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I disagree, and I speak from experience. We've been repeatedly hit by climate-change induced typhoons here (near the SF Bay Area), and hurricane-force gusts hi
by hedora 2y ago
I disagree, and I speak from experience.
We've been repeatedly hit by climate-change induced typhoons here (near the SF Bay Area), and hurricane-force gusts hit both of the last two years. Our area looses a lot of roads to mudslides, and of course we have extended power outages.
Having said that, the first year, PG&E only delivered one nine of availability last year, and this year, they're closer to two nines.
The difference is that they actually trimmed the trees (residents have been asking for this for years), and they replaced most of the Regan-era telephone poles (the old ones had bent into all sorts of interesting arcs, and the data lines used be held up by being tied to nearby tree branches).
So, for a Cat-1 to be as bad as it is in Texas, I assume the issue there is the same as here in California: Graft at the utility company, and corruption at the state house.
We know for sure that Texas has these issues because they continue to refuse to winterize the grid. They could do so at minimal cost -- I think they just have to buy more expensive grease and install insulation sleeves when they run above ground pipes -- and the vast majority of states in the US do this. As a result, every time they get a 10-year snow storm the whole state loses power (and those storms are probably now 1-5 year storms thanks to climate change). This has been a well-publicized problem there since at least the 1990's, so they've had more than enough time to fix it.
The last time they had a big winter storm, the power outage cascaded to a catastrophic failure at a refinery that feeds 20% of global PVC production. This is why you couldn't get materials to repair drainage or plumbing during the tail end of covid.
As to your point about it being an urban area:
The higher the population density, the easier the technical challenges become for this stuff. The amount of line to maintain per customer drops, and so does the density of hazardous trees, landslides, etc. The main challenges are around permitting, etc, but those processes are supposedly very lax in Texas (which is a good thing IMO).
I do agree they should be burying lines whenever possible. Everyone should do that. Modern equipment means it's a lot easier than you'd think.
- gunapologist99 2y agoHouston actually has relatively low population density compared to other metro areas with only 3,842 people per square mile, and across the MSA (Houston is extremely spread out), that number is much lower. (Compare to, for example, Union City, NJ, with 54,138 persons/sq mile.) There are some 7.5 million people spread out across more than 10,000 square miles across the greater Houston area. Also, the water table is very high, and hurricanes completely flood entire areas, so transformers etc are often completely underwater. It's just not feasible to bury sensitive equipment when the entire area is under six or ten feet of water.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoTLDR Texas is hosed as climate change accelerates and there is no will to pay to build resilient infra. Godspeed y’all.
- silverquiet 2y agoI don't think it's really possible to predict what will become of Texas. One could imagine such a big, resource-rich state finding ways to work collectively for the better of all, though obviously that's naive to the point of nearly being a joke. Still there is a lot going for it in some sense. Politicians may not care about the people, but their beloved businesses also need infrastructure, so at least there's that. I've lived in Texas my entire life and there are aspects of it that I love, but I do have vague plans to move north once my remaining ties to the state dissolve.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoWould you bet your financial success or life outcome on Texas making rational policy leading to potentially more favorable outcomes for its citizens (based on all available evidence)?
- alexk307 2y agoDid you read OP's post?
- toomuchtodo 2y agoYes. I am also familiar with the technical challenges and cost of improving last mile electrical distribution to withstand hurricane force conditions where burial is not an option (whether because of a high water table or potential surge conditions, where equipment is suspended at a height above ground level on permanent scaffolding or pedestals). It is expensive, not impossible. It is a choice, and there is a cost. It’s cold, hard economics. The politics are whether to spend or not spend, and the outcome of that decision.
- ethagknight 2y agoYou lost me at “climate change induced typhoon”. Comparing an “Bay Area typhoon” (very hilly) to low and flat Houston with a direct hit is disingenuous at best.
- wannacboatmovie 2y agoDon't worry, he saw a clogged storm drain in Pac Heights once, he's got this.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoHe does speak from experience!
- jwkpiano1 2y agoThe elevation of Houston is _higher_ than the elevation of SF. Yes, there are many hills, and the _max_ elevation is obviously higher, but there are also plenty of low lying areas and areas at sea level.
