20 ms·

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity

as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote monitoring capability beyond whats detected at the line. Operators tend to baby these stations intentionally as their failure could spark massive outages across the grid (again, due to older design considerations) Now this part might get a little political, but these substations/transfer depots/etc... arent just old because the outage would hit a lot of customers at once, but because NIMBY groups frequently oppose building or augmenting existing substations. Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict.

Scoundreller 6y ago
Not just substations, but the conductors themselves. The more current you run through a line on a hot, non-breezy and sunny day, the more it sags. Which leads to more resistance, which leads to hotter lines, more sagging. It’s a positive feedback cycle.
- ISL 6y ago
  How does line-sag lead to increased resistance? My understanding is that the mean-free-path of conduction electrons in even OFHC copper is quite short -- scattering on impurities is the dominant loss mechanism, not the boundaries of the conductor. Is the theory advanced above that the morphology of the wire matters, or is there another mechanism at work?
  - etimberg 6y ago
    The resistance is not constant and is in fact a function of temperature [0]. Line sag is a proxy measurement for line temperature, since things expand as they heat up. From [1], most materials have positive alpha coefficients so the resistance increases with temperature. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conuctivity#Temperature_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con... 1. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-12/temperature-coefficient-resistance/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chp...
    - ISL 6y ago
      The statement referred to heating driving sagging, which increased resistance. The increase of resistance with temperature is well-known -- I was curious if there is some effect that is directly related to the wire sag (changing morphology, somehow-altered surface area/skin-depth, changing kinks at the connections, some subtlety with increased length (cross-sectional area also increases), etc..).
      - Scoundreller 6y ago
        My thought is that after each expansion/contraction cycle, contraction is never exactly back to its previous state. Like bending a piece of metal back and forth, it weakens each time.
      - hanniabu 6y ago
        Theoretically I would thing the sag itself should increase resistance since resistance increases with both length and smaller wire diameter. When the line lengthens the diameter should decrease (similar to stretching a piece of gum or putty).
        leni536 6y ago
        I don't think it should. Heat expansion should slightly increase the diameter.
        mensetmanusman 6y ago
        Not if the length increases to counteract it.
        sharpneli 6y ago
        It doesn’t ”counteract” it. All dimensions increase based on the same coefficient. Same percentage increase on all axis. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion and check the coefficient of expansion.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    My thought was that the gauge of the wire goes down as it sags. The same weight of wire across a longer distance. Maybe I’m wrong and this kind of wire stretching doesn’t impact resistance?
    - etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
      I think sag means voltage sag.
      - ericbarrett 6y ago
        In this case sag is meant literally. https://www.atcllc.com/blog/why-do-power-lines-sag-on-hot-days/ https://www.atcllc.com/blog/why-do-power-lines-sag-on-hot-da...
      - fencepost 6y ago
        One of the more impressive things I've seen with electricity is watching a transmission line into a local neighborhood turn orange and stretch to drape itself across a pickup truck parked in the wrong spot. Took a minute to realize what I'd just watched.
        andrewflnr 6y ago
        You glowing orange from heat?
        fencepost 6y ago
        Yep, only thing that made sense. There was a heavy storm going through and I was driving by at night, during the day probably wouldn't have been visible at all.
    - morei 6y ago
      The volume expands as it heats, so it's not a given that the diameter (gauge) goes down. But the length is longer and that does increase the total resistance.
  - thescriptkiddie 6y ago
    Just FYI, transmission lines are aluminum not copper. Also, both copper and aluminum have positive temperature coefficients of resistance.
aleksandrm 6y ago
> its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.
- genericone 6y ago
  Plenty of businesses are still open, and AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Maybe not at human comfort levels, but they still need to run them for the whole building.
  - war1025 6y ago
    > AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Serious question: How was this handled in pre-AC times? Is it just an issue because buildings are much better sealed than they used to be, or is there more to it than that?
    - genericone 6y ago
      Building design has changed tremendously since the introduction of AC, the number of usable windows and ceiling overhead has drastically decreased in those regions traditionally needing them.
    - nanomonkey 6y ago
      Older, less insulated buildings, breathe better. The more your home "breathes" the more it transfers heat and humidity to the outside, which defeats most insulation, unless the breathing is done though a heat exchange.
      - nanomonkey 6y ago
        As an update, as I'm getting a bunch of down votes for some reason (please comment!). Newer homes and buildings have a vapor barrier beneath the outside cladding. This article on the Perfect Wall [0], explains the benefits and options. Older houses, like the Victorian that I live in, didn't have modern insulation, which can deteriorate if it gets wet, so they were made to breathe, so that any moisture that got into the wall could be removed through air movement. Not to mention that fireplaces required a constant stream of new air to replace that which is pulled up through the chimney. [0][https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-the-perfect-wall https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...]
