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Electrocuted birds are sparking wildfires
- coding123 4y agoAt this point, if power bills are going to be $600 a month anyway, it makes waaay more sense for everyone to buy minisplits (w/high HSPF), prismatic lifepo4 cells, BMSs, Chinese solar panels, and a few inverters. You'll have the solar paid off in just 3 years with 44kwh storage, probably 12kw array. 4 years if you have someone else install it.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoMy family members on a rural volunteer fire brigade have put out a few fires caused by a brushtail possum being electrocuted on a pole mounted transformer and then fleeing to nearby trees in panic while on fire.
- bombcar 4y agoI know that there are problems with burying high-tension lines (they give off heat, basically) but around here most of the normal "household power lines" are buried and it greatly reduces snow load problems, downed branches, and critters eating them.
- homero 4y agoBut those can't be inspected or repaired easily and they corrode in water
- vel0city 4y agoThere are other issues other than just the heat of power lines. The earth itself has effects of the electromagnetic waves on the wire, burying the lines changes the capacitance of the system. This means there are a lot of other design considerations to the whole system that need to be accounted for and handled other than just burying the cables in the ground. You're then also massively increasing the cost of the cable. The overhead lines use the ground as the ground while buried cables need sheathing. You're also then increasing cost from all the insulators and protecting of the cable to bury it compared to just having the wire exposed. Things aren't too challenging when you're only talking a few kV, but once you're dealing with 35kV+ transmission lines things start getting complicated and messy.
- jamal-kumar 4y agoI hear this pretty much every time that it's brought up around Europeans, and I was thinking about what it would take for us to change this. I think the biggest issue is that you'd have to somehow get the private property rights sorted out in order to dig up thousands and thousands of people's front yards, and that's probably the biggest factor in why we keep on letting this happen to ourselves. It's kinda like the biggest challenge is NIMBYism (Not in my backyard-ism) but front yard instead. The other comments talk about technical challenges but at least you guys aren't massively on fire every year. You would think that would be compelling or something right?
- MandieD 4y agoI currently live in a suburb of a large German city, in a neighborhood packed with row houses and low-rise apartments. My father lives in west Texas in a neighborhood with maybe 50 households, each on their own 1-10 acres, 30 miles from the nearest town. What is the per-household cost to my utility to maintain the buried lines for my neighborhood, versus what would the per-household cost be to my father’s utility to bury the lines to his little neighborhood?
- Glawen 4y agoLines are buried in big cities, in smaller towns the lines are running from house to house, using roofs instead of poles
- c_o_n_v_e_x 4y agoSince you mentioned Texas... In certain parts of inner Houston, there is still pole mounted power. When hurricanes inevitably roll into town, the parts of town with pole utilities lose power for far longer (days-weeks) than other parts of town with buried utilities (hours-days).
- bombcar 4y agoThe homeowner stuff is actually easier than it might seem - almost universally the main problem is cost. People with power lines across their property already have an easement and the connection to the pope/box is easy enough to run underground with a pig and little disturbance. Our town has it because the town has its own town-owned power company and they don’t care for multiple callouts during winter. Other older, richer areas nearby don’t have it. Homeowners are generally in favor of it - as it makes the area look nicer and if you do have an easement it’ll drop from like 40 ft to ten or so.
- mwint 4y agoHow’d they figure this out? Eyewitnesses?
- EdwardDiego 4y agoOn occasion, also a dead possum at the source of ignition. One memorable example, the possum jumped from the power pole into a nearby hedge, so the fire started at the top. Pretty much all wooden power poles in NZ have metal bands on them to try to prevent possums climbing them, but it's not 100% effective.
- latchkey 4y agoWe have a transformer up on a pole at one of our datacenters. Bird landed on it, fried itself and took everything offline. The side effect was that it fried a bunch of cmos batteries in the servers. We've since put a fake eagle up there. BIRDS AREN'T REAL
- KennyBlanken 4y ago> The side effect was that it fried a bunch of cmos batteries in the servers. That's...not how that works. You had a bunch of dead CMOS batteries, and then a power failure.
