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LinuxBender
TeMPOraL
Reminds me of a story a colleague told me, from his early job working in tech support call center for a phone company.
He recounts of an issue with a customer complaining about low Internet speeds, despite being located close to the distribution building for the whole area. Seemingly, everything should've been fine. A cable leaves the distribution building, goes into the ground, and reappears a short distance later near the customer's house. Upon close inspection it was discovered that the cable did not take a straight route underground - instead of cutting the cable to necessary length, someone just buried the entire spool, and the total cable length was close to a kilometer or so. The signal, unboosted, barely got through to the other end.
dylan604
Ohmuhgawd, this is so bizzare. That cable is not free, and wasting that much of it was surely to get noticed, wouldn't it? Questions, so many questions. Was this a contractor sticking to the man by wasting all of that cable? Was it someone trying to earn points for how much cable they "installed" that month? Wouldn't it be more financially beneficial to cut the cable as normal, and then sell of the spool to a scrapper or other used cable place? Was this a team of people that all agreed this would be a bad idea?
So sounds like a movie plot
th5
My guess is too lazy to cut and re-terminate the cable.
phendrenad2
Maybe the install department had extra budget to waste before the end of the year, so it wouldn't be cut next year.
noahmbarr
It’s a typical non-disclosed denominator issue.
whyenot
As mentioned in the NPR story, it's about 10% of their distribution and transmission lines.
Buttons840
"Last night I moved 60 trillion meters of DNA downstairs to get a drink. I was thirsty."
dthunder
We're taking a different approach in Australia (the state of Victoria specifically), and not only are we replacing bare wire overheads with buried cables [0], we are also implementing Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiter (REFCL) technology to lower the risk of bushfires due to downed wires. [1]
When powerlines come into contact with the ground or a tree, arcing can occur. If the line remains live and continues arcing, the risk of fire is quite high.
REFCL tech works by detecting the phase-to-earth faults that occur when a one of the three-phase powerlines breaks and falls to the ground. REFL instantly reduces the voltage on the fallen line, and boosts the voltage on the other two phases. REFCL will then test the faulted line after a few seconds, and if the fault was intermittent full service is restored. If not, the whole line is removed from service to prevent fires and make the line safe to work on.
On Total Fire Ban days (very high risk of fire due to weather conditions), the REFCL settings operate at increased sensitivity.
There's a requirement in Victoria that by 2023 all high risk zone substations have to install REFCL technology, and all HV customers connected to those zone subs have to be REFCL compliant (their equipment must be able to handle the over-voltages that occur during REFCL operation).
[0] https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/electricity/powerline-replacem...
[1] https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/safety-and-emergencies/powerli...
avidiax
> REFL instantly reduces the voltage on the fallen line, and boosts the voltage on the other two phases.
I didn't get how that would work, so I did a bit of research. REFCL effectively grounds the affected phase so that it is 0V with respect to ground. But the other 2 phases retain the same voltage relative to the affected phase, so they have increased voltage relative to ground.
https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/-/media/Files/AusNet/Commu...
Andys
Additionally, we have increased patrols of the wires in regional areas, installation of spreader bars, and regular clearing of the trees and shrubs near the wires.
ikr678
Not using bundled/sheathed ABC overhead cable? Or was that too expensive relative to the remaining risk.
stephen_g
I'm not super familiar with power systems, but as far as I've seen in Australia, higher voltage ABC mostly only comes in 11 or 22kV (distribution), not 33kV and up which this seems to be talking about (feeder/transmission).
You do seem to be able to buy 33kV ABC from China but not sure if it would meet Australian Standards.
Looking at Wikipedia's page on ABC though, it says that even older 11/22kV ABC is being replaced to underground in Australia because the insulation can degrade and it can cause fires too.
chongli
I have a question I haven’t seen anyone address so far: how much can we expect this to reduce the frequency of wildfires? Intuitively, to me, the effect would seem to be negligible. All of the conditions for wildfires will remain in place. It’ll simply be something else that lights the spark. If it’s not power lines it’ll be lightning.
So then to follow up: what is the point? To deflect blame from PGE? And who pays for it?
nostrademons
Electrical power causes about 10% of wildfires by number [1], but it's responsible for 7 out of the 20 most devastating wildfires [2]. Perhaps this is because power-line fires happen disproportionally in remote, unattended areas, where they can grow large and uncontrollable before firefighters arrive.