dtwatljfk 6y ago
> but because NIMBY groups frequently oppose building or augmenting existing substations. Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Can you elaborate? A substation is about to start construction just across the (narrow) street from my child's elementary school.
- eggsnbacon1 6y ago
  the em waves produced by substations induce fear of decreasing home values via an unknown mechanism.
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  I used to work in the contact centre for my country's radio spectrum regulators, we'd get numerous phone calls from people who were terrified of or complaining about the "radiation" part of "electromagnetic radiation" from power equipment or celltowers or radio transmitters. I'd say 1/3 were reassured by my explanation of why non-ionising radiation isn't going to harm your unborn child/give you cancer[1], 1/3 decided I was a lying tool of the Establishment and They Knew The Truth, and the last 1/3 had a genuine mental illness - "No you don't understand, the Prime Minister has authorised the Police to monitor my TV viewing using radio waves and it's giving my family cancer". [1]Unless you're climbing a transmitter tower and exposing your womb to a focused microwave beam at a very close range for a substantial period, then the heating effect probably isn't going to be doing good things.
  - giantrobot 6y ago
    > Unless you're climbing a transmitter tower and exposing your womb to a focused microwave beam at a very close range for a substantial period, then the heating effect probably isn't going to be doing good things. That's exactly what I'd expect from a lying tool of the Establishment.
- amluto 6y ago
  If I were in your position, I would ask (privately, to avoid unnecessarily freaking everyone out) what their limits on stray voltage and stray current are outside the substation and what they do to control and monitor it. 60 Hz radiation doesn’t seem like a credible risk at all to me. 60 Hz conducted emissions, on the other hand, can very easily kill you — imagine crawling in hands and knees two feet from a downed powerline. I would like to imagine that regulators and utilities have this under control, but making some effort to verify this could be reasonable. (49 states permit utilities utilities to ground a current carrying overhead wire at utility poles, resulting in parallel currents in the ground. I’m not aware of this being a documented hazard to people, but it’s a documented problem for cattle. CA is the exception.)
pc86 6y ago
> Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Serious question, why is the answer to this not a slightly-but-not-much-more-polite version of "That's ridiculous, be quiet." and moving forward?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Because the representatives with authority will get voted out by these folks. You have to dance around them, or find technical mitigations to the silliness (substation facades, suboptimal siting, more expensive underground transmission, etc). It's why you're seeing a rapid uptake in battery storage by consumers in California; it's a hack around regulatory and utility failures (and you get a federal tax credit if it charges primarily from your rooftop solar, which is mandatory on new CA residential construction). It is ridiculous, and people who are ridiculous must be negotiated with (unfortunately!). I don't know what the solution is besides applying constant pressure in the appropriate direction. Disclosure: This information comes from my own research, as well as first hand accounts from electrical linemen friends in NorCal upgrading infrastructure.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    At what point is it ok to throw in the towel and say "this is just a city/state reaping what they sow". Sure there's people who want to do things right but as evidenced by a result they're a small enough minority that their voice doesn't matter. It's not like there's lobbyists from BigWildfire(TM) distorting things. The purpose of a system is what it does.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Every time I think we’re there, it turns out we’re not yet there. I don’t know.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  The US legal system allows a great many delaying tactics if you can afford filing fees and base your case on statements that cannot be proven with certainty. The legal system is often set up to require either certain proof or expensive multi-year reviews to overcome such objections, and they are used with great success by coordinated groups of NIMBY folks. Laws could be passed to sidestep all of this and support infrastructure growth, but those laws would trigger the same attacks from coordinated groups NIMBY, who happen to often be wealthy single-family homeowners, and thus more often than their competition have captive lawmakers to resist any effort they disapprove of.
jessaustin 6y ago
Plausible, but then why is it happening in California and not in similarly NIMBYist states? Electromagnetism obsessives live all over the nation.
- creato 6y ago
  My impression is that california uniquely empowers individuals to obstruct projects with myriad legal mechanisms that are easy to initiate but expensive to fight.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- war1025 6y ago
  Rumblings I heard had to do with too-aggressively retiring traditional power plants in favor of renewables, resulting in a lack of adequate baseload power. But I have looked into it exactly zero.
- holycrapwhodat 6y ago
  CEQA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quality_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quali... Ever since it was passed, NIMBYs and other types of individualists have found more and more ways to use its provisions to block anything from happening that they don't want to happen.
meroes 6y ago
I am a technician for xfinity in the bay area and NIMBYism a huge part too I would say. Huge portions of Mill Valley especially on and around Mt Tam had such bad poles and vegetation. Only the last 3 fire years did anything. But literally nothing gets approved besides exact replacement. Nothing gets put underground, or rerouted because (as I understand it) mostly NIMBY groups. And I believe ATT ultimately owns most of the poles, PGE maintains them + leases, and the rest (comcast, sonic, etc) just lease. Marin has the reputation in Xfinity as the worst maintained in the 9 bay area locales they work in.
