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Subscribe to RSSMany areas of the U.S. were sweltering on Wednesday, while many Mid-Atlantic residents are still without power and air conditioning after a recent storm. NBC's John Yang reports.
Updated at 5:54 p.m. ET: In the aftermath of violent storms that knocked out power to millions from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic, sweltering residents and elected officials are demanding to know why it's taking so long to restring power lines and why they're not more resilient in the first place.
The answer, it turns out, is complicated: Above-ground lines are vulnerable to lashing winds and falling trees, but relocating them underground involves huge costs — as much as $15 million per mile of buried line — and that gets passed onto consumers.
With memories of other extended outages fresh in the minds of many of the more than 735,000 customers who still lacked electricity Wednesday, some question whether the delivery of power is more precarious than it used to be.
"It's a system that from an infrastructure point of view is beginning to age, has been aging," said Gregory Reed, a professor of electric power engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. "We haven't expanded and modernized the bulk of the transmission and distribution network."The ongoing outage meant no July 4 holiday for thousands of utility workers who scrambled to restore power across the region.
The storms that began Friday knocked out power to 3 million and have been responsible for the deaths of 26 people in seven states and the District of Columbia, including two people who died after accidents in Virginia.
The sheriff's office in Loudoun County, on the Maryland border, said Wednesday a utility worker from Florida crashed after her truck had brake problems. The bucket truck's driver, 57-year-old Jacqueline Green, died after going downhill into an intersection and hitting a semi-trailer Tuesday. Authorities also said there was a death in Richmond caused by a falling tree but no other details were immediately available.
The Weather Channel's Kelly Cass takes a look at the national forecast.
Much of the afflicted areas faced yet another day of scorching heat, with the National Weather Service forecasting temperatures in the 90s and above from the Midwest to the Atlantic Coast.
Utilities warned that some people could be without power - and unable to run their air conditioners - for the rest of the week.
The region still most affected was West Virginia and the neighboring Blue Ridge Mountain section of Virginia, accounting for close to half of the lingering outage.
The powerful winds that whipped through several states late Friday, toppling trees onto power lines and knocking out transmission towers and electrical substations, have renewed debate about whether to bury lines. District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray was among officials calling for the change this week and was seeking to meet with the chief executive of Pepco, the city's dominant utility, to discuss what he called a slow and frustrating response.
"They obviously need to invest more in preparing for getting the power back on," said Maryland state Sen. James Rosapepe, who is among those advocating for moving lines underground. "Every time this happens, they say they're shocked — shocked that it rained or snowed or it was hot — which isn't an acceptable excuse given that we all know about climate change."
Though the newest communities do bury their power lines, many older ones have found that it's too expensive to replace existing networks.
To bury power lines, utilities need to take over city streets so they can cut trenches into the asphalt, lay down plastic conduits and then the power lines. Manholes must be created to connect the lines together. The overall cost is between $5 million and $15 million per mile, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, Inc., a nonprofit research and development group funded by electric utilities. Those costs get passed on to residents in the form of higher electric bills, making the idea unpalatable for many communities.
Power lines are already underground in parts of Washington, but initial estimates are that it would cost as much as $5.8 billion to bury them throughout the entire city and would cost customers an additional $107 per month, said Michael Maxwell, Pepco's vice president of asset management.
North Carolina considered burying its lines in 2003, after a winter storm knocked out power to 2 million utility customers. The North Carolina Public Staff Utilities Commission eventually concluded it was "prohibitively expensive" and time-consuming. The project would have cost $41 billion and taken 25 years to complete — and it would have raised residential electric bills by 125 percent.
An onslaught of recent extreme weather around the country, including heat waves, wildfires and flooding, has increased strain on infrastructure already struggling to meet growing consumer demand. And some scientists predict the severe weather will only increase, though it will take time to study this year's weather before any conclusions can be drawn.
Pepco has contingency plans for dealing with severe weather like tornadoes and hurricanes and runs periodic drills in which staff go through the process of responding to mass outages. In this case, though, the hurricane-force winds lashed the region with no advance notice, creating a type of quick-hit storm that caught the utility flat-footed and for which it had not practiced, Maxwell said.
Cliff Owen / AP
A Gulf Power lineman works to restore a power line in Middleburg, Va., on Tuesday.
"That's going to be a very big lesson for us," he said. "We need to understand how we recover from this."
A stress index created by the North American Electric Reliability Corp., which monitors the country's power supply to annually assess its performance, shows that day-to-day performance seems to have improved, but there was an increase in high-stress days. The company counted six high-stress days in 2011, slightly more than the three preceding years. Weather was a contributing factor in nine of the 10 failures severe enough to generate a federally required report in 2011.
But utility insiders acknowledge that the math is little comfort when a customer's air conditioner fails during a triple-digit heat wave and the food spoils.
"The industry is getting better and better," said Aaron Strickland, who oversees distribution and emergency operations for Georgia Power, a subsidiary of the Atlanta-based Southern Co. "In my opinion, I think the expectations of customers are higher and higher because we depend so much on electricity. ... We expect to push that button and it works."
Still, he noted Friday's storms pummeled the region with no advance warning, and "you can't prepare for that.""You don't see it coming," Strickland said. "It just happens."
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.
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and no, this wasn't caused by man's effect on the environment.
Not sure if you are being sarcastic. . . . occurs to me that fossil fuel consumption causes weather upheavals resulting in damaged power lines resulting (maybe, not entirely sure) in net decrease in power consumption.
Hey, guys, I have a brilliant idea! Let's not borrow money at an effective negative interest rate and upgrade our decaying infrastructure. Let's not create millions of new jobs.
Fossil fuels cannot be a problem because humans walked with dinosaurs only a couple thousand years ago, according to the Love Child of the Reichwing: Sarah Palin.
You Betcha!
Weather is erratic. Statistical outiers like the conditions in the mid-west would existed irregardless of the whole concept of global warming or climate change. Being convinced of man's effect on our climate, I am discouraged when individuals site these types of conditions as evidence of climate change; this isn't what its about.
Well folks, ask the unions! They call that job security and bargaining power.
Oh my gorsh, is the Enlightened, Eastern U.S. in Sarah Palin's "crosshairs?"
You Betcha'!
Thinking and knowledge not only sucks, it is evil.
Blame deregulation and the fact that nobody wants jobs that don't take a college degree. Also, we do not let illegal aliens take the jobs citizens don't want. Also, driven by profits, companies staff at the minimum to get by. Who do we thank for all this, Obama of course.
Weather is always changing, folks. This has nothing to do with climate change, nothing whatsoever. The fossil fuel industry would be happy - happy I tell you - to spend a fraction of their profits on pollution control, if only it could be proven, beyond any hint of a shadow of a doubt, that climate change is due to human carbon emissions. Why do you think the oil industry gives millions of dollars to foundations whose primary purpose is to cast doubt on the ridiculous theories of man-made climate change by those silly scientists who don't even know that the world's climate has always been changing?
Go away you silly scientists!
Down sideing work labor force too save money for the 1%.
Why not put power lines that are in neighborhoods underground. That way more personnel can deal with the problems where lines are still above ground.
Look everyone, the rest of the states need to follow NC's example and make climate change illegal. That should put an end to all of this.
A couple here need to go back to school, and I wonder if we had all nuclear energy, and solar, as well as wind, if these electric poles in the USA would not still be the problem?--Hmmm hmm I am still waiting for an answer!
I have not seen any light poles in one EU country now for 30 years!---so never a problem, but that can not be done here; it is called job security, by those who are allowed to black mail the system here, like unions and business!.--But methane and other solvents, as well as CO2 is causing the global problem, has anyone seen 169 times over Greenland the last 41 years----trust me it is not a theory!
@Gabriel As the article says, $5-15 million per mile. But nobody wants to pay any taxes, so that ain't gonna happen.
Gabriel-1934044:
I lived in a development with power lines undergroud for aesthics. They had to tear the place up when lines had problems. Backhoes digging up yards, etc. It seems to be more convenient and likely less expensive to keep the power lines above ground.
Well, we could use Byron's idea of borrowing at negative rates and contract the work out to the illegals for $500,000 per mile and everyone should be happy. 15 million per mile less half a million would be 14 1/2 million per mile savings. At zero interest. Oh wait, it was Obama's idea to rebuild our aging (and it's really showing it's age now) infrastructure so we just can't never ever ever allow that. And illegals? If we hired them all to rebuild our infrastructure then our fat lazy asses would have to mow our own yards and wash our own dishes. Can't ever ever allow that either. Hmmmm, guess we're just fkd. Suck it up and suffer, dudes.
People complaining about this now should have been complaining about this the last time the power went out. Our country's infrastructure has gotten a D rating by the society of engineers. We have more people using exponentially more power on a system that was built in the 20-50s. It wasn't designed for this level of stress. This is where the jobs are. Put Americans to work fixing our own country. Otherwise these things will not get better. The next power outage may be for weeks or months. What will people do without their AC, Fridge, TV, Internet and I phones? Riot.
