Power Lines.

I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I see power lines. I just get pissed right the hell off.

Power lines have remained essentially unchanged since they were first invented. Think of how much some things have advanced over the past hundred years. Yet power lines still run up and down almost every road in America. You would think by this point the utilities companies would embrace some new technology to save them repair costs after storms, old age, and other causes of line damage.

Yeah, I know some counties in Europe have installed their lines in the ground and that saves a lot of money on maintenance. But why is it that the world is still using technology that is over 100 years old?

Maybe it's just me. But this is bugs the crap out of me.

Here are some examples of huge advances in some technologies over the past 100 years.

An analog computer that played chess from 1912


A Notebook computer 2012.


A telephone from 1912.


An Iphone 5.


An airplane from 1912.


Boeing's fully autonomous strike jet.



And now, power lines in Seattle in 1912.


Ok folks, are you ready to be blown away? Here it is.

:uziower lines today.



AAARGGHHH!

they are telephone lines.

reply to post by haven123


Which ones?

Electricity and phone lines generally, occupy the same poles. At least from what I have seen.

Here, I'll add another picture for you

You get my point.

I know what you mean... if anything they should work towards making all power lines under ground.

But there are even more exotic ways of transmitting power. As Tesla often liked to demonstrate, you can transmit power wirelessly by using resonation. I haven't really looked into exactly how it works actually, but I know it works. Each house could have a special wireless power receiver which could tap into a main emitter of nearby power plants. I'm not exactly sure how safe it would really be though to have a huge amount of power being transmitted wirelessly all over the place.

reply to post by haven123


I've noticed a lot of your posts,and i must say,for the most part,are sadly amusing.
just so you know, hydro and telephone lines share the same pole!!!
with the advancement of fiber optics,phone lines are becoming obsolete.
thus,most of the 'hydro' poles you see are indeed that. hydro poles!
how do you think they deliver the hydro from the power plants!!! by magik?
read your hydro bill - you get charged a delivery fee from the hydro co.! (thru the lines!!!)
more and more i'm starting to think you are exactly the character your avatar portrays from king of the hill!!!
sad

Originally posted by ChaoticOrder
I know what you mean... if anything they should work towards making all power lines under ground.

But there are even more exotic ways of transmitting power. As Tesla often liked to demonstrate, you can transmit power wirelessly by using resonation. I haven't really looked into exactly how it works actually, but I know it works. Each house could have a special wireless power receiver which could tap into a main emitter of nearby power plants. I'm not exactly sure how safe it would really be though to have a huge amount of power being transmitted wirelessly all over the place.

edit on 3/10/2012 by ChaoticOrder because: (no reason given)

That would be the tesla coil...which is much different than ones hobbyists make today. teslas were designed to not arc into the air and blow # up, modern ones usually are intended to do exactly that.

Several problems though. The biggest one is you cant put a meter on it and sell it. Also, tesla coils tend to blow # up when they malfunction. Especially modern electronics.

Also, tesla thought he was achieving overunity and pulling free energy out of the "aether".

And tesla coils cant possibly be remotely healthy. And if one shocks you, you wont feel it, until its done fairly major damage. Your nerves dont respond to such high frequency current. In teslas time, it was assumed it wasnt that dangerous. Cant feel a shock then its not shocking you and all

reply to post by reficul


Wtf is hydro?

Could be worse.
Last year, they put fiber optic wire down my road, in the ground.

They have NO plans to use it for anything for at least another year. Claim they ran out of money. WTH???

reply to post by phroziac

That would be the tesla coil...which is much different than ones hobbyists make today. teslas were designed to not arc into the air and blow # up, modern ones usually are intended to do exactly that.

So how exactly did his setup manage to send power through the air without arcing?

Several problems though. The biggest one is you cant put a meter on it and sell it. Also, tesla coils tend to blow # up when they malfunction. Especially modern electronics.

Dude they could easily put a meter on it. How do you think they meter our power right now? They put a box on our houses. Anyone could remove the box or mess with it, but they do inspections and have ways of detecting when unmonitored power is being used. However it probably would be harder for them to detect from where the power thief was located with a wireless setup.

Also, tesla thought he was achieving overunity and pulling free energy out of the "aether".