- paloaltokid 6y ago
  Oh god...Marin NIMBYism is really crazy when it comes to that stuff. And there's a lot of conspiracy theory / 5G type stuff that goes on as well. Strange to think that many of the folks who live there are in charge of a lot of the companies on HN (or are senior execs there).
  - davisr 6y ago
    Well, they're not entirely wrong about the 5G. I understand many in this forum won't agree with me. From https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no... > We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe > The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found “clear evidence” that two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats and damaged DNA in rats and mice of both sexes. The Ramazzini Institute in Italy replicated the key finding of the NTP using a different carrier frequency and much weaker exposure to cell phone radiation over the life of the rats. > Since 5G is a new technology, there is no research on health effects, so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research. Meanwhile, we are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation. These increases are consistent with results from case-control studies of tumor risk in heavy cell phone users. About the author: > Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, is director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been translating and disseminating the research on wireless radiation health effects since 2009 after he and his colleagues published a review paper that found long-term cell phone users were at greater risk of brain tumors. His Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website has had more than two million page views since 2013. He is an unpaid advisor to the International EMF Scientist Appeal and Physicians for Safe Technology.
shortandsweet 6y ago
I'm curious about how you became an apprentice then decided it wasn't for you? These are not easy to get into I've heard. What made you consider it and what made you leave?
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  I can't speak for OP, but one of my coworkers used to be a lineman. He saw the old guys in the job and didn't want to end up like them and also got sick of working outside in extreme weather and became a programmer.
kryogen1c 6y ago
> Wild claims related to electromagnetism what follows is speculation, so you can grab your pitchforks if you want but it will be a hollow victory. I've always been suspicious of the claim that EM fields have zero effect on human beings, especially near high-volts lines. It doesnt seem possible. Our bodies function based on electrical signals and many cellular mechanisms are mediated with ions. do we have a list of all electrically-sensitive bodily processes? could we guess what would happen if their simultaneous activation changed by 5%? what about 45% or more? So much of the human body is not exhaustively understood in the general case, and certainly not in the individual case. idk, i dont wanna go all tinfoil hat here. it just seems like circumstances are aligned for there to be large holes in our public understanding (accidentally or otherwise). note: for whatever its worth, ive spent some time around the 8MW generators on Nimitz-class aircraft carriers[0]. [0]: https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cvn-68.htm https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cvn-68.htm
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Wouldn't we see those effects on the animals and plants that live around the power lines?
  - kryogen1c 6y ago
    observational studies like this would be hard to craft. we'd have to be doing the studies, first. second, we'd have to know what we're looking for. if the effects were subtle, generational, or multiple and confounding, it would be hard to see even if we were looking. also, im sure the sample size is small. not a lot of people/animals spend years 10 feet from high-volts lines. also, people are generally pretty change-averse. if there were proof that our current way of life was harmful, not a lot of people would be interested in discovering, spreading, or changing due to this news, least of all the companies with a profit motive. saving the turtles is fine if all you have to do is use a metal straw instead of plastic, but ask people to inconvenience themselves (less TV, less air-conditioning, less hot water, etc) and you've got a different response.
  - emmelaich 6y ago
    I've seen that claimed. And then attributed to chemicals used around and in the building of power lines. Sorry no link found right now.
reaperducer 6y ago
Operators tend to baby these stations intentionally as their failure could spark massive outages across the grid You certainly know more about this topic than I do, but according to the article, it wasn't the operators that decided to cut back on power, it was ordered by the Independent System Operator. From what I read, Edison, PG&E and SDG&E just did what they were told, and for some reason the ISO told them to cut back earlier than was previously necessary. That's why the experts are "stumped." If I'm missing something, please let me know.
a-dub 6y ago
> its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. ahh yes, seems like the "looking for toilet paper in all the wrong places" phenomenon where there's no lack of supply, but the existing supply lines head to the wrong places. (all the industrial/office stuff is idled, while rural locations are blasting AC in ways they've never seen before)
dragonwriter 6y ago
> as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. That's a nice story, except as the article notes it wasn't distribution but generation that was the problem. Not a shortage of installed capacity, but shutdown of four (one wind apparently due to conditions, and three natural gas apparently voluntarily by the operators) plants.
thedracle 6y ago
I would imagine with the amount of financial exposure these power companies have now regarding wild fires, it's not exactly in their best interests to try to push their infrastructure either.