THIS complication is the direct effect from inaction. As long ago as The Bush Man J.R. the few have been working to upgrade this nations power grid to bypass such problems. Yet nothing has been done. His own party fought him tooth and nail to do so. NOW again when early in his presidency President Obama tried also to re establish a new conduit to a new power grid those in lobby's of cult and misfortune refused.
So here this nation is once again in thee most sweltering of times and I guess still nothing will be done. My good personal friend B. has then assured me it will once again come fourth to the front of the line of importance but let us watch once more as profit entangles progress. And leaves it once more by the Way side. Another instance of America not being as up to speed as the rest of the modern world. ; ]
Cheers
We are hoping to be moving from California to North Carolina within the next year. We've already decided that we will have a natural gas automatic standby generator that will run the whole house, including the a/c. Although it will cost about $10,000 - as far as I'm concerned, it would pay for itself with a one-week of 100 degree temperature days power outage. And this outage won't be the last. They will keep happening until infrastructure is updated and utilities go underground.
Gabriel,
Actually, the best cost effective compromise might be something different. Leave the intense neighborhood overhead lines in place but bury the distribution of the next level up. Put these "main lines" underground and add switchgear in underground vaults along this distribution so only small areas are served by a feeder breaker, (switchgear). This would be similar to taking one circuit in your house and splitting it up into two or three.
What this would do is localize the problems. The main distribution would be protected and only the directly damaged neighborhoods would be effected. In this type approach, the same type damage might only impact a hundred customers instead of a thousand.
There are some issues though that still make this costly. Bare overhead conductors can carry a high amount of current and in fact they get quite hot when under load. Quite high voltages are run this way safely with relatively simple bare conductors. Strung on poles when heated up the wire can easily expand and grow in length with barely perceivable drooping or lowered tensions.
When you go underground, it gets more complicated. The conductors can no longer be bare and must be insulated to the appropriate voltage level. That insulated cable for the same conductor size is many multiple times more costly. High voltage insulated cable is very expensive. And it gets worse. The conductor diameter size for the necessary currents is quite a bit smaller in the "free air" installation. When you insulate the wire, you can no longer run it quite as hot. And then when confined in a conduit underground, the heat shedding capability gets even worse. So what happens is that you must run considerably larger conductors for the same loads. As the size of the conductor gets bigger that means more metal, (usually copper or aluminum), which again means higher cost. So if you take the approach of moving everything underground, it will be very expensive just for the material cost of the wire alone. Add to that the excavations, conduits, underground vaults etc. The installation cost is quite large too.
But, if you take a compromise approach, you can improve overall reliability, localize outages better and save some cost of switching everything over. At the same time you would be able to add some capability but that doesn't come free either. I believe the total cost would be considerably less and the gains could still be significant. Cosmetically, in your neighborhood, it probably wouldn't look too much different, but the overall reliability would be far better. If your next door neighbor's tree fell on the overhead line you'd probably still lose power until it was repaired, but if the damage occurred a mile or so away, you could be just fine. Maybe see a couple seconds out and then come back.
One drawback to selling this approach is that it would still be costly, but most people would look around and not see any difference, so people would be questioning just what they paid for. When people spend money, they want to see something for it.
The systems overall are quite old, overloaded and under maintained. Local utilities have chopped their lineman workforces and cut back on maintenance to save money and keep costs down. But when a problem hits, they don't have enough people to deal with it. They end up borrowing people from other companies and relying on a group of lineman sometimes known as "storm chasers" or gypsy linemen. There is somewhat of an underground of these guys. They are relatively independent and often have their own equipment. They travel from problem area to problem area and make a ton of money working ridiculous hours under adverse conditions. I've come across a couple of these guys who have their own lift trucks and all the gear. Their cabs are loaded with hardware that would make tornado chasers jealous. With the overtime involved, these guys can bring down $150,000 to as much as $200,000 in a "good year". (what most people would call a bad year for storms.)
Part of the problem is that when multiple parts of the country get hit in relatively the same period, there just aren't enough properly trained people to go around. It's pretty much a young man's game too. The work is very physical and extremely dangerous and often the working conditions are bad at best. You really need to know what you are doing too. Not the kind of work you hand off to just anybody.
We have sat on our hands for a couple decades at least when it comes to the grid and power distribution in general. The work that has been done during that period has pretty much been confined to just what is absolutely necessary. It is going to get worse before it gets better and people are going to need to realize that it won't improve without spending a lot of money. As the old saying about "pay me now or pay me later" goes, we chose "later" for quite some time and now that bill is coming due.
1NewDay
Excellent writing, I have been in the utility industry for 25 years and that is by far the best explanation for people not in the industry to understand. The small municipal where I am at chose to keep paying later and well the day is now here upon us.
hahaha49,
Thanks very much. I appreciate it. I'm an electrical engineer working on my 40th year in industry. More of a controls and automation guy, but have done enough in power to be dangerous. Sometimes a lot of things we take for granted, just gets you blank stares from those outside the profession. I consult these days and spend a lot of time with corporate management helping explain things. Also done some training through the years and have worked across a pretty broad spectrum getting into all sort of things. I'd like to think I am pretty good at helping people understand some complex things without having to give a big training course. I get calls all the time from people I've worked with/for in the past looking to understand something better. I manage projects mostly these days and I also get a lot of questions about why "simple" 15kv armored cable costs so much and why it takes so long to make connections, etc. And of course it just gets worse as you go up in voltage.
If people really understood how old some of the equipment in our grid and distribution systems are, they'd be as nervous as we are about the fragility of the system. Sometimes I think that the power guys have for too long, done too good a job meeting crisis after crisis and finding ways to get the power back on. People think it's "fixed" because the lights are back on, but we know that often all we did was find a work-around. Systems all over are loaded with these past work-arounds and nobody wants to spend the money to fix it right for long term reliability. A couple months from now, most people will look back almost having forgot the storms and figure that everything is "fixed" now. That is until the next storm rolls through. We patch things up and keep it going but then people don't want to spend the money anymore because the problem is ''gone". Can't count the number of times I've heard something like, "It's working fine now, why do I need to spend another $50k? Guess that's one way you learn to be able to put things into understandable terms.
Thanks again. Stay safe!
Engineering solution to power line problem: Put lines on taller supports! If supports put lines above the trees only the supports are vulnerable to damage from falling trees! If you cut the trees that will impact the supports, the problem will be solved! I will send you a bill! All of my work supports homeless veterans and every ten million dollars supports 20,000 homeless veterans over forty years!
Really taller supports? So it has longer to fall, when the wind hits?
Now you have to figure out how to keep the trees from growing .....
Travel around the country and then the world and see where they have solved these problems. The wind problem has already been solved by the"experts"! If you read all of my post you would have seen a suggestion to cut the trees. Most communities want those "tree lined avenues" so which one do you want more! People live in death traps in tornado alley because they WANT to! Construction technology does exist that can withstand an EF-5 tornado, is cheaper to build, but doesn't fit zoning laws. Your serve!
We don't have the $ to invest in infrastructure (and jobs). We need it all for WAR, and the banksters.
Mrknowitall, here's a idea don't plant trees to close to power lines. That six foot tall maple you plant today will be eighty five feet some day.
I live in an area of Oklahoma where there aren't many trees. A storm's straight-line winds is all that's needed to bring down mile-long stretches of power lines. No trees required.
Se, I said the "experts" knew how to solve it, I didn't say that every state was using it! The technology also exists to keep ice off the lines, another problem that brings down miles of lines. What my point is and was, there are solutions that do NOT cost 15 million dollars per mile. The government officials, local, state, and federal HIDE behind the BS that the utitility companies put out! "If you want your rates to go up here it the fix"! We generate our own electicity, on our facilities, have all utilities in tunnels, and raise all of our own food. We generate our own fuel for our vehicles and farm equipment! Any questions?
You have some good ideas MrKnowItAll, but it might help to be taken more seriously if you change your screen name. Nobody knows it all!
Taller lines? That's interesting... So you want the power lines exposed to higher winds. Most of the damage to Utility poles was caused by exposed power lines, not trees falling on them. The drag on the power lines alone was enough to pull over and snap the poles.
Exposed North-South power lines are much worse off than those that were protected by the wind break caused by forests.
What's worse? One break in a line caused by a tree, or replacing 10 miles of Utility poles?
Fossil fuels cannot be a problem because humans walked with dinosaurs only a couple thousand years ago, according to the Love Child of the Reichwing: Sarah Palin.
You Betcha!
benji2, It was either that or Wile E. Coyote, genius! I could give a rat's rectum if anybody takes me serious here! Governors, Senators, Congressmen, and yes Presidents KNOW I am serious! I say what I mean and know what I say! I have performed research for over forty years, Director of Research for three Institutes, solved eighteen major problems and developed programs to show others how to do it. I see and hear all the rhetoric and propaganda spewed by the corporations, politicians, government agencies, and the public and I like to poke the bear, so to speak! What you and I write here will not change one mind either way. If you reread the posts, most people cannot read and comprehend a few sentences. Power, sex, and money are the rules society plays by! I DO NOT! Thanks for listening!
You can blame a good part of this on "Free-market" policies pushed by business and politicians in the pay of corporations.