That's not a true statement and I think you have been misinformed. He intended to pull energy from the ionosphere and transmit it wirelessly, but the tower he built to do it wasn't finished because his funding got cut off. J.P. Morgan was funding him if I remember correctly.

wow, i thought i was the only one that thought about things like this.
I`ve often thought about how wasteful it is to cut down so many trees to use as telephone/electric poles and i wondered why they haven`t come up with a better system after all these years.

reply to post by watchitburn




When I read the title to your thread I almost spit coffee all over my keyboard! This is pretty funny my friend.
Just when you think you've heard it all leave it to ATS members to find something new to bitch about.

Really? With all the annoying people doing all the annoying things they do it's the innocent power lines that piss you off?

It's no worse than a thread I read yesterday where a member was having a fit because somebody sat too close to her on a bus.

I'm not saying you're wrong but I guess I just don't think about it as much. (at all)

If we put them underground where are the birds going to hang out? Did you even think about the birds?

Originally posted by phroziac
reply to post by reficul

 

Wtf is hydro?

When you get your electrical power from water systems.
I lived in BC for most of my life, and I still call it hydro even though I'm out of that province now.

Those last pics in the op are a mess. It's hard to imagine them still working.
They're burying a lot of the lines in Canada now- our weather kills the overhead lines.

They bury so much that we have a number to call before we dig for anything, even before putting in fences
Phone lines, gas lines, and electrical lines.
That comes with a whole new set of problems too, mice get in the buried phone systems, and the workers have to trace all over the place for problems. They've found nests of mice a couple of kms away from the original problems at times.

We still have a lot of the overhead lines too, but they can't let them get that messy or they'd have to be fixing them constantly. It's cheaper to just string up new lines, or bury them when possible.

If we put them underground where are the birds going to hang out? Did you even think about the birds?

Trees

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Tesla coils can light up lightbulbs that arent even plugged into anything that are beyond the distance they can arc to. Theres a famous picture of tesla holding a lightbulb thats lit up......no arcs. Furthermore, given the long exposure required for photography back then, it wouldve looked weird as hell if there were arcs. If he even lived through it.

As far as overunity, i was under the impression that pulling power fron the aether was overunity....

reply to post by snowspirit


I suspect i have hydro but they dont really tell us where it comes from. we also have to call a number before digging....lots of gas lines.

reply to post by phroziac


i don't know,some greek word that has something to do with water!
looking at the greek economy,maybe we don't need this 'greek hydro'!!!
look what it did for them!!!

reply to post by phroziac

Tesla coils can light up lightbulbs that arent even plugged into anything that are beyond the distance they can arc to. Theres a famous picture of tesla holding a lightbulb thats lit up......no arcs.

I am aware of that much. I was asking about the physics of how that works.

While it sounds like a good idea to go to fully underground power lines, in reality it isn’t such a workable idea. Remember, power companies are in the business of making money. It it was cheaper in the long run, they would have went to underground lines long ago.

There is many problems with underground lines that make them unreliable in their own right. As many industry people have studied and found out. The number of power outages is less with underground systems. But the length of the outages is much longer. And the number of outages goes up exponentially as the system ages.

General rules.
Underground lines can not be installed where it floods at any time. If it floods, even for a short time, it may take weeks to get power back. It may require changing large portions of equipment that was submerged. There is underground installation equipment that is rated for submergence. But the actual reliability of that equipment when it’s actually submerged is hit and miss at best. And that rating is only for short time submergence. If left underwater long enough, then it will fail.

Underground lines age badly. Ceramic insulators on overhead lines have almost an unlimited life. Poles have 40 to 100 years life expectancy depending on climate. The insulation used in underground cables has a very limited life. Current usable life is about 20 years. After that, all the underground lines need to be replaced. If you don’t, then the system will become so prone to random failure that it will not be usable.

Just because you have underground lines, doesn’t mean you can have trees on the right of way. The right of way still needs to be constantly cleared of anything that puts down deep roots. Tree roots will grow around the line and stretch it, causing failure. And when a tree gets blown down, it will rip the line out of the ground.

And the thing that complicates all of that. Underground power lines make it hard to find faults. You have to separate the line into its smallest segments to find out which one is faulted. It can take days to localize some faults. And repair sometimes takes weeks. In the mean time power has to routed around the fault which often entails installation of temporary overhead lines, or insulated cables ran along the top of the ground until the failed line can be dug up and replaced. In an aboveground system, a simple visual check will usually locate the problem 99% of the time. Fixes are usually finished with an hour or less of bucket time.