Scoundreller 6y ago

Not just substations, but the conductors themselves. The more current you run through a line on a hot, non-breezy and sunny day, the more it sags. Which leads to more resistance, which leads to hotter lines, more sagging. It’s a positive feedback cycle.

ISL 6y ago
How does line-sag lead to increased resistance? My understanding is that the mean-free-path of conduction electrons in even OFHC copper is quite short -- scattering on impurities is the dominant loss mechanism, not the boundaries of the conductor. Is the theory advanced above that the morphology of the wire matters, or is there another mechanism at work?
- etimberg 6y ago
  The resistance is not constant and is in fact a function of temperature [0]. Line sag is a proxy measurement for line temperature, since things expand as they heat up. From [1], most materials have positive alpha coefficients so the resistance increases with temperature. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conuctivity#Temperature_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con... 1. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-12/temperature-coefficient-resistance/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chp...
  - ISL 6y ago
    The statement referred to heating driving sagging, which increased resistance. The increase of resistance with temperature is well-known -- I was curious if there is some effect that is directly related to the wire sag (changing morphology, somehow-altered surface area/skin-depth, changing kinks at the connections, some subtlety with increased length (cross-sectional area also increases), etc..).
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      My thought is that after each expansion/contraction cycle, contraction is never exactly back to its previous state. Like bending a piece of metal back and forth, it weakens each time.
    - hanniabu 6y ago
      Theoretically I would thing the sag itself should increase resistance since resistance increases with both length and smaller wire diameter. When the line lengthens the diameter should decrease (similar to stretching a piece of gum or putty).
      - leni536 6y ago
        I don't think it should. Heat expansion should slightly increase the diameter.
        mensetmanusman 6y ago
        Not if the length increases to counteract it.
        sharpneli 6y ago
        It doesn’t ”counteract” it. All dimensions increase based on the same coefficient. Same percentage increase on all axis. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion and check the coefficient of expansion.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  My thought was that the gauge of the wire goes down as it sags. The same weight of wire across a longer distance. Maybe I’m wrong and this kind of wire stretching doesn’t impact resistance?
  - etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
    I think sag means voltage sag.
    - ericbarrett 6y ago
      In this case sag is meant literally. https://www.atcllc.com/blog/why-do-power-lines-sag-on-hot-days/ https://www.atcllc.com/blog/why-do-power-lines-sag-on-hot-da...
    - fencepost 6y ago
      One of the more impressive things I've seen with electricity is watching a transmission line into a local neighborhood turn orange and stretch to drape itself across a pickup truck parked in the wrong spot. Took a minute to realize what I'd just watched.
      - andrewflnr 6y ago
        You glowing orange from heat?
        fencepost 6y ago
        Yep, only thing that made sense. There was a heavy storm going through and I was driving by at night, during the day probably wouldn't have been visible at all.
  - morei 6y ago
    The volume expands as it heats, so it's not a given that the diameter (gauge) goes down. But the length is longer and that does increase the total resistance.
- thescriptkiddie 6y ago
  Just FYI, transmission lines are aluminum not copper. Also, both copper and aluminum have positive temperature coefficients of resistance.

