How Tech From Australia Could Prevent California Wildfires and PG&E Blackouts (ieee.org) 106
"Technology developed to combat Australia's deadly bushfires could slash California's fire risk and reduce the need for PG&E's 'public safety power shutoffs'," reports IEEE Spectrum.
"See the video to watch an advanced power diverter cut off 22,000 volts of power in less than 1/20th of a second, preventing ignition of dry brush," writes Slashdot reader carbonnation.
IEEE Spectrum reports: California utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) delivered a bitter pill last month when it said that deliberate blackouts to keep its lines from sparking wildfires could be the new normal for millions of customers for the next decade -- a dangerous disruption to power-dependent communities that California governor Gavin Newsom says "no state in the 21st Century should experience."
Grid experts say Newsom is right, because technology available today can slash the risk of grid-induced fires, reducing or eliminating the need for PG&E's "public safety power shutoffs...."
Some of the most innovative fire-beating grid technologies are the products of an R&D program funded by the state of Victoria in Australia, prompted by deadly grid-sparked bushfires there 10 years ago. Early this year, utilities in Victoria began a massive rollout of one solution: power diverters that are expected to protect all of the substations serving the state's high fire risk areas by 2024. "It's not cheap to put one in but once you do it, you've got 1,000 kilometers of network that's suddenly a lot safer," says Monash University professor Tony Marxsen, former chair of the Australian Energy Market Operator, Australia's power grid regulator, and chairman of Melbourne-based grid equipment developer IND Technology.
The power diverters -- known as Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiters (REFCLs) -- react to the surge of current unleashed when a power line strikes the ground or is struck by a tree. When this happens on one of Victoria's 22-kilovolt distribution circuits, the REFCL instantly begins collapsing the faulted line's voltage toward 100 volts, and can get there in as few as 40 milliseconds (ms). "If it can do it within 85 ms, you won't get fires," he says... Marxsen says 20 to 30 percent of the distribution circuits in PG&E's territory have the appropriate three-phase design for REFCLs, as do a similar proportion of circuits in the territory of Southern California Edison (which is also grappling with grid-sparked wildfires). "It would certainly offer the option of not shutting down the networks when there's high fire risk," he says.
"See the video to watch an advanced power diverter cut off 22,000 volts of power in less than 1/20th of a second, preventing ignition of dry brush," writes Slashdot reader carbonnation.
IEEE Spectrum reports: California utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) delivered a bitter pill last month when it said that deliberate blackouts to keep its lines from sparking wildfires could be the new normal for millions of customers for the next decade -- a dangerous disruption to power-dependent communities that California governor Gavin Newsom says "no state in the 21st Century should experience."
Grid experts say Newsom is right, because technology available today can slash the risk of grid-induced fires, reducing or eliminating the need for PG&E's "public safety power shutoffs...."
Some of the most innovative fire-beating grid technologies are the products of an R&D program funded by the state of Victoria in Australia, prompted by deadly grid-sparked bushfires there 10 years ago. Early this year, utilities in Victoria began a massive rollout of one solution: power diverters that are expected to protect all of the substations serving the state's high fire risk areas by 2024. "It's not cheap to put one in but once you do it, you've got 1,000 kilometers of network that's suddenly a lot safer," says Monash University professor Tony Marxsen, former chair of the Australian Energy Market Operator, Australia's power grid regulator, and chairman of Melbourne-based grid equipment developer IND Technology.
The power diverters -- known as Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiters (REFCLs) -- react to the surge of current unleashed when a power line strikes the ground or is struck by a tree. When this happens on one of Victoria's 22-kilovolt distribution circuits, the REFCL instantly begins collapsing the faulted line's voltage toward 100 volts, and can get there in as few as 40 milliseconds (ms). "If it can do it within 85 ms, you won't get fires," he says... Marxsen says 20 to 30 percent of the distribution circuits in PG&E's territory have the appropriate three-phase design for REFCLs, as do a similar proportion of circuits in the territory of Southern California Edison (which is also grappling with grid-sparked wildfires). "It would certainly offer the option of not shutting down the networks when there's high fire risk," he says.
These Excuses Reek (Score:1)
Re:Or just manage our forests (Score:5, Informative)
It's not experimental. These are rolled out in a pile of places in Victoria already, and will be rolled out to more within 4-5 years.
They're literally just a 22kv earth-leakage detector and fast breaker. There's nothing particularly experimental about them apart from the fact that they are a scale-up of existing tech.
