After Recent US Storms, Why Are Millions Still Without Power? 813
Hugh Pickens points out a report from Jamie Smith Hopkins that "The unusual nature of the 'derecho' is complicating efforts to get everyone's much-needed air conditioning up and running again as more than 1.4 million people from Illinois to Virginia still remain without power and power companies warn some customers could be without power for the rest of the week in the worst hit areas. Utilities don't have enough staff to handle severe-storm outages – the expense would send rates soaring – so they rely on out-of-state utilities to send help, says Stephen Woerner, Baltimore Gas and Electric's (BGE) chief operating officer. Hurricane forecasts offer enough advanced warning for utilities to 'pre-mobilize' and get the out-of-state assistance in place but the forecast for Friday's walloping wind was merely scattered thunderstorms. 'No utility was prepared for what we saw in terms of having staff available that first day,' says Woerner. But is it a given that a strong storm would cause this magnitude of damage to the electricity grid? 'Even without pursuing the extremely expensive option of burying all of the region's electrical lines, the utilities can and do take steps between bouts of severe weather to prevent outages,' writes the Baltimore Sun, adding that consumer advocates are concerned that utilities invest sufficiently in preventive maintenance. 'Tree trimming and replacement of old infrastructure — particularly in areas that have been shown to be vulnerable to previous storms — helps prevent outages.'"
Because Jimmy's a lazy sonofabitch! (Score:3, Funny)
Goddamn, napping on a man lift next to a downed livewire?!?! Who DOES that?!?!?
Why? You have to ask why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because we never bother to maintain our infrastructure. We build bridges and let 'em fall down. We hang power lines off wooden poles, and never bother burying them. We sort of fix it when it breaks, but then it breaks again, but we don't really learn from it.
Re:Why? You have to ask why? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why? You have to ask why? (Score:5, Informative)
It's because we never bother to maintain our infrastructure. We build bridges and let 'em fall down. We hang power lines off wooden poles, and never bother burying them. We sort of fix it when it breaks, but then it breaks again, but we don't really learn from it.
While what you say is true, the real problem this time was that the utilities were caught off guard. When they know a major storm, particularly something with hurricane strength winds, is coming, they marshal their resources ahead of time. Normally for a hurricane they have a week or so to prepare for it and to have extra crews and equipment on stand-by for the repairs/clean up. But this storm came without warning and therefore they are having to repair and marshal resources at the same time. Add to that the problem that most of the states that loan equipment and workers to the east coast for this type of work were also hit by the same storm.
In the end, while improving infrastructure is a needed thing, it isn't the cause of this delay in getting power back on.
Re: (Score:3)
You are right about the cause of delays if this were an isolated instance, but storms are not freak events, they happen all the time. Without even mentioning the smaller outages, we often lose power for extended periods of time (35 hours this time, 48 hours the year before, etc.) Each time this happens there are plenty of people who are looking at longer (week-long) outages.
In other words, this is not the first time this happened, but the next time it does and hundreds of thousands are without power for day
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You ask why is the level of outage the same? The answer is because in both cases trees were toppled onto power lines and power poles snapped. It is important in analyzing the events of this storm to separate the scope of the damage from the apparent response. It could be that the response has been very good, but the scope of the damage was so great that even with a good response people are still without power, days later. I am not saying that is the case, but without a real comparison between the damage
Re:Why? You have to ask why? (Score:4, Informative)
if millions are without power for a week it's more likely something to do with transmission towers
Nope, it's tens of thousands of trees down [cnn.com] across several states. Crews can only clean up so many per day.
Re:Why? You have to ask why? (Score:4, Informative)
"Our problem, why so many customers are out, this one damaged over 50 large transmission lines and 70 substations." - http://wvgazette.com/News/201207010139 [wvgazette.com]
http://www.dailymail.com/News/201207020077 [dailymail.com] for pretty picture
Pipelining (Score:5, Insightful)
Utility rate regulation is a system of assuring the investors of their return in return for doing something the public wants done. US Utility Rate Regulation used to be aimed at making sure that the maximum generation capacity was present with adequate return for lines and repairs etc. Under the George W Bush administration this regulation shifted towards "Pipeline" design for power sales. This stripped the local Coop or supply company of its revenue for service and maintainence. Further changes in regulation changed the position of the large generators so that they have little or no incentive to build new facilities. As such the USA is losing its grid to a very finely tuned profit machine that has no instinct for self preservation. Everything is now and nothing is tomorrow. The result is that the USA is fast sinking into a 3rd world power grid with massive failures and stunningly stupid management. The power rating system optimizes the push towards insufficient demand and planned brownouts. The 1930's regulation design caused the largest expansion and most robust utility system in the world. The 2000's are seeing this systematically dismantled in favor of "deregulation" which in this case is a farce because the regulation exists this is only a matter of how it is designed.
