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[RedKing]

What Truean said. And yes, I know that the technology isn't fully there yet for induction transmission. A lot of the issues you mention aren't so much an issue for resonance induction (i.e. the receivers create stationary localized fields rather than needing one ginormous EM field that extends for miles, at least as I understand it...not an expert in power transmission systems).

My point is that there are better ways out there. As you point out, even burying the lines could help in places (although buried lines on the coast often run into problems with subsidence and saltwater corrosion). But there's little change because most of these utilities, private and public, are so locked into the short-term, profit-focused model that they'll just rebuild each time (and pass the costs on in higher rates) rather than make large-scale infrastructure upgrades that would save on money and disruption later.

It's the same problem with the Federal infrastructure. Obama wanted to sink some serious capital into fixing the power grid, the highway systems, etc. Would have provided quite a few jobs in construction, an industry hit very hard by the housing collapse.
The response? "Too expensive. Let the states pay for it."
The states' response? "Too expensive. Let the municipalities pay for it."
The municipalities' response? "Too expensive. You people are screwed."

This country is going to Hell in a handbasket because somewhere along the line, somebody came up with the rhetoric that the government should be run like a business, and it caught on. Without remembering that:

A. Most large businesses are ALSO poorly managed, inefficient, and short-sighted. It's the nature of large organizations.
B. The government is NOT A BUSINESS. The government exists in large part, to provide those services and protections that the corporate world would not, or would abuse if they did. Running a government like a for-profit business is a terrible idea.

[Andir]

The inverse square law nullifies "resonance induction technology", plus you have to consider that every charging device between you and the transmitter creates a shadow and reduces your signal.

Cancer though? probably not with the wavelengths used. Non-ionizing radiation only affects organic tissue by heating it slightly.

Eh, it's still well above acceptable standards of exposure.

There is no practical way for a single municipal vendor to keep enough linemen on call to handle this kind of wide destruction. And even if they did, they would risk loosing their workers and stored materials to storm damage. It really is better to have the material and workers distributed so that they can perform normal work most of the time, but be available to respond en mass to rare destructive events.

Also, I believe that line workers are among the best paid "blue collar" jobs that you can get:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos195.htm

[Andir]

Double post, for another thought...

It's the same problem with the Federal infrastructure. Obama wanted to sink some serious capital into fixing the power grid, the highway systems, etc. Would have provided quite a few jobs in construction, an industry hit very hard by the housing collapse.

Do you know where all that money went?  To the National Highway System.  The same system that the Federal Government already pays into.  The money you speak of has guidelines on spending (from the Fed and labeled "earmark hostile") and cannot be spent on other "local" streets and roads.

Complaining that the Fed won't pay for your local street is complaining to the wrong people.  You need to address the municipality correctly.  This is why distribution of political power is essential.  You can more easily get elected to the city council/board and get these things done.  Instead you complain about a bunch of old guys sitting in Washington D.C. who wouldn't know that a local street needs to be paved and they aren't willing to let the State/Cities spend that money appropriately.

So the problem is that city-wide infrastructure issues exist... Obama steps in and says: "Let's spend money on the highway systems and railroads between cities."  Do you see the issue here?  The only thing that money's going to do is let people go to other cities easier.  (While I commend that goal, it doesn't address the local issues at hand.)

[Truean]

I don't understand this anger (from either of you)... It was a huge freaking storm.  The workers are out restoring power as fast as they can... as stated in the article.

"resonance induction technology" -- are you serious?  Do you know how much wasted power there is involved in this?  Do you know how that will impact so many households between towers?  Your speakers would blow out of their cases and you'd probably develop cancers from all the radiation.  Do you realize how big these coils would have to be?  It's not a simple matter of pop-up towers or expense....  I don't even... ugh.

The only thing I can think of that would be even slightly "anger" inducing is that most of the power lines are not buried.  Some of them cannot be, but a greater majority can with today's technology levels.

It isn't the response, it's the planning or inadequacy thereof from the planners.

Yes, it was a big storm, a hurricane, which we can foresee. We know we get them regularly along the Atlantic/Gulf and we know sometimes they are big storms, but we don't plan adequately.

The gripe isn't about the crews working or performance; it's that someone didn't hire enough crewmen. We need more than the "let's cut costs" skeleton crews. Yes this costs money; yes they should pay it, however it needs to be paid. Hire, more, utility workers, so we can get things up and running quicker. Also trim more tree branches that are in danger of falling on power lines.

The issue is maintenance, no one wants to properly fund and pay for it. People have taken the eight letters in "overhead" and condensed them into a four letter curse word no one wants to deal with. We then have the audacity to wonder why nothing gets done/nothing works....