For the last 30 or so years states have been deregulating and privatizing their energy grids and utilities, energy production and distribution especially.
Guess what? It's more profitable for the companies not to upgrade and do maintenance on their systems than to let you swelter and even die from heat, cold etc.
And if there is no authority to stop them from doing that then they will...and have.
I want it fixed, and I want it now, and I want it for free.
Where have I heard this before?
I agree with the person that said cut the trees. All over the country cities trim trees to keep them away from power lines. But I also think power lines should be underground. As far as the cost is concerned, if we would quit sending all these foreign countries money we would be able to do this without putting an additional expense on the homeowners. Oh yes, we could also do it if we would quit supporting all the free loading illegal aliens. You want to live in this country do it right, get in line and become a US Citizen.
Seems like this is making the case for ongoing maintenance and upgrading of our power grid. If we had been upgrading it all along as new technology became available, we wouldn't be hit with so many big expensive upgrades in emergency situations.
Seems to me every time they dig up a street for whatever reason, why not lay the conduit for the electrical at the same time? Seems like I see the streets dug up frequently but most often after it was recently paved. (I say this sarcastically.) Seems the cost quoted is a bit excessive: $5 to $15 Million per mile? They must be using the gold standard.
Raise taxes -- fix infrastructure. Cut military spending to 1/2 of the next 20 countries combined. Enough left over for health care for everyone.
How much is the continuing outages due to AEP wanting to up rates? Are they using the outage to make a point about needing the higher rates?
The answer, it turns out, is complicated: Above-ground lines are vulnerable to lashing winds and falling trees, but relocating them underground involves huge costs — as much as $15 million per mile of buried line — and that gets passed onto consumers.
The power companies already have us as a customer. Why put their lines underground..
The storm damage repairs will be passed to the customers. We're still paying for repairs from a 2005 storm. If there is another storm the repair charges continue and probably rise.
Good money.
We all want a filet-mignon lifestyle but want it on a Mcdonald's budget. It don't work that way. And one thing to keep in mind is that cable underground goes bad too and it costs a lot more to fix it than cable in the air. People want things fast but they don't want to pay for the costs of getting something quick. Crazy world!
Our power grid, just like roads, bridges, dams, levees, all parts of our infrastructure, are aging and suffering from a lack of maintence. This keeps coming up year after year, yet nothing is ever done about it, just more talk.
We currently spend 52% of our annual budget on military spending, 48% for everything else. Perhaps we should rethink budget priorities and spend a little on repairing, then maintaining our infrastructure. It will only get worse if we continue ignoring the situation.
We are hoping to be moving from California to North Carolina within the next year. We've already decided that we will have a natural gas automatic standby generator that will run the whole house, including the a/c. Although it will cost about $10,000 - as far as I'm concerned, it would pay for itself with a one-week of 100 degree temperature days power outage. And this outage won't be the last. They will keep happening until infrastructure is updated and utilities go underground.
This is the reason I have 3 different ways to light and cool my house. 3 different ways to purify water, cook, start a fire and not to mention my food storage. People are stupid and never learn.
I wonder why utility companies STILL cannot figure out that if they bury the power lines then this would not happen. It's not rocket science, it's common sense.
Utilities could create jobs for several years doing this and in the end, it would be a great upgrade to the infrastructure. So tired of seeing/hearing stories like this when the solution is so simple.
"The industry is getting better and better," said Aaron Strickland, who oversees distribution and emergency operations for Georgia Power, a subsidiary of the Atlanta-based Southern Co. "In my opinion, I think the expectations of customers are higher and higher ...."
He's about as clueless as KnowItAll-Dude up there ^^^^^ who has consorted with Presidents, is sorta like a professor at not only ONE, but THREE research-centered institutes and/or universities, and believes that the answer to taking strain from power-lines is to put them higher up. That way they receive more wind-load & are exposed to slightly lower temps, which in an ice-storm can & does make the difference between them being where they are suppose to be, and them being on the ground. Yup, sounds like a plan. Oh yeah, he's also found out through his research that lines only fall in the U.S., since the rest of the world has solved that mysterious problem.
Then he shows his Doctorate in Meteorology by claiming people subject theirselves willingly to F5 tornadoes by living in their path. I guess he has some secret code by which he can predict where they pop up. Guess he doesn't realize that F4's & F5's have occured in EVERY state, with the sole exceptions of Maine, Rhode Island, Idaho, Arizona, California, Hawaii, & Alaska. I included F-4's there, since I know from experience, multiple times, you're just as screwed by either one. 300,000,000+ all living in 7 states .... gonna be a bit crowded, but Alaska will save the day. And if you want to count ALL tornadoes, which still kill & destroy regardless of Fujita scale, you're gonna have a tough time finding a good neighbourhood. ALL 50 states have had tornadoes. But if you build your house on the tallest parts of the Apps, the highest peaks of the Rockies, Death Valley, or the northern Alaska bush, you'll PROBABLY be alright.
And about those "zoning laws" .... the GREAT majority of tornadoes occur in rural areas, a huge percentage on privately owned farms, which rarely have ANY zoning laws. So show that F-5 proof thing you know about. Keeping it hidden is pretty much murder, since people die every single year by living in non-F5-proof buildings.
As far as the actual topic of this article, I can tell you EXACTLY why power outages are more common & last longer than previous decades. It's a little "trade secret", which isn't actually a secret at all, which I picked up during my 6 years as a serviceman with a major utility. I'm not going to even advertise their name, since they are so crooked, but I will say they currently rank in the top 5 in the nation based on gross income. That little secret is ..... they HATE you, the residential and/or small consumer. They are trying VERY hard to shed every single asset related to distribution, only keeping the transmission side & super large industries. Linemen & servicemen are part of that asset, so have been quite literally slashed to a mere FRACTION of what's necessary to ensure timely & reliable service.
That's why I scrammed after 6 years, as soon as I was able to get my electrician license. I saw the lay-off coming, so didn't stick around for the hurt.
You, KnowItAll-Dude, have proven beyond doubt, just by your ridiculous claims & defensive attitude when questioned, that you are ..... well ..... full of horse-feces. Now toddle along little one. Mommy has your oatmeal heated up.
Haddie Nuff claimed, "We currently spend 52% of our annual budget on military spending"
Not even close. Never has been ... ever. The 2012 budget was 3.7 trillion $$'s. For that same year, defense was authorized 1.0 trillion $$'s, with an estimated total expenditure after supplemental requests of 1.4 trillion $$'s. You wanna do the math or want me to? (HINT: Using the higher figure, it's about 37.5%.)
But here's where it gets funny. That 1.4+/- amount ALSO includes "borderline-defense" expenditures such as FBI counter-terrorism, Homeland Security, NASA satellites, international affairs through State Dept (when Hillary goes shopping), $70 billion for VA health, $55 billion for retirement/disability pensions, & $250 billion+/- for debts from past wars. If you are strictly talking military, as in DOD budget (bullets, boats, & boots), then that is a little over $700 billion, or about 19% of our total budget, FAR from your 50+%.
I guess we could start making injured soldiers pay for their own treatment, artificial limbs, etc., take away all that free money given to 20+ year retirees & quadraplegics, & default on our loans. And then we could just quit modernizing our arsenal, since the world is such a safe place & doesn't require a strong military. That'd cut that 'ole defense budget WAY down.
David, Gotcha!
How many nuclear submarines does al-Qaeda have?
How many aircraft carriers does Iran have?
We can fight off ALL the armies the world can muster. All at the SAME time.
Armies do not make the world safer for us.
For those in a hurry to get their air conditioners rolling, go outside, in the shade, or fire up the family car.. Those who want less government, buy generators or batteries. Those who want trees cleared immediately, buy a chain saw.Those who want to hear the news, go sit in the car.
It's over 100 degrees, and some people interviewed on the news want their streets done right now.They don't see electric companies in sight. All damage has to be assessed first, before any power is turned on. Trees have to be cut and streets cleared before any utility trucks can even come in. Power has to be shut down to protect citizens. What's is so hard to understand? It's never the same way twice.
Why not clear it yourself? Because you could be killed. That's all you need to know. Now let them continue working in 100 degree heat,and all through the night, while you try to cool off. Sheesh!
Of course, by that logic, you shouldn't plant a tree within 85 feet of a power line, either. The problem isn't just trees that get tangled in lines as they grow (most utilities cut them back, anyway), but those that are planted at a distance and fall on the lines during a storm.
@Just Wrong ... didn't you read the article? The utilities KNOW that burying the power lines would solve many of these problems, but there is that little matter of cost! How many people will accept a 50% or 100% increase in their utility bills to avoid a long-term power outage? I've lived in my home for 20 years and experienced only TWO outages that lasted longer than 24 hours. Compared to paying higher electric bills for 20 years, I'll take the two outages. In a world of finite resources, there are always trade-offs.
"It's got to break first and knock the power line down before they'll do anything about it."
Well, there's your problem. We won't spend money on infrastructure and we won't spend money on preventative maintenance, so when the SHTF it hits hard.
When you get double time during emergency repairs why would you ever want to do preventive maintenance? We had to elect a new commissioner before they would stop that crap. Our reliability is now improved 99% because they trim back trees every year.