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As such the USA is losing its grid to a very finely tuned profit machine that has no instinct for self preservation. Everything is now and nothing is tomorrow.
That's not true at all. After the utilities refused to do the repair and maintenance they were paid for by consumers, they then went to congress for additional funding. Congress happily granted massive upcharges and taxes for to perform the repairs they refused to do the first time and had already been paid for. As a result, the utilities took the extra cash and tax revenue and refused to do the work a second time. They are now lobbying for a new round of taxes, rate increases, and grants to perform the wor
Re:Pipelining (Score:5, Informative)
Coops and Municipal utilities are nearly entirely exempted from deregulation, and run much the same as they did in the 1930s.
In any event, this storm is a good natural test of your hypothesis: some of the affected states (Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey) are entirely deregulated, and some (West Virginia, Tennessee, the Carolina) are traditionally regulated. Virginia is somewhere in the middle.
Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in Europe, the news reports a very simple reason: a totally dilapidated infrastructure. Most power wires still hanging off of poles, subject to lightning, wind and falling trees. Decades-old transformers and switching stations that fail catastrophically, and sometimes cause cascading failures.
I haven't lived on the East Coast for decades - any power engineers want to comment on the truth or falsity of these reports?
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Interesting)
On moving to the States (East Coast) from Europe I was pretty surprised by the sheer volume of electricity cables strung in the air. For cost reasons it makes sense for the main backbone cables to be on pylons, but new build homes in cities seem to have all manner of cables strung from the nearest pole.
Not only is this unsightly, but it's a nightmare in a situation like this. Residential areas are full of trees. The lines themselves are exposed to ice accumulation in the winter and winds and lightning at other times. Power lines go down taking out small numbers of homes, but require substantial manpower to repair.
These lines should have been buried when the homes were built. Doing it retrospectively will, as the OP suggests, cost a fortune.
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have thought with the age of most European cities that above ground would be more common, that seems to be the excuse around these parts "well, that's just the way they did it back then. live with it." So if buried power in Europe is so much more common, what's the reason for that? Have power lines always been buried there? Was it done after WW2 since everything had to rebuilt anyway? Or did most countries just say "screw these ugly poles and wires" and eat the expense of burying the lines?
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am from Belgium, and I think that the move to burying lines underground started here in the 70's for new developments.
When we moved in '78, we were connected to a grid underground, but the other end of the street, which was much older wasn't.
There is still cleaning up being done. In 2006 we moved to a new house in an old street, and for the new development, one quarter of the street electricity was buried underground, but only this year the last remains of utility poles have been replaced by underground connections. This is, however, in a small village. In our previous house, in a more populated area, the electricity was already long underground.
Such works are mostly done when the sidewalks need to be replaced e.g., or when the sewage system needs an overhaul.
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Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Informative)
Telecom network designer here. I can't vouch for power companies, but as far as communications lines, it really is that much cheaper to put them up a pole that you already own or a paying a pittance of a lease for then to bury them & have to deal with:
a.) Design. The poles are already there & in some instance they are maintained by a different company entirely. Locating existing UG utilities is expensive. Some counties in Florida are now requiring GPR readings before they let you place anything. Ground penetrating radar &/ or LiDAR crews are expensive.
b.) Permits (Railroad, DOT, City, County, & sometimes bridge or Dept of Environmental Protection) And they all want something different on their permits.
b.) Construction. Most companies contract out boring. Directional boring rigs aren't cheap to run. Conduit is more expensive to place than the metal strand that goes between poles. It's quite literally 4 times more expensive to place UG plant than aerial plant & that is before the before the cost of the above items is taken into consideration.
Also, you really can't compare Europe to the USA. Europe is tiny & crammed. We are very, very spread out. Case in point, the *city* I live in is just slightly smaller than Luxembourg.
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Informative)
and have more vacation, live longer and are happier.
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Regarding windstorms, we get a lot. Last weekend's thunderstorms took out several rail lines for hours and killed a couple of people by lighting strike and falling trees. Not unusual for the summer. In the late autumn, the low pressure zones from the Atlant
Re:Also the Drunken BackHoe Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
But the person that digs would have to pay the damages, not the end-user. And that problem exists with fiber too and although a frequent occurrence, it doesn't necessarily take the whole US Internet out or even the Internet for a city.