It probably won't solve wildfires - there's still plenty of fuel, and hotter climates, and strong winds - but it can buy some breathing room. I suspect a bigger reason is to maintain the integrity of the grid. Buried power lines don't start fires, but they also don't get taken down when there is a fire, and they won't have a judge order them shut-off when there's a risk of high fire danger. Being perceived as an unreliable source of electricity is a far bigger threat to a utility than burning down a few towns - I know that was the primary reason I went solar, and a lot of my peers are also thinking of disconnecting from the grid because the grid isn't there when you need it.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/How-California-s...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/californias-catastrophi...
bluGill
You have just convinced me that fires will get worse. Every time there is a fire it cleans out all the fuel, so if 10% suddenly go away, that means when the next fire happens there is more fuel for it.
neaanopri
If there isn't any "critical infrastructure" which can be damaged nearby the fire, smaller intentional burns can keep fuel accumulation low.
nomel
You're almost certainly correct, since that's what a state oversight committee found in 2018 [1], but this perspective was criticized harshly by the media when Trump mentioned the same.
[1] https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-ma...
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TheHypnotist
What service do you have where your grid connection is that unreliable? Is it PG&E? Is it due to their "cautiousness"?
mrep
Not op, but PG&E shut off the power to over 2 million people for 3ish days due to high wind fire risk back in 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_California_power_shutoffs...
bob1029
> the grid isn't there when you need it.
> What service do you have where your grid connection is that unreliable?
I am in Ercot, right next to where the natural gas pipelines begin and where regulation ends, and I also struggle to keep the time on all of my appliances week-to-week. I don't know how the EI grid is doing, but feels like reliability has been dropping like a rock west of the Mississippi since ~2014 or so.
I used to have a computer plugged directly into the ATX power grid that had ~3 years of uptime. What a fantastical time that was.
Now, I am currently having a 50kW standby generator installed (oversized for multi-day operation). I am also investigating multiple fuel sources and smaller auxiliary units. Have to think in 2nd order terms these days. Everyone else is getting a generator installed too.
nostrademons
Yes, it's PG&E. It's a combination of their cautiousness and their incompetence. Sometimes the power will just go out for reasons unrelated to PSPOs (public safety power outages).
eldaisfish
If someone views a modern electrical utility in a Western country as unreliable then they either have no idea what they are talking about or have unreasonable expectations.
See NERC's reliability report for 2020 - even accounting for fires, the average transmission capacity loss for the entire USA and Canada was mostly under 0.5%. (Page 65)
https://www.nerc.com/pa/RAPA/PA/Performance%20Analysis%20DL/...
Solar and batteries aren't a substitute for grid transmission infrastructure and cannot match the amounts of energy a good transmission grid can deliver. The best part of the grid - you don't have to worry about balancing or when you need energy. You just flip a switch.
Yes, PG&E could have done more and their investment choices led to lots of damage and loss but let's not jump the gun and term their grid unreliable. They are held to NERC's standards which are among the best in the world.
ZeroGravitas
I think the poster was making the subtler point that while average performance will be good, that might be heavily weighted towards those living in urban centres.
If some outlying customers switch to partial or full self sufficiency, then a utility "death spiral" can occur as they increase prices on the remaining customers in the area.
Two responses to this are:
Legally force people to stay connected and pay for the grid
Start building microgrids using distributed solar and batteries, which is apparently being done in remote Australia.
Either can be a good thing if well managed, or an inefficient boondoggle if not.
epistasis
> If someone views a modern electrical utility in a Western country as unreliable then they either have no idea what they are talking about or have unreasonable expectations.
This is making the error of substituting average performance for the actual performance of a particular grid. The PG&E grid shuts down large amounts of transmission during high wind events:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_California_power_shutof...
> Solar and batteries aren't a substitute for grid transmission infrastructure
This is proving to be very wrong. Transmission is extremely expensive, it can be one of the most expensive parts of the grid, and, both batteries and distributed solar are being used as a substitute for transmission.
The term in the industry is "non-wires alternatives," and it was a way for early lithium ion batteries to be used profitably on the grid, even before their recent price drops. (That and frequency regulation in the PJM market).
spfzero
There are some unintended consequences of shutting off the power preventively though. Two seasons ago someone had switched on the three generators they had installed because of these "high-winds" shutoffs, one of which caught fire and ended up causing a medium-sized brushfire here, I think on the order of a few thousand acres IIRC. It was in one of the canyons around here, fairly rural, but very near lots of suburbia.
devoutsalsa
It’s like enforcing a policy of not smoking next to the pumps at a fueling station.
SilasX
... in a world where 4channers can anonymously spray sparks at gas stations and do it for the lulz, and it costs $1000 each time you tell someone to stop smoking at the pump.
(That is, the policy is expensive, and there are numerous other hard-to-monitor causes of fires.)
floatingatoll
I think there’s a big fire underway right now that PG&E thinks was probably set by two of their electrical fuses. Burying fire in dirt stops fire, so removing the power equipment from direct exposure to oxygen and tinder by burying it in dirt is a really effective way to stop electrical sparks from leveling up into wildfires.
You might send a manhole cover into near earth orbit now and then when an underground transformer explodes. As the famous saying most definitely does not go: One small leap for manhole cover, one giant leap for not celebrating your fifth anniversary of burning down ratepayer homes and national parks.
