The Glade 4.0

On a related note, this is why I jumped to a different area of the industry. Didn't want to keep playing "find the 35kv line lurking in the wet grass at night" game anymore. Once PECO joined with Exelon, crap really went downhill.

I have no idea how that merger doesn't violate an antitrust. Way too big to provide effective service in the way that the company was originally incorporated to do. I think when a company gets that big they should need to reapply for incorporation- showing how they will benefit the immediate communities they are in.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

There is a proper way to accomplish any task....

I have a question: Why don't we put our power lines underground, like they are in Europe? These kinds of things would never happen again, nor would stuff like the entire eastern US and Canada blacking out because a tree touched a power line.

New lines are installed underground in many neighborhoods. In older neighborhoods and cities, with existing above ground infrastructure and other building and zoning issues, the answer is, quite obviously, practicality and cost.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Most of the power lines around here are below ground. I don't know when they started doing it, but my workshop is in a neighborhood built in the early 70's and it has all underground power.

Underground distribution is great but impractical in a lot of urban enviorments. Each utility has a required depth it must go. They all must inhabit the same governmental right of way. Digging requirements and distances must be maintained. In other words, impossible to do according to the rules.
And repairs would take longer
and people would have to pay to have their exsisting service put underground
and a host of other issues. Ugh id hate to find what's in the ground in some Philly neighborhoods

But I'm happy that most new construction requires underground now.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Here we have a company that manages all of the lines (Centerpoint). Each power company pays them for access.




Expense is the major reason. I would love it if the lines were underground, then I would not have the problems after hurricanes that we have here.

Also the soil is clay, and it expands and contracts depending on the amount of rain we have have lately.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

Safety is another possible concern.

Burying lines creates a problem with digging. You need to get a permit before you start digging because there's a chance that you hit a water main or a gas pipeline. These can be catastrophic. It's much harder to locate buried cable than buried pipes, and digging crews hit buried television and phone lines with some regularity. If that happens and an apartment complex loses their cable that sucks for a few hours. If instead they clip a power line, you've got a pretty big problem.

There is a lot of development going on in the United States. We're not even close to being done with all of our major cities. We dig great big holes for building foundations all the time. Burying power lines just adds more stuff to get in the way a few years down the road when we want to add new construction. Lines that are above ground can be moved relatively easily. Buried lines have to be dug up and then reburied.

All of that digging and burying requires additional equipment and introduces more safety concerns. Yes, a crew member can fall off of a ladder, but do you really think that's more hazardous than bringing out a jackhammer to bust up concrete? Not to mention line damage. A damaged line electrifies whatever it touches - generally speaking this is going to be the ground. Everybody knows to stay away from a downed power line. I learned that from G.I. Joe when I was four years old. Now, if you've got a buried line that gets some damage which exposes copper, that's a problem. It's probably not going to kill anyone walking around over the top of it. Chances are, they're just going to get a slight shock, if that. But if it does happen, the power company is losing that lawsuit. Also, it's safer for their own guys to be maintaining a downed power line that they can see than it is to be digging near a line that may or may not be damaged and they can't see it to know either way.

Another reason is grid maintenance. This, I suspect, is the big one.

Lines degrade over time, and have to be replaced. Soil gradually erodes the insulation. The ground does not protect buried power lines. It eats them away. Yes, it does prevent a tree from falling on the line and knocking it down. That may make buried lines an appealing option in states like Louisiana and Florida with a lot of hurricanes. On the whole, the increased rate of decay and the added cost to dig up and rebury a line overcomes the slight benefit of not having a few trees falling on your lines.

In addition to the power lines, there are also transformers that need to be maintained and replaced. This is where a lot of your outages occur. The way we're set up in the United States, we can send a crew out with a ladder. If they were buried, we'd have a much bigger problem getting at them.

This brings us to grid design.

Because of the maintenance issue with transformers, we would probably be restricted to only placing transformers where they can be accessed through existing manholes if we were going to bury our lines. Otherwise, we would have to put in additional manholes for the crews to get at the transformers, and that requires ripping up a lot of city streets. The decision to bury a line that you know will require regular maintenance imposes design restrictions. Or, you could buy 200 ladders and design whatever the hell you want.

As I alluded to earlier, there are reasons why you might want to bury a line anyway. Maybe you're in a heavily forested region with a lot of storms. Maybe you're in Kansas. Which option is best depends on where you're located. And sometimes you just happen to be located in a region where your customers are absolutely convinced that buried power lines are best and they will hear no argument to the contrary, so **** it, you bury them and then jack up their rates to pay for it.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Fake edit: Beaten while composing. Oh well.

Ice storms are costly, but underground power distribution is still more expensive both to install and maintain. It's also more difficult and time-consuming to maintain and repair. It's also impractical: there is no safe way to work on an energized power line from the ground. Pretty much any maintenance and repairs you have to perform will require cutting power service. With an aerial line, you can actually do quite a bit work on a live line as long as you take the proper precautions to keep yourself from being a ground path.

There's also some serious safety concerns with burying transmission lines. Cutting through a 7.2kV distribution line with a cable-seeking-backhoe is bad, but cutting through a 57kV transmission line would probably vaporize your backhoe. And believe me: if you bury it, they will cut it. It is only a matter of time.

As for why transmission lines run such high voltage in the first place, the answer is Joule's Law and Ohm's Law. If you want to increase electrical power (energy per second), you can do this either by increasing current or increasing voltage. However, even though power lines are thought of as conductors, they nevertheless resist the flow of current according to Joule's Law. By combination with Ohm's Law, we get these two relationships:

P = I^2R and P=V^2/R

Where P = dissipated power (namely thermal).

In other words, if you want to transmit more power, and you don't want to melt your power lines, increasing voltage is a much better plan than increasing current.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Any pooch worth screwing is worth screwing right.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Everyone should live in or next to a city and there wouldn't be so many damn power outages. It's pretty obvious to me but I guess people like having days without power.

This statement bears some clarification. It has a corollary: Even though the ground is thought of as an insulator, it still permits the flow of electrical current.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

That's about the dumbest thing I've ever read.

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"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." - Alice R. Longworth

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash Williams

Why? It would also save a lot of energy, make fast Internet cheaper, and many more efficiencies.