blackout

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http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/mufonontario/archive/blkout.htm

 

Coming back to Prozac's post and BTAs comment. There is a distinct difference between the european and the US power grids, as illustrated in this weeks SPIEGEL:</font>

• US:
  Widely mashed power grid, running at full capacity with long ways to the end user. With one power plant failing reserves are usually lacking. In case on an anomality alterne power lines are quickly overloaded or a frequency drop occurs - consequence is a powerplant or even power net blackout.
• Europe:
  Tightly mashed power grid running below max capacity. If one power plant fails, reserve capacity is immediately available (there are power plants in reserve only for that purpose), if need be from the most distant end of europe - power is redirected to alternative routes, power grid load is manageable.

That is, the european web is more flexible, more reliable, more redundant - while the US web is probably more cost-effective - as long as everything goes as it should.
I take pride in the european achievement to create the european power-grid cooperation - across borders and more than 10 different buereaucracies - and languages.

And I think Prozac's right when he points out the investment issue: The Bush administration doesn't see the difficult issue of "soft power" as a priority - like improving infrastructure at home, or improving the living conditions of the broad population - that's a private issue, isn't it?

A cruise missile, aircraft carrier or control of a country and its resources is a power you can grab, the strategic advantage of having a stable infrastructure reducing vulnerability isn't that obvious.
The Bush goons just don't think that way. And with the increasing deficit they are unlikely to invest more money at home, especially considering their imperial burdens overseas.

America, a shaky giant? Perhaps.

[ August 18, 2003, 15:36: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

That rises the question wether complete privatisation of vital infrastructure makes sense or not - greed is basically the reason why no one invested in the power grids - the returns are too meager. Powerplants are more profitable. That is that sort of profit oriented, shortsighted idiocy that neglects the delivery over production - as the consumer need electricity anyway.

The other aspect is that the US don't get a standard legislation for their huge country, which provides extra obstacles for investors. Inability to common sense?

Taken from Reuters

 

I hardly think Bush's goons are to blame for this one. Some bad things, believe it or not, are totally unrelated to the Bush administration! Actually it's such a relief to not see the "blame Canada" attitude to the blackout here that maybe I shouldn't knock a good thing when I see it... Just to point out, though, that one of the reasons that the North American power grid is structured very differently than in Europe is that our population here is very, very widely distributed.

Also, because power prices are over-regulated to the point where we pay far less than it costs to generate it, North Americans waste energy at a tremendous rate. I'm guilty of this too. In France I could only afford to turn my water-heater on a few minutes before my shower - or, at work, a few minutes before my restaurant opened for each service - because it was too expensive to let it run all the time. Here I leave my water-heater on all the time and wallow under hot showers for obscene lengths of time. And let's not even talk about the energy-wastefulness of air conditioning and those huge office towers that keep all lights on, all night long. North Americans have finally gotten what we deserve and let's hope we learn our lesson and start reducing consumption.

We had no power for two days and are still going to be rationing power and water for the next week or so. We have moved into a tent in the back garden so we won't even think about using power most of the time. Also because our house is like a swamp with the air conditioning turned off. But we do come in once a day to check email, the news, and ALFA/SP boards - just the essentials!

 

Well, sure it isn't a Bush-created misery. The point is that they didn't try anything to deal with the problems - as they were known for quite a while already.

But I agree with you on the waste: The US, some 400 or so million people and about 8% of the world's population, are producing some 30% of the worlds CO2 output and are estimated to use some 25% of the world's energy - but that's the american way of life, something holy.
Canceling the Kyoto treaty was certainly easier than to force the corporates to put money into unprofitable environmental improvements or even to tell the US people to change their wasteful ways and to start to use energy responsible. The californians had to learn that water isn't in infinite supply the hard way.

Al Gore IMO made a very good point, and was ridiculed for that, when he said that switching over to economical cars and reduce the amount of energy needed would be a significant contribution to the US strategic safety and independence from foreign resources. Perhaps much more so than conquering oil fields. But that again is this alien concept of "soft power".

So if the price is to ensure access to new energy supplies overseas in order to maintain that way of living, there's a price the inhabitants of the country where this energy is have to pay for this freedom. But that part goes mostly unnoticed.

A general feeling for responsibility when using energy is much more developed in central europe, yet even we are wasteful still.

I'm pessimistic about the consequences of this blackout - in 4 weeks it'll be just a memory and people will go on as usual. And that's giving the next generation a big f*ck you and missing a chance to learn from mistakes.

 

I really dont know about the state of affairs in the US, but I will relate my experiance here.

Greater Bombay, or the main and older part of Bombay, has its own energy supply which it draws independently of the rest of the state of Maharashtra. Thus even if the grid which connects the 5 western states fails due to any reasons, there is still power available in the larger part of Bombay. Sure those bloodsuckers charge more but I guess it's really important to have such an arrangement.
Why cant the inner parts of American cities have some similar arrangement whereby people coming back from work are not stuck?

 

I was at a friends house at the time, and it sucked because the power went out at 4:15 or so, and we were half way through our show on tv! But, we did end up having barbequed pizza, and at about 11 at night, we hooked up a tv to his moms Durango and watched "The Water Boy" until 12:30. We went to bed after, but were woken up at 3:36 when all the lights came back on.

 

Power out in italy yesterday night and almost whole italy was without power.The reason was as I heared a lightning strike in one of the import lines from Switzerland. Italy is one of the exceptions from the generally very tightly knit european power net, and it lacks reserve plants on stand-by to provide emergency supply.

In fact Italy, lacking powerplants is heavily dependent on energy imports from france, austria, germany and switzerland, actually it iirc draws some 20% or so from there. Bad concept? Well, it's Italy

 

I was wondering how long it would take for the Italian blackout to be mentioned here. Once again, a chain reaction takes down a power grid. There isn't any more fragile an element of the infrastructure of modern society.

 

Talking about outages, it hasnt been mentioned here before either but last week there was a massive outage in southern Sweden and eastern Denmark. "Only" lasted between 2 to 4 hours depending on where you were. Seems like the power systems of the entire western world needs an overhaul.

 

It was we ?

Not a butterfly in Australia ?

We say it was not we, it was the Italians and Austrians themselves. It was our tree but our shortage only lasted 20 minutes. So could have the Italian one.

 

One of these days, someone will invent a high-temperature super-conductive plastic. And amazingly enough, they'll be able to use ester-base from all the landfills around the country; esters that are formed when an adaptive bacteria is found/created and used to breakdown all the baby diapers and trash bags.

The problem will be laying it. You certainly wouldn't want it above ground. And digging even a small 6000km trench is some work, yo.