Ready for the next ice storm?

[patric]

The Tulsa Whirled weighs in on what we learned (and didnt learn) from the last big one:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?subjectid=261&articleid=20091025_261_G1_Broken869842

As for me, I think I'm going to lay in a supply of canned foods and flashlight batteries because, despite the lessons of the disastrous ice storm of 2007, AEP-PSO has been able to accomplish practically nothing this year in terms of taking overhead electrical lines in Tulsa neighborhoods and burying them.

Short of using B-52s and Agent Orange, no amount of tree trimming is going to protect us from power outages. The solution is not to try to move trees away from the power lines. The solution is to move the power lines away from the trees, or at least away from the tree limbs.

Meanwhile, I remind everyone that one Tulsa neighborhood was completely immune to power outages in the 2007 storm. From my front yard, downtown glowed like the Emerald City that cold winter. What did downtown have my neighborhood didn't have? Buried lines.

Falling tree limbs were responsible for a lot of the outages in that storm, but a good share of them were caused simply by the weight of ice alone. Tree trimming does nothing to protect against that.

[Hoss]

The Tulsa Whirled weighs in on what we learned (and didnt learn) from the last big one:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/article.aspx?subjectid=261&articleid=20091025_261_G1_Broken869842

As for me, I think I'm going to lay in a supply of canned foods and flashlight batteries because, despite the lessons of the disastrous ice storm of 2007, AEP-PSO has been able to accomplish practically nothing this year in terms of taking overhead electrical lines in Tulsa neighborhoods and burying them.

Short of using B-52s and Agent Orange, no amount of tree trimming is going to protect us from power outages. The solution is not to try to move trees away from the power lines. The solution is to move the power lines away from the trees, or at least away from the tree limbs.

Meanwhile, I remind everyone that one Tulsa neighborhood was completely immune to power outages in the 2007 storm. From my front yard, downtown glowed like the Emerald City that cold winter. What did downtown have my neighborhood didn't have? Buried lines.

Falling tree limbs were responsible for a lot of the outages in that storm, but a good share of them were caused simply by the weight of ice alone. Tree trimming does nothing to protect against that.

Buried lines don't prevent the substations OR the big transmission lines from shorting or falling.  I know of more people than I can count that had underground electric that lost it either at the same time or just after I did.  So while buried lines will help in the residential scheme of things, unless you can get AEP to figure out how to pony up a googleplex dollar solution to bury the transmission lines, we will ALWAYS see this problem with large ice storms.

To say that burying the lines is the be-all-end-all is a misnomer.

[Townsend]

Buried lines don't prevent the substations OR the big transmission lines from shorting or falling.  I know of more people than I can count that had underground electric that lost it either at the same time or just after I did.  So while buried lines will help in the residential scheme of things, unless you can get AEP to figure out how to pony up a googleplex dollar solution to bury the transmission lines, we will ALWAYS see this problem with large ice storms.

To say that burying the lines is the be-all-end-all is a misnomer.

I might've lost power in any case...the difference would've been time.  I doubt I'd've been out for 10 days if all they had to fix were substations and big transmission lines.

[patric]

Buried lines don't prevent the substations OR the big transmission lines from shorting or falling.  I know of more people than I can count that had underground electric that lost it either at the same time or just after I did.  So while buried lines will help in the residential scheme of things, unless you can get AEP to figure out how to pony up a googleplex dollar solution to bury the transmission lines, we will ALWAYS see this problem with large ice storms.

I dont think there is a universal panacea either, but the scale of neighborhood distribution and feeder failures far, far exceeds those of transmission line failures.
...and even downtown has transmission lines feeding their underground network.

Because neighborhood undergrounding would not be 100% effective at reducing reliability problems is not a reason not to pursue it.
Another poster here presented arguments that AEP was inflating the cost-per-mile of undergrounding, and I also recall the Corporation Commission "study" where AEP also inflated the cost of "burying every power line in the state" by actually including "every power line in the state"... even those that would be absurd to bury,
like these:

If AEP had not represented the rate increase as a way to bury more utility lines after the ice storm, im reasonably certain there would have been resistance, but as it stands now it was just bait-and-switch with the  money going instead to the tree-trimming subcontractors.

[cannon_fodder]

Buried lines don't prevent the substations OR the big transmission lines from shorting or falling.

Generally substations "fail" because of a failure in the lines.  That is to say, when a residential feeder line gets bogged down with ice and grounds the transformers put on fireworks shows, when enough of those go or a failure occurs at certain points in the grid the substation fails.  Rarely does a substation fail because of the actual ice.  Thus, it seems likely that reducing failures on residential lines would greatly assist in the problems at substations (second hand knowledge from working for a company that did a lot of substation work).

Large transmission lines rarely fail.  When they do, it's catastrophic and often a cascade.  I don't recall hearing of any major transmission failures during the ice storm.

But I agree.  Burying lines isn't a panacea.  But it will help with 75+% of the problems associated with ice, wind, and severe whether (for which we are known). 

Additionally, has anyone else noticed that a giant cluster of wires running all over the place on both sides of the street on ragged poles is ugly?

I think the lines should be buried on a long term plan.  When lines need to be replaced - just plan on burying them.   They are engineered to last up-to 30 years.  I assume in Oklahoma that time frame is not often achieved and the industry standard of replacing 3% of a grids power lines annually is probably exceeded. 

Using this very conservative and slow method, we would have all power lines buried in Oklahoma within 30 years.  If we left main transmission lines out of it we should be able to achieve it faster than that (supplement those with the VRC deicing system Dartmouth developed).   They're replacing the lines anyway, so while I understand there will be added expense to bury the lines it will greatly reduce future costs (replacing underground lines in conduit is faster, less outages from trees, less tree trimming, etc.). 