The repair crews are understaffed. The maintenance is underfunded and underdone as a result.
The solution is to hire and retain more skilled utility workers and do more tree trimming of branches over power lines.

No one does this, because no one wants to pay for it....

The problem isn't always trees above the lines.  Debris can fly from anywhere and hit power lines.  Power poles themselves can be blown or knocked over.  Lines past stress points, someone's clothesline gets wrapped around the power....

Hiring 150% of your normal staff isn't going to miraculously ensure that nobody loses power, nor is it going to be cost effective (or smart).  You'd have people sitting around twiddling their thumbs doing nothing (or be laid off) most of the year.  When people have nothing to do they get complacent and slow.  Hiring on a bunch of people like that would likely make things worse because they'd likely not be as experienced as a well worked crew who routinely fixes these issues and they'd likely make mistakes.  (If you do the same work daily, you're less likely to screw up, miss a step, cut corners as if you did the work once a month.)

The "Normal" is too low.... Cost? You know how much money is lost due to power outages every year? It's easily in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Forget the wider economic losses, think about all those grocery stores that routinely throw out $50,000 + in spoiled meat and dairy. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/07/13/long-power-outages-cost-restaurants-thousands/
And that's just the economic costs from spoiled food. Pay no attention to the moral implications of letting that much food rot when we could prevent it in a world rife with malnutrition and outright starvation....

Three words: "Skilled Emergency Labor." You have any idea how difficult it is to be a fully certified lineman and what you have to know/the dangers of not knowing it? We need to pay to keep skilled emergency workers on staff to retain their skills for when they are needed. Same thing with firemen, EMS. You can't purchase these services piecemeal from anyone on the street, because it takes years to master these skills. Moreover, the risk is ennormous. How much would you charge to deal with a burning building or countless downed power lines that could kill you?

Also, I believe that line workers are among the best paid "blue collar" jobs that you can get:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos195.htm

That's because you don't get it. "Most line installers need several years of on-the-job training." Then of course there's the high on the job mortality (death) rate, and the fact that all those electrical fields you're pointing out give you cancer if you're a lineman too, especially so because you're around them all the time, up close and personal.... http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/156/10/913.full . Historically it was one of the single worst jobs with 1 out of every 2 linemen dying due to work related causes http://ibew765.org/. Electrocutions were the fifth highest type of work related cause of death in the most recent reports. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/98-131/ This is the problem with America, people don't know half of what they think they do, look at a website without knowing anything and say "I could do that, they have it pretty good!' Then the next logical step is saying they have it "too good." Then we take stuff away from others who deserve it because we haven't figured out it isn't easy, they are good at their jobs and make it look easy. "It's harder than it looks."

If you want to save costs, look elsewhere, like the bloated military budget, or corporate tax subsidies to companies that move labor overseas. <--- Tax into oblivion, please. I'm sick of subsidizing the building of Chinese factories. It seems Republicans have become soft on communism, or at least they indirectly fund it.

Nobody said anything about "ensur[ing] that nobody loses power," quite the opposite, I expect people to loose power. The issue is with restoring it.

http://www.dcnonl.com/article/id32356
"America’s roads, public transit and aviation have gotten worse in the past four years. Water and sewage systems are dreadful. The basic physical backbone of American society is barely above failing, a report by top engineers says. "

This country needs to pony up the cash via taxes to keep itself from crumbling and anyone who doesn't want to but has the ability to needs to be forced to via taxation under penalty of federal prison time for tax evasion. Libertarians should forcibly have their water, electric, and gas shut off so they can see exactly how much they need society. Rabid followers of Ayn Rand, should be dumped off in the Rockies to form their own community called "Galt's Glutch." The rest of us don't need them, they are free to leave and I wish they would. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_locations_in_Atlas_Shrugged#Galt.27s_Gulch

[sluissa]

There's room for improvement with everything, but I've seen first hand how well power companies respond to situations like these. There's really no room to complain about the disaster response. I'm guessing it's the same up there, but down in the Southeast, every power company has a cooperation agreement to send help to each other during disasters. I live in Florida and after a major hurricane a few years back, the truck that reconnected our electricity was from Texas. There really were thousands of extra workers sent in to help along with hundreds of trucks.

Now, I can imagine the northeast has a slightly different setup than we do down here and I don't envy anyone that has to work on underground lines after serious flooding. Still, I think, given what they have to work with, they're doing a good job.

The infrastructure itself... well... yes, it could be improved dramatically. However, as was said. Most people consider it too expensive and just want to keep slapping bandaids on things ignoring the fact that a lot of it is at least 30 years old at this point, if not older.