(As you might suspect, they’ve been making tidy profits every year for decades while choosing not to invest in burying power lines. The only reason there’s been such rapid change and a proper incident reaction in IT terms for an actual megacorp, is that they’re in bankruptcy court and the judge can compel them to act competently and rapidly, and shame them and penalize them for failing for the fourth year in a row to do so. Non-US folks, our power utilities are a mix of for-profit and not-for-profit, and ethical behavior that costs money is less common in for-profit ones. Co-ops are usually a good idea, but megacorps not so much.)
seanmcdirmid
PG&E doesn’t really make that much money from serving those more rural communities and houses where those fires are likely to occur. They subsidize those higher cost to serve areas with all the money they make in the big urban areas that aren’t at risk at all. Burying lines will just cause urban areas to subsidize urban areas even more, when there really should be some consequence for deciding to build your house in or abutting a dry forest with the need to have power brought in through that forest.
mlyle
In many cases these are transmission lines between urban areas that cross rural areas.
Or in the case of the Camp Fire, we're talking about a transmission line constructed in the 1920's to carry hydroelectric power from the Sierra Nevada to other areas-- primarily Contra Costa County.
hedora
If that is true, then how do rural-only power companies outside of California provide much better service at much lower prices than PG&E?
Also, running a mile of power line in a California city is orders of magnitude more expensive than running a mile of power line in rural areas outside of California. To the extent that PG&E follows the law (sometimes they just steal the money, and blow up towns years later when the system decays), I doubt they make much profit in the city.
At any rate, PG&E prices are completely out of control in rural areas. All in, I paid ~$10K for a 5 foot run from an existing transformer. All they did was run three wires five feet, and re-energize their own transformer.
It took them three years.
In the meantime, we built a house with a gas generator and Lithium ion batteries.
I’m not including that expense in the $10K, nor am I including delay of construction or wiring on our side of the PG&E box.
I am including the second pole and power backing board they had us build because the first one (built to their specifications) was unacceptable.
Edit: Also, they made us bury our lines, but refused to bury theirs in a reasonable timeframe. Hopefully we’ll get buried service lines out of this.
Edit 2: I forgot. They refused to give us permission to move our box to eliminate their unburied lines. So, it wasn’t that we wanted them to pay to bury the lines. We wanted their engineers to sign off on moving a transformer, and then decommissioning their lines.
Since then, they’ve had people on our property multiple times to deal with trees that interfere with the line they wouldn’t let us pay to eliminate.
floatingatoll
I absolutely agree that the incentives to build homes in/by forests need to be rethought, or at least handled better at the building code / enforcement level.
roenxi
I'm no accountant, but if you go bankrupt as a result of an activity then the activity likely doesn't count as profitable. Cash flow positive, yes. Profitable, no.
Profitability and bankruptcy sit in a mild opposition to each other.
michaelt
> if you go bankrupt as a result of an activity then the activity likely doesn't count as profitable
Unprofitable for the shareholders, maybe.
The CEO still gets to take home $6M+ [1] which sounds plenty profitable to me.
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/04/08/pge-execs-pay-raises-...
kelnos
PG&E is usually profitable; the cause of their bankruptcy is all the damages and fines levied as punishment for their part in starting wildfires.
Bayart
>Burying fire in dirt stops fire
Not so fast ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire
floatingatoll
Now I wonder if coal is more electrically conductive than dirt as well as thermally susceptible. Could you ionize a coal vein? Maybe we can transmit AM radio with it and map it with a heavy metal detector!
dredmorbius
Fortunately, California has a very low incidence of coal fires.
pengaru
> what is the point?
Presumably the point is to bring affected parts of California back to the first world by not having to shut off their power whenever there's heavy winds expected.
boulos
One distinction versus naturally caused fires (like lightning) is that power lines are often downed by high winds over dry terrain. Lightning, usually, is accompanied by a storm so there’s at least some rain.
It’s not going to stop everything, nor all human-caused fires (e.g., the “gender reveal” one last year), but I believe it shifts the likelihood more than you expect.
ashtonkem
The biggest effect will be that they won’t have to trigger blackouts during high winds to prevent downed lines from starting forest fires. For those in the affected area, that’s a big deal.
But if CA wants to reduce these fires, they desperately need to catch back up on their controlled burns. A combination of low brush fire for decades (not forest fire!) and changing environment has built up an extremely dangerous backlog of fuel that makes CA specifically and the PNW in general a massive fire risk. Short of fixing global warming and moving everyone away from the interface between nature and city, the only solution is to burn up all that fuel in a controlled way.
bluGill
This doesn't apply to CA, but in general it is a good idea for most of the world.
The vegetation there has been on natural cycles for years of burning hot every few years. Sure power lines start the file, but they will start anyway: large hot fires have always been part of the life cycle of that area. This is very different from the low brush fires that are a natural part of most other forests.
ashtonkem
CA has huge fires partly because they suppressed the low brush fires that were more common a century or two ago. Because they’re now decades behind on the natural burns that would normally happen every summer, the state will have to work overtime to catch back up to a safe equilibrium.