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Re:Or just manage our forests (Score:4, Interesting)
That works on 22kV lines but what if the lines are 220kV? If it takes 10x as long to get to safe voltage then possibly you already have a fire.
The 220kV lines are big steel-lattice towers, high above the ground. No trees fall on them. It is the smaller distribution lines, strung across paddocks between wooden poles that are the problem.
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The issue in the 220kV+ lines is typically conductor sag while under heavy load letting them get close enough to unmanaged vegetation, or conductor spacing that was not designed for high wind conditions. You also have some towers that cannot accommodate high wind loading, either due to design assumptions or corrosion; less common is insulator failure.
But I don’t get how a 2.3-3 cycle shut-off will solve the problem for distribution circuits, at least excluding downed lines. That is plenty of time for
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The video linked [youtube.com] in the summary actually showed that while some arcing does occur, it doesn't appear to raise the vegetation past its ignition temperature before it stops.
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get close enough to unmanaged vegetation
I used to contract at a public electrical company in Washington when there was a big windstorm. Every county that depended on Puget Sound Energy had major blackouts lasting up to two weeks because of vegetation taking down the power lines. Our county didn't and I asked one of the 'reliability engineers' (forget his real title) why. He told me that PSE, like all of the other private corporations, had been shorting its tree trimming and maintenance departments for a
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Yeah... as much as I am a capitalist, I am starting to think that the electric utilities are better off as government monopolies. The way the companies game the public utility commissions suggests that the current structure isn’t going to be able to improve much.
(For the companies, the big challenge is that the energy demand isn’t increasing (much if at all), due to things like more efficient air conditioning, LED lighting, and EnergyStar appliances. This gives them an incentive to cut operati
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The 220kV lines are big steel-lattice towers, high above the ground. No trees fall on them. It is the smaller distribution lines, strung across paddocks between wooden poles that are the problem.
Big lattice towers are no guarantee, when a company does not maintain its equipment. While trees may not fall on them, they can create sparks that fall on the trees. This has been determined to be the cause of California's devastating 2018 Camp Fire. A high-power transmission line (110kV rather than 220kV, but still a high-power, high-tower line) faulted, and managed to ignite the foliage underneath it (which should've been cleared away from the tower anyway).
Analysis after the fact has generally concl
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Re: Or just manage our forests (Score:1)
Re:Or just manage our forests (Score:5, Informative)
Controlled burns work only to a point. If the ignition temperatures are high enough the foilage still on the tree ends up being the vector the fire uses.
Here in Australia we are pretty thorough with our controlled burns but once that fire gets up steams its not going to be stopped by a lack of forest floor fuel.
Though sometimes we do get fires caused by lack of controlled burns, aand like the US it gets blamed on some sort of nebulous green conspiracy when in reality its almost always caused by budget cuts to forestry services by austerity loving beancounters in the city.
Getting controlled burnoffs right isn't easy. Here in West Australia we used to just leave it to local rangers to manage it, and almost ended up burning down our most beloved tourist town, Margret River, in the process, so I was part of a project to properly manage these and use a bit of science to properly model short term climate predictions , forest fuel profiles (It makes a huge difference whether its say eucalypt forests or plantation pine or whatever) and so on into a model that includes public consultation, physics models, industry consultation (for instance If your going to do a burn off near grape farms you need to ensure the winds blowing away as smoke can ruin grapes, ditto with tourist areas where smoke inhilation can cause medical troubles and so on) and so on. It was a huge project, but at the end i think we got it right, and its now as well managed as possible.
Its never a case of just burning all the forest floor fuels, its a big project that by necessity requires a degree of bureacracy to ensure the science supports the action, and it all costs money. But its worth it.
Re: Or just manage our forests (Score:1)
Re:Or just manage our forests (Score:4, Informative)
In particular to this quote:
Blaming government departments for not practicing fire reduction, because of a lack of safe fire conditions might sound sexy, but is basically disingenuous.
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Blaming government departments for not practicing fire reduction, because of a lack of safe fire conditions might sound sexy, but is basically disingenuous.
Nothing stops them from doing burns when it's too dry or windy, rather it's the extra costs associated with it. You need to either prepare before the weather goes sideways with firebrakes or burns a head of the area you're wanting to work with. Or you need to preemptively apply retardant or smothering retardant a head of your planned burn area. You also need to have teams prepared beforehand to deal with hotspot flares and have active monitoring downwind for spark jumps.
We do this in Canada, because it's
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I live in Canberra so I have seen first hand the results of poor forest management which has been both due to government and green actively working to prevent the burns, they also actively try to stop roo culls and brumbie culls even though both of those have devastating effects on the environment due to overpopulation as well.