[kaijyuu]

This thread is more educational than the class I'm currently in.

[RedKing]

Double post, for another thought...

It's the same problem with the Federal infrastructure. Obama wanted to sink some serious capital into fixing the power grid, the highway systems, etc. Would have provided quite a few jobs in construction, an industry hit very hard by the housing collapse.

Do you know where all that money went?  To the National Highway System.  The same system that the Federal Government already pays into.  The money you speak of has guidelines on spending (from the Fed and labeled "earmark hostile") and cannot be spent on other "local" streets and roads.

Complaining that the Fed won't pay for your local street is complaining to the wrong people.  You need to address the municipality correctly.  This is why distribution of political power is essential.  You can more easily get elected to the city council/board and get these things done.  Instead you complain about a bunch of old guys sitting in Washington D.C. who wouldn't know that a local street needs to be paved and they aren't willing to let the State/Cities spend that money appropriately.

So the problem is that city-wide infrastructure issues exist... Obama steps in and says: "Let's spend money on the highway systems and railroads between cities."  Do you see the issue here?  The only thing that money's going to do is let people go to other cities easier.  (While I commend that goal, it doesn't address the local issues at hand.)

Great job completely misinterpreting what I was saying. 
No, I don't expect the Feds to pay for my local road. What I'm talking is multi-state, public infrastructure like the Federal Highway system. There is no Federal DoT crew that goes out and paves the highway. That's offloaded to the state DoTs and paid for with Federal money. And even then it's typically built by private contractors and paid by the state, with ostensibly Federal money. In many states, there's not enough money going around to upgrade aging bridges & roads AND maintain existing roads AND build new capacity to meet existing demand. So state gov't is in maintenance-first mode, curtailing construction and upgrades, and in some cases paying for it purely with state funds when there's no Federal ones left.

This offloads the same problem to the state, when they can't afford to build/maintain/upgrade state roads, and push that cost to the cities. Those cities have nowhere left to push to. They either raise taxes or let the local roads turn to shit.

Obama wanted to *increase* transportation outlays, because it would be a job creator and because those upgrades are sorely needed in some areas. Those increases got stripped out of the final budget. In fact, the overall Federal highway outlays dropped, IIRC. And this is just symptomatic of a lot of similar "trickle-down" spending issues (education, Medicare, etc.). The Feds pay the states less, the states pay the providers less, services wind up being cut or costing considerably more. But hey, at least the rich didn't suffer. That would simply be un-American.

[Andir]

Three words: "Skilled Emergency Labor." You have any idea how difficult it is to be a fully certified lineman and what you have to know/the dangers of not knowing it? We need to pay to keep skilled emergency workers on staff to retain their skills for when they are needed. Same thing with firemen, EMS. You can't purchase these services piecemeal from anyone on the street, because it takes years to master these skills. Moreover, the risk is ennormous. How much would you charge to deal with a burning building or countless downed power lines that could kill you?

Also, I believe that line workers are among the best paid "blue collar" jobs that you can get:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos195.htm

That's because you don't get it. [snip other]

Now you are putting words in my mouth.  I never said they were unskilled or easily replaced.  Nadaka covered the argument points fairly well.

Great job completely misinterpreting what I was saying. 

You too.

No, I don't expect the Feds to pay for my local road. What I'm talking is multi-state, public infrastructure like the Federal Highway system. There is no Federal DoT crew that goes out and paves the highway. That's offloaded to the state DoTs and paid for with Federal money. And even then it's typically built by private contractors and paid by the state, with ostensibly Federal money. In many states, there's not enough money going around to upgrade aging bridges & roads AND maintain existing roads AND build new capacity to meet existing demand. So state gov't is in maintenance-first mode, curtailing construction and upgrades, and in some cases paying for it purely with state funds when there's no Federal ones left.

This offloads the same problem to the state, when they can't afford to build/maintain/upgrade state roads, and push that cost to the cities. Those cities have nowhere left to push to. They either raise taxes or let the local roads turn to shit.

Obama wanted to *increase* transportation outlays, because it would be a job creator and because those upgrades are sorely needed in some areas. Those increases got stripped out of the final budget. In fact, the overall Federal highway outlays dropped, IIRC. And this is just symptomatic of a lot of similar "trickle-down" spending issues (education, Medicare, etc.). The Feds pay the states less, the states pay the providers less, services wind up being cut or costing considerably more. But hey, at least the rich didn't suffer. That would simply be un-American.

Yep, I understand this.  It's money the Federal Government should have been spending all along.  I never said that it wasn't.