There is several small towns that are experiencing a lot of the aging problems now. They are some of the first ones that went to underground lines around 20 to 25 years ago. The lines are done past their usable lifespan. The power outage problems are getting so bad in the areas that some of them have tried to sue the power company for negligence. The problem is, the very people that are suing are the ones that demanded that the town go to all underground utilities 20+ years ago. And they don’t want to fork over the required cash to completely replace the underground lines. They are trying to blame the power company for a condition they caused. And more importantly, they are trying to force the electric company (and all the rest of the rate payers) to foot the bill for the replacement, so they don’t have to directly pay for the whole operation.

Some of the towns finally seen the error of their ways and have went BACK to overhead lines because they realized the cost of replacing the underground lines every 20 years was totally intolerable.

Some of the newer underground cable coming off the production line has a projected life of up to 30+ years but that is unproven at this point.

Short sections, like is often used from an overhead line, to the pad mount transformer behind a house, or building, can last up to 30 to 40 years in some cases, but the odds of it’s failure grow exponentially past 20 years. It makes sense to leave it in place until failure when it’s failure will not affect the larger system as a whole. But when that line is the mainline which means complete system outage when there is a failure at any point along the system, then the entire line will have to be replaced when it reaches that point, or the downtime of the system will be more than it’s uptime. And things will only go down from there.


That is the irony I see in people calling for underground lines so they won’t be bothered by hurricanes. Those very hurricanes, and the flooding that is associated with them is why it’s impossible to use underground lines. The cost of troubleshooting the flooded underground lines and replacing the failed parts will take longer, and cost more than the complete replacement of the overhead lines in question every time a storm comes through.

reply to post by Mr Tranny


Wow we have a power-line professor on our hands folks.

That was a great post though, a lot of interesting information.

Here is one talking about existing systems.
www2.starexponent.com...

Light and Power Director Mike Stover said the life expectancy of underground cable is about 25 years.

One talking about new systems using current production cable.
www.gatrans.com...

The lifespan of underground lines is 30 to 35 years, about half that of overhead lines.

Again, talking about new production cable.
mlgw.blogspot.com...

Furthermore, Weaver said MLGW believes the life span of an underground system would be about 30 years, compared to the 50-year life of an overhead system. So once the underground system is paid for after 30 years, MLGW would have to start paying for it again.

Here is a reference to Deerfield which is one such community that is suffering from aging underground systems. They are suing the power company because the underground systems are failing so much. But the irony is they were the ones that pushed for those underground systems in the first place.
triblocal.com...

Deerfield sued ComEd for unspecified punitive damages, compensation and legal fees. It alleged that ComEd violated the Public Utilities Act by breaking its franchise agreement to provide consistent service to Deerfield customers.

According to Deerfield officials, the village experienced 82,347 customer power outages during about 1,300 electrical failures. The lawsuit states that only 13 percent of the outages were weather related.

Deerfield resident Judith Adamson is one of the nearly 30 customers cited in the suit who suffered from chronic outages.

For the past 38 years, Adamson endured numerous day-long power outages. ComEd crews regularly ripped up her driveway and yard to repair an underground cable in front of her gray, two-story colonial home in the 1200 block of Arbor Vitae, she said.

Seven of her neighbors, also on a cul-de-sac off the north branch of the Chicago River, suffered from the same chronic outages, she said.

Since ComEd replaced an underground cable in January, power outages have been few in number and short in duration, she said.

The irony is strong with the next one. Here is a clueless idiot so hyped up on the idea that underground systems are reliable that he can’t see reality if it bit him. He doesn’t comprehend the fact that the reason why his power is going out so much is because of the underground systems failing. He thinks that since his system is underground, that it can’t be the problem. It must be the above ground systems that feed it. But the cause of the problems is the very system he thinks is infallible.
www.dailyherald.com...

My subdivision has all of its wiring underground but because of issues upstream or downstream we are continuously without power. Really, ComEd, the time has come today to resolve these issues.

reply to post by cavalryscout


F birds, I don't care about birds. They poop on my car.
I also don't like children, rap music, or New Jersey.

But, I'm glad you found my thread entertaining, if nothing else.