Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909 [Telecom]

Around here the wooden poles are loaded down, to the extent that some poles are "doubled", there is a second pole alongside, apparently to help with the weight. Historically around here the lines were--top electric, middle phone, lower cable. The electric lines do not appear to have changed, but the rest of them are heavy. I don't know which kind they are.

They've also added buried FIOS cable.

Despite the load, it's still relatively easy to carry phone and cable since they're low voltage. But there is a big shortage of carrying capacity for very high voltage power lines that interconnect generating stations. Neighbors fight those lines out of health worries.

On Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:30:35 -0500, hancock4 wrote: .......

About 20 years ago there was a lot of agitation here about running new above surface high-voltage transmission lines in urban areas, with the eventual outcome that some were turned into underground cables.

It cost more initially, but in the long run they will be more reliable and generally beneficial to the community in many ways.

How will underground cables be more reliable and generally beneficial to the community?

For example see 1998 Auckland power crisis

People feared that living close to high tension lines caused cancer, and this time the statistics confirmed a higher cancer rate close to the lines.

But furthur investigations determined that the cancers were not caused by the electric fields, but were caused by the herbecides used under the wires to keep the right-of-way clear. They now use mechanical means rather than chemicals to clear the vegitation.

Vehicles can't crash into power poles that aren't there, winds can't affect power lines that are underground, and the visual pollution of underground power distribution is limited to the access ports on the pavement.

Using an example of poorly maintained infrastructure is hardly a justification for a particular type of infrastructure (if it was then the thousands of outages caused by above ground lines would all be highlighted). That particular example is a prime lesson in what occurs when a public utility is privatised and the new owner does nothing but claw cash out of it at the price of letting things degrade up to breaking point.

New Zealand went through an aggressive phase of utility privatisation in the 1980's (when the fashion was in full swing) and enjoyed all the short-term benefits that these things bring, until enough time passes and all the unprofitable, pesky things like neglected maintenance come back to bite you in the bum.

Most of the power outages that we see here are due to people running into electrical poles, wind taking out overhead wires, and icing taking out overhead wires. Occasionally there are also pole failures due to flooding and erosion. All but the last of these can be prevented by burying cables.

This is by no means a problem with undergound power lines. This is a problem with underground power lines that were poorly maintained for half a century, were well beyond their expected lifetime, and were not maintained at all for the last few years of their life. Overhead wires will also fail if they are not regularly maintained. Power companies who do not maintain their infrastructure are courting disaster, no matter what kind of infrastructure it is.

--scott

I'm not familiar with that particular case, but in the U.S. changes in public policy likewise brought about a decline in the quality of service.

In several parts of the US power was "deregulated" to allow for "competition". It appeared, just as in the Bell System breakup, the _theoretical_ "competition" was the end goal, not necessarily public interest or public benefit. As a result we got Enron and massive power California outages, surely not in the public interest.

What is especially peculiar in these cases is the the marketplace is artificially tilted _against_ true competition. Normally, a business attracts market share from others by providing a superior service or price. But the only way newcomers could do that in the power and phone businesses is if they were given special advantages or the existing companies handicapped. In the case of the telephones (which included the Independent Companies, too), the newcomers were allowed to skim off the cream--take the most profitable service segments and set their own rates without any of the obligations or regulatory burdens the existing companies had.

The book, "Wrong Number", the Breakup of AT&T" by Stone documents how the public was hurt and a selfish few benefited by the the Bell System breakup. Some of the same dynamics were at work in the power system breakup.

Back in 1960, I was attending new Bell System employee orientation in the Boston, MA area. We were told that in metro Boston, the power company and N.E. Telephone paired off similar-sized suburban cities. In one city, the power comppany owned all the poles, and in the other city telco owned all the power poles. That way, if a pole got damaged, the emergency agencies didn't have to figure out who owned what pole. I assume that this also eliminated paying each other for pole space.

With all these posts about poles (is that a pun?) I have to pass along two long-ago anecdotes from my younger brother, a lifelong very blue-collar lineman for Pacific Bell (and now long deceased; smoking is in fact a bad habit):

"No job is so important, and no service is so vital, that we cannot take time to do our work safely."

Line crew version, as quoted and practiced in the field:

"No job is so important, and no service is so vital, that we cannot take time out for coffee."