My argument is that complaining about local repair crews after a storm has little to do with some infrastructure spending bill.  If the state is taking money away from local streets to pay for highways, that's an easy problem to remedy.  Stop doing it.  Let the people complain that the Federal highways are terrible, increase spending on State Highways and let people choose the safest, cleanest road.

[RedKing]

And get voted out of power in a heartbeat when commerce and flow of people in your state drops to a crawl. For better or worse, Federal highways are the main arteries of traffic in states and major cities. If California or the city of Los Angeles allowed the Federal highways there to degrade, it would paralyze the entire metro area.

Closer to home, if Raleigh/North Carolina allowed I-40 and the 440 Beltline to degrade, Raleigh would become a nightmare to navigate. The problem is that we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. Your solution seems to be "F*ck Paul."

[Truean]

Three words: "Skilled Emergency Labor." You have any idea how difficult it is to be a fully certified lineman and what you have to know/the dangers of not knowing it? We need to pay to keep skilled emergency workers on staff to retain their skills for when they are needed. Same thing with firemen, EMS. You can't purchase these services piecemeal from anyone on the street, because it takes years to master these skills. Moreover, the risk is ennormous. How much would you charge to deal with a burning building or countless downed power lines that could kill you?

Also, I believe that line workers are among the best paid "blue collar" jobs that you can get:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos195.htm

That's because you don't get it. [snip other]

Now you are putting words in my mouth.  I never said they were unskilled or easily replaced.  Nadaka covered the argument points fairly well.

Nice trick, except it won't work. I never said you said they were unskilled or easily replaced, that's actually you putting words in my mouth. You've repeatedly lost this argument to me and others.... Isn't it funny how everyone, including OP, says its you who put words in people's mouths...? Think that maybe the problem isn't everyone else but perhaps you?

Here's how it went: You said

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hiring 150% of your normal staff isn't going to miraculously ensure that nobody loses power, nor is it going to be cost effective (or smart).  You'd have people sitting around twiddling their thumbs doing nothing (or be laid off) most of the year.  When people have nothing to do they get complacent and slow.  Hiring on a bunch of people like that would likely make things worse because they'd likely not be as experienced as a well worked crew who routinely fixes these issues and they'd likely make mistakes.  (If you do the same work daily, you're less likely to screw up, miss a step, cut corners as if you did the work once a month.)

Points: hiring extra staff isn't good but rather wasteful ("150% normal," twiddling their thumbs, complacent, slow) and we should get more "experienced as a well worked crew" workers.

I said:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The "Normal" is too low.... Cost? You know how much money is lost due to power outages every year? It's easily in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Forget the wider economic losses, think about all those grocery stores that routinely throw out $50,000 + in spoiled meat and dairy. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/07/13/long-power-outages-cost-restaurants-thousands/
And that's just the economic costs from spoiled food. Pay no attention to the moral implications of letting that much food rot when we could prevent it in a world rife with malnutrition and outright starvation....

Three words: "Skilled Emergency Labor." You have any idea how difficult it is to be a fully certified lineman and what you have to know/the dangers of not knowing it? We need to pay to keep skilled emergency workers on staff to retain their skills for when they are needed. Same thing with firemen, EMS. You can't purchase these services piecemeal from anyone on the street, because it takes years to master these skills. Moreover, the risk is ennormous. How much would you charge to deal with a burning building or countless downed power lines that could kill you?

My points: 1.) It pays to keep Skilled Emergency labor on staff so their skills don't rust this directly goes to answering your "twiddling their thumbs" point. They aren't twiddling their thumbs, they're learning a trade on the job.... 2.) Those "less effective" workers, are apprentices, and they need to have a job in order to get their years of on the job experience. This is how those "well worked and effective" crew members learned how to do their jobs. Moreover, it was about economic payment structure. You keep them on staff because you couldn't pay per instance so even if they spent some time "twiddling their thumbs" it would be worth it when they were finally needed.

You said:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, I believe that line workers are among the best paid "blue collar" jobs that you can get:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos195.htm

Your point was, as plainly stated, that line workers were, "among the best paid "blue collar" jobs you can get."

I said:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's because you don't get it. "Most line installers need several years of on-the-job training." Then of course there's the high on the job mortality (death) rate, and the fact that all those electrical fields you're pointing out give you cancer if you're a lineman too, especially so because you're around them all the time, up close and personal.... http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/156/10/913.full . Historically it was one of the single worst jobs with 1 out of every 2 linemen dying due to work related causes http://ibew765.org/. Electrocutions were the fifth highest type of work related cause of death in the most recent reports. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/98-131/ This is the problem with America, people don't know half of what they think they do, look at a website without knowing anything and say "I could do that, they have it pretty good!' Then the next logical step is saying they have it "too good." Then we take stuff away from others who deserve it because we haven't figured out it isn't easy, they are good at their jobs and make it look easy. "It's harder than it looks."