To be fair, climate change and changing habitation patterns are also making this much worse.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/11/californias-...
s1artibartfast
Fire intensity in California is absolutely related to frequency.
Historically, most California forests had low intensity burns every few years. Now, these same forests haven't had a fire in 100+ years, resulting in extremely intense fires that leave behind ashen moonscapes. This is not the historic normal fire cycle in CA.
xyzzyz
If only conditions matter, but triggers do not, why don’t all forests catch fire all at the same time when it gets dry enough? Think about it: average forest in California will probably get dry enough to support forest fire at least every few years. Why then it takes decades or centuries until the fire actually visits them?
chongli
Triggers are necessary for fires, obviously, but getting rid of the triggers does not solve the problem. There's another wrinkle to the whole matter: when a forest survives the dry season without burning down it doesn't reset. The following year there will be even more dead wood and other dry material in the area. This means next year's potential fire will be even worse than the last.
carabiner
One step at a time. Forest management is a huge issue. Wildland firefighters are zealous, almost paramilitary organizations that try to vanquish every fire like enemy invaders. In reality, fires are part of the lifecycle of forests that clear brush and make the forest healthier and more resilient in the future.
citrin_ru
There is a limit on how much dry wood a forest can accumulate. At some point old dead wood will rot and become soil. Though in dry climate rotting is slow.
mongol
That is interesting. I thought rain reset the conditions.
Someone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle: “a fire needs to ignite: heat, fuel, and an oxidizing agent (usually oxygen)”
There also always is plenty of oxygen. In dry summers, there’s also plenty of fuel. What’s lacking is sufficient heat. The ignition temperature of wood is difficult to assess, but wood can start burning at 125°C ≈ 256°F (https://www.warrenforensics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/P...)
It doesn’t get that hot without help, e.g. from a campfire, a magnifying glass, or sparks from electricity.
BenjiWiebe
Or lightning. Lightning can and does happen without rain, too.
hnarn
There are many long term economical effects of burying electric, not only does it reduce exposure to liability (you caused a natural disaster), it also reduces maintenance cost, failure rates and so on. Both customers and providers prefer buried cables, all things being equal. The only issue is that they're more expensive to actually place, so maybe them causing wildfires has finally pushed companies to put the cables where they belong.
T3OU-736
As a corollary - maintenance of buried power lines is more expensive due to all the digging which has to be done. Power line inspection is also trickier.
I also wonder if the unions representing linemen have a strong influence on "bury" vs "overhead" since most of lineman's job involves work up a pole rather than a tunnel.
Lastly - burying anything in the ground in areas where the ground has been known to move (California is the "Earthquake" entry in the Bingo game of "choose which natural disaster" that is the continental USA) is liable to be a non-trivial endeavour, one which will require ongoing inspections and the like.
raggles
There are lots of good reasons distribution companies don't like cables in some situations (especially rural). Connecting new customers and network alterations is much more expensive, changing to a higher voltage is not possible, upgrading capacity requires a whole new cable which is more expensive than replacing the conductors, cables only last about 30-50 years. Finding and fixing a cable fault usually takes much longer than overhead (although there are probably less of them per mile). Without wild fires, I seriously doubt cables are more economic in rural areas.
zild3d
> how much can we expect this to reduce the frequency of wildfires?
A point to keep in mind here, PGE is a company. Their primary goal is to not be the cause of the wildfire and pay damages. If it also reduces the frequency of wildfires, great.
dredmorbius
NB: there's PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric), and PGE (Portland General Electric). Whilst their service areas differ (PG&E serves California, PGE serves Oregon), they're near enough and similarly-enough named that the distinction is useful. Both are for-profit companies.
The article here refers to PG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric, an investor-owned private utility serving California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_General_Electric_Comp...
hestefisk
We did this in Denmark many, many years ago. It is also significantly cheaper to maintain as you no longer need to manage vegetation around the powerlines, perform pole / cross-arm inspection etc. In some countries the main hesitation to underground cabling for transmission lines has been up front cost as well as unions (=less maintenance, less work).
bluGill
20 years ago my local power company did the math and discovered underground was more expensive to maintain. Underground you don't need to maintain vegetation, but the lines break more often, and are a lot more expensive to replace.
This obviously depends on local conditions. Where I lived then there was plenty of water so starting a large fire was not possible. The plenty of water also meant the ground wasn't stable. Of course they did need to maintain vegetation, but that is a known cost.
cpascal
I'm interested what would cause underground cables to break more often. Is it people not "calling before you dig" and accidentally severing them or is it something else?
lazide
Ground moves, especially in California. Sometimes it’s subsidence, sometimes landslides, sometimes it’s seismic related, sometimes it’s frost heave or the like. Properly studied and buried (with proper backfill) usually is protected, but big enough changes will cause problems.
