Comments on: Should Northeast power lines be buried?

By: blert

blert — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 04:05:34 +0000

Actually, John Dough…

Las Vegas DOES have a storm surge drainage scheme.

It relies upon surface level concrete other than a few spots.

It’s so impressive that a engineering video spelling it all out was broadcast on one of the cable networks less than three years ago.

Vegas has a history of getting its 3.5″ of rainfall all at once!

———-

Modern methods refute the assertion that you can’t pull in URD without an open trench. The oil industry can bore seriously large horizontal holes — whereas a mere 5″ is plenty for URD cables.

Whereas the old HV primary loop cables used to have a braided – naked – neutral conductor on the outside; today’s cables come with a sheath around the braid — precisely to permit horizontal pulling schemes.

Depending on the power company, plastic tubing — blue for power — orange for datacom — may be pulled first. Once it is in, the cable is pulled in as if it were conventionally trenched and filled PVC pipe.

There are literally thousands of horizontal drilling machines in use today — a consequence of the datacom boom — all just as suitable for pulling power conductors.

Take some time and visit Ditch Witch and its peers. They’re on the web.

By: John Dough

John Dough — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:15:11 +0000

Michael Adams says……

“Likewise, people who move to Texas from Northern climes are always astonished that we have no snow plows, nary a one.”

We have a similar issue here in the Las Vegas valley. Every flood, transplants from the northeast / rust belt / snow belts wonder why we have no storm drain system, until someone tells them we only get 3 1/2″ of rain annually…

I pee more than that annually.

By: sergey

sergey — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 12:59:48 +0000

Power outages are extremely rare in central Russia, where in all urban areas power cables are buried and aerial high-voltage lines have very robust design margin and capable withstand the most terrible weather. In my lifetime there was only one such event five years ago, when short-circuited transformer at a major grid nod caught fire and exploded. This led to a cascade failure, all Moscow region and some near regions had blackout too. This caused complete transport collapse, all railroads halted, all automobile traffic halted too because traffic lights were dead. More than 30 mln people were affected. But nevertheless this 30 ton transformer was replaced in 8 hours, and less than a day all power supply was restored.

By: DaveindeSwamp

DaveindeSwamp — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 03:52:37 +0000

It’s tough to bury lines in South Louisiana so we adjust and handle it .

By: Michael Adams

Michael Adams — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 02:48:52 +0000

Mr. Frank pointed out that the very expensive choice to bury lines to prevent a once-in-200-years problem makes little sense. Likewise, people who move to Texas from Northern climes are always astonished that we have no snow plows, nary a one. Then, after they have lived here for a decade and never seen enough snow to plow again, they understand. Life is Montessori for grownups.

By: Mr. Frank

Mr. Frank — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 02:11:17 +0000

ricki,

When the health care system and transportation are stressed, it might be wise to take no chances with old food.

By: rickl

rickl — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 01:58:56 +0000

The positive side of an extended power outage is that it gives me an opportunity to thoroughly clean out the inside of my refrigerator and freezer, which I tend not to do otherwise.

An aside: While I know that raw meat and vegetables should be discarded if they thaw out and/or warm up, what about cooked leftovers? I have several sealed Rubbermaid containers of leftovers in my freezer which thawed, but still stayed cool and I didn’t open them. Are they safe to eat, or should I toss them?

By: rickl

rickl — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 01:47:48 +0000

Here is PECO's page about how they go about restoring power: Restoring service safely and quickly Their Outage Map could be more detailed, though. Compare it with ConEd's.

By: Roy

Roy — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 01:25:05 +0000

I live in an area where the residential power lines are underground.

Our substation is about 5 miles away. The high tension lines supplying the substation and the line down the main road is also above ground. The lines go underground as they enter the subdivision and they supply the local 3-house transformers from underground. And of course, each house feed is also underground. (I have one of those step-down transformers in a corner of my backyard.)

We still suffer the occasional power outage, usually whenever some catastrophe happens to either the substation or the power supplying it, or when Cletus gets froggy with his backhoe. (A car crashed into the substation once and that had us down for about half a day.)

We had an ice storm back in January ’09 that had power out all over the state for weeks in some places. Ours was down from about 3:00 AM until they got the substation back up at 8:00 PM that same day.

Most of the delay in getting power back up for a lot of people is the power company having to find and correct a lot of little problems. In a widespread disaster, naturally, they will start with the biggest problem – a down substation or a down main power line – and then work their way slowly out to all of the little problems – a tree down in your front yard that took out a transformer supplying 3 houses for example. All of that takes time, especially when manpower is short, as in a major disaster.

I think the fact that my residential area power is underground – and therefore we don’t have all of the little problems – is the reason we have not had any major outages since I’ve lived here.

I say bury them if you can – especially in residential areas.

By: rickl

rickl — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:56:58 +0000

My power just came back on.

Did I miss anything?