My brother, wearing climbing belt and spikes, is up near the top of the old pole, shifting over the last wire to the new pole, when the old pole starts to vibrate noticeably. He looks down; the hotshot crew chief is already chainsawing into the base of the pole he's at the top of.

As related subsequently, over a beer, the vibration was substantial enough that he very nearly accidentally dropped the heavy tool he was using at the time, straight down the pole -- but he decided not to.

He spent the last years of his career down in manholes in the base of the piers for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, below water level in some case, I think, and also in Maiden Lane in San Francisco with the manhole cover back in place, and traffic running overhead, splicing fiber optic cables.

Thanks for the post. Interesting stuff.

After the Second Avenue switching center fire in the 1970s in NYC, they rushed in men to resplice wires to switches rushed into the building. Fortunately one floor was empty so they put in a new ESS to serve, the older switches would be manually cleaned contact to contact.

The splicers in the basement worked on planks, very crowded in. Apparently once in, everyone was basically locked in. Undoubtedly not the most pleasant working conditions.

In reading newspaper articles of the time, I noticed several things:

. Area businessmen were terrified to be without a phone since crime was a problem. NYC had a rough time of it in those days, lot of urban problems, fortunately the city is much safer today.

. There had been many fires in switching offices recently, causes unknown but possibly arson. It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. Once again, the city was not in the best of shape and there were considerable tensions in the air over urban issues; the Bell System definitely got its share of it in those days. (The 1974 version of the film Pelham 1-2-3 somewhat reflects those times.)

One newspaper report I just read stated that underground power lines cost from 4 to

I've also read reports that indicate trouble shooting and repairing underground power lines near the end of their life is very expensive.

So I'd want to see some detailed cost estmates and real world experiences before agreeing that underground power lines are a "good thing".

Tony

That is all industry bovine effluent. First of all automatic trenching equipment is available these days. Cut and cover and bury it all. Second of all you [can] run everything through massive conduits.

And dropping fibre for every home into any local underground power distribution essentially "future proofs" all comms for a very small incremental cost.

This is the sort of infrastructure expenditure that should be done right now to generate local employment and provide more efficient infrastructure that should (in theory) increase productivity for a long time to come.

The buildings in our community our served by a private power network. Yes, the underground cables are very expensive to maintain. Over time they wear out and break. But it is very common for modern houses to be served by underground wiring.

The flip side is that storms take an awful toll on overhead lines. Every major storm knocks power out to people for extended periods of time. With deregulation, power companies were forced to go lean and not have as many crews on standby. Being without power is no fun.

This is true, if you look at the up-front costs. If you look at the long-term maintenance costs, underground lines often turn out to be cheaper in many areas. Thing is, some folks don't want to pay the money up front because they're unable to look beyond this quarter's financial report.

Yes, this is can be true, but THIS is the result of folks trying to get much longer life out of buried cables than they were ever expected to have. (And this is related to the subject above, in that replacing underground infrastructure is very expensive. You don't have to do it often, but when you do it's a killer. So power companies will do nearly anything to keep old cable plant operating a little longer.)

The problem is that the costs vary widely from job to job, and sometimes it's hard to predict the costs in advance. There are automatic trenching trucks that can put lines down for very low cost if the soil is right and if the ground is clear. There are also big cities with huge amounts of undocumented infrastructure under the streets, where the excavation has to be done by hand and the cable laid a foot at the time to prevent disturbing other services.

--scott

In the sandy mud underneath Rhode Island that is doubtless true, with the biggest issue for underground wiring probably being salt water infiltration. The ground is not as cooperative everywhere.

NYC is probably the worst case example, where the city is built on a slab of rock, and digging the tunnels involves jackhammers and blasting. They flood, too. But given the density of wires there, overhead simply stopped being practical in the heart of the city, although there's still plenty of overhead in the outer boroughs.

R's, John

What is the expected life of underground cables, particularly older ones?

So, true.

Thank goodness that those cities should soon have a steady supply of bankers and stock brokers, who, with patient training, can be taught which end of the shovel to hold.

--Gene

And who would have trouble working in an iron lung, given their previous experience of "work".

They could be employed in an area more suited to their abilities, I believe that Speed Humps are still in demand......