be saving your mobile battery for more necessary requirements. The geeks can wait a few days for their new kernel version.

That doesn't sound like Linus Torvalds.

Are you thinking of Stallman? He's the one that's always on his laptop: https://rms.sexy/ (not nsfw)

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#76

Post by paganel »

soco wrote: post #70
paganel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

As far as I know they have constant problems in places like NYC with just that, i.e. with underground stuff that no-one knows anything about anymore.

> Maybe the infrastructure in some places is better because those places were more concerned with the infrastructure in the first place

Probably, yes, but it is easier to make the infrastructure more user-friendly in order to be handled by not perfect administrations than to make those administrations as close to perfect as possible, because the latter case is only present/valid in only some select locations (for example see how NYC is not part of that club of select locations).

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#77

Post by madeofpalk »

stetrain wrote: post #43
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.

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.

I've seen my backyard spontaneously bust into flames from the extreme heat. Never had a power outage.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#78

Post by sponaugle »

Lalabadie wrote: post #68
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…

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…

Nationalizing our power grid management would not solve these problems. Keep in mind the US power grid is more than 10 times the size of all of Canada in terms of production, and of course far far larger than in terms of distribution endpoints. The investment needed to do things like bury power lines would be hundreds of billions of dollar. The dollars could be spent without nationalizing the grid, but the problem is the money will not get spent. If we did nationalize, it would add another level of government spending and waste that would still not have the funds needed to actual fix anything.

Perhaps if we did less of the world's policing we could spend some of that money on infrastructure.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#79

Post by sponaugle »

kardianos wrote: post #67
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.…

Exactly. It is important to remember that the rural somewhat-backwater state that both Linus and I live in, Oregon, is slightly larger than United Kingdom. Population of about 4.3 million (compared to 67 million in the same area in the UK).

The reality of the power distribution network is a continuous threat from trees, of which there are a lot. Oregon has about 10 billion trees (compared to 3 billion in the UK).

As kardianos mentioned - The trees are tall and the power lines are in the fall zone - which is a recipe for problems in ice/winds storms that don't happen often. Just keeping the trees trimmed near the power lines themselves is a huge undertaking of continuous work.

The grid could be much more resilient - But not for $0.12/kwh.

Re: Heads up – effectively offline for now

#80

Post by sponaugle »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #17
antonvs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A generator is the obvious answer.

Or a battery. It's weird that everyone that replied forgot about batteries.

In terms of complete house power - Batteries are fantastic for a small size use case, but economically difficult in large size. I have 42kwh of battery storage (Enphase), plus 20kw of Solar generation, but that combined is not enough to cover a complete power outage longer than 24-36 hours in stormy weather. The cost of that system is well more than 10 times the cost to get a generator that can do the entire house (22kw Generac for example).
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