Might want to check your facts there. The conservationists have actually argued *for* a cull of brumbies [abc.net.au], but have been blocked by conservatives on "cultural" grounds, spearheaded by John Barilaro, who is the member for Monaro. [theland.com.au]
I also cannot find a single reference to "the greens" blocking or reducing burns, especially as they have never been in power, nor held the balance of power. If you have information to the contrary, I'd actually like to see it (genuinely! I'd like to be informed on the debate).
What
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I am not following every fire, but from what I have seen the current California wildfires are forest fires; they are all grass and brush fires. I don't know the best way to control brush, but the city where I live in uses goat grazing to clear the high fire danger brush areas and to create fire breaks.
It doesn't sound like you are one of those people using these fires to promote logging for their own profits, but I have seen a lot of those. Most of the accusations against California have had to do with logg
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You need both. One doesn't stop the need for the other. This prevent bushfires. Lack of forest management will cause repeated widespread power outages. Your comment is like saying "Why do you need a seatbelt or ABS when you could just drive responsibly."
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So make people pay for more and more upgrades to the CA grid. Thats "green" energy.
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Lol rakes. OK troll.
Can't use controlled burns where PGE has refused to fulfill their contractual obligations, because it would damage the power infrastructure. This energy monopoly has held California hostage, and made billions in profit by doing so.
Re: Or just manage our forests (Score:1)
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Uhm, gosh, sorry
Yes, you are.
but PG&E is not -the- California power company. It is a regional monopoly,
Yes, it has a monopoly on distribution within its service area. Thanks for agreeing with me.
Re: Or just manage our forests (Score:1)
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Not what you said.
Oh yeah? Point to where I said they had a monopoly across the state. I'll wait.
Next time you step up on a topic you know nothing about do 15 seconds of research before being a trollish dick.
I live here in California and have been researching this subject for years, because it directly affects me. I've done the research, and I've spoken to firefighters directly. (No point in talking to PG&E, they lie, lie, lie.) Pot kettle black, fucko.
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Damn, dude. Read your own shit. Here, I'll quote you since you're too dumb or lazy to read your own post, "This energy monopoly has held California hostage, and made billions in profit by doing so".
Which part of that do you believe is incorrect?
I'm done with your bad lawyering and dishonesty.
And I'm done with your inability to understand English. I have more intelligent and better educated fish to fry.
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You are textbook troll.
You're one to talk, newbie. The parent poster is right, and you're willfully misinterpreting his post. He's got a couple of decades of posting history that I'm personally familiar with that tells me he's not a troll. You don't, and you're acting like one.
Re: Or just manage our forests (Score:1)
These fires were caused by untrimmed trees (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure these fires were caused by untrimmed trees in the powerline rights-of-way.
Why do they not trim the trees and foliage in their rights-of-way instead of just turning the power off?
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The regulations currently require them to do the inspections. PG&E has skipped out on inspections in the past (ie, the gas line explosions in San Bruno) because they want to save money.
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Why do they not trim the trees and foliage in their rights-of-way instead of just turning the power off?
Because Californians think the foliage that needs to be trimmed and the brush that needs to be cleared is a "habitat" and wont let them.
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Not true. Trimming the brush is a requirement in many areas that are fire prone. There is no "hands off" policy here causing the problem. I know it's a common meme to make fun of California for being too liberal, but the reality is that this is not where the problems are coming from. Next door Arizona is a very red state and also has a volatile fire problem. The western US has always been trouble with fires, and in the past it was federal policy to stamp out fires fast and over time this has led to the
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Not true. Trimming the brush is a requirement in many areas that are fire prone.
Is PG&E responsible for clearing all the underbrush in California? No, right? The most they would be responsible for is clearing it near their lines.
So whats stopping it from being cleared everywhere PG&E isnt responsible for? Do tell.
You can't make California look good here.
You vote for politicians that talk the good game, who then fuck you over, again and again. Words are words and actions are actions. You shallow fucks dont care about the actions tho... just
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Is PG&E responsible for clearing all the underbrush in California? No, right? The most they would be responsible for is clearing it near their lines.
And if you had RTFA, you would know that is exactly what is being discussed.
Retard.
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And if you fix all the power lines, have perfect inspections, etc., then that's just one small part of the problem. Lightning, sparks from autos and machinery, careless campers, and so forth. Brush in California is dry, many trees are dead from pest infestations, and so there's a lot of fuel for the fires.