The problem is multi-fold
- The government put the cables in a long time ago, sometimes during periods where certain products were scarce (usually because of war) and thus sub-par elements were used (aluminum or steel)
- Privatized utilities got the wiring for free on the promise that they would expand and renew and have been collecting money but not investing it
- No government oversight for the privatized utilities to keep on their promise so things have not been inspected for years
- Patchwork as-needed repairs causing unnecessary losses and dependencies
- Increases in demand, decreases in classic resistive demands
- Most of the heaviest things (motors, airco) in homes still run on 110V even though 220V has been available in most homes but most homes haven't been wired correctly for 220V
- Now that the system is on the brink of collapse, the utilities go with outstretched hand back to the government in order to have the taxpayer pay for it regardless
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Insightful)
unlike europe that has gone to war with each other every 50 years or so for the last 1000 years, the US hasn't been bombed. in some cases there has never been a reason to build new infrastructure like in the bombed out post WW2 remains of europe
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:4, Informative)
Sweden just didn't really have a lot of modern infrastructure until post-WW2, especially outside Stockholm. The first metro system in the country opened in 1950, for example. The road system was so undeveloped as late as the 1960s that they were able to change from left-hand to right-hand driving [wikipedia.org] in 1967 without a lot of expense (it would've been a lot worse if they had motorways whose on/off-ramps had to be replaced). The national power grid was only completed in the 1940s. And so on.
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:4, Informative)
Despite not being bombed, we quite constantly upgraded our infrastructure during the last 60 years.
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Insightful)
While I was in eastern France, Italy and even Germany, I saw plenty of power lines on poles in rural areas, so I doubt this is an American problem.England, less so, but mostly because I never left London.
For instance, storms last year brought down a lot of trees in northern France that caused massive power outages as well.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/comment.html?entrynum=54 [wunderground.com]
I think this is less a case of "dilapidated infrastructure" and more a case of EURO vs USA put downs. I should point out that I've never seen a news report here in the US blaming European incompetence when a storm knocks out power.
We have the good sense to blame the storm. A storm in this particular situation was way under-estimated.
Re:Dilapidated infrastructure? (Score:5, Funny)
>> large parts of Tokyo are served by power lines hanging off [flickr.com] poles
Those aren't functional, they're only there for effect when Godzilla attacks.
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Living now in a country where hurricanes (we call them typhoons) are a yearly occurrence, I know that they are no excuse for power outages. Normally typhoons take down some advertising signs, a handful of trees, that's about it. Tornadoes that's indeed something quite unique US, probably because no-where else in the world there are large enough areas of virtually flat land.
Taiwan some years ago had outages, and villages cut off, but that was due to huge landslides. A typhoon dropped about two meters of rain
Follow FPL's lead (Score:4, Interesting)
In Florida since we get nasty storms all of the time the power companies have full time crews that trim trees near power lines. They are going to have to do it anyway when a storm comes and it's easier to do it when the weather is nice for 3/4 of the year than when the storms come in the heat and humidity of the summer. All you have to do is call them up to take a look at a tree near their lines and they will take a look and trim it if needed.
The rest of the country might not get this weather often enough to spend the time to maintain the trees so when a freak storm comes by you not only have had lots of tree growth but it's growth that hasn't been subjected to high winds.
http://www.fpl.com/residential/trees/index.shtml [fpl.com]
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Frequency is troubling (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who was without power from Friday night to yesterday afternoon in Maryland (served by BG&E), I get that this was bad storm and outages are probably inevitable. My problem is: Why are there so many of these outages?
I moved to my current residence in 2006 and there have been at least 4 outages lasting longer than 24 hours. I think I'm missing one in that count, but I didn't want to put it down without remembering it better. But we've had one of these 24+ hour outages each of the last three years.
When I step outside during an outage, I'm greeted with the sound of generators all around me (including my own, but it's quiet enough that I hear several others over it). Why do we all have generators? Because we need them so frequently! I bet if I did a poll, half the neighbors would either have a generator or have power from someone that does. And a good portion of the rest probably have friends or family far enough that they might have power, but near enough to make staying at their place feasible.
Meanwhile...my water works fine. My natural gas service works fine - we were able to take hot showers throughout the outage. My FiOS worked fine after I hooked it to the generator. All of those things have one thing in common: the lines are buried. It's sad that my internet service is more reliable than my electricity. If it's so expensive to bury wires, how come Verizon just did it a couple years ago when they installed FiOS?
