2 Electric Companies May Be To Blame For The Wildfires

a reply to: Lilroanie

No words games.
We seem to agree, actually.

Trust me.

a reply to: Phage

Okie dokie Just have fuzzy head and still roaming house mumbling under my breath about dumb ass Cali voters and trying to figure out how fast we can move lol.

a reply to: MissSmartypants

It is known that PG&E issued a warning to customers about a possible interruption of service due to safety concerns a mere 2 days before the fires started so they were aware then of the likelihood of problems. And the way to prevent the problems.

a reply to: MissSmartypants

The Santa Ana winds cover a very large area.

The decision would have been to shut down service for thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of users. For days. That would have prevented the fires, yes. But no one have known that and they all would have been really, really pissed.

Tough decision.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MissSmartypants

The Santa Ana winds cover a very large area.

The decision would have been to shut down service for thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of users. For days. That would have prevented the fires, yes. But no one have known that and they all would have been really, really pissed.

Tough decision.

My family was without power for 7 LONG days after Hurricane Isabel and it wasn't In order to prevent loss of life and yet we still managed to get through it.

a reply to: MissSmartypants

So you get my point. You didn't have power because there was no power.

You might have felt differently if you didn't have power because the power company just turned it off.

No?

Interestingly, a good way to prevent damage to the grid during a severe geomagnetic storm would be to turn off the system. But that too, would piss off a lot of people. Millions of them.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MissSmartypants

So you get my point. You didn't have power because there was no power.

You might have felt differently if you didn't have power because the power company just turned it off.

No?

Perhaps not back then...but now after the horrors we have all witnessed during these current fires I would gladly endure the inconvenience if there was even a remote chance that it would prevent something like this from happening again, especially if I had the financial resources to simply stay somewhere out of harm's way.

originally posted by: Phage
Interestingly, a good way to prevent damage to the grid during a severe geomagnetic storm would be to turn off the system. But that too, would piss off a lot of people. Millions of them.

And it wasn't just my neighborhood that lost power...it was large areas of coastal Virginia and North Carolina.

a reply to: MissSmartypants

I would gladly endure the inconvenience if there was even a remote chance that it would prevent something like this from happening again,

Hindsight is 20/20.

originally posted by: Phage
Interestingly, a good way to prevent damage to the grid during a severe geomagnetic storm would be to turn off the system. But that too, would piss off a lot of people. Millions of them.

Turning off the grid wouldn't help. It is the electricity in the air and ground that would fry the wires and electronics. Turning off the telegraph systems during the Carrington event wouldn't have stopped the electricity from flowing through the wires and starting fires.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MissSmartypants

I would gladly endure the inconvenience if there was even a remote chance that it would prevent something like this from happening again,

Hindsight is 20/20.

No...NOW I would gladly endure the inconvenience, as I said, but perhaps not then. A little peckish tonight, aren't we?
But no worries... I graciously and preemptively accept your apology.

a reply to: MissSmartypants

It is the electricity in the air and ground that would fry the wires and electronics.

No it isn't.

A geomagnetic storm is just that. The Earth's magnetic field gets disrupted. It wiggles a bit. That is no big thing unless you have a long conductor, like a power line or a fence or a pipeline. Because when a moving magnetic field encounters a conductor it produces an electrical current, if it has the right alignment. That's called induction.

The longer the conductor is and the more powerful the magnetic field, the more voltage will be produced. Now, the Earth's magnetic field is not very powerful (way less than a refrigerator magnet) so even with a very long conductor the most that will be produced is a couple of hundred volts. That's more than enough to fry a telegraph wire but the electrical grid can handle it with no problem.

Here's the tricky part. Our electrical grid uses AC power, alternating current (thanks Nikola). But the current produced by the Earth's magnetic field is, for all intents and purposes, DC power. To simplify it lets just say that, in the transformers that make the power grid possible, AC power does not play nicely with DC power. The transformers cook.

Solution; turn off the AC power. And blame Tesla.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MissSmartypants

It is the electricity in the air and ground that would fry the wires and electronics.

No it isn't.

A geomagnetic storm is just that. The Earth's magnetic field gets disrupted. It wiggles a bit. That is no big thing unless you have a long conductor, like a power line or a fence or a pipeline. Because when a moving magnetic field encounters a conductor it produces an electrical current, if it has the right alignment. That's called induction.

The longer the conductor is and the more powerful the magnetic field, the more voltage will be produced. Now, the Earth's magnetic field is not very powerful (way less than a refrigerator magnet) so even with a very long conductor the most that will be produced is a couple of hundred volts. That's more than enough to fry a telegraph wire but the electrical grid can handle it with no problem.

Here's the tricky part. Our electrical grid uses AC power, alternating current (thanks Nikola). But the current produced by the Earth's magnetic field is, for all intents and purposes, DC power. To simplify it lets just say that, in the transformers that make the power grid possible, AC power does not play nicely with DC power. The transformers cook.

Solution; turn off the AC power.

Hmmm...I hate it when you do that. Make sense, I mean.

a reply to: MissSmartypants

Thank you for the opportunity.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MissSmartypants

Thank you for the opportunity.

Anytime.

would coating the power lines in fire prone areas help

it sounds to simple

a reply to: Lilroanie

Curious, I just read that some firemen are making upward of 200 K per year with a pension. I mean I like firefighters, but that seems like alot.

Also didn't Jerry Brown veto some bill a year or two ago that was going to require brush management that probably would have made this event much less likely?

originally posted by: markovian
would coating the power lines in fire prone areas help

it sounds to simple

It’s not quite as easy and elegant as it sounds it’s a very expensive and labor intensive operation to take down the bare conductors to replace them with insulated transmission lines, also the insulation comes with some fairly big draw backs.

Yes the Distribution lines are not insulated through out for the following:- First it will be very costly for long distance distribution . Second if any fault due to over current arises then the inside of cunductor will burn . These type of fault can't be seen through naked eye. If insulation is provided then the weight of conductor will increase resulting in INCRESE IN SAG ( ground clearance).

Also another problem is the insulation reduces current carrying ability as even good insulation is only good for roughly 105 degrees centigrade meaning that the utilities would most likely need to go to a bigger transmission line to carry the same amount of of current as the bare conductors, thus adding on to the weight and cost issues even more.

So it's not because some fiery sinkholes have quietly opened up by the coast over there ?