- latchkey 4y agoThey literally had visible fried marks on the batteries and machines would fail to boot until the batteries were replaced.
- Diederich 4y agoYup. I've dealt with the fallout from 'disorganized' power failures in datacenters before. I don't know exactly what goes on, but I know that a notable but relatively small fraction of our servers had real deal hardware problems after, many not booting up at all. Many fried power supplies, many cooked batteries.
- twawaaay 4y agoIt is not possible for a CMOS battery to get fried this way and the machine be still able to boot. For a CMOS battery to get "fried" a number of components would have to fail catastrophically. There are typically layers of protection that fail open and a much higher voltage needs to be able for them to get shorted which is what would be necessary for high voltage to reach CMOS battery. Now, I am not saying that CMOS batteries weren't hurt. I am saying that it is inconceivable that you would get number of servers that had CMOS batteries hurt and then boot up fine when they are changed for new ones. Your store does not check out.
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- perihelions 4y agoRelated old thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8577812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8577812 ("Bat bomb", 40 comments)
- dredmorbius 4y agoI was hoping Olga might net a mention. She does.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago...and the reason they're sparking wildfires is because there's excess tinder due to human interference with the natural wildfire cycle, and that tinder is very dry because of human-induced climate change. We're also destroying the food sources and habitat for birds.
- MandieD 4y agoAs long as Americans consider themselves entitled to city-like services wherever they can clear land to build a house, there’s going to be a problem. Most modern rural Americans are not active participants in agriculture, which was the case back when the federal government originally subsidized rural electrification. It’s a lifestyle decision for a large portion of the current rural population, and one that those of us who accepted smaller houses or apartments with little to no land generously subsidize with our similar electric rates and low fuel taxes.
- noahtallen 4y agoWhat exactly do you mean? If you mean electricity or internet, I’d have to disagree. It’s important for those to be universal. Water, sewage, or gas, I could kind of understand. But in rural areas, you dig a well, use a septic tank, and have a propane tank. Not relying on city infra. For services like hospitals or restaurants, rural areas don’t have great access to those. It doesn’t feel like there is a problem in general like you describe.
- UIUC_06 4y ago> To better document this fowl play, Taylor Barnes, a biologist at EDM International, an engineering consultancy firm in Colorado, collected data on wildfires across the United States. He and his colleagues used Google Alerts to monitor fires started by birds between 2014 and 2018, using keyword pairs: “fire” and “eagle,” for example. So their "research" consisted of casual Googling? They didn't even cross-check any Fire Service, insurance, or other sources about the causes of wildfires? > says Antoni Margalida, a conservation biologist at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology who has studied the impacts of wildfires caused by birds and other fauna in Spain but who was not involved with the work. and then they quote a guy who "has studied" it in Spain but wasn't involved with this. Then they quote two other studies from four years ago. What was Sabine Hossenfelder saying just the other day about science journalism and why it's so bad?
- dredmorbius 4y agoIn the paragraph immediately following the one you quote: The scientists then discounted any speculative reports, only keeping those with evidence of a bird as the cause. These could include a photograph of a burned bird carcass at the fire’s ignition site, or a statement made by an expert, such as a firefighter, detailing the presumed cause of the fire. Finally, they checked to see whether any particular environment was especially susceptible to these fires. From TFA.
- UIUC_06 4y agoYour point is, they were careful to winnow down the data? Yes, but they started with a faulty data collection method, so if anything, they were probably understating the problem. Also not comparing their results to those from other methods of fire investigation, which surely are also being practiced. Kind of like looking for your lost keys under the street lamp, because the light is better there.
- openknot 4y ago>"they were probably understating the problem" The authors' claim wasn't to give a comprehensive figure of the number of electrocuted birds that caused wildfires, in a specific region over a specific time. Instead, their goal was to establish that electrocuted birds is a significant reason for wildfires, rather than very rare events. This is useful because, even without a comprehensive figure, the article still provides convincing evidence for companies that may consider upgrading systems to prevent bird electrocution. For example, from the article: "Electric utility companies can insulate wires and install spikes to discourage perching; they could also build structures that allow for safer perching on transformers."