BG&E did a "reliability improvement plan" in our city a year or two ago, moving some main wires underground. It seems to have cut down on the shorter power outages, but no such luck for the longer outages. We're tired of it. My wife and I are going to write BG&E a nice letter that basically asks "WTF?" I plan to CC the city council and local papers as well.
Re:Frequency is troubling (Score:5, Interesting)
Buried lines isn't an automatic solution. I lost DSL/phone after a major rainstorm flooded the underground pipes. The power stayed on because it was above the water.
For comparison... (Score:4, Informative)
For comparison, our computers have reset unexpectedly twice (iirc) in the past 12 years. I assume that both times it was due to a short power-blip. No other outages that I recall. I think occasionally about buying a UPS, but I'm not sure the UPS wouldn't actually decrease the reliability.
The difference is exactly what you expect: all power wires here are buried. Heck, our house was built in 1934, and the wires were buried. Why does the US still string them up on poles, almost a century later? Weird...
Re:Frequency is troubling (Score:5, Interesting)
Derecho is what happens (Score:2)
The infrastructure is significantly behind (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is the $$ for change?
Harvested by the already rich?
Re: (Score:3)
Where is the $$ for change?
In the pockets of those purchasing the electricity.
Trim the fucking trees (Score:5, Informative)
I sat in on a town hall meeting where JCP&L fumbled majorly in explaining themselves after taking a week or more to restore power in northern NJ. They gave all manner of excuses, and the meeting attendees pointed out endless examples of dead branches hanging over wires. Their policy? Then don't touch the branch unless the branch is *hanging* on the wire. How's that for foresight? The moment a strong wind kicks up, they lose power. They're so fucking cheap that they fired all their linemen, and now out-of-state emergency support has become the ONLY support.
Shame on them.
Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Nature happens. You guys are knee'jerk reacting. Next story.
Please (Score:2)
My home state of CT had two storms that took out power to most of the state for over a week just last year. Get on our level.
On a serious note, it's kind of sad to see that even after our horrendous storms and massive consumer backlash against CL&P's near-monopoly, there are still power companies out there acting like it could never happen to them, not having a contingency plan for the worst case scenario.
early 20th century infrastructure (Score:3)
I lose electrical power at least once a year. Sometimes it's just a few blocks, sometimes it's a quarter of the city. It usually happens during thunder storms, but once in a while it happens for no apparent reason. It usually takes several hours for it to be restored. This is in a city of 200,000 in the Midwest. Several decades ago, this was acceptable; electricity was a convenience that gave us light and maybe ran some of our home appliances. But today it is essential to our daily lives; too many things now require electricity to work. And yet... we're still using the same basic infrastructure that my grandparents got their electricity from during the Great Depression.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If electricity is essential to your daily life, you might want to seriously consider changing your life. I definitely appreciate the convenience of electricity, and I wouldn't get a whole lot of work done if it went out for an extended period of time, but my life certainly wouldn't be in danger, and I'd even be entertained.
why are so much wires above ground? (Score:5, Interesting)
it's like the wal mart attitude of just buy the cheapest no matter what the hidden costs are of buying more products to make up for the crappy cheapest product in the first place
same here. dollar wise for the initial costs its cheaper to put up overhead wires. and the repair costs are probably low enough that digging holes is always too expensive.
and the fact that when you get to the republican areas everyone is always against higher taxes so they make due with crappy infrastructure
Re:why are so much wires above ground? (Score:5, Insightful)
and the fact that when you get to the republican areas everyone is always against higher taxes
My girlfriends hometown has a public pool that unfortunately needs extensive repairs because its leaking water. The town said it could fix it by raising taxes and of course there was a huge uproar. Then the town said they could fix it by charging people to use the pool, once again more uproar. Then someone discussed buying the pool but said he would have to charge three times as much on admission fees compared to the public fee to make it profitable. And you guessed it the people were still angry.
Its like people expect all these municipals and public services to paid off by money that comes out of thin air.
Re:why are so much wires above ground? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I live in a Democratic area. We have high taxes, and our infrastructure is still crappy. Just because we're being soaked for taxes doesn't guarantee that they'll be used to repair our infrastructure.