They also buried lines in extremely windy areas. Doing it selectively gives the most bank for the buck.
Is that another way of saying cut down every tree? Or find a way to stop storms?
What's an "emtreamly windy" area? NJ hasd 76 mph winds. Anywhere can get hit by a hurricane. Bury the lines. then get ready for the rate increaes. The consummer will be paying. By the way, when areas flood, you lose both the lines and equipment.
He doesn't say whether the dead tree is on his property or not. But if it is, I wonder if it has occurred to him to have the tree cut down himself instead of expecting all the other ratepayers in the area to subsidize the maintenence of his property.
Shouldn't we all build or acquire some form of small-scale energy self-reliance and use common sense with our personal housing and landscape choices, thus preparing ourselves for the inevitable failures in the "system"? It's going to happen. Plus, those who are not sick should buck up and stop whining about inconvenience and discomfort. Many in the would would take your lot in life in a heartbeat. FYI: this is my 5th day without the power grid.
These Long outages didn't happen before DE-REGULATION and the EXECS didn't POCKET Millions of dollars every year in BONUSES. The company I worked for was known for the service we provided. Now the customer has to call a electrician to fix any damange to their service before the power co, will connect it back on to Their lines, because the cust. owns the service wire, the entrance cable, the meter box and in some cases the meter. These items were owned and maintaned by the power co. before DE-REGULATION. Now the Co. I worked for verily has enough Linemen to get crews together in an emergency, as most of the work is now done by contractors. While THE RICH GET RICHER!!!
Imagine if you electric bill immediately went up $107 per month average (don't know how they came up with this figure). Multiply that by 12 and you are up to $1284 per year. Is the inconvenience of being without power for a week or more every two or three years worth spending the additional monthly? The way everyone is complaining you would think the power outages were happening every month or more. Everyone clammering for underground lines will be the first in line to start complaining about the traffic jams the utility companies are creating when they start tearing up the streets and sidewalks.
Bull.... the American Public and the GOP don't want to spend ZIP on infrastructure improvement.... "it goes to UNIONS"... You think this is bad.... try water, sewer, gas, electric and roads. The GOP is helping to make us a third world country!
Mr Kevin Bitz-Is not the state or understate of your local UL done on a local level? Is that what your bill is for along with the taxes and fees you already pay? So either your local UL is not charging enough or more likely the local county, city and state taxes on your bill that is suppose to go to maintain and repair is like all government money, used elsewhere.
Kevin has a big and correct point. We used to have a utility regulation system that was based on passing maintenance cost to customers with no markup, but allowing a fixed return (like 16%) on capital improvements. That was a great system, because it provided constant incentive for improvements - more efficient power plants, better transmission lines, safer pipelines, and so on. It worked great for 80 years. But conservatives convinced the public that "energy deregulation" and competition would lower prices. All it did was promote cost cutting.
It's the same old fixing something that wasn't broken. Read up on the Enron scandal, and realize that this is the real motivation behind deregulation - it's not to make our country better, it's to increase the wealth of the few by making our country crappier.
Utilities are deregulated and there are less than a dozen serving the entire US these days. Entergy, Duke, First Energy, Dominion, Excel, etc. Check out their locations!!
That's a stupid lie. Energy deregulation has done a lot to keep costs down. Your local utility is still a monopoly and they have not been deregulated, there is no competition there. So it's your quasi government agency that is the problem, not the deregulated energy providers.
Facts trump liberal lies every time.
"Energy deregulation has done a lot to keep costs down."
Yeah. Short term by cost cutting. That's our point. (And you are also being inconsistent. First you say deregulation is working, then you say that the lack of deregulation is the problem. Conservative inconsistencies tie conservative thinking into knots.)
Energy deregulation, Bank deregulation, airline deregulation, those that pushed for all the deregulation legislation(dem and Rep.), gave the company's a windfall ; after Katrina, they went back to the rate commissions, and asked for a hefty raise, they got it, even though they had been charging for 20 years to build up a emergency fund, which they spent on other investments; Mississippi has just sued then and won a judgement of about a billion dollars; there answer, raise rates to pay off the judgement.
"Facts trump liberal lies every time."
Don't you just love politics? Each side selectively chooses facts that support their ideology, then 'spin' them to bolster their argument, disregarding the rest of the facts. Both sides do it; it's how the game is played. So, you can take your pseudo statements of 'fact' and go pack sand.
Hey...Valhalla...all lies are stupid.
That makes you subsapient, right?
But it's a fact that deregulation removed the motivation from all utilities to retain the people needed for emergencies- because there's no teeth in the fine structure now.
As a consequence, they retain only what they need to barely meet the labor requirements of a good day- and they pay their CEO's thousands of dollars an hour in wages.
When things go bad in a big way, the customer suffers- sometimes for weeks, not days.
But...no one can deny the empirical evidence: weather is trending towards greater extremes- whether you have the sense or the background required to understand global warming or not.
This is just act one- and like it or not, it'll happen again...and again....and...well, like it or not, it's time for MORE regulation, not less.
A utility company needs to face fines that would put it into state receivership for crap like this- those bastards are literally murdering their customers for the sake of greed.
That's not changing until we blow the obstructionists out of the House- and educate people like you.
What! Back charge improvements that will ultimately profit the power company back on to the consumer. What the hell, I have always thought that was what was build in the gross profit such as salary's and R&D., I'm sorry I keep forgetting that most of that goes into the corporate bigwigs pocket. This is stupid, I continue to see sub-divisions and homes under construction with power lines on poles. If a storm can cause this much damage and cover so many people and over such great distance, can you imagine what would happen to you if we were attacked? Just a few small bombs would send this country into the dark ages. You would think that the so called security services who are supposed to be looking after America would have instructed the utility companies to have started war and storm proofing these valuable resources a long time ago. I always forget that every thing that needs to be done good or bad is under the control of rich and powerful people, and if it will take money from their pockets or unless it will benefit them, its not going to happen. I forget that all of them have built in resources on their property that they would not be effected during these catastrophes. To all those on the east coast take a look around you and see exactly who has power and who doesn't.
Your Utility is regulated by the state. Look to your local, county and state reps, be they GOP or Dem and see where your money went that you paid in taxes and fees to maintain your infrastructure. Here in CA. there are many extra bonds, special taxes etc that are suppose to go to improve the infrastructure. And every summer same ole story about rolling blackouts, warnings to use less or else etc etc. Government never has a problem adding on a tax or fee but using that money soley for its intent is never on the minds of a politician looking for votes to divert that money elsewhere.....
There is no free lunch, burying lines is far more expensive and it is you who will pay. If you want it done ask the utility for an estimate and pass the collection plate.
Valhalla, you don't want to pay the increase to bury the lines fine. When your power goes out shut up and patiently wait til they get it fixed. The eat the cost of the spoiled food in your frig and freezers. No suing no getting a settlement, no insurance claim. Eat the cost of staying at a hotel. Suffer the lost wages because your employer is unwilling to pay you for not working. Eat the cost of that power backup generator. Your loved one dies because of the lack of electricity sorry but no suing eat the costs of that too. Truly there is no free lunch. You can pay a little up front or a lot after the fact. Penny wise pound foolish.
Buried lines are no guarantee you will not have outages. I live a community where all utility is buried. About six or so years ago, our area had an ice storm. Guess what, we lost power for days even with buried lines because the ice took out the substation.
Grow up and quit whining. Prepare yourself for what mother nature can and will continue to do.
I see someone left the door to the crypt unlocked and Valhalia crawled back out. Since this post I made ended up in a collapsed column I'll dedicate it's reposting to him.
"Well, we could use Byron's idea of borrowing at negative rates and contract the work out to the illegals for $500,000 per mile and everyone should be happy. 15 million per mile less half a million would be 14 1/2 million per mile savings. At zero interest. Oh wait, it was Obama's idea to rebuild our aging (and it's really showing it's age now) infrastructure so we just can't never ever ever allow that. And illegals? If we hired them all to rebuild our infrastructure then our fat lazy asses would have to mow our own yards and wash our own dishes. Can't ever ever allow that either. Hmmmm, guess we're just fkd. Suck it up and suffer, dudes."
Devil's son. Here in our area the power went out once. We threw out the food in the fridge to be on the safe side. So it probably cost me 20 or so bucks in food. But, if I had to pay another 100 bucks a month as a guarantee to get quicker restoration of service, well I guess I'll take my chances. Better to pay 20 bucks once a year than over a grand every year. The devils in the details, ain't it?
JoeCal....20 bucks or so? Really? You didn't lose much then!
As long ago as the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, it was postulated that by observing political trends and human nature, one could predict the future. Just look at Fox news, the tea party movement, and environmental deniers, and we can predict the decline of America through weather catastrophes, infrastructure collapse, and economic inequity.
We focus only on short term stuff, and allow the worst of our selfish natures to override the intelligent long term planners, to the profit of a few, and the harm of our nation.
And how many solar panels are on your roof? What do you drive? If Obama and co weren't bankrupting us and wasting half a billion on Solyndra boondoggles to launder money into his campaign coffers we could afford to do more.