- ethagknight 2y agoHills make a huge difference impeding winds across the land, storm water drains much faster. Has a hurricane ever hit San Francisco? It’s not a real comparison, typhoons in the area, to a direct hurricane. It’s also extremely expensive to mitigate, maybe it should be done, but the GP was hand waving it all away. Commenter even “disagreed from experience” and then cited a totally different experience.
- jwkpiano1 2y agoTrue, but none of that contradicts what I said.
- ethagknight 2y agoHouston geography is just so so different from San Francisco, it's a goofy comparison to make. Both are major coastal cities, one being slightly higher than other is not really material, and thats about where the comparison ends. The impact to Houston is a drainage matter, no where for massive quantities of water to go.
- nostrademons 2y agoAlso live in SF Bay Area, but my sister lived in Houston for ~20 years and I grew up in the Northeast (and got hit by hurricanes Gloria and Bob as a child). What we saw with the winter storms of 2022 and 2023 was nothing close to what Houston or even the NY area gets with a hurricane. Bay Area topography is hilly; most of the wind is broken by the Santa Cruz mountains. I'm in one of the SF Peninsula canyons that's known for being particularly windy, and we saw maybe 70mph gusts and 30mph sustained. A Cat 1 hurricane (like Beryl, Bob, or Gloria) has 75mph winds sustained with gusts up to 100mph. A Cat 5 (like Katrina at the height of its strength; it made landfall as a cat 3) has 150mph sustained winds and 200+mph gusts. Hurricane Bob knocked out power to eastern Long Island NY for 2 days in 1991. Hurricane Sandy (also a Cat 1 at landfall, but a direct hit on NYC) knocked out power for 2 weeks. The problem is not unique to Houston or Texas. PG&E has plenty of its own problems, but the reason fewer poles went down our winter storms (and they still did go down; Cupertino was without power for almost 2 days) was simply because the wind was less.
- alexk307 2y agoWhat are climate-change induced typhoons? How are those quantified?
- ifyoubuildit 2y agoI also wondered this. How do you tell the difference between a climate change induced typhoon and the alternative? Maybe its obvious to the down voters, but you have at least two people here you could potentially teach something to.
- alexk307 2y agoYou don't - that's the point.
- Dylan16807 2y agoYou use statistics. Demanding the answer for specific storms is like demanding to know whether a smoker's lung cancer was caused by smoking. Maybe?? But we know in aggregate smoking caused an enormous amount of deaths. We can measure the number of smoking-induced deaths, and the number of climate-changed-induced storms.
- alexk307 2y agoI understand the concept, but please show me the statistics that show that storms are increasing in quantity or severity on a timescale consistent with anthropogenic warming. OP said that specific storms are climate induced - there is no way of saying that a storm formed due to climate change when it would not have formed in the absence.
- Dylan16807 2y agoThey said a multi year batch of storms was climate change induced. That's significantly more valid than saying a specific normal-size storm is. The dice even out as you add more samples. I don't want to look for papers right now. Ask them about the claim that "This has been a well-publicized problem there since at least the 1990's", not me. My point is that you definitely can prove (or disprove) it. Your claim that it's unprovable on purpose or something is not right.
- dehrmann 2y ago> climate-change induced typhoons here (near the SF Bay Area), and hurricane-force gusts What the Bay Area has seen is nothing like actual hurricanes.
- jjav 2y ago> What the Bay Area has seen is nothing like actual hurricanes. In terms of wind speed, quite similar. A category 1 hurricane is only 74-95mph winds. This is pretty mild, as far as storms go. I've been through many, many category 1 hurricanes and it's not much of a storm. Things only start getting scary around category 3. I have several friends who live high in the hills in the Santa Cruz mountains and they regularly see wind speeds in the range of cat 1 hurricanes.