Throw in backhoes, erosion, etc. along with it being more expensive to fix when it does break, and overall it isn’t always guaranteed buried will be cheaper maintenance wise.
bluGill
The slightest crack will allow ground water in shorting out the wires. Cracks are somewhat common after a few years because the ground moves via the yearly freeze-thaw cycles we have up north.
cube00
Rodents enjoy chewing on them and the chemicals they use to discourage them only last so long.
orzig
This is very valuable information if true, can you provide some sort of references?
abduhl
It’s pretty common sense. Underground breaks cost more to fix because you have to dig the line up both to find the problem and fix it. Above ground problems are visible while underground problems are invisible.
Not to mention that above ground lines have slack between poles while underground lines are pulled relatively taut. Any shifting in the ground is going to result in a break underground before a break above ground. Above ground lines are also better founded because the poles are sitting on foundations or driven deep so their ability to resist ground motion is a bit better while electric lines move with the ground around them pretty much in sync. This is particularly important in seismically active areas like CA but underground infrastructure actually typically performs better in actual seismic events.
urthor
Imagine it was significantly cheaper if you measured it over a 3+ year time-span.
Not over a 1-2 year time-span.
The unwillingness of corporations to minimize OpEx by taking on significant one-time CapEx, in order to pretty the books, lives on in so many domains.
bcrl
Minimizing OpEx is one of the main drivers of telcos to switch to fibre. Companies like Bell Canada are telling their shareholders that network maintenance costs will drop as copper is decommissioned and services are migrated to fibre.
Consultant32452
Another important factor is that highly regulated local monopolies like power companies may have certain restrictions like only being able to charge a certain % over cost. Well, you'd much rather have 5% of a large number than a small number, so you're incentivized to do the more expensive long term thing.
lazide
It definitely explains a lot of what PG&E has done sometimes - maximum inefficiency and cost in some areas, incredibly (long term destructive) cheap in others.
QuercusMax
Health insurance has been doing this too.
bastardoperator
They've been doing this in California for the last 40+ years. PG&E is just a prime example of why de-regulation doesn't work. LADWP which is a publicly owned utility ran the Scattergood-Olympic Transmission Line (11 miles) under the city nearly 5 years ago and LADWP actually generates revenue for the city of Los Angeles. Honestly, PG&E needs to die in bankruptcy court.
eastbayjake
I thought it was significantly more expensive to bury high-voltage transmission lines because the current corrodes the insulation needed to bury the lines, so you have to dig up and replace every 20-30 years. I was actually quite surprised to learn that above-ground transmission lines in the US are uninsulated for this reason.
nate_meurer
No, the insulation in a solid dielectric transmission lines is cross-linked polyethylene, or paper in fluid-cooled lines. Lines are designed to operate well within the thermal capabilities of the insulation, and there is no such thing as routine replacement of undamaged underground lines.
Above-ground transmission lines are uninsulated because they don't need to be, and the extra weight of the insulation would require more expensive towers.
dylan604
Yes and no. It's a power company that owns the right-of-way where there lines are located. They will still keep that land cleared of any vegetation they don't want. I'm honestly surprised they don't just use RoundUp over the entire area of their right-of-way.
Upitor
Did what exactly? Most the transmission grid at least is overhead lines in Denmark. In fact, it is said that putting more than 15% of transmissions lines underground would be irresponsible due to physical limitations of AC lines, which corrupts the transmission system.
hestefisk
That is true. But the distribution system is largely UGed. My OP was meant to say Dx not Tx.
gaoshan
The upfront cost is why we don't generally do this in the US. If we looked at it from a 50 year perspective we'd (probably) do it in a heartbeat but we aren't very good at that sort of planning ahead.
hattmall
If they were managing the vegetation the wildfires wouldn't really be an issue though. It's California though so know doubt a friend of some PGE board member just started a company that buries power lines at an exorbitant cost.
abeppu
How do other places with dry forested areas deal with this? Are there similar regions from which California should be learning?
Also, if we get a major earthquake, are they going to have to dig all the lines up again?
Also, can we just note how crazy it is that this company blew up a neighborhood, burned down a town, was convicted in these separate incidents, and is still allowed to have a monopoly on power for a broad region? Why are corporate convicts apparently treated so well, but natural persons who are convicted are treated so poorly?
stickfigure
Those places burn too.
You want electricity, right? PG&E is one way to get it. You could replace the people in charge, you could replace the owners, you could even nationalize the whole thing and you still have the same problem: Vast amounts of incredibly expensive, aging infrastructure, drying climate, and homes built into the wildland boundary interface.