Obama admitted he lied about shovel ready jobs, why should we trust anything he has to say. It's Obama that is concentrating on short term stimulus instead of long term budget fixes. Democrats haven't passed a budget since he was elected.
Facts trump liberal lies every time.
Yes, the liberals are responsible for everything bad in America. It's the Republicans and their free-market mantra that are the true Americans. Since solar panels require long-term planning to be competitive, we don't need them. We can continue to import oil. Solyndra went broke not because the Chinese (with heavy government subsidies) flooded the market with cheaper but inferior technology, but because Obama (who wasn't born in America and is secretly a Muslim) wanted to spend tax payer monies in an effort to repeal the Second Amendment and usher in a New World Order and socialist utopia. Whew....I hope I hit all the conservative talking points. I may have missed a few, that's a lot of crazy for one man to keep track of!
Valhalla, New York is the burial site of Ayn Rand.
Knowing that, you know everything Phil is going to say about whatever topic comes up. He is a master of the logical fallacy.
Valhalla Phil is probably paid by the post by people ultimately intent on the destruction of his entire class.
Sadly, he's probably just bright enough to understand what he's doing is treachery, and no service to anyone but his masters.
Pity the man- the only way he can make it with his talents is by willingly playing the role of a Judas Goat willing to entrap his own kind for the sake of his next meal.
My, we are getting a little dramatic aren't we. Phil is simply telling you progressive nitwits the truth, which you can't handle. Then you resort to name calling and personal attacks, and making reference to something called Faux Noise, whatever that is.
No, he's telling everyone the "truth according to Phil", which isn't the truth at all. His situation is no more the truth for everyone else as mine is.
But two can play that game, if you insist.
In late 2009, my wife and I bought a brand new mobile home for $42,000 including moving and placement. It beat being beholden to a mortgage for five times as much, but that's besides the point. Anyway, with the money we saved, I figured it would be a great idea if we put solar panels on the roof. What could be better than a mobile home for solar panels, especially given that our home is placed, permanently, in an east-west configuration, so it gets plenty of sun.
When I tried to do this, I was told NO. Both city ordinance and state code forbade having solar panels on permanently placed mobile homes. I spent the better part of the next year trying to find out why this was the case. No one had a clear answer. All I ever heard was "it's for safety" which is a load of bunk, considering my home is built to the same standard as prefabricated foundation homes that sell for 200-300K - the only difference is the lack of foundation. Hell, my walls are actually thicker. But those homes can have solar panels.
I later found out that Dominion Power had "discussed" solar panels with the State Corporation Commission - the entity responsible for regulating natural monopolies in the state. Shortly after this "discussion", two things happened: Mobile home electric rates were positioned slightly higher than foundation homes and General Assembly (Republican majority) passed the bill which prevent permanently positioned mobile homes from having solar panels. The bill was signed into law by a Republican Governor. The city subsequently followed suit with the ordinance just to comply with state regulations.
So, did you follow all that?
If not, a recap: I have a situation where I could provide almost all of my electric needs on my own through solar panels but I am not allowed to because a Republican controlled majority in the state has decided I have to give my money to the power provider. I can't even have solar panels on my property.
This same majority also recently repealed the former law that allowed people to generate their own power and sell the excess to the power provider.
Captiosis, that is one heck of a story. Incredible that here in the land of the free and the brave they can stop you from doing something that would help the grid. Incredible. I hope that that gets repealed. Good luck. Regards,
Wally, the day that Valhalla Phil tells the truth, Satan will win the winter Olympics- with a home field advantage.
Name calling? I'm just trying to respond in terms he'll grasp- using the same tepid rhetoric he's comfortable with- if a little exaggerated for the sake of burlesque.
You could sum up most of his posts with a few catchy phrases: "Liberal lies", "Crony socialism", and "Obama" this and "Obama" that.
He has no grasp of logic whatsoever, and engages in non sequitors constantly- things like this gem of reasoning:
So, let's take a little look at the last few sentences for deductive brilliance....First premise: Obama fixed GM by firing people and cutting the pay of those remaining (if you're referring to the usurious bunglers they had as a management team, that's actually true- but clearly not the conclusion he wants you to draw). Second premise: Obama abetted this process by forcing GM to move a factory to Mexico, and to offshore every possible job (pure baloney, of course). Yet in the very next sentence, he describes the stimulus as a union payback- when the preceding actions would have enraged any union out there into violent opposition.
And...capping this hilarious, oxymoronic rant, he claims his "facts" trump liberal lies.
Come on, Wally- you can't fake that kind of madness....
These power companies have no competition. This in itself shows how socialism is a failure. No competition breeds contempt from customers and arrogance from the utility. here is one solution to the problem is for one month after a 5 day outage the electric company is not allowed to charge for service. See how fast the cables get fixed than. How about re-enforce the lines with steel cables the keep the trees from tearing the lines down. The power will still go out but to repair them all you would have to do is cut the tree away from the lines. that would save a lot of time. This woul dhelp and not cost as much as burying the lines. maybe the areas should pass a law that the lines have to be buried and the cost can't be passed on but must come for the profits of the company. Oh boo hoo to the stock holders.
Your argument is inconsistent. First you imply that you hate socialism, and then you advocate a very socialist sounding "pass a law and make the stock holders pay for it."
I would remind you that before modern conservatism messed things up, we had 80 years of a "socialist" electric system that worked great, with consistently lowering cost and improving reliability. It is the penny-pinching, cost-cutting, profit-driven, fact-denying, wage-lowering, pension-eliminating, union-busting, anti-American worker and anti-American consumer philosophy that is undercutting this great nation. What conservatives advocate is immense, stunning wealth for a few, at the cost of American greatness.
ScientistX-You need to study the Northridge earthquake. State run repairs, some still going on and many had to be redone. The ones done by private companies, non-union, done ahead of schedule, cheaper and the freeways open way ahead of schedule and NONE had to be re-done.
Reagan was a Socilaist? I must have missed that history lesson! Dang, and I though he was the one who promoted Deregulation! I don't know what is worse, being a tea bagger or reaching 66 years in age.
One can always find conservative think tanks making stuff up, or distorting stuff, or basing arguments on anecdotal evidence. The great California highway system was built by union labor and state funding. I am suggesting that you look not at one small area, but at the decades of American greatness from 1932 to 1980, when we built wonderful stuff that has stood the test of time. No one in those days was talking about infrastructure collapse because we had figured out how to do it right. It is the fault of short-term thinking and cost cutting that we are in serious trouble today. It is the fault of GOP legislatures that our infrastructure spending has been woefully inadequate for 30 years. And now we are paying the price for voting in so many republicans.
Sorry, it's liberals that are liars. We were the only game in town in the first half of this century, it wasn't until the 60's that we began to see competition from around the world. Infrastructure collapse was caused by democrats promising to tax for a specific purpose then putting the money in the general fund to spend on socialist programs. CA is the poster boy for this, I lived there to witness it.
Nobody believed your lies in 2010, why do you think anyone will now?
As a strockholder I'm not paying for it...you are. No profits and the company folds.. then what? Nothing states they have to stay in business. Think that can't happen? Just look around the country.
If a power company folds, the state or federal government should take it over and make sure that everyone has power. Power isn't for profit, it's for a working civilization and a government's duty to the people is to preserve this. In fact, food, power and basic necessities should not have the word "profit" associated with them.
Utilities are regulated and the rates are set by local, usually liberal, governments. Ignorant twits.
What don't you include gasoline under the necessities Leroy? With no profits to farmers and growers, processors, and other middlemen, you wouldn't have any food. You wouldn't even have seed to plant, if a bit of profit isn't involved. It takes all kinds of things to provide power...infrastructure, plant and equipment, fuel, and real ordinary people to do all the tasks all along the supply chain involved in this process. They all need to be paid so they can pay their bills and feed their families. So the utility needs to a make a profit which is set by law.
You sound like your idea of government is to get all the "free stuff" you can. Pathetic....
So, most local governments are liberal? What's your proof of that? Virginia is a conservative state (and hit hard by the storms), but its local governments are liberal? How does that happen?
Companies won't spend any more money than is necessary to build the infrastructure unless the government requires them to do so - after all they have profits to protect and no competition to worry about.
And the American people don't want the government to tell businesses how to operate and people don't want the government to spend money on infrastructure except in emergencies.
So, this is what we have and it will get worse as the infrastructure ages - it will get worse: electrical, water supplies, sewer lines, highways, etc...
Americans seem to think that this stuff lasts forever and when it does fail will be replaced by magic.
The goverment regulates the power companies. In Los Angeles for DWP or in So Cal here with Edison, they can only raise a fee/tax when approved by the state power comission. However the actual taxes and fees, state and local that is suppose to go back into infrastructure, always gets diverted to other pet programs the politicans want funded. Look to the sourse of whom spent that money collected in taxes, not the provider of the power as the scape goat.
Again - the old system of regulation was that maintenance and fuel costs were passed on the rate payer with no profit. The only source of profit was spending on capital improvements (which had to be justified to the public utility commission as reasonable improvements). That made all the incentive lie in the direction of continuous improvement, and is why we built such a great power structure over the years.