aleksandrm 6y ago

> its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.

genericone 6y ago
Plenty of businesses are still open, and AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Maybe not at human comfort levels, but they still need to run them for the whole building.
- war1025 6y ago
  > AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Serious question: How was this handled in pre-AC times? Is it just an issue because buildings are much better sealed than they used to be, or is there more to it than that?
  - genericone 6y ago
    Building design has changed tremendously since the introduction of AC, the number of usable windows and ceiling overhead has drastically decreased in those regions traditionally needing them.
  - nanomonkey 6y ago
    Older, less insulated buildings, breathe better. The more your home "breathes" the more it transfers heat and humidity to the outside, which defeats most insulation, unless the breathing is done though a heat exchange.
    - nanomonkey 6y ago
      As an update, as I'm getting a bunch of down votes for some reason (please comment!). Newer homes and buildings have a vapor barrier beneath the outside cladding. This article on the Perfect Wall [0], explains the benefits and options. Older houses, like the Victorian that I live in, didn't have modern insulation, which can deteriorate if it gets wet, so they were made to breathe, so that any moisture that got into the wall could be removed through air movement. Not to mention that fireplaces required a constant stream of new air to replace that which is pulled up through the chimney. [0][https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-the-perfect-wall https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...]

dtwatljfk 6y ago

> but because NIMBY groups frequently oppose building or augmenting existing substations. Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Can you elaborate? A substation is about to start construction just across the (narrow) street from my child's elementary school.

eggsnbacon1 6y ago
the em waves produced by substations induce fear of decreasing home values via an unknown mechanism.
EdwardDiego 6y ago
I used to work in the contact centre for my country's radio spectrum regulators, we'd get numerous phone calls from people who were terrified of or complaining about the "radiation" part of "electromagnetic radiation" from power equipment or celltowers or radio transmitters. I'd say 1/3 were reassured by my explanation of why non-ionising radiation isn't going to harm your unborn child/give you cancer[1], 1/3 decided I was a lying tool of the Establishment and They Knew The Truth, and the last 1/3 had a genuine mental illness - "No you don't understand, the Prime Minister has authorised the Police to monitor my TV viewing using radio waves and it's giving my family cancer". [1]Unless you're climbing a transmitter tower and exposing your womb to a focused microwave beam at a very close range for a substantial period, then the heating effect probably isn't going to be doing good things.
- giantrobot 6y ago
  > Unless you're climbing a transmitter tower and exposing your womb to a focused microwave beam at a very close range for a substantial period, then the heating effect probably isn't going to be doing good things. That's exactly what I'd expect from a lying tool of the Establishment.
amluto 6y ago
If I were in your position, I would ask (privately, to avoid unnecessarily freaking everyone out) what their limits on stray voltage and stray current are outside the substation and what they do to control and monitor it. 60 Hz radiation doesn’t seem like a credible risk at all to me. 60 Hz conducted emissions, on the other hand, can very easily kill you — imagine crawling in hands and knees two feet from a downed powerline. I would like to imagine that regulators and utilities have this under control, but making some effort to verify this could be reasonable. (49 states permit utilities utilities to ground a current carrying overhead wire at utility poles, resulting in parallel currents in the ground. I’m not aware of this being a documented hazard to people, but it’s a documented problem for cattle. CA is the exception.)