- lolinder 2y agoTo quantify the winds we're talking about, the record-setting winds in the Bay Area this February peaked at 100mph gusts, with 18 stations recording values between 80mph and 100mph [0] (Pablo Point, out in the middle of the Pacific, recorded gusts of 102mph, but I'd consider that an outlier). Notably, all stations recording values higher than 80mph are on mountain peaks, not anywhere near population centers. In most of the Bay Area the gusts didn't exceed 60mph [1]. During Hurricane Beryl, 17 weather stations in the (very flat) Houston area recorded wind gusts in excess of 100mph. 30 stations recorded gusts in excess of 90mph [2]. Beryl's sustained winds were about 65mph, in excess of the gusts that most of the Bay Area experienced in that February storm. All of which is to say: other commenters are right, it's useless to look at what you experienced in the Bay Area and compare it to even a small hurricane. [0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/05/map-where-wind-reached-102-mph-and-other-peak-bay-area-gusts/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/02/05/map-where-wind-reache... [1] https://underscoresf.com/the-belated-weekend-catch-up-record-breaking-winds-blew-across-san-francisco-bay-area/ https://underscoresf.com/the-belated-weekend-catch-up-record... [2] https://houstonlanding.org/these-houston-areas-received-the-strongest-wind-gusts-during-hurricane-beryl/ https://houstonlanding.org/these-houston-areas-received-the-...
- sdenton4 2y agoConsider earthquakes. Preparation and infrastructure are what matter. If you don't do the prep, you'll have a hundred thousand dead from a 6.0. But if you do the prep, you'll have relatively trivial damage from a 7.0. Texas power, thanks to their 'we don't need no regulamazations' attitude, has shown itself to be woefully underreported repeatedly in the last few years.
- roenxi 2y agoI can't walk by this comment without noting that their 'we don't need no regulamazations' attitude resulted in a large populous state which people want to migrate to. The other large US state, California, has electricity prices that appear to be 2x higher [0]. And their migratory trends are not encouraging. People underestimate the heavy burden of a strong regulatory state. High standards and high costs. All in it the Texas approach looks to be pretty good even if it means you have to be prepared for an emergency. I actually lost power for 24 hours recently so I can sympathise; a widespread outage would be horrific for an unprepared person. But being prepared for emergencies is a much more resilient approach in the long term and better than the quite substantial risk of overregulating. They have a very healthy attitude. [0] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
- reaperman 2y ago> So, for a Cat-1 to be as bad as it is in Texas, I assume the issue there is the same as here in California The CEO of Centerpoint was the CFO of PG&E and the CFO of Centerpoint came from PG&E as well. So you're more right than you know!
- holbrad 2y ago>climate-change induced typhoons Tell me your uninformed, without telling me.
- richrichie 2y ago[flagged]
- m463 2y agoCan they bury power lines in houston? I thought the water table was pretty close to the surface. (if you want a swimming pool, dig a hole!) EDIT: ok I looked it seems there are two kinds of lines - transmission lines and distribution lines. Distribution lines can be buried, but it might not be good in hurricane prone areas that are prone to flooding. transmission lines are hard/expensive to bury, since the insulation requirements are technically challenging. The hurricane seems to have taken out some large transmission lines in addition to distribution lines. I wonder if maybe redundant lines might be cheaper than buried lines?
- ipython 2y agoFailed buried transmission wires caused the famous five week blackout of Auckland NZ in 1998 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Auckland_power_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Auckland_power_crisis
- Gibbon1 2y ago> A 1998 ministerial inquiry criticized both the Auckland Electric Power Board and its privatized successor, which had halved its staff after taking over in October 1993 > The inquiry report also said, "Internal expertise in 110 kV assets was not maintained at a sufficient level" It's almost as if you put public infrastructure under the control of people who only care about collecting short term rents bad things happen. Other comment California has underground transmission lines. And yes sometimes they fail. Had a smaller one oops in my old neighborhood in San Francisco a few years ago. PG&E is spending about $20b to underground 10,000 miles of lines in fire prone areas. Seems like a lot but it's $40/foot. Still that's only 10% of the total. https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/article/2021/09/california-utility-to-underground-10000-mi-of-power-lines https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering...
- Terr_ 2y ago> The main challenges are around permitting In other words, politics scales the other way: The more people you have in the same spot using the same resource, the more different ways they can be unhappy with the management of that resource.
- sjs382 2y agoYou have experience with something you think is similar but you don't have enough experience to understand the nuances. It's ok for you to sit this one out.