Profit-minded business people saw great profit from cost-cutting rather than system improvement. And they were right - short term. Long term, however, we killed the golden goose to try to get to the golden eggs faster. We are paying the price now for Reagan-era cost cutting redirection.
Again, if the state regulates the cost for Utilities which they do..... You should direct your inquire in what your local, county, or state politicians did with the taxes and fees they collected off that utility bill that is suppose to go to local infrastructure. You are blaming the provider of the service vs the government that has taken the money that is suppose to go to improvements for its residents.
We write our checks directly to the power company. I believe that is what pretty much everyone does. I do not see how government could take that money and redirect it. However, I can see how government could tell a power company whether or not to conduct system improvements, and I can see government telling a power company "No improvements this year, I need to get re-elected and I don't want my opponent to use higher utility costs to defeat me." Just keep doing that for 30 years and you get a pretty run-down utility system.
Just more liberal lies, so boring. PG&E is NOT deregulated, nor is any local utility. They are a monopoly and they must be regulated.
The only competition local utilities have is solar on your roof. Thanks to Bush removing the $2000 limit on renewable energy credits, I have 10KW on my roof. How much do you have? I get 90% of my power from the sun, how much do you get? If your a typical liberal I'm guessing zero.
A good friend of mine is a lineman for the electric company. They have been working 16-hour days in this heat!
I just spent 24 hours a day for four days without power or AC in this heat. My cat nearly died. This is bad for everyone involved.
maybe you shouldn't live somewhere where you need something as artificial as air conditioning to survive...
I might be able to get you another cat. I'll make some phone calls!
You're right, Bob. Everyone on the planet should only live in latitudes where temperatures never get above or below their core body temperature. I should never have depended on something as frivolous as electricity. I'll be sure to also tell my elderly neighbor, who is hospitalized due to heat stroke, when I visit her later today. I just wish you would have told the 1.5 million people that lost power in the DC area about this last week so we could have moved to where you are, a place that does not require heat or air conditioning. Are there many houses there, where you live? Do the houses have roofs or doesn't it rain there, either?
Its obvious you wasn't the one doing without. These people don't have the luxury of buying from another electric company. Check out your own electric lines and you will see trees that could break down the line. The power company has right of ways and if kept clear, trees will not fall on the lines. If the towers will not stand a 100 mph wind then there is a design flaw. Areas along the coast deal with wind all the time. Its not often wind will blow a tower down. Plus how long does it take to put up a tower. We are not building a bridge. It shouldnt take weeks to repair a line. The power grid needs updated very bad. When wind alone shuts down the entire system state wide maintainance has been let go.
No one is blaming the workers and they do a good job. The problem lies in the design and maintainance process of the company. Had they hired more people when it wasn't so hot to do the work that needed done this wouldn't have happened.
sad, hopefully this nation will do what many other developed nations already have done: underground lines.
Hope you and your cat are doing ok. I have 8 cats, and was powerless over a week in last years October-storm. CL&P said they were going to cut down many trees around the lines - I still have not seen any work being done. I think it is time for the electrical companies to step up to the task - they have made enough profits during the years. Even better, underground lines - not a day too soon.
Think of the overtime.
Thank you, Decibella. We are getting back to normal. Many others around me are still suffering though. I worry about the pets, the elderly, and the special needs the most. We may open our home to a neighbor if there is no power restored tonight.
One final observation - back in the Energy deregulation days in California, we had rolling blackouts as soon as we deregulated, and energy prices shot through the roof. The argument conservatives made back then was that "environmentalists" were holding back the construction of new power plants. That was all as phoney as as Obama being born in Kenya or the earth is 10,000 years old. Once we got rid of deregulation, the prices fell and blackouts disappeared with no significant new power plant construction.
This is the frustrating thing in America - so many people believe nonsense, like the world is not warming, evolution is a myth, Obama is a muslim, we found WMDs in Iraq, deregulation works, taxes are too high, our healthcare system is the most efficient in the world, and on, and on. We are being dragged down as a country because a subportion of our population - the conservatives - are dumb as ditch water, and are being used and manipulated for the profit of the few and the harm of the nation.
Really, please tell me 1 just 1 new power plant built in CA. in the last lets say 20 years.
My point is that it was a lie to blame rolling blackouts in California in the years 2000 and 2001 on "greenies" preventing the construction of power plants. What has occurred since 2000 and 2001 to avoid rolling black outs (which we haven't had since) was not new plant construction; what occurred was the removable of the "deregulation" system, which was essentially a system designed to enrich a few by impoverishing the state.
And more liberal lies. Power WAS NOT deregulated, it was regulated in a way that forced it to fail. Sorry, I lived there through that entire mess. Bureaucrats wanted "deregulation" to fail and they made sure it did through contract "restrictions" i.e. regulations. They just changed the wording.
Nice try.
If I am not mistaken, I believe it was Enron and Company causing most of the rolling blackouts in Ca in 2001 for their market manipulation. They were taking whole plants offline to force higher prices, that is a proven fact.
The rolling blackouts were caused in part by price ceilings on utility companies, which made it impossible for them to pass along their costs to the consumers. Simple economics says that whenever there are price ceilings, less supply will be provided and that was what indeed happened.
In many areas, terrorists - greenies, stop the power companies from trimming trees to protect power lines. Then you have Obama and his EPA shutting down coal plants which means an alternative feed, i.e., multiple plants feeding an area gives some redundancy, is not available. When a catastrophe hits one of the fewer plants, people could be out of power for months! Then you have the other government regulators at the state level creating roadblocks to a solid business plan with no vision of reliability of power. Government and Greenies are the sources of prolonged power outages. Power companies couldn't plan to bury more cable. The government would throw up so many obstacles it would be impossible. So stop electing Democrats! or continue to swelter - and it will get worse under Obama.
Im sure all the windmills, solar panels etc are bringing power to the areas, not....
Libs love Green, except when they cant get power to watch The Real House Wife of....then its bring on the oil to get the ac back on.
Read my comments above. Do you really think that "greenies" have the political power to stop billionaire companies? In America, money = political power.
And again - look to history. For the 80 years pre-Reagan, we did things the "socialist" way (no, it's not really socialism, it is common sense and FDR-type American) and it worked great.
The very worst thing you could do is continue to elect Republican cost-cutters. They are the root cause of crummy infrastructure. Their policies lead to collapsing bridges, failed power lines, and so on. They want money to go to one source - the rich few - whereas Democrats support public projects that create jobs and make America better.
Your argument has holes in my humble opinion. Billionaires are billionaires because they see and invest in what will make profit. Billionaires and millionaires yes do buy political access from both parties. The Dem and GOP are for sell and have been for sale for many years. So with that, if the green energy was a profitable venture, then the same billionaires would invest it in.
I do not argue what you think I argue. I am arguing in favor of infrastructure spending. I am pointing out that environmental "greenies" have very little political power in this age of Citizens United.
Infrastucture spending is a low profit venture, enriching mostly the guys doing the work. High profit ventures are things like pushing paper around, and selling derivatives and credit default swaps, and crap like that that does no good except for increasing a billionaire's wealth. Hence billionaires push deregulation of the financial market, and take money out of infrastructure. Just compare the interest on the national debt ($250 billion) which goes directly into the pockets of those who bought the securities while doing no good for the average citizen, with highway spending ($40 billion) which creates jobs and makes the nation better. That is a system set up over the last 30 years to direct our tax dollars directly to the wealthy, and is primarily a consequence of the Reagan tax philosophy.
See Figure 1 of http://www.scribd.com/doc/47619821/US-Congressional-Budget-Office-Report-Highway-Spending-Brief-2011 to see that in inflation adjusted dollars, the federal government spent about the same on highways in the 1960s as they do today, despite the huge increase in traffic volume over the last 60 years. That penny-pinching seems like cost savings, until you are stuck in a traffic jam, or a local bridge collapses.
The major failing of capitalism is that it is unable to distinguish between money made from exploitation and money made from increased efficiency.
Consider Bain Capital: they went in, bought a company, fired all the employees and sold off the assets piecemeal. The sum of the pieces was greater than the whole, so they made money. But at what cost? A lot of people unemployed and a company that would still be contributing to the economy 5 years down the road no longer exists - so you are shrinking the economy.
In general, for any given concern, you can save money in the short term by getting rid of your engineers, scientists and selling off your infrastructure. But that's pretty the same as selling your car in order to save money. You might not be able to make it to work tomorrow, but your balance book looks really great today.
Half the billionaires who are billionaires are such because they have exploited the economy and destroyed the work of other people. The other half are people who have created wealth, people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. It is no surprise that the exploiters are so-called Conservatives and the creators are liberals.
People who are liberals see the taxes they pay as a necessary investment in the future, our infrastructure and America. The exploiters see everyone else also as exploiters and so they resent other people benefiting from the system; you see incessant complaints about how 'their' money is being stolen and all these crack Moms perpetually living on welfare.