Decentralize! (Score:3)
The US electric grid has evolved (Score:3)
Because maintaining power grids is hard. (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously. Look at a map for any densely populated urban area, and consider the scale and complexity any utility provider must face. The problem is enormous and the adverse conditions affecting the utility are highly varied. Also consider that it makes no sense for these utility providers to retain standing armies of workers and equipment to react to rare events.
People need to grow up, and understand that sometimes they will be left without the conveniences of modern life. It is incumbent upon each of us to be prepared for these difficult times when we might have to go a full 48 hours without being able to watch The Bachelorette.
Infrastructure Cheapskates (Score:3)
confluence of effects (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in central Maryland. There is more to this than just a Derecho. We get every two to three years. They're not unheard of.
We had a mild winter and a cool spring. The winter did not have any significant snow or ice. So weak tree limbs didn't come down. There weren't many significant thunderstorms in the spring either, so no significant dead wood fell because of that. Here we are in early summer, and we get the first major storm of the season and all that weak and dying wood that hasn't been cleared out of the trees comes down at once. In many cases it takes the whole damned tree down. This wouldn't have been a big deal if it had been spread over a few storms here and there, but instead it happened all at once.
In so many ways, this was a perfect storm...
Re: (Score:2)
>> NEED I SAY MORE
Yes. You omitted the part about coming up witht he money for your solution.
Re: (Score:2)
And where will they be put?
Many people are very NIMBY about solar and wind.
Re:Without power? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be more than happy to hear wooshing if it meant sustainable power with less interruptions. Honestly I don't see what the big deal is here. Where I'm at there are 3 sets of train tracks about 100yds from my building and I get along just fine. Can't imagine that a few wind turbines would be that much louder..
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Only is that same land is next to a big river, lake or sea. That's not a huge deal because economies of scale mean you don't want a lot of little nuclear power stations anyway, just a few huge ones (maybe small reactors but several to make a large installation and share turbines etc), so there's more than enough sites to fit the cooling needs. However we do have a rather stupid and entirely pointless myth that the things can be placed anywhere, and comparative land use arguments l
Re:Without power? (Score:5, Funny)
imminent domain
LOOK OUT!
It's about to happen.
What's about to happen you ask?
Domain. It's imminent.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When the economy hit the black water tank in 2008, China made a stimulus package. It didn't just go to replacing cars either.
They spent money adding airports, roads, rail, laying fiber, even adding chip factories so they can fab their own stuff if need be.
It has helped their economy immensely. Their factories are highly competitive because their government and business cooperate. They can get raw materials to where they need to go on a scale that couldn't be matched here in the states due to the governme
Re:Without power? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which would require multiple utility corridors all of which would need to be maintained, twice as many "unsightly" poles and twice the cost of running the service in the first place - read higher lot prices, twice the maintenance work to keep the trees cut back, twice as many unhappy homeowners as their trees that they planted to close to the right of way are cut back - "I didn't know it would grow that high!", lots of isolation and distribution stations where even more things could go wrong, and you'd still be at the same risk when a big storm hit.
If you don't like the situation, buy a big diesel generator and wire it in. Then have a big storage tank of diesel close by.
Re:Without power? (Score:5, Insightful)
People complained about outages after Hurricane Whatever a few years ago so the utility came through and cut back everything. My neighborhood looked like a war zone when they were done. They even bush-hogged my flower garden. Then everybody complained about the trimming. Of course, we still lost power for 36 hours last weekend.
Every homeowner should have a generator, a water pump, and a gun. Waiting until you need one to get it is too late.
Re:Without power? (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember - government spending is bad. REGARDLESS of the outcome for us. Government spending = taxes, and as everyone knows, this country was founded on three principles:
1.God is in heaven, satan is in hell, and we are a Christian nation.
2. I have the right to own any firearm I wish, up to and including napalm.
3. TAXATION??? This country isn't designed to have taxes. Why should I have to pay for YOUR roads and YOUR power and YOUR schools? Socialist pig.
Seriously, though, it seems to me that infrastructure spending is one of those no-brainer things that shouldn't even be a question.
Re:Without power? (Score:5, Informative)
> Seriously, though, it seems to me that infrastructure spending is one of those no-brainer things that shouldn't even be a question.
Of course it's a question; why should it be any different just because it's "infrastructure?" If there is demand for it, let the free-market provide it... nothing dictates that "infrastructure" be provided by some entity that maintains a monopoly on the use of force. Note too that "free market" includes voluntarily assembled co-operatives and communes. Communal activity for common good is one thing... forced participation in some initiative, at the point of a gun barrel, is something quite different.