pc86 6y ago

> Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Serious question, why is the answer to this not a slightly-but-not-much-more-polite version of "That's ridiculous, be quiet." and moving forward?

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Because the representatives with authority will get voted out by these folks. You have to dance around them, or find technical mitigations to the silliness (substation facades, suboptimal siting, more expensive underground transmission, etc). It's why you're seeing a rapid uptake in battery storage by consumers in California; it's a hack around regulatory and utility failures (and you get a federal tax credit if it charges primarily from your rooftop solar, which is mandatory on new CA residential construction). It is ridiculous, and people who are ridiculous must be negotiated with (unfortunately!). I don't know what the solution is besides applying constant pressure in the appropriate direction. Disclosure: This information comes from my own research, as well as first hand accounts from electrical linemen friends in NorCal upgrading infrastructure.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  At what point is it ok to throw in the towel and say "this is just a city/state reaping what they sow". Sure there's people who want to do things right but as evidenced by a result they're a small enough minority that their voice doesn't matter. It's not like there's lobbyists from BigWildfire(TM) distorting things. The purpose of a system is what it does.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Every time I think we’re there, it turns out we’re not yet there. I don’t know.
floatingatoll 6y ago
The US legal system allows a great many delaying tactics if you can afford filing fees and base your case on statements that cannot be proven with certainty. The legal system is often set up to require either certain proof or expensive multi-year reviews to overcome such objections, and they are used with great success by coordinated groups of NIMBY folks. Laws could be passed to sidestep all of this and support infrastructure growth, but those laws would trigger the same attacks from coordinated groups NIMBY, who happen to often be wealthy single-family homeowners, and thus more often than their competition have captive lawmakers to resist any effort they disapprove of.

jessaustin 6y ago

Plausible, but then why is it happening in California and not in similarly NIMBYist states? Electromagnetism obsessives live all over the nation.

creato 6y ago
My impression is that california uniquely empowers individuals to obstruct projects with myriad legal mechanisms that are easy to initiate but expensive to fight.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
war1025 6y ago
Rumblings I heard had to do with too-aggressively retiring traditional power plants in favor of renewables, resulting in a lack of adequate baseload power. But I have looked into it exactly zero.
holycrapwhodat 6y ago
CEQA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quality_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quali... Ever since it was passed, NIMBYs and other types of individualists have found more and more ways to use its provisions to block anything from happening that they don't want to happen.

meroes 6y ago

I am a technician for xfinity in the bay area and NIMBYism a huge part too I would say. Huge portions of Mill Valley especially on and around Mt Tam had such bad poles and vegetation. Only the last 3 fire years did anything. But literally nothing gets approved besides exact replacement. Nothing gets put underground, or rerouted because (as I understand it) mostly NIMBY groups. And I believe ATT ultimately owns most of the poles, PGE maintains them + leases, and the rest (comcast, sonic, etc) just lease. Marin has the reputation in Xfinity as the worst maintained in the 9 bay area locales they work in.

