Rant: First snow, then comes power losses - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: blueskull
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 12:43:44 am
content: As far as I know, power grid systems should be designed to survive and serve power even in extreme weathers, aren't they?No! A minor snow plus some sleet caused 6 bloody power outages in my community only within 4 hours this afternoon!For God's sake I equipped power loss protected SSDs on all of my computers, so at least filesystems and OSes are still there.I guess I need to fork out a quick and dirty low power UPS project for at least my cable MODEM, switch and Linux server box.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 12:53:35 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on January 23, 2016, 12:43:44 amThe grid, yes, but not the final distribution network. People smash cars into poles, snow accumulates on wires and makes them break, people plug in more heaters than their wiring can handle.It would be too expensive to design really robust power distribution network free of this kind of problems.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 01:07:57 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on January 23, 2016, 12:43:44 amTwo words for you: Home generator. If you can't survive on your own without a support network (food, shelter, water, power, heat, etc) for a few days then you fail as person.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 01:25:58 am
content: How much do we need a new model for power distribution? So much the whole planet's future depends on it. We're playing Russian Roulette with our future, with a one in eight chance every decade of the gun blowing our brains out.Google "Carrington Event" OR "Coronal Mass Ejection" AND "Loss of the Ultimate Heat Sink"

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 01:29:17 am
content: We are slowly recovering for a huge recession, infrastructure was among the first things to be cut.And keeping things on the cheap has at least maintained the existing infrastructure.You would not design a road in Arizona the same as in Chicago for example, same thing with the electrical system, you won't design it to stand Antarctica - Sahara climates it would be too costly.Dallas when it gets a bit of sleet (iced rain) creates havoc, they don't have enough sand trucks because it's not a common occurrence and they can't be prepared for everything for the once in a decade storms.The thing is that budgets are not endless and its easy to blow the current budgets.Just the tires of the cars in NC are most likely out of spec for the current weather conditions, not to mention the batteries, and they probably have their windshield wiper fluid filled with just water.You just can't prevent it all.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 01:33:53 am
content: QuoteThe fact that they should doesn't mean they ***are***.My neighborhood uses all underground cables but outside of it, good old overhead wires everywhere. What makes it worse is that my town is one of those tree cities so if there is slightest wind or rain or storm, we lose power.I have a standby generator but it doesn't last two weeks - average time for power outage here.

author: TheSteve
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 02:24:55 am
content: Losing the AC mains is a great time! You finally get some payback for the UPS and generator you have ready to go. I lose power multiple times per year, just the way it is in some areas with lots of trees.steve@pi-vip ~ $ w18:21:30 up 516 days, 21:06, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05That up time didn't happen by accident...

author: Tinkerer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 06:57:28 am
content: Up to 5 years ago we used to lose power every time a bad storm came through. We thought they were joking when they said they had made upgrades to make sure it doesnt go out.Turns out the power company wasnt joking. My power never goes out now, even during a hurricane.

author: station240
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 09:23:41 am
content: I was without power for 5 1/2 hours recently while the power company did some rewiring in the street.Problem is we've had a heatwave lately and the pets don't cope well without some form of cooling.So I took 1 car battery, 1 USB fan, 1 old PC USB front port PCB, random wires and earth straps. Add some containers of ice, seal the room up and hope it remains cool (ran aircon overnight).16C to 28C when the outside got up to 35C.Last place had a 17 hour blackout, after the new underground transformer got flooded. That time I had a UPS and a crate of spare batteries.

author: Connoiseur
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 10:01:46 am
content: Our state EB's are awesome, CAT IV stuff knit into a noodle cake! WOW! This make electricians across the globe look like wimpsYou must have a bird's brain (i.e birdbrain) to do such an intricate wiring.I guess this will make you swoon and froth in your mouth.But please don't die I've a lot to learn from you guys....

author: VK5RC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 11:02:23 am
content: Rather bizarrely in my state the distribution company ( different from the energy retailer) could charge for "Infrastructure" costs with customers having no say in it and no Government oversight, the result we have now got too much infrastructure, the state Government is trying to enact legislation to solve this mess and surprise! the distributors are taking them to courtOur electricity still occasionally goes out in a storm but we have pretty mild weather here; bush fires really bugger power lines though!!