Except that utilities are a regulated industry so free market doesn't apply.
Re:Without power? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because "free market" is a lousy way to provide essential services. If you do, then only high profit neighborhoods will have affordable power. Most rural communities are heavily subsidized by their denser neighbors.
If this was a free market, then utilities would pull out of poor and low profit neighborhoods.
I know; I work for a utility. We have neighborhoods where we will never, ever, "make a profit", because we had to sink so much into the infrastructure that at our normal rates we will never make our investment back.
On the whole we're "profitable" - as profitable as a public corporation can be. But we could be raking in the big bucks if we were private and allowed to abandon "poorly performing" or "unprofitable" neighborhoods.
So your "free market" would take us back to the days when the rich had power, clean water, sewer, and internet, and the poor lived in squalor and filth.
Re:Without power? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that hose poor living in squalor and filth would be stealing from and infecting the rich, and periodically lining them up against walls and shooting them.
Subsidizing basics like power, clean water, sewer and education for the poor works out quite well for the rich overall.
Re:Without power? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gov't spending IS bad regardless of outcome. ALL gov't spending is bad under ALL situations.
Sending First generation and low-income students through college is bad? [ed.gov] I always assumed that more education = less money spent in the long run . . . . But I guess that decades of research (just google that) can be wrong. . . .
The productive USA was built without income taxes, without corporate taxes, without payroll taxes, without FDIC, Fed, IRS, FDA, FHA, EPA, CIA, FBI, SS, Medicare, EI, Medicaid, welfare, without dep't of energy, education, agriculture, small business, commerce, interior, HUD, etc.
Do you know why those things exist? To protect citizens. You can say what you want about the Gub'ment being out to get you, but it's true. Private enterprise in the 19th and early 20th century proved one thing, over-and-over, it will cut costs to the point of being dangerous to its workers, just to increase short-term profits. What choice do we have? Are you telling me that we can trust corporations to do what's in our best interests? If you say yes, please google anything with large businesses and the start of the labor movement.
But how does a country become a productive exporter, creditor without gov't building infrastructure? Because it's not true that gov't is needed to build any of it, what IS true is that WEALTH is needed to build infrastructure.There has to be a REASON to build infrastructure, there has to be wealth first, there has to be a promise of making a return - the profit motive is the driver, nothing else.
Okay, what about us who live where it wouldn't be profitable to run power, water or any other essential service? I guess we're just screwed. And Profit as the driver is an incredibly fine line. Today's attitude of bar-the-door short-term profits at the expense of all else doesn't exactly lend itself to developing long-term strategy. You know what does? Slow-moving government.
Infrastructure? How about the Keystone pipeline - the actual PRODUCTIVE infrastructure that private companies want to build, because they believe it's going to be profitable, it's going to make money. Is that the wrong thing today somehow - making money? USA was built by business, not by any government. USA was built by ABSENCE of gov't, people came to USA for freedoms from their totalitarian governments.
Keystone pipeline = 250,000 jobs is what we're told. NO, Keystone pipeline = 250,000 MOSTLY TEMPORARY man-year jobs. So, if it creates 20,000 jobs that last for 6 months, that's 10,000 jobs, correct? Nope. A job is a stable, long-term position. A temporary employment opportunity is what they're counting. It has nothing to do with long-term solutions. Granted, it's better than nothing, but change the discussion from how many jobs it will create by hyperbole, and actually give us a realistic number. I haven't been able to find one. And I'm not willing to trust someone who is driven by PROFIT to do what is in my best interest. No thank you.
The countries today that do the best are those that removed the most government controls from their economy over time, and USA is moving in a completely wrong direction.
Citation please? Are you talking about third world hell-holes? Or the pseudo-socialist Europeans?
You want infrastructure? You can't have infrastructure, there is nothing to build it for, and if there is something to build it for (like an oil pipeline) you are arguing against it, and it's not even a government project. You are not going to have infrastructure, because you don't have production. You are not going to have education and science, because you don't have manufacturing and engineering.
Wat? Are you saying that infrastructure necessarily equals profits and oil? Infrastructure means fixi
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We are arguing the exact same thing, but from different angles. Your belief is that the free-market is the cure, not a perfect one, but better than government. Mine is the polar opposite. I do understand what freedom is. My freedom is to choose to not let the free-market make my decisions, based on what would be profitable this month. I choose to be altruistic and not say fuck the rest of you people. I choose to think for myself and not just consume. I choose to get involved in government, because believe i
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Re:Without power? (Score:4, Informative)
They can get smashed, but there are some types of panels that are resistant to such damage, and can even be repaired (a little solder to fix any broken connections and a new glass sheet over the top should be more than enough).