Drive in LA, pothole city. Drive here in Orange County, see a pot hole, call the local city and bam fixed the next day if not that day. Drive on the 5 Freeway and nice 5 plus lanes each way. Drive the 5 in LA and 3 lanes some places 2 lanes and bam, bumper to bumper. What do they have in common, nothing thats the point. LA run by Libs, and OC is not. The few cities in OC that are run by the Dems, take a look on how beat up they are compared to cities controled by the Repubs. You dont see lack of infrastructure in GOP controled cities, far from it. Why is that?
Have you driven in Seattle? Portland? San Francisco? Other liberal cities? They are all better than L.A. Your logic is poor.
Have you driven in Mississippi? Missouri? Tennessee? Arkansas? Try it, and you will get a first hand view of the rotting infrastructure.
The major failing of socialism is it doesn't distinguish between those that want to contribute and get ahead and those that just want to leach off of others. Free market capitalism does discriminate against rip offs, only socialist crony capitalism like Solyndra rips off the public.
Your lies about Bain are pathetic. How did Obama fix GM? He fired a bunch of people made the rest take a huge pay cut, opened a new plant in Mexico, and shipped other jobs overseas. Obama's jobs czar closed whole divisions and shipped them off to China.
Obama's stimulus was nothing but a union payback, the new infrastructure bill negotiated with republicans actually goes to infrastructure.
Again, facts trump liberal lies every time.
Valhalla Phil you make at lease $350,000.00 a YEAR. Really a rich dumb a@s.
You know whose is speaking the truth here, because their posts get collapsed, which are the first ones I read.
This is not a major failing. It is an inefficiency. Basically, the argument is that since someone might take advantage of the system, we shouldn't have a system at all. We have already seen the results of tax-free paradises - they are inevitably 3rd world countries. The most powerful people in all of these countries view the general population as property or scum. This is capitalism at its finest. The richest countries in the world, the ones with the highest standard of living are all invariably 'socialist.'
Do you want to live in a country where there's a little bit of abuse of the system, and a lot of prosperity, or do you want to live in a country without any regulation or responsibility?
We already know what expecting people to work for the common good ends up as - we have already seen the failure of Communism. How is that any different from expecting corporate CEOs to work for anything other than their own profit? How can you expect them to work for the common good?
Byron Raum...
Obviously you are not talking about the US of A. After all, we are seeing a continuous growth in our public debt AND a continuing growth in on the regulatory front.
Communism failed because it ignored human individuality + the top had little concern for the proletariat unless the military became more supportive of the proletariat than the leadership.
CEO's on the other hand have to address two things to remain in business and their job. First is to maintain/grow the demand from the public for what they produce in goods or services. Secondly is to produce acceptable earnings and value for those who have invested in the company.
Guess what, if the CEO doesn't do both they will be gone or the business fails. IE by your standards they failed to achieve a common good, within the constraints offered by their business model.
It isn't just "greenies" ... it is homeowners who don't like seeing their trees cut. In my area, every year homeowners pack town meetings that address the annual tree pruning by utilities .. and they're not there to applaud the idea! They're not "greenies", but they sure love the idea of NIMBY.
Does anyone else remember the days of regulation, when the Utilities were required to maintain the lines and right of ways, instead of waiting until they failed. Trees were trimmed away from lines. No upgrades of account in the last 30 years. Didn't anyone else see the aging lines coming apart. A horrible condition happened here in W. PA a couple of years ago. A jury rigged splice broke electrocuting a young mother in front of her daughters. First Energy, the company that caused the massive east coast/canadian blackouts bought our local utility. We here nothing about the upgrades that were ordered by PA anymore. I grew up far out in the country 60 years or so ago and with heavier snow falls, I remember not one time that power was lost for more than a few hours. The lines were well maintained back in those days.
Just more liberal lies. Local power is a monopoly, there was no deregulation of local power because they are a monopoly. Typical liberal propaganda ploy, use one isolated sob story to condemn an entire multibillion industry.
Nice try,
When utilities fail, it is usually a result of an aging infrastructure system. Utilities, because they serve every American, should be mandated to put a certain percentage of all profits into rebuilding those aging infrastructures BEFORE any CEO pay is allocated.
Bad reporting on the costs of putting lines underground: they fail to compare that cost with the alternate costs of having crew out on July 4th with overtime, and on all those other days. Although it would seem 'logical' that this is between the lines, that isn't how it works in Pa. Our gas company dug up our lawn two years in a row to fix holes in the lines with patches, even though the entire line was so full of holes we had images of Swiss cheese. Finally, on year three, they dug up yet again, and replaced the pipes....after we came home one day with bright yellow tape around our house warning us not to enter because it could blow up...which several homes did in Pa in the past few years. How could it have been more cost effective to dig up the same pipes three years in a row, as opposed to replacing the pipe in years one or two? Nah, some exec was retiring in years one or two and wanted his bonus check to be bigger, no doubt!
Deb W, I suppose you forgot you have a state energy commisoner, a federal enegry commisioner, a Federal Engery Czar and a host of other city, county and state employees that are suppose to look after infrastructure and all the support staff for each goverment office. They are doing a great job are they not?
But they are not because they want to get re-elected. The whole cost-cutting, tea party philosophy is "you better not spend any money or you'll get kicked out."
The irony is that that approach does not prevent deficits. Look at America from 1945 to 1980. We spent more on infrastructure back then, and we decreased the national debt (as percentage of GDP) every single presidential term. Prior to 2008, all of our nation debt explosion occurred under Reagan and the two Bushes, during periods of infrastructure defunding. It's all a big scam. Spending money on infrastructure creates jobs, stimulates the economy, gets money flowing , and decreased national debt. Tightening the purse strings has three bottomline consequences: aging collapsing infrastructure, shift of wealth out of the great majority working class into the hands of a few, and ultimately ironically creating more debt while pretending to make less debt.
Here is a econ lesson for Libs-
Lib thinking: Im a greedy capitalist, yet I will destroy the middle class and want to destroy jobs to line my own pockets.
Reality- Well, I cant be a greedy capitalist and destroy the very fiber of customers to make my pockets more fat now can I? If I destroy the very class that will buy my products and services then whom will then buy those products and services? How can I become more greedy and earn more profit when i have nobody to sell to? Whom do I hire to make those products that I also now have no more base to sell to.
Those that supported the Car bailout and the thousands of feeder jobs that would be lost if no bail out, then must conclude the same that no Coporation wants to lose the very fiber of customers they relay on there is no more cutomer base.
Again with the liberal lies. National debt has been an almost flat rising slope all the way until Obama got elected, then the slope went nearly vertical.
Another pathetic is that we have cut anything. Even Ryan's plan did not cut the base number, it cut the built in increase. If we just froze the increase we would have a balanced budget in less than two decades.
The sad part is, if Obama continues to spend us into bankruptcy, there will be no money for anything, let alone infrastructure.
Really DUMB a@s post valhalla a good RED NECK Republican.
Republicans talking about reality!!! At least they have a sense of humor.
Valhalla, did you use your own, or the GOP made table of our National Debt?
I see the resident libbies have totally lost it and have to resort to babble. Funny!
Decibella...
Go to treasury.gov for the historical debt data over time. Not really that hard to draw a graph showing a steepening of the curve. Especially when realizing that public debt under obama has increased the same amount as bush2, only bush2 did it in 8 years and obama in 4. ie mathematically the curve must steepen over time.
"The ongoing outage meant no July 4 holiday for thousands of utility workers who scrambled to restore power across the region."
Hundreds of thousands are without power and AC. I just spent four days without it with heat index in the triple digits. An elderly woman in my condo complex is still hospitalized, nearly died.
But not having a hot dog, a beer, and a day off on the 4th is clearly the biggest problem.
Why does it have to be a competition as to whose day is worse?
I'm pretty sure that those utility workers who are working 16-hour days aren't going home to air conditioning either, by the way.
And no, I'm not a utility worker, I don't know any, and I'm not a huge union supporter. I just don't think that we need to complain as to whose day is worse unless we want to talk about something like Syria. It's pretty hot over there, too. :)
There is no competition. There is misery all over. My point, which you missed, is that the worry about missing the fourth of july vacation is the last thing on anyone's mind right now, line worker or outage sufferer. The person quoted in the article trivialized real suffering.
The power companies should NOT be patting themselves on the back with their high number of buried power lines, particularly in the DC area. They started doing that to only NEW construction only in the late 90s based on lessons learned. They are not and HAVE not gone and buried any older lines regardless of how many times those lines have come down or had the wires and poles replaced.
I would cost a few billion? Well people are out of work so there is plenty of labor and the cost of energy is pretty high so a good investment would not be wasted just now. Modernize or be left out in the cold when alternatives leave the power companies on the outside.
I often say I look forward to the day when we are energy independent and the oil companies have nothing we want. I now also look forward to the days when we all have our own (solar or geothermal) power sources at home and the power companies have nothing to offer.
So what are you waiting for? Solar is the cheapest source of power you can get if you DIY the install. Do you expect government to give you the panels? Thanks to Bush you can spend as much as you want and take a 30% credit off the top of your tax bill. DIY cost is $1.25/w for the entire system. A typical 10KW system will run the bulk of most homes at $12,500. That's half the cost of a decent car and it appreciates instead of depreciates.
