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Rolling blackouts are possible across Long Island this week as LIPA crews work an ever-expanding list of sites damaged by Tropical Storm Irene and 189,472 customers remain without power.
It's scary to think most of these people actually have the right to vote and serve on a jury.
The burying power lines thing really should be a priority on infrastructure improvement, but that would be a very...very...very...long project.
Think about the cost involved anytime a repair was needed. You're now bringing in a union backhoe operator to come out to the site to dig up the property to access the buried lines as well as rebury the lines once repairs are effected.
For those of you who can get into the actual Newsday site, read the comments from the public!
There's a guy complaining that the "illegals" in Huntington Station have power, while the "legal residents" in Huntington and Huntington Bay don't!
I've long held that Newsday commenters are the lowest common denominator of society. Terri Schiavo reads their posts and thinks "these people are absolutely brain-dead"
Funny thing is, you see the same thing there as you do here as far as idiots turning every subject into a political argument... very interesting.
I've long held that Newsday commenters are the lowest common denominator of society. Terri Schiavo reads their posts and thinks "these people are absolutely brain-dead"
Funny thing is, you see the same thing there as you do here as far as idiots turning every subject into a political argument... very interesting.
You have to realize that a lot of times those 20 political slanted comments are from the same 2 or 3 people who go around to every web forum they can get on saying that Obama is a Kenyan/it's Bush's fault etc ad infinitum. It's very easy to have dozens of alias on a web forum.
Think about the cost involved anytime a repair was needed. You're now bringing in a union backhoe operator to come out to the site to dig up the property to access the buried lines as well as rebury the lines once repairs are effected.
(OK, not LIPA issue, but the idea is the same -- cost effectiveness underground v. overhead)
That article is interesting. It does a good job showing the basics of why it wouldn't be feasible on LI. Some of it is misleading IMO.
As a point of comparison,Con Ed has different underground networks within Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx. Each network has several high voltage (distribution) feeders accociated with it, and those feed transformers in the street, which ultimately feed the customers. Most of their system is designed to withstand a 3rd or 4th contingency, which means a network can lose 3 or 4 feeders before anyone starts losing lights. The lines are pulled through ducts so there is not always digging involved in repair. Your article states that it would take 58% longer to repair an underground outage, the reason for this is, if there were an outage, it would indicate severe damage to the grid, and an almost imminent shutdown (does anyone here remember Long Island City in 2006)?
Overhead feeds cannot withstand a first contingency. When a feeder goes down, people lose lights. it's that simple. If there is minor damge, like say a bad wire or even one tree down, then linemen can isolate the fault and get people back on relatively quickly through a series of switch moves. That's ONE fault...we're dealing with 5000 right now. In order to sustain enough reliability to justify the cost, LIPA (actually National Grid) would need to install miles and miles and miles of cable, hundreds if not thousands of new transformers, and rip up every street on LI. Then, every home would need to dig up their yard (can you say NIMBY??) or other modifications would need to be done to get the 120/208 into the homes as they are currently, which is mainly overhead. That just puts you back at square one, as I'm sure probably between 10 and 20% of the outages here are caused by trees taking out someone's overhead service from pole to house.
It ain't feasible.
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