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 11:35:18 am
content: Solution: Underground power cables.We almost never have power failures. Unless of course some idiot contractor does not acquire the permits and supervision to start digging a hole.Our grid has such a high continuity that the UPS and Backup generator at work have not been used for 5 years.But to be fair, our climate game is at mode Easy.

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 12:18:05 pm
content: I was amazed 3 years ago when driving through country just 2 days after some large bush fires. (Dunalley Tas).Kilometres of brand new power poles were already up and restrung, bringing power to the town.In some areas the green poles were the only thing standing above a charred, flattened landscape.So good work energy company.

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 07:39:54 pm
content: I don't know how bad it is in NC, but here in the Mid-Atlantic were getting a pretty massive winter storm that could include record-breaking snow fall. Some amount of utility issues are to be expected. Undergrounding utilities is a great idea, but it's tremendously expensive, especially in urban areas. There are so many areas in the US with above ground power lines that moving them all underground would cost in the trillions of dollars and take decades to complete. According tothis articlejust doing this in North Carolina would cost $41 billion and take 25 years.The thing about infrastructure is that it simply doesn't make financial or logistical sense to try to acheive 100% service during events beyond a certain severity level. During one of the last big snow storms we had several years ago, people were complaining about how long it took to clear the roads and how long the city was effectively shut down as a result. But the only way to deal more effectively with that sort of situation would be to purchase and maintain thousands of pieces of additional equipment and hire and train tens of thousands of people on an ongoing basis, just to maybe save everyone a day of downtime once every five years. It simply doesn't make sense to operate infrastructure that way. The trick, of course, is to figure out which contingencies require what level of preparation.Of course there are emergency situations where life safety is an issue, but there always will be in any severe weather (or even normal weather), so those should be planned for in any case.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 08:12:41 pm
content: I lived in NC for seven years and it only snowed twice, and one of those times it was just a couple of inches. A storm such as this happens maybe once a decade, it's not possible for the utilities to keep enough people on staff to deal with a major problem that happens this rarely. It's just not financially possible. Power companies from all unaffected areas across North America will be sending people to help out where it's needed, that's how they do it.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 08:30:05 pm
content: QuoteThat's why mutual-aid agreements exist, precisely for that reason.

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2016, 09:36:09 pm
content: Quote from: dannyf on January 23, 2016, 08:30:05 pmSure, but when a historic storm hits the entire eastern seaboard at once, there aren't many people you can call on for aid who aren't already busy dealing with their own problems.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2016, 06:53:35 pm
content: Quote from: ajb on January 23, 2016, 09:36:09 pmWhen we got hit by Katrina, there were all kinds of power company trucks everywhere you looked for weeks afterward. I remember seeing some from Nevada, Arizona, and even Canada. I'm sure there were others.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2016, 12:11:01 pm
content: The problem we've had over here in the UK this winter is it's been too wet and mild. We did have a bit of cold weather last week and a little snow but that didn't last for long. The lowest I got on my thermometer was -4oC and the snow melted soon after it fell. Yesterday it was up at 15oC.The forecast says the same storm you've had in the US is going to hit the UK this week but by then it will have picked up some warm moist air from the tropics and we'll get more rain.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2016, 12:36:39 pm
content: Quote from: ajb on January 23, 2016, 07:39:54 pmThese articles are a fraud. No sane country puts all power line underground. There is a certain size, where you dont need to put it underground, as the cable is thick enought to handle any weather condition. And 95% of the power will go thrugh 10% of the cables. Just put the big cables into protected enviroment, if a block of flats loses power that is a minor issue.Losing power statewise is a huge issue. Basically life stops, economy stops, losses are in the billions.BTW I dont see poeple from Russia or Canada complaining about the snow. Surely there is more there...