There's no magic trick that will solve this problem. The money for electrical upgrades will have to come from taxpayers and/or ratepayers; there isn't anyone else. And it will only reduce the probabilities of big fires. The huge Carr fire in Redding was started by sparks from a towed trailer. The LNU complex last year was lightning (plus one guy trying to cover up a murder with arson). It's not all electrical... probably not even a majority.
MiguelX413
Just take the money from the profits lol
vkou
There won't be any profits if they actually go ahead and fix it. You'd have to claw it back from prior shareholders who benefited from that unethical behaviour.
triggercut
Perth's metropolitan region in Western Australia has the largest percentage of underground power in the world. Granted, a large portion is in suburban areas and I suspect entirely in the distribution network not the transmission network. It's climate is very similar to much of California.
Power infrastructure on this magnitude requires an extraordinary amount of capital investment to set up. Who takes on their debt? The operating expenses for asset management and maintenance of a mature network are eyewatering when compared to their underground counterparts as there is a lot more numerous and frequent replacement activity for parts. Pole infrastructure may have a life span of 10-15 years but some parts will be replaced out every 3-5. Before you know it you pay for every pole 4 times over it's life. Now multiply that by several hundred thousand poles in a large network and then you start to get the picture. I'm not trying to be an apologist but I'm surprised from what I hear of American infrastructure that it's not a far more regular occurrence.
Denvercoder9
> Perth's metropolitan region in Western Australia has the largest percentage of underground power in the world.
I highly doubt that. Their government claims about 55% of houses has underground power. There's parts of Europe where they're easily up to 90%+. For example in the Netherlands only (part of) the high-voltage transmission network is above-ground, all house connections are underground.
raggles
Your numbers are way out, poles usually last between 25 and 70 years generally depending on what they are made from. Hardware (pins, insulators, crossarms) last at least 15 years usually, often much longer. There is certainly nothing that needs replacing every 3-5 years.
moistly
BC is currently burning to the ground. Again. I don’t think our hydro grid has failed due to forest fires, or at least not commonly. Nor is it responsible for starting them. Our territory must surely be as rugged as California’s. So maybe look North?
anonAndOn
Don't forget the company also poisoned an entire town.[0]
repiret
I was under the impression that the higher dielectric permittivity of soil made it impractical to bury AC transmission lines. Are they switching to DC while they're at it? Is there some other solution? Are the problems caused by high permittivity overblown?
AriedK
https://research.tudelft.nl/en/publications/technical-perfor... Good read if you're interested in the technicalities. They do bury high voltage (380kV) AC lines, sometimes even construct a tunnel for them, but I doubt they'll do that in this case.
unishark
Very possible, unless there's some other trick nowadays. AC does not go far underground or under water, but high voltage DC can be used for much longer distances.
morpheos137
The cables can be thick jacketed with a dialectrict and heavily shielded with copper tape or braid or similar material and the jacket and shielding limits the leakage but makes the cable much more expensive to manufacture and install.
sunstone
I was wondering the same thing. HVDC is 'an under the radar' technology that is set to rework a lot of the grid world wide. With projects underway to send power from Australia to Singapore or Iceland to the UK it's likely to turn up in many places, even California.
rmason
I have what I think is a legitimate question. Wouldn't it be an order of magnitude cheaper just to clear all the trees 120 feet either side of the power line? Plant the cleared land to alfalfa and solicit bids from farmers to harvest it every year.
dfsegoat
What you describe is essentially the program they had in place already. Maybe not 120 feet, but certainly some distance. They hire contract helicopters year round to survey lines, and task crews to clear brush. I live in Sonoma County, CA [1,2,3] - so we see the effort.
I think you might also be underestimating the scale of the power infrastructure in CA. The hydro etc. power generators in the north of the state are located in extremely remote areas.
My brother was a consulting engineer for PG&E in Northern CA, on a lot of their Hydropower infrastructure - most of the generation sites were only accessible by humans with helicopter flights, or 2-3 hr drives on poorly maintained roads. The transmission lines are not really accessible except by helicopter survey.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNU_Lightning_Complex_fires
SOMA_BOFH
it may be hard work but it's necessary.
zombie357
As someone who can see the Dixie fire column daily, had family evac’d by the Bear fire last year (basically burned 100K+ acre area just SW of the Dixie), and lives 10 minutes from Paradise (the town mentioned in the article), most of the PGE right-of-ways do look like freeways now through the forest, little to no under story growth. I believe they’re limited to how far out they can go due to easements.
To add, basically the last 4 years has been the burnout of a huge swath of forest in this area between the Camp fire, Bear fire, and now the Dixie fire, not to mention the many “small” fires that were caught/didn’t get established. The majority of land between highway 32 to the La Porte/Quincy highway has burned. Don’t have a good estimate since I’m on my phone, but 100s of square miles of mostly back country forest. Both the Camp and Bear fires made 10-15 mile runs in one day, and Dixie’s put up massive pyrocumulonimbus pretty much every day this week.