I've love to see a realistic feasibility study.  Not the "all lines underground at a cost of $250K to $3mil per mile = $50 Billion" junk.   It seems to me AEP approaches the issue with an attitude of "we don't want to bury the lines" and goes from there.




Urban Tulsa article on it:
http://www.urbantulsa.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A26794

Originally after the ice storm they said they would bury 800 miles of lines in Tulsa, that number was reduced and then the project was halted.  Honestly, what is their incentive?  If the system has massive failures and they need to replace everything . . . they just get a rate increase. 

[patric]

As spooked as Ive been in the past about gas appliances, I ended up replacing an electrtic bath heater with a blue-flame heater from Sutherlands.
It's ventless,  and has a lot more safety features than older unvented gas heaters (like shutting off if Oxygen or gas pressure gets low), and of course, require no electricity.
At 6,000 BTU it wont heat large areas but it could mean the difference between pipes bursting or not during a power failure, and make riding out the outage a bit easier.

They do make larger heaters, but 6,000 BTU is the largest heater you can put in a bathroom, and at $80 I can afford to put in another somewhere else if I need.

[brianh]

I was without power for 19 days that year.  Everything was electric in my old place back then so I had nothing except cold running water.  I don't think it was that bad really, you can pretty much solve the heat problem with extra blankets( maybe a little whisky or vodka).  The big problem is taking an ice shower for 19 days in a row(mitigated from 100% terrible to only 96% terrible by humming eye of the tiger as you rinse your hair). I am glad I have the gas water heater now.  I hope my neighbours don't have generators; the only thing worse than freezing at night, is freezing at night and having a lawnmower sound that never stops. My parents who live in a neighbourhood that had buried lines(around 61st and Sheridan) were one of the few places that were with power the whole time.

[cannon_fodder]

I have a generator, but only ran it sporadically.  An hour here or there to power the furnace and get the heat up, heat the fish tank, keep the lizard alive, juice up the fridge, etc.  Then probably a few hours in the evening for the same purposes, but on a luxury basis.  NO need to run it over night really.

And a HUGE +1 to gas stove, gas water heater, and a fireplace (gas and wood).

[custosnox]

we were out of power for about a week.  We did a lot of cooking on the gas stove just to get some more heat, and had the fireplace burning almost constantly.  Of course I worked at the casino at the time, so they had power out there the entire time, so I had that 10 hours a day of having power.  I will say I did a lot of reading during that week.  I'm just glad I happened to buy some new books right before it hit.

[buckeye]

My gas log fireplace didn't put out heat worth a damn!  Even worse, it's frighteningly expensive to run.

I borrowed a generator and ran it during the night hours to keep the furnace on and fridge cold.  The neighbor on that side of the house left to see family in Arkansas fortunately.  I had earplugs at the ready, but nobody complained.

[patric]

I borrowed a generator and ran it during the night hours to keep the furnace on and fridge cold.  The neighbor on that side of the house left to see family in Arkansas fortunately.  I had earplugs at the ready, but nobody complained.

It's not firsthand knowledge, but natural gas generators are supposed to be quieter than gasoline generators, and have the added benefit of not needing to be fueled all the time.  They look like small air conditioning compressors and are tied in to both your gas lines and your breaker box, so are generally considered "permanently installed".
Since "quieter" is subjective I dont know how much of a difference the NG engine is.  Anyone ever own one?

Into the second week of our outage we tied a portable gasoline generator into a 240-volt outlet.  It sat open under an overhang and that seemed to make it resonate to the point where the whole house hummed.  Were looking at building a doghouse-like enclosure to dampen the sound if we can get it to vent exhaust properly.

[cannon_fodder]

The natural gas generators are very, very nice.  They are about as load as a car when properly installed and run.  At high idle they can be a bit loud, but not nearly as bad as a much smaller "portable generator."

HOWEVER, they are very expensive.  If you don't have $5,000 to spend on one don't even consider it.  I don't think I've ever seen one installed for less than $15K.   You need to buy the unit, have a foundation/pad poured for it, have the unit craned into place, have lines run to it and plumbed, have an auxiliary power switch installed (so it doesn't back-feed into the line), etc.    Frankly, I've only seen them on "big boy houses", and even then rarely.  The reason is expense.

A brief Google search shows Briggs and Stratton makes one for < $5K (not installed of course).  Installed lets call it $7,500.  Which most people wouldn't be able/willing to spend for an event (power outage) that is usually a nuisance and a real problem once every decade or so.

[brianh]

My gas log fireplace didn't put out heat worth a damn!  Even worse, it's frighteningly expensive to run.

I borrowed a generator and ran it during the night hours to keep the furnace on and fridge cold.  The neighbor on that side of the house left to see family in Arkansas fortunately.  I had earplugs at the ready, but nobody complained.

No one is going to complain to the person running it. Your not going to go over and complain at someone for wanting heat, you just deal with it.

[buckeye]

True indeed.  Gladly, none of my neighbors are jerks as would come over and complain anyway!

That generator was obnoxiously loud.  The owner bought it bran new and used it for four hours before his power came back on.  He said, "I have to warn you - that thing sounds terrible, like it's going to fly apart any moment.  That's normal."

I was half way to building an insulated 'doghouse' for it by the second night.

It used 8 gallons of gas per night (14 hours) and had enough juice to run the washer, dryer, fridge, tv and a few lights.  Briggs and Straton engine.  Given my choice, I'd get one of the nicer Honda models - they're much quieter and more fuel efficient.  Expensive as heck, too.