paloaltokid 6y ago
Oh god...Marin NIMBYism is really crazy when it comes to that stuff. And there's a lot of conspiracy theory / 5G type stuff that goes on as well. Strange to think that many of the folks who live there are in charge of a lot of the companies on HN (or are senior execs there).
- davisr 6y ago
  Well, they're not entirely wrong about the 5G. I understand many in this forum won't agree with me. From https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no... > We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe > The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found “clear evidence” that two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats and damaged DNA in rats and mice of both sexes. The Ramazzini Institute in Italy replicated the key finding of the NTP using a different carrier frequency and much weaker exposure to cell phone radiation over the life of the rats. > Since 5G is a new technology, there is no research on health effects, so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research. Meanwhile, we are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation. These increases are consistent with results from case-control studies of tumor risk in heavy cell phone users. About the author: > Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, is director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been translating and disseminating the research on wireless radiation health effects since 2009 after he and his colleagues published a review paper that found long-term cell phone users were at greater risk of brain tumors. His Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website has had more than two million page views since 2013. He is an unpaid advisor to the International EMF Scientist Appeal and Physicians for Safe Technology.

shortandsweet 6y ago

I'm curious about how you became an apprentice then decided it wasn't for you? These are not easy to get into I've heard. What made you consider it and what made you leave?

bonestamp2 6y ago
I can't speak for OP, but one of my coworkers used to be a lineman. He saw the old guys in the job and didn't want to end up like them and also got sick of working outside in extreme weather and became a programmer.

kryogen1c 6y ago

> Wild claims related to electromagnetism what follows is speculation, so you can grab your pitchforks if you want but it will be a hollow victory. I've always been suspicious of the claim that EM fields have zero effect on human beings, especially near high-volts lines. It doesnt seem possible. Our bodies function based on electrical signals and many cellular mechanisms are mediated with ions. do we have a list of all electrically-sensitive bodily processes? could we guess what would happen if their simultaneous activation changed by 5%? what about 45% or more? So much of the human body is not exhaustively understood in the general case, and certainly not in the individual case. idk, i dont wanna go all tinfoil hat here. it just seems like circumstances are aligned for there to be large holes in our public understanding (accidentally or otherwise). note: for whatever its worth, ive spent some time around the 8MW generators on Nimitz-class aircraft carriers[0]. [0]: https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cvn-68.htm https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cvn-68.htm

rbanffy 6y ago
Wouldn't we see those effects on the animals and plants that live around the power lines?
- kryogen1c 6y ago
  observational studies like this would be hard to craft. we'd have to be doing the studies, first. second, we'd have to know what we're looking for. if the effects were subtle, generational, or multiple and confounding, it would be hard to see even if we were looking. also, im sure the sample size is small. not a lot of people/animals spend years 10 feet from high-volts lines. also, people are generally pretty change-averse. if there were proof that our current way of life was harmful, not a lot of people would be interested in discovering, spreading, or changing due to this news, least of all the companies with a profit motive. saving the turtles is fine if all you have to do is use a metal straw instead of plastic, but ask people to inconvenience themselves (less TV, less air-conditioning, less hot water, etc) and you've got a different response.
- emmelaich 6y ago
  I've seen that claimed. And then attributed to chemicals used around and in the building of power lines. Sorry no link found right now.

reaperducer 6y ago

Operators tend to baby these stations intentionally as their failure could spark massive outages across the grid You certainly know more about this topic than I do, but according to the article, it wasn't the operators that decided to cut back on power, it was ordered by the Independent System Operator. From what I read, Edison, PG&E and SDG&E just did what they were told, and for some reason the ISO told them to cut back earlier than was previously necessary. That's why the experts are "stumped." If I'm missing something, please let me know.

a-dub 6y ago

> its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. ahh yes, seems like the "looking for toilet paper in all the wrong places" phenomenon where there's no lack of supply, but the existing supply lines head to the wrong places. (all the industrial/office stuff is idled, while rural locations are blasting AC in ways they've never seen before)

dragonwriter 6y ago

> as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. That's a nice story, except as the article notes it wasn't distribution but generation that was the problem. Not a shortage of installed capacity, but shutdown of four (one wind apparently due to conditions, and three natural gas apparently voluntarily by the operators) plants.

thedracle 6y ago

I would imagine with the amount of financial exposure these power companies have now regarding wild fires, it's not exactly in their best interests to try to push their infrastructure either.