And individual merely needs to weigh the costs of having occasional/extraordinarily rare outages like this against the costs of the system.
Re:Wires (Score:5, Informative)
I completely agree here... When I moved back to Europe in 94 they were in full swing moving power cables from above ground to below ground. Now in 2012 it is rare to see an above ground house to house power cable... With most of them, outside of the big distributor cables, underground it is also nicer looking as there are no more power lines.
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It's simply because Europeans are denser.
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Re:Wires (Score:5, Insightful)
they would be difficult to find and extremely expensive to fix. I'm not sure that I see underground cabling to be that much of an advantage.
Look up Time Domain Reflectometry. With it, an engineer can find a line break or insulation leakage to within a few centimeters on a kilometers-long stretch of wire. Underground damage is just not all that hard to find anymore. As far as expense, maintenance of overhead wires is surprisingly high. They have to continually trim trees to keep them away, they have to continually fix broken wires due to storms or cars and trucks accidentally ramming poles, and the risks to passersby from downed wires is a huge liability, with millions of dollars of lawsuits per death on the line. Compare those to the costs of burying a cable that basically will just sit there for years on end, with generally no significant mechanical stresses on it to cause failures.
The only drawback is making the investment to bury the wires. The payback is measured in decades, not months like the Chief Financial Officers want to see. They'd rather spend money on investments with quick profits.
FEMA funding for burying wires (Score:3)
There is generally FEMA funding available for burying wires.
Every time a hurricane hits St. Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands - an unincorporated U.S. Territory), they allocate funding for burying the wires. 80% of it finds its way into various pockets, and the 20% left over goes to balancing the wires back up on poles for the next hurricane.
Quite the little income generator, for the people with the pockets.
Re:Beacon Power (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, let's spend trillions for that extra 1% uptime instead of just let the people who absolutely have to have emergency power buy an inexpensive generator.
Re:Beacon Power (Score:5, Insightful)
We spent 4 trillion on a tax break and two wars and got NOTHING for it. Why not spend trillions on building a huge industry that would make us energy independent? Money spent on building shit benefits us all. The fifties were full of crazy ideas and huge projects and what did we get, the most awesome country in the world.
Also "inexpensive generator" do you mean one that can run AC? So in my house that is 4x40 amp circuits, plus a 15 amp for the fridge, two more 15's for the lights so a ~20K watt generator? So $5k plus installation, that's a two day job for an electrician so lets say $10k installed. Even if that is one in ten house houlds in America that is a fuck load of money. Why not spend it on something that will generate electricity for many many years and give us a hard currency export.
Re:Beacon Power (Score:4, Insightful)
And how many trillions do you lose due to power outtages?
How many trillions would come directly back as taxes?
How many trillions could you make by selling more power because your grid is better?
How cheap exactly is a generator and the switching/gearing to connect it to your house?
Your point is very short sighted, indeed.
Re:Beacon Power (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Beacon Power (Score:5, Informative)
PLEASE PLEASE buy a real transfer switch. It will only add another couple of hundreds of dollars, but prevents the backfeed from killing the guy trying to fix your power.
More like $300-$400 US for the switch, an additional $300-$400 US to get a qualified electrician to install it properly, and $50-$100 for the proper permits. YMMV of course based on location.
Having said that, it is something you really should do if you are going to connect a generator to your house wiring in any way, shape, or form. To expand a bit, a transfer switch connects your house wiring to your generator's power while at the same time disconnecting your house wiring from your power company's feed. If you don't disconnect from the power company, power from your generator can back feed onto the pole and ultimately down the line to where a lineman might be working. At best the lineman will detect that the line is still live and it will take time to track down your feed. At worst he could be electrocuted. No matter what, switching your house systems to generator power should automatically disconnect those systems from the public utility. If it takes two separate actions then one of them can be forgotten and someone can get hurt or killed.
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and if they were to put a new charge on your bill to pay for this improvement almost everyone would riot.
Re:Because of Privatization (Score:5, Informative)
"...recent Public Service Commission investigation of Pepco found a years-long pattern of shirking such maintenance (curiously, at the same time that the company was paying its stockholders healthy dividends). The commission handed down a $1 million fine, its largest ever, for what it called a pattern of neglect. "
Moron...