- Stratoscope 4y agoAt an apartment where I lived many years ago, I was doing the laundry one afternoon (each unit had its own washer and dryer) and the washing machine started slowing down and speeding back up and slowing down again, and finally stopped. I checked the lights and they were off too. So I called the office and reported the problem. After power was restored later that day, the maintenance guy came by to see if things were OK, and he explained that a squirrel had chewed into the power line. It did freak me out a bit that in the washing machine's behavior I was indirectly seeing the death throes of the squirrel.
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- nostromo95 4y agoI did some work at a utility company a few years back where I had access to a database of every historical outage across the system along with such info as the diagnosed cause. Thousands of outages were caused by “Wildlife (Squirrel)”—more than once it crossed my mind that this file was the last record of those squirrels’ lives on Earth!
- recursive 4y agoSurely the only record. Most squirrels don't get even a single record.
- nostromo95 4y agoTruly those squirrels were blessed.
- pfdietz 4y agoThese database records can be accessed using languages such as SQRL.
- s0rce 4y agoThere are quite a few records of squirrels! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=45933 https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=45933
- DonHopkins 4y agoThey need to send in some ducks and elephants. Q: Why do ducks have webbed feet? A: To stamp out fires. Q: Why do elephants have flat feet? A: To stamp out burning ducks!
- djmips 4y agoI guess some of it is nesting related. There are some solutions to this as shown in this article that talks about Ospreys getting electrocuted. https://www.audubon.org/news/as-ospreys-recover-their-nests-are-sparking-fires-and-power-outages https://www.audubon.org/news/as-ospreys-recover-their-nests-...
- jamal-kumar 4y agoHow much would it realistically cost to rebuild the electrical infrastructure so this doesn't end up costing places like the state of California even more in damages? I know PG&E is pretty much bankrupt over this but I really see this on the utilities companies to replace their 100+ year old infrastructure with something that isn't a massive catastrophic risk factor for everyone, man woman child and critter, anywhere near those buzzing lines...
- bob1029 4y agoToo much. One option is to bury all those lines. This is possible in theory, but not in practice. If you did this, then you also have to worry about all the future issues with power lines you can't see or maybe even find anymore.
- mistrial9 4y agoPG&E is not "pretty much bankrupt" over this .. in fact, during the Enron power scandal, public court documents uncovered a decades-old transfer of cash out of the PG&E books (highly regulated) into new holding companies that were purchasing income-generating assets around the US, like under-valued power generation in the deep South for example. This was expressly forbidden in every regulatory ruling and yet upper management at the time found a way to do it "legally". It has continued in patterns like that for more than thirty years. The recent court-induced liability for death, and criminal conviction of PG&E, are only now changing systems in place for decades. You have been "had" -- source: attorney consulting on the Enron proceedings at the time of the blackouts
- jamal-kumar 4y agoI have a really hard time hearing out Americans who put things in condescending scare quotes it's like your worst national character trait
- mistrial9 4y agohow would you write that? real question
- happyopossum 4y agoHow has this not been a problem for the ~70 years leading up to the dates in the story? Many of the power lines here in CA have been around since the 40s, yet birds are only now catching fire?
- prawn 4y agoMight be that birds have been getting electrocuted throughout that period, but the areas being dry enough to support/spread fire have grown?
- pixl97 4y agoMaybe because we're getting drier and warmer than ever. Maybe because of more encroachment on the UWI leading to more chances of an incident. Maybe it always has been a problem but the cause has not been documented so causation was not associated.
- chrisseaton 4y agoHmm I wonder if the climate is changing or something?