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2016, 01:07:48 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on January 23, 2016, 12:43:44 amAnecdotes. You need to judge by the aggregated power availability. Perfection is extremely expensive.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2016, 01:13:36 pm
content: How much redundancy can you get? To each house is really not practical. Feeds to both ends of a street/ Well if someone takes out a pole with their car or a line comes down, at least some of the people on that street will be without power.We got 3 feet of snow over the weekend - not one power blip here. My internet and cable TV have been spotty though. Nothing's underground. my main power line runs across the front half of my property, through a tree, to a pole on the opposite side of the street. Tree's not mine or I would have cut out a space for the wire so nothing rubbed on it. I suspect this will cause me trouble at some point in the future.

author: C
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2016, 04:12:46 pm
content: Under ground is not always better.Maine, USA normal winter lots of snow.Think most water lines are down about 5 feet.Winter storm, It rained for a week. The temperature then dropped below freezing & it snowed.The nice normally safe water line down 8 feet froze.They had to use a jack hammer to dig what is normally nice soft earth.The ice rock was 9 feet deep.Good old mother nature likes to break the rulesBelow ground can be a real trouble when there is a fault.

author: VK5RC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 06:31:59 am
content: The local experience here with underground power has generally been OK, but the local HV goes down one of the main streets to our suburb and the guys are always working on it. One guy was in a talkative mood as I walked past and described issues with the inert gas charging of the surrounding pipe and moisture penetration.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 06:44:06 am
content: Quote from: C on January 25, 2016, 04:12:46 pmThis probably depends a lot on the type of ground. Maybe very porous soil let the rain water through rapidly. I did tests as a child in London clay - actually the back garden of our house. About 1m down a thermometer probe barely registered a change in temperature throughout the year. Its a long time ago, and I can't remember the actual changes, but another probe at 0.5m registered something noticeably seasonal, but pretty minor.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 06:48:35 am
content: Quote from: VK5RC on January 26, 2016, 06:31:59 amIn the UK the power companies are steadily pulling out that old style cable and replacing it with cross-linked polyethylene.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 07:44:47 am
content: Quote from: IanB on January 26, 2016, 06:48:35 amAren't XLPE cables universal for new high voltage installations anywhere but on a catenary?