Edit to add: it’s also been incredibly dry, most of June-July has been upper 90s-low 100s, with a few 110+ periods. Humidity has also been extremely low, in the afternoons 8-12%. Even overnight it only recovers up to 40-45%. Higher elevations are cooler, but not so much that it mitigates, so the forest is pretty tinderbox right now. Once it’s lit it’s hard to put out.
dntrkv
Plumas Forest is one of my favorite parts of CA to explore, so these fires have been difficult to watch. My favorite place to camp is this remote spot on the Feather River, luckily it hasn’t been touched by the fires yet, but it’s only a matter of time now I guess. Do you own property out there? If so, what kinds of things have you done to your property to prepare for the now seemingly inevitable?
tjr225
…and? Why did you create an account 27 minutes ago to post this? Sincerely curious.
nostrademons
S/he has useful and relevant information to add to the discussion. Why not?
nightfly
There are several (many?) posters on here who create a new throwaway account every time they say anything
coding123
Did you have a first post too?
carpdiem
Not really. Trees are actually somewhat hard to burn, so most wildfires start by catching dry underbrush on fire instead. So in this case, that would just be the alfalfa.
Key to remember is that power lines can spark when they're damaged by winds (which can lead to the lines themselves being close enough to the ground for the spark to traverse to the underbrush).
Animats
This is for what utilities call "medium voltage" distribution (1KV to 35KV), not high tension towers. These are the cables you see around your neighborhood, upstream of the pole transformer. They're usually not insulated other than by airspace. Clearcutting around those would wipe out the trees in most residential areas.
The big high tension towers go through clear-cut rights of way.
The big headache is not burying cable. If there's nothing else in the ground, that's not too hard. It's working around water lines, sewer lines, gas lines, driveways, phone, data, cable TV...
smt88
That would destroy thousands of miles of wildlife habitat, and it would certainly cover some private property too.
Plus you'd have to do it regularly, not once.
lazide
Probably not. A lot of this land is in remote areas with no irrigation, steep, rocky, or otherwise difficult to manage.
No one is interested in farming alfalfa on 25% slopes with rocks 6” under any topsoil and massive trees to clear before it would even be usable.
thedougd
Take the opportunity to burry empty conduit with it and lease it to telcos.
agilob
I don't know technicalities, but we have this in Wales. There are tunnels on top of which we have railways. The tunnels have power cables and fiberoptic cables. Sometimes they flood in west-mid Wales, last I know and remember was 2012 and we (Aberystwyth, Machynlleth) route internet traffic to North Wales or Ireland instead to Birmingham.
thedougd
In my region, they mostly run this new, flexible plastic conduit with horizontal borers or a piercing tool. They'll dig holes several feet deep and dozens of feet apart. In one hole they start this tool and it digs its way horizontally to the next hole. From what I've seen, the conduit effortlessly follows. I'm sure geology makes a difference.
Here's a marketing video for one of these piercing tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=Hs3C2LMzSPg
dd36
Good idea. Maybe even get The Boring Company to make usable tunnels.
titzer
Meanwhile, in Germany, they've been burying powerlines for over a century so the entire country doesn't look like ass.
icpmoles
For the high voltage lines Germany is pretty much still at less than 10%.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Statistics-of-AC-Under...
breck
Love it! My vision of the future has all power lines buried. Mostly thinking in the cities but fire prevention is a plus as well.
If anyone has any leads on startups or innovators in the tunneling space please share or each out!
baxinho0312
Burying high voltage power lines presents several technical challenges on its own - the type and thickness of the insulation had to be able to withstand the dielectric stress which is normally solved by using enough distance between the wires themselves and the ground for the typical high voltage power line. Another problem is increased capacitive load due to the higher capacitance of the lines which causes problems/completely makes the switchgear to not be able to perform switching/breaking operations. Capacitive load then needs to be compensated to improve the networks power factor, cos phi. This is typically done by introducing expensive equipment to the network configuration like shunt reactors or static synchronous compensators. It is also typically more expensive to have and maintain a underground cable than an overhead power line
thaumaturgy
Two more issues are water tables (although those have been falling rapidly across much of California over the last few years) and seismic activity -- not just the big quake sort, but also the usual few cm a year of movement in opposite directions sort.
I suspect that this is going to be an engineering project on the scale of the mythical California high-speed rail, and with the same life cycle. PG&E especially has a track record of misusing funds for upgrades and maintenance.
leecb
> My vision of the future has all power lines buried.
Singapore already has already achieved this. It's actually quite pleasant to not have any overhead lines.
They are currently replacing the main electricity distribution cables that run under roads, and replacing them with a system that runs in tunnels 60m underground. This depth is necessary to avoid other systems like the subway(MRT) that run at shallower depths. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/deepest-tunnels-spore-...
lorenzhs
This is not some magical high-tech vision that only exists in Singapore. It's been this way for many decades in built-up areas of most of Western Europe -- mostly it's just overland high-voltage lines that are above ground. My grandfather used to tell the story of how his American visitors were always curious where the power in his house came from (this was probably in the 60s or 70s) and amazed when he showed them the connection in the basement. It amused him to no end.