- mistrial9 4y agoin California, currently famous as a wildfire center of the West, the local power company (12 million customers?) was required to run power to rural areas long ago. About 40,000 miles of power lines in California are using cable quality from the 1940s, which are illegal to use now in any way. But the cost to replace those lines directly is not eligible for rate increases to customers, so they stay as they are. Yet cutting trees is a cost that is eligible for pay rate increases to customers (roughly, legalese warning).. so more and more trees are cut. Surprise! (not) Meanwhile "look birds are doing it" is in the headlines.. There is a political panic about this in Sacramento so in 2022, there are some changes, but the details of the wire quality are in this report: A Study of Risk Assesment and PG&E's GRC ; Liberty Consulting Group 2013
- asdff 4y agoI'm of the opinion its only a matter of time before PG&E and other power companies are seized by the state. What a boon that would be for those under private electric, considering I suffer through no rolling outages at all from public electric in CA. Currently PG&E are paying $25 billion to bury 10,000 miles of line (1). Meanwhile in 2021 the state of california had a 75 billion dollar surplus (2), and in 2022 the state had a 100 billion dollar surplus (3). The state could bury those 40,000 miles with one year's worth of budgetary surplus and no increase to rate payers (how PG&E is coming up with their $25 billion). 1. https://www.kcra.com/article/moving-pge-power-lines-underground-cost-who-foots-the-bill/39960842 https://www.kcra.com/article/moving-pge-power-lines-undergro... 2. https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/05/10/california-has-a-staggering-757b-budget-surplus-1381195 https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/05/10/... 3. https://calmatters.org/politics/2022/06/california-budget-surplus-explained/ https://calmatters.org/politics/2022/06/california-budget-su...
- pvaldes 4y agoAnd covering arsonist traces Last week: "we, the government of Castilla will rebeal against prohibition of chasing wolves following other rebel local governments" (Wolf is a protected species, so what they were saying is: we don't want to follow the law). A few days later. Casually, the biggest wildfire registered to date in Spain started in the area with more wolves of Spain, a well known place that had a big touristic appeal, lots of deer, and with registered basically no wolf attacks to cattle. But lets blame the timber for wildfires that start in the tongues of politicians. Breastfeed the crazy, harvest what you sow. It happened every single time in the last years. So currently there is some pressure to blame... for example, the birds that drop dead in the firebreak under the line. Because firebreaks are superflammable it seems. Better than fix the wires.
- throwaway5752 4y agoIt is climate change rapidly drying out areas that previously were not as dry. So you have decades of excess carbon in timber that the land can no longer sustain. You don't have to get into scenarios involving wolves, Castilla, and arson. Same as the birds, it so simple: the stochastic cause of the fire is irrelevant. It could be a spark from a line, a electrocuted small animal, a squatting vagrant making dinner, or even lupine hating Spaniards... but that happened before all the time, and it didn't result in the most massive and intense wildfires in human history.
- pvaldes 4y agoThere is not such thing as an excess carbon in tinder. The normal way is that this tinder will became soil, soaked in water. The more older the forests, the more humid the place, unless we reset it removing the water and the soil, by frequent deliberate burning.
- jefftk 4y agoThis depends a lot on where in the world you are. Many places are just very dry, and before humans used to burn regularly.
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- throwaway5752 4y agoClimate change, that is causing extraordinary, anomalous heat and drought, is resulting in previously unremarkable incidents like birds being electrocuted triggering massive wildires.
- guenthert 4y agoIt might also be the sagging lines methinks.
- scotty79 4y agoHow can a bird electrocute itself? I though isolators separating the wires from anything grounded are fairly large.
- guenthert 4y agoThey are, but a bird spreading it's wings near one of those insulators could reduce the 'spark gap' below save limits.
- bell-cot 4y ago> Birds of prey—particularly those with large wings such as buzzards and eagles—are especially vulnerable to electrocution at power poles, says Graham Martin, an ornithologist at the University of Birmingham. “When landing or taking off from the perch, they are likely to touch two wires simultaneously.” And a bird does not need to bridge a "hot" wire to an actual ground. There are plenty of "hot" to "hot" combinations of wires which are also lethal - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_electric_power
- Maursault 4y agoThe birds had help.
- steve_adams_86 4y agoI’m a sample size of one, but I have witnessed two birds exploding on power lines and found the fried bodies of two more in my front yard. My guess is that this happens a lot. The last one I found in my yard was still clinging to the power line above. The feet stayed and the rest of it shot off about twenty feet into my garden (though not sure if something dragged it there). I can’t imagine how many animals die on these things given how many tens of thousands of km power lines are out there.
- aaron695 4y ago