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The latter is cheaper in California. Note it's not cheaper in Australia where the utilities are liable to pay compensation to customers (in the order of more than their yearly power bill) for every incident.
In ... 2009??... I remember getting a lovely $1000 payout due to a utility starting a fire that burnt down their lines and kept the power out for more than 24h. A brief outage on the other hand is not compensable.
But then Australia is a country with regulated industry so I guess that makes it the Slashdo
australia's fires beyond serious 850000 hectares (Score:2)
Yeah 2100395 acres
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9ThPQzuotM [youtube.com]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-11/nsw-bushfires-850000-hectares-destroyed-worst-to-come/11691038 [abc.net.au]
Old tech (Score:2)
I think I already have a bunch of those in my house:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They weren't really expensive, I think...
Bushfires in Aus are serious (Score:4, Informative)
The power lines in Victoria all have spacers, so no arcing in the wind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] - 450 k hectares, 170 dead, 5 towns razed & 2 species extinct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] - 1.2 M hectares, 75 dead
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] - 2.0 M hectares, 71 dead
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In California all fire incidents have names. The fire that ate my former residence literally started across the street (where some jerkoff fond of large bonfires was living illegally in a trailer) and consumed only literally a handful of acres or two, and one structure, was named. We had already moved out at that time, or I'd probably remember the name; Cal fire's website is crap and I'm on the tablet, or I'd look it up.
Unfortunately they also reuse incident names, because... Cal fire. They are terrible at
All because California are cheap, lazy thieves. (Score:2, Insightful)
They're too busy raping every budget in the state for their commuter rail boondoggle.
They won't fund their forestry service and re-implement best practices for fire prevention.
Then they lay the blame on their power company and try to rape them for MORE money.
If you're living in California and you have ANY sense whatsoever, get the fuck out NOW.
Then let the idiots who remain burn with the rest of the state.
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It's highways that are the boondoggle. Rail has ten times the capacity per dollar, and doesn't cover up the land and prevent water from sinking in and eventually making its way to aquifers. It's also cheaper to maintain. A single rail with sidings can carry bidirectional traffic thanks to PTC. And emissions are much lower with rail, both GHGs and also the elimination of tire dust.
Unfortunately, a lot of moneyed interests have figured out that the law permits them to profit by holding up railways needed by T
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"Rail has ten times the capacity per dollar"
Unless you want to go someplace rail doesn't go, especially off-schedule.
As bad as automobiles are for the environment, they allow people FAR more freedom than commuter rail.
"The arguments against rail are universally fraudulent"
Only Sith deal in absolutes.
Howsabout this argument? The high speed rail project was NARROWLY passed in 2008 with a ridiculously optimistic construction schedule and a ludicrously lowballed budget and no identifiable source for the budget
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Unless you want to go someplace rail doesn't go, especially off-schedule.
That's why the HSR plan includes links to other transportation systems. There's also the option to use a car to get to the HSR, and then use it for the remainder of the trip. The higher utilization gets, the more money there will be to run more trains, and improve schedules.
As bad as automobiles are for the environment, they allow people FAR more freedom than commuter rail.
Environmental damage limits freedom. If you don't have food or a place to live, "freedom" is a cruel joke. You may be able to sleep in your car, but you can't eat it, or breathe it.
Howsabout this argument? The high speed rail project was NARROWLY passed in 2008 with a ridiculously optimistic construction schedule and a ludicrously lowballed budget and no identifiable source for the budget.
The money is there, assuming that we're not robbed of ou
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The main problem is, people have already voted on this.
Hence the dearth of high speed rail in the US and the fact that the remainder of the standard rail is on life support.
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The main problem is, people have already voted on this.
When people vote on rail, unless they have been spectacularly lied to (and often even then) they generally support it. The more congestion they have to deal with, the more likely they are to vote for it. CA residents generally vote in favor of rail every time. Take the situation in Santa Cruz for example. Voters in 1990, 2016, and in 2018 approved Proposition 116 providing funds to purchase the line for rail transit, for Measure D to build the trail and maintain the active rail line, and to preserve SB1 fun
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"California residents vote in favor of rail every time."
Yep. And look where they're at right now...
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California residents vote in favor of rail every time.
Yep. And look where they're at right now...
Sitting in traffic on the highways and freeways, often for hours per day? You're really not making your case.
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Or perhaps you're just not listening.
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Or perhaps you're just not listening.
I'm listening, you just don't comprehend the import of what you're saying, in the context of reality.