82% of Germany's power lines are buried: https://www.iwr.de/ticker/lange-leitungen-82-prozent-der-str... (in German). This figure includes everything from low-voltage lines to houses to high-voltage distribution lines.
seanmcdirmid
Many urban areas in the USA have buried power lines. I moved last year from Bellevue WA to Ballard in Seattle WA, one of the first things I noticed in my new home are all the power lines around us (they are mostly buried in Bellevue and much of the east side). Fairly sure the Bay Area is roughly the same (Palo Alto must right?), but I don’t have any anecdotes to go on.
breck
Fascinating. Thanks for the link! I remember from a visit to Singapore a decade ago the fantastic subway and all the underground malls, but had no idea how advanced their tunnels were. Thanks!
baxinho0312
Works for distribution networks for households in the cities, but but for high voltage transmission lines.
maCDzP
If you are interested in this space you can just search for “trenchless electrical conduit”. A company that makes a lot of equipment is https://www.herrenknecht.com/en/
jlmorton
I mean, obviously everyone desires to have the power lines buried, the issue is that it costs something like $250 billion dollars to do it in California alone.
grecy
When talking visions of the future, aim higher - get rid of the power lines altogether.
Every building should have it's entire footprint as solar panels, and enough batteries to last the night. Imagine all the money saved on power lines and maintenance of them. Especially in sunny California this is a no-brainier.
gizmondo
That saves no money at all, because you still need it for the cloudy day or week.
epistasis
Even cloudy days produce power. Charging the car at a grid connected point instead of at home would probably shift enough usage to last a week.
zbrozek
Or use a generator when that happens. At my place that would be a week or two per year.
account4mypc
Off topic, but how do underground power lines stay cool? I always thought long distance powerlines got really hot.
elric
Above ground "High Temperature, Low Sag" cables can reach 200°C. Underground cables can still go up to 90°C, which is still flamin' hot. They're usually buried at least 1 meter deep, which gives the heat a decent chance to dissipate. But in those areas with high chances of fires, I'd be wary all the same :-/.
Of course, the above mostly applies to high voltage & high current situations, think 150kV, 300MVA monster connections. I doubt PG&E manages 10k miles of high voltage power lines. If we're talking residential interconnections, there won't be any issues burying those.
niffydroid
I would have thought they'd need to put sections of cooling in, if not maybe they have some form of oil or other liquid to help dissipate the heat? I thought one of the many reasons why the UK still does overhead between chunks of the grid is for cooling and easier maintenance.
goler
Are the associated costs passed to ratepayers at cost or is there some allowance for a positive investment return for PG&E shareholders?
bcrosby95
In theory rate hikes have to go through California regulators but, at the same time, the company is allowed a certain rate of return.
In practice I have no clue how it works out though.
tomrod
Typically in markets like CA and TX you will have a rate case go to the public utility commission. I'm more familiar with Texas' approach (it was a data source for my dissertation); the idea is to let the companies charge enough to cover reasonable costs.
black_puppydog
Shouldn't "won't be sued for negligence" cover the investment, given that they know their equipment is a fire hazard?
jlmorton
No, it won't, because PG&E doesn't have the money to do this, and the company is already majority-owned by the PG&E Fire Victim Trust after emerging from bankruptcy.
There are no rich shareholders to foist the costs on. No investors are going to pay tens of billions of dollars, more profit than PG&E generated over several decades, to pay for 10% of the electric wires to be buried. If there were any investors on the hook for this, they would simply declare bankruptcy and walk away.
The only option here is that the costs are paid by ratepayers, or taxpayers. There is no other option available.
black_puppydog
I see, thanks for explaining. That would have made for a nice addition to the article. :)
IMHO an infrastructure of this size & importance might just as well be state owned, but I guess rate hikes will also do. As long as there is some mechanism to help (yes, probably with tax money) those who might not be able to afford them...
amotinga
in that case why have owners at all? it should basically be nationalized then. otherwise taxpayer paying the cost without really reaping profits (if there are/will be any)
IgorPartola
A federal grant might work too. Wildfires on this scale affect more than just Californians.
refurb
I can’t find it now but a while back someone posted the meeting minutes from the CA PUC review of PG&E’s budget. It had stuff like “request to replace chain link fence for $175k - denied” and it was a 1,000+ page document.
PG&E has to get approval for their spend from the PUC and for any rate hikes.
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When they say 10k miles, do they mean 10k miles of land or of cable? Asking because my military unit used individual cables to exaggerate numbers. i.e. 6 strands at 1 mile would become "6 miles of cable run". Either way, great they are doing this. I hope they prevent some fires and save some lives.