I gave you specific examples of why it is NOT all that great and directly refuted your point with cited answers. You don't get [it] that linemen have a not so glamorous job, and I illustrated points showing that they don't.

And since you pointed out Nadaka's argument I'll address it specifically:

Truean: I would point out that it should have taken a year or so to restore power after Katrina over a much wider area, these things tend to go much faster than expected because every available service truck will drive across the country and go to work putting power infrastructure back in place starting with corridors leading to high value locations, and then spreading out from there. After a couple weeks, the only people without power should be the ones living far out of the way.

There is no practical way for a single municipal vendor to keep enough linemen on call to handle this kind of wide destruction. And even if they did, they would risk loosing their workers and stored materials to storm damage. It really is better to have the material and workers distributed so that they can perform normal work most of the time, but be available to respond en mass to rare destructive events.

There are other issues, but I don't think disaster response is a significant one.

What I'm saying is that while our response time isn't absolutely horrible, it really, really could use some improvements. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Irene-could-leave-many-apf-2011674395.html?x=0 Two weeks? Why? We know we repeatedly get hit by storms like this. How much economic activity is lost due to not repairing it as quickly as we can by funneling more funding and manpower into this? Economically, if extra funding and manpower cost less than the monetary losses, then why not do it? It doesn't have to be a single municipal vendor providing the labor, it could be regional or some other structure. As for who the people are who go weeks without power, no one should go for that long.


"More employed specialist people; less downtime/extended blackouts; more money saved from not incurring the monetary cost of having blackouts be extended....

It's the "extended" part that bothers me. I'm not knocking the repair crews; they don't need me to do that. I'm trying to support them and say we should support them, with money.... That way we can cut into the "extended" part of blackouts.

[Heron TSG]

As a novice electrician, I can tell you that repairing lines is incredibly dangerous and difficult. Not only are you high up, you're working with very high amounts of power. This is why they pay so well. If you want a lineperson to rush a job and get it done faster, you're asking them to risk death just that much more. If I were a lineperson, I would never sacrifice safety for speed. There's a process you have to go through for a reason. More linepeople would mean more parallel jobs being done, but there's not much that can be done for speeding up the work of a single lineperson.

[Truean]

As a novice electrician, I can tell you that repairing lines is incredibly dangerous and difficult. Not only are you high up, you're working with very high amounts of power. This is why they pay so well. If you want a lineperson to rush a job and get it done faster, you're asking them to risk death just that much more. If I were a lineperson, I would never sacrifice safety for speed. There's a process you have to go through for a reason. More linepeople would mean more parallel jobs being done, but there's not much that can be done for speeding up the work of a single lineperson.

Yup, and thus I think we should hire more to cover more ground, safely. "Money" and "speed" don't do you any good if you're dead.

[Andir]

Your point was, as plainly stated, that line workers were, "among the best paid "blue collar" jobs you can get."
...

I gave you specific examples of why it is NOT all that great and directly refuted your point with cited answers. You don't get [it] that linemen have a not so glamorous job, and I illustrated points showing that they don't.

I stated that the job was among the best paying blue collar jobs.  I never said easily replaceable or glamorous.  (in fact, I said the opposite by stating that someone not experienced would make mistakes...)  You did that.  Your words, my mouth.  If you can find where I said we can just hire more linemen during disasters, I'll retract that statement... good luck.

This whole conversation keeps overlooking the borrowed workers aspect of it.  There's no need to hire more people for natural disasters because people can come in form neighboring areas and help.

Nobody said that the employees should work faster.  I said they could work faster than someone sitting around for a year waiting for a disaster to strike because they are more skilled/practiced.

(edit: sentence structure.)

[Sheb]

This whole conversation keeps overlooking the borrowed workers aspect of it.  There's no need to hire more people for natural disasters because people can come in form neighboring areas and help.

Except that is obviously not working, as you need weeks to get the power back on.

[Andir]

This whole conversation keeps overlooking the borrowed workers aspect of it.  There's no need to hire more people for natural disasters because people can come in form neighboring areas and help.

Except that is obviously not working, as you need weeks to get the power back on.

Weeks are fringe cases.  That house that's 10 miles from the nearest town (who likely have a backup generator because their power goes out every storm.  I know.  I grew up in that environment.)