author: VK5RC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 10:36:47 am
content: This cable and supporting pipes would be less than 10yrs old, I never saw the cables and I think it was reasonably high voltage, several kV.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 11:30:34 am
content: Quote from: IanB on January 26, 2016, 06:48:35 am... and the telco company (BT/OpenReach) is pulling out "last-mile" cables made of twisted-pairs made of enamelled wire covered with waxed paper, with many pairs sheathed in lead.Yes, I grabbed a 12" to show people. I only wish I had grabbed an inch of TAT-7, the last trans-Atlantic coax cable, when I had the chance.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2016, 12:21:55 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on January 23, 2016, 12:43:44 amDepends on where you are.Here in Switzerland, the power grid is rock solid. In the past 7 years living here, I've experienced one single power outage. Power here is nearly universally buried underground, in well-maintained conduit. It's rare to see visible cabling here.In the US, on the other hand, I had my desktop computer and all the network gear on a UPS, because the power would go out a few times a year. The reason is that the US has nearly all above-ground power. What happens then is that ice can build up on lines and cause them to snap, but even more commonly, trees and branches fall and break the lines. (That's why hurricanes cause so many power outages.)Quote from: NANDBlog on January 25, 2016, 12:36:39 pmSwitzerland has most power lines underground. I can't find national figures, but one of the power companies (which covers a mix of urban to rural) says it's 92% underground for low-tension, 60% for medium-tension, and 13% for high-tension lines.There's a lot of discussion here of moving even more of the medium and high-tension lines underground, because people don't want the unsightly overhead lines.Quote from: NANDBlog on January 25, 2016, 12:36:39 pmThe problem in USA is that it's not the big distribution lines that break. In a typical hurricane or snowstorm, what happens is that thousands of small last-mile lines get snapped by fallen branches. So yeah, each one of those might only affect 10 buildings, but when you have 10,000 such breaks in a single city, it's easy to end up with hundreds of thousands of people in the dark. And because many American homes have only electric heat, this becomes a major public safety issue in snowstorms. Unfortunately, every such big storm, a few elderly people die because their heat went out and they literally die of hypothermia.Quote from: NANDBlog on January 25, 2016, 12:36:39 pmThose places expect lots of snow so they are set up for it. The reason huge snowstorms like this cripple so much of the US is that they are areas that rarely get very much snow. This means they don't have enough snow removal equipment and supplies to deal with it, locals don't know how to drive in it so they crash their cars (causing even more problems), and the infrastructure and housing aren't designed for it. The parts of the US that do get tons of snow every year (think Minnesota or Colorado) have no trouble with it because they are prepared for it.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 04:29:27 pm
content: Every decade there is around a one in eight risk of there being a huge solar flare ("Coronal Mass Ejection" that hits the Earth and causes global power grid destruction. (The transformers blow up) We narrowly missed one hitting us on June 23, 2012.We should especially build backup power systems that could sustain the spent fuel pools on nuclear power plants to prevent the problems they had at Fukushima. (the technical name for that is "loss of the ultimate heat sink")There is a significant risk now of a "CME" like the one in 2012 hitting us, knocking out the global power grid for some time, and then shortly afterward, in multiple locations around the globe, the lack of spent fuel cooling could trigger multiple nuclear meltdowns - IF those nuclear power plants could not keep cool water circulating around their spent fuel. The backup could be accomplished with huge solar panel farms. Thats what I think they should do, because diesel fuel could be in short supply during a global power outage.This potential catastrophe is something we all need to think about preventing more!The consequences of knowing about, but failing to address in time, this risk of a solar storm knocking out a great many nuclear power plants cooling is a huge setback to all of humanity that likely would kill billions of people all around the world, mostly children, by raising the price of food to unaffordable levels.Just as any nuclear war would do.Its much much higher than almost any of the other risks we are kept scared with . Addressing it is not rocket science.Its preventable, all they have to do is address it.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2016, 09:28:09 pm
content: QuoteNot all preventable events should be prevented.Preventing once a year disaster is easy;Preventing once in a hundred year disaster may be worth it to some;Prevent once in a million year disaster is hardly sensible for 99.999999999% of the population.As you go out on the probability, the cost to prevent such events goes up exponentially.

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 12:12:19 am
content: iQuote from: dannyf on January 30, 2016, 09:28:09 pmI think you have too many 9s in your percentage. At this point the cost is not going to change as you have already prevented a disaster for all the people on Earth.Just saying this cause I think people shouldn't use the term exponentially unless they mean it mathematically.

author: Mechanical Menace
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 11:19:11 am
content: Quote from: cdev on January 30, 2016, 04:29:27 pmYou can't really shut down a nuclear pile, even if you're not generating electricity with it and it's at it's lowest possible power output you're still generating heat so can still generate steam. Wouldn't a steam powered backup coolant pump powered by the heat you can't help but generate be a more efficient fallback than a massive solar farm for that eventuality?

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 12:49:13 pm
content: Quote from: Mechanical Menace on January 31, 2016, 11:19:11 amThey tried that at Chernobyl in a way, seeing if they could still generate power during shut down. Would work if you had a Stirling power engine and some reasonable cooling method, like a pump driven off the Stirling plant along with an alternator for electrical supply. Probably would need a few redundant units though, and you would need some extra space in the plant, but would work with the shutdown heat to run cooling even with a 30C above ambient heat source, though at very poor efficiency. Problem is the pool is not pressurised, and you would want to keep the main plant temperature under 200C and still pressurised to made it usable. That falls in still running, and you need also the feedwater make up units to keep it that pressure so there is no boiling, which might need more power than the standby plant can generate with only moderate system leakage.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 03:01:13 pm
content: Don't they build new reactors in a way that even if all power and people are lost the core will keep below meltdown due to physics as long as there is coolant in the containment system?I recall reading an article about self-stabilization of reactor cores some time ago.