As a conservative I find it funny as hell I have to beat liberals over the head to put their money where thier mouth is on solar. I get more interest from conservatives on solar than liberals.
10KW....it will run a home if you don't have any AC or other applicances. Most don't want to live like a hermit.
It is true that the government needs to put people back to work by creating jobs for infrastructure and manuafacturing. This is what a country is about, you work to improve the country and earn your living.
Leroy-483977-yes Leroy, the government can pay you with a IOU, written in Chinese. I mean what's another few cents on the dollar to add on the 40 cents on the dollar we have to borrow to feed the beast of the government. Those that think this not a big deal are normally the ones that default on the credit cards raising the rate for the rest of us.
And when the power company comes ask to cut back a tree some people have a fit because it was planted by their grandfather or it has been there for 200 years...
Thanks to easements they don't really usually have to ask. It's just cut away.
That's what happens here in Denver. Most power lines branch off the main at the front and run down the alleys, thence along the fence lines. Property owns have no control over the easements and should not plant in that area.
There is AN EASY FIX, extremely cheap, easy to manufacture, produce, market, install & maintain, but we have to get past the corrupt Republican OIL corporates & the electrical energy corporates! It's MAGNETICALLY-DRIVEN ELECTRICAL ENERGY! A SIMPLE SYSTEM FOR EACH & EVERY HOME! NO FOSSIL FUEL REQUIRED and it is 100% NON-POLLUTANT!!
There are 3 viable patents by Howard Johnson for MAGNETICALLY-DRIVEN ELECTRICAL ENERGY in our U.S. Patent Office that have been there for a long while!
During outages with this type of electrical energy, the ONLY ONES that would be without power are the ones that incurred damage! There are people that are ALREADY using this MAGNETICALLY-DRIVEN ENERGY for their home electricity and Troy Reed, an electrician, has been developing a magnetically-driven electrical motor for vehicles!
If we can get by these corrupt Republican corporates, could you imagine! A whole new electrical energy industry to put people back to work & revive our collapsed economy! Let's do something about it!!
And who says liberals can't outscam conservatives. Go ahead, buy one. They are all over the internet.
BTW, all electric motors are magnetically driven.
You might want to review the first law of thermodynamics before you post more lies.
Yes, underground costs more initially, but if you start and do it a little at a time it lasts much longer, pays the difference in time, and in areas of storms in the long run is actually cheaper and more dependable. While you are still vulnerable standby power and shorter system lines can get power back on line quicker. There are many good options that smaller utilities just do not have the resources to even consider. Larger utilities like Southern California Edison and Con Edison have answers that should be passed on to smaller organizations including why they have not paid more attention to inventors like Tesla. We have known how to do many things better than we currently are, but just like ANA is selling stock to get more Boeing 787's, some how some way we need to deal with the up front costs.
Yeah, california fixes everything. ever since they stopped those earthquakes all has been better.
How's those finances doin'?
I'm on my way to Home Depot to buy a 700 mile long extension cord.
14 gauge should be okay? Or I could get 10000 6ft cords.
While you are there pick up a 6KW generator. Much cheaper than all that wire by far! Seriously, even a cheap generator will run your TV, refrigerator, and some fans. It may be a few hundred but if you have frequent outages it's worth it.
Grid tie solar is great but you lose it during an outage, it has to shut down so as not to backfeed the downed lines. There is grid tie with battery back up but it is far more expensive.
As usual we are 25yrs or more behind the curve because that is when we should have bit the bullet and bury the power lines but we were cheap then too and didn't want to spend the money. Now it is even more expensive and too much of a disruption- yet even more necessary because we are more dependent than ever on electricity and the technology it powers. Considering how vulnerable we are to power outages you would think we wouldn't keep mandating more and technology in our everyday lives but we are. Such as putting medical records on computers and now forcing some schools to eliminate real books and making everything dependent on computers. Stupid stupid stupid.
When we invaded Iraq I heard a lot of Americans saying how ungrateful the Iraqi's were for complaining about the lack of electricity and gas. Comments were made that they should be grateful they got liberated. At that point they had been without electricity for 6 MONTHS. Yet Americans can't cope without power for even a week. This stuff needs to happen more often as we need to be humbled a little and see what others go through often because of us and our policies. Go cry me a river.
The mid Atlantic and north east has been run primarily by which political party? Under their many years in charge, where are the contingency plans? The wealthy are inconvenienced, the middle class and poor are suffering. Look towards your leadership for solutions that should have already been developed. Incompetence, period.
Before the more idiotic period of deregulation Public Utilities maintain standards of how power lines were to be protected. This was done by mandated clearances and frequent tree trimming and brush removal, any danger to legislated public property was removed, period, a storm event deprived of ammunition (trees) as put as far from possibility as thorough feasible. Trees grow, but cutting cost and allowing them around power and communication lines it is just modern idiocy. You might need to hang the deregulators and profiteers from those trees to make the point.
Again more liberal lies. Public utilities have never been deregulated. It's the power proviers that were deregulated and that has been totally effective.
It's the fact that local utilities are monopolies that they are run so bad. The only competition they have is solar on your roof. Monopolies have to be regulated.
Hang the government bureaucrats that oversee the power company monopoly's from the trees, deregulation had nothing to do with it.
RichMJones, for your information cities all over this country are still trimming trees and bushes to keep them away from power lines. Don't know why they didn't do it in these areas. As far as brush, in many areas the tree huggers and animal rights people have stopped people from trimming because it is the nesting and home of creatures like rats etc. There were several home owners in the hills CA that wanted to trim the brush around there homes to cut down the possibility of their home burning in the case of the many fires in the hills they have. The animal rights people said they couldn't do it because of some rat that lived there. One man refused to comply with them and cleared the brush around his home anyway. A short later there was a fire in those hills and most of the homes were lost because of the brush. His home stood. Smart man. And now that the brush has all been burned the rats are dead and have no place to live if they lived. Hmmm.
Sassycat.....they do trim trim the trees and such around our power lines it just happened to be that bad of a storm that it didn't matter!
Ahh, infrastructure. Roads, bridges, power lines and so forth.
Too bad the GOP decided that the US didn't need to spend any money on such things. Frivolous costs. Too expensive. Don't need to put people to work. What was Roosevelt thinking back then anyway?!
Who needs stinking infrastructure when the rich need their tax cuts?!
More liberal lies. Obama's infrastructure did nothing, he even laughed when he admitted he lied about shovel ready jobs. The new bill that republicans had a hand in does go to infrastructure instead of union kickbacks.
Nice try.
This is outrageous that power is off for days. Fix it!
Just don't raise my rates!
I'm sure Obama could do it.
Fix it?? They will just click their heeels and it will all be better.
And don't forget that a few months down the line complain about the overtime paid out to some. By the way, your rates are going up. I'm a stockholder and I'm not picking up the tab. without us, you have NO electric.
Gosh, life is soooo unfair.
I really would rather have Obama fix it so I don't have to pay. Let the rich pay.
The utility companies already make so much money, it's ridiculous that they claim to need to raise rates to bury cables. It may cut into profits short term, but the lower cost of maintenance and repairs in the long term would make it worthwhile.
Of course, power lines are completely unnecessary. Nikola Tesla proved in 1891 that electricity can be transmitted without wires to power electrical devices. He started building the Wardenclyffe Tower in 1901 with backing from J.P.Morgan and others, but construction was halted when Morgan was informed that the wireless power could be tapped into by anyone with the right frequency receiver. This meant that the electricity couldn't be metered and the power companies couldn't make money off of it.
15 million a mile. Think maybe there are more than a few miles to bury. What about floods when all the wires and equipment are flooded out? Or do you think theyb are waterproof? when that happens, you will be out for months, not days.
As far as who pays, the users pay. you think you get the electric for free? What a bunch of leaches. Give me everything for free.
@ R. Scalzo
funny isn't it, that they can do it in Europe !!!!
No power outages there !
You're one of the learn resistant people, that make this country a mess, what it is!
Name how many tornados Europe has had in the last century.
R. Scalzo
If the underground lines were not waterproof, they would ground out. They are insulated against all electrical conductors, including water. Do you think they just bury naked cable in the ground? Ridiculous.
There are many European nations with very strong winds and storms, but since they have underground lines, they are not experiencing the same amount of outages as here in USA. When I first came to USA, I had this vision of a super advanced country - after all USA sent a man to the moon in 1969, and I arrived here 10 years later - but was surprised to see all utility poles leaning in all possible directions and a mess of wires crisscrossing the roads and neighborhoods. As this is not enough, trees and branches are growing into the wire spectacle.
Underground lines are needed (and yes they are waterproof).
Gotta link? About that wireless power.
R.Scalzo,
How do you think countries like the U.K. and Ireland and areas like Bermuda, Cuba, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and all the islands in the Carribbean get electricity?
There are power lines on the ocean floor that are pretty water proof; no worries about flooding out equipment...lol
Justin, just an fyi buddy, but buried cable that is shielded also goes bad and water can get into it regardless of what it's encased in.