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Natural monopolies should not be allowed to be private for profit corporations. Your arguments are weak at best.
1st they are NOT heavily regulated anymore. The mines are a heavily regulated industry and the coal companies are able to do what ever the fuck they want, the energy industry has more liquidity than you can shake a strike at and in the real world the have come to indirectly control their regulating bodies. Look at any after the fact analysis of any disaster and you will see that the regulators are
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The NE neighborhoods are so old they predate power lines. Tearing up all the streets and sidewalks in the entire northeastern US would have cost ridiculous amounts of money.
Re:visited to USA recently (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you actually been to any third world countries? I have, and I can tell you that the US is nothing at all like a third world country. In the slightest.
Case in point, I walk into my hotel for business in a third world country *at night*, it's a fairly nice hotel even. The power flicks out. No one is fazed because the computers and some lighting are still on, but most of the lighting is off and I am standing in the dark in a hotel lobby, without a cloud in the sky. Yes, this is due to scheduled blackouts. The blackouts continue for the rest of my two week stay, with perfect weather. That is what a third world country is like.
In the US, an unexpectedly strong storm with hurricane force winds come through. Some portion of people are without power for a few days because it was basically a hurricane without the days long weather track. That is annoying, but not a big deal.
As for the rest of it, the US has a shitty public transit system, but 95% of Americans own cars with relatively cheap gas. We don't *need* a public transit system like you might in other countries. The internet may well be slower than what you have into your house, maybe, but I can still do pretty much anything that anyone needs to do, short of running a popular website from my home computer.
The problems you are talking about are what we call "first world problems", not third world ones.
Re:visited to USA recently (Score:4, Informative)
Well, as an european I would call it typical US that you conclude from one particular third world country, that you had visited, on all of them :D
Especially from one event alone.
We here in europe call the USA a third world country with a first world army. Thats why you are considered so dangerous.
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Again, it's like saying that Europe has a pony, so I need a pony too or I'm somehow a third world country. It's nice that you all have public transit systems, but even if we had a nice public transit system, I'd still not want to use it. I *like* not having to share a train with hundreds of my closest friends when I go to work every morning. I get in my car, turn on my stereo and a half hour later, I'm at work. And this is in fairly heavy traffic.
As for better Internet, I'm not arguing against it, but e
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The last time France had >38C temperatures over 14,000 elderly died [wikipedia.org], many in understaffed hospital wards while government employees were on vacation.
third world indeed
There is no usable public transit system, and what there is smells of urine and feels highly dangerous
Stay away from public transit; that's for 'students' and the welfare state's underclass which are increasingly synonymous and equally dangerous to phone/pad/laptop/credit-card equipped business people. We drive cars in the US.
The power lines are not buried, they are just haphazardly strung up on big poles all over
New construction (<30 years old) doesn't look like that -- power lines are buried. Existing infrastructure does
Re:visited to USA recently (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:visited to USA recently (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:visited to USA recently (Score:5, Informative)
There are also geographic issues as well. East of Houston to Florida is swamp. Good luck burying anything there. There is a reason why Louisiana is known for its elaborate crypts and morgues. There is just no way to bury the dead, so they have to remain above ground.
The US is a very disparate country. Some places the cities are as safe as Europe (Seattle, Portland, and chunks of NYC.) Other places, not so much. One of the main reason why some cities are burying cables now is because overhead lines tend to be a target for metal thieves so they can get their next meth fix.
Re:visited to USA recently (Score:4, Informative)
So is ours.
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Any underground system that has a problem with ground water and flooding isn't built correctly.
Any earth movement sufficient to disrupts electrical line will be local, and will be the same issue if they had been above ground.
When ever electricity is lot to wind people talk about the infrastructure; which needs to be modernized.
Re:Air conditioning? Open a window. (Score:4, Informative)
Why are Americans so obsessed with air conditioning?
Because their summer climate is crap. When you've got temperatures around 100F and humidity over 90%, you become very keen on air conditioning.
Re:Air conditioning? Open a window. (Score:4, Informative)
It's not critical to normal, healthy adults in a resting state, but when the heat index hits 105 to 130 F (40-55C), the sick, elderly, and those performing physical labor start dying. I'd wager that over 50% of the deaths attributed to this storm are due to heat-related illness.
Re:Unions and Liability? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Low skilled workers and 7200 volt power lines, what could go wrong?
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The government requires that corporations act in the best interest of their shareholders lest they be vulnerable to shareholder lawsuits. It forces corporat