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Pot, kettle.
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"A new rail line has more capacity than a new road."
A 1000 Mbit line has more capacity than a 1Mbit line.
Totally irrelevant when you're using, at best a couple K of data for an entire session, total.
Building out an HSR project where the ridership figures have continually retracted basically points to said project never actually carrying the intended load and being unnecessary at the given scale.
It's like building a double-wide, three tier bus for a route that carries 10 people daily.
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A 1000 Mbit line has more capacity than a 1Mbit line.
Totally irrelevant when you're using, at best a couple K of data for an entire session, total.
Only if you refuse to plan for the future, which is what you're doing.
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Not the future.
Fantasy.
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So what's your plan? Just throw up your hands and say fuck it?
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At every stage one should be doing a cost-benefit analysis.
And YES, if it stops making sense, punch the "Fuck It" button BEFORE ass-raping your constituency out of MORE cash that you're just throwing onto the bonfire.
Pushing ahead "at all costs" is retarded.
Not sure why this is so controversial for you.
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And YES, if it stops making sense, punch the "Fuck It" button BEFORE ass-raping your constituency out of MORE cash that you're just throwing onto the bonfire.
Just saying "fuck it" to the transportation congestion problems is not an option here. You don't just get to ignore problems.
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So you push MORE problems, at a massive price tag.
GOTCHA!
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They won't fund their forestry service and re-implement best practices for fire prevention.
Then they lay the blame on their power company and try to rape them for MORE money.
Not sure about California but in most places it's not up to forestry department to clear right of way areas from powerlines. That's up to the utility.
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The problem is, the fires are starting up in areas BESIDES the powerline easements...
Dedicated Equipment, Buried Wire, And Arrests (Score:2)
The rest of the US grid (Score:3)
Just ask the rest of the USA what its doing to keep the power on... and what green politics CA did not do to keep the power on.
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works in summer and winter... so no need to seek out strange and advanced grid tech. Just ask the rest of the USA what its doing to keep the power on... and what green politics CA did not do to keep the power on.
The data [eia.gov] says your claim is bullshit (and that's just for 2019).
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Did politics in CA place extra demands on the grid that was very different from other US states?
Placing new tech now won't fix past political demands on the grid in CA.
It's infrastructure (Score:1)
The power lines should be underground like in the countries where billionaires pay taxes and additionally to not having your house burned down, you can have other nice things, for example even power during hurricanes, hailstorms etc and termites can't ruin your weekend nor a drunken driver mowing over power poles.
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**Citation Needed** - =16KV (localized distribution) pretty routine, but name a country with a significant amount of high power transmission underground? I'm not aware of any.
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[citation needed]
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Zero of the fires were started in places where PGE has been prevented from cutting. Your argument has no limbs of any kind, let alone those which might fall on power lines. Save your trolling for a dumber audience.
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> I would think the actual number of fires started by power lines to be very very small.
https://www.ktvu.com/news/pge-... [ktvu.com]
But to counter that foaming-at-the-mouth drivel from "cusco" - clear-cutting of millions of acres of forests down to dust has nothing to do with any of this. No one has prevented PG&E from clearing overgrowth around their lines; they've simply decided to swallow all the funds, issue them as dividends, and pocket the massive gains from stock options, rather than spend _budgeted_ m
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They're bankrupt because they caused wildfires and got sued over it. Had they been proactive and made the necessary equipment upgrades to prevent this problem in the first place, they wouldn't be in bankruptcy.
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PG&E can't maintain it because they're bankrupt. This is after decades of environuts going out of their way to stop them from doing so, and then suing them for failures. But somehow they can come up with the money for 'woke' programs and outreach, which seems to be mandatory in the state of California going by all the crazy that keeps happening.
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I always find these rightwingnut conspiracies amusing. The left can't even keep its own people in line for long enough to keep Shrub or Rump from stealing an election, yet somehow they manage to maintain a multi-decade plan to bankrupt PG&E for some nebulous and unexplained reason.
Re:PG&E is a "woke" utility (Score:5, Informative)
"PG&E can't maintain it because they're bankrupt. This is after decades of environuts going out of their way to stop them from doing so, and then suing them for failures."
PGE is bankrupt not because it has not been profitable, but because its willful failure to perform maintenance or cut trees that they are contractually obligated to cut has resulted in billions in fire damage, and hundreds of deaths. They have paid out over 4.5 billion dollars in stock dividends to investors willing to profit from this negligence, money which could have been used to fulfill their obligations. Everything your said is wrong, as usual.