Thousands in New York powerless as blackout problem persists

[Pooka Fey]

Thousands in New York powerless as blackout problem persists

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-07-21-newyork-electricity_x.htm

<snip>
NEW YORK (AP) — Tens of thousands of New Yorkers were still without power Friday, the fifth day of a mysterious electrical problem that has been blamed for subway delays, flight cancellations and dead air conditions during the hottest week of the year. Power company Con Edison initially said fewer than 2,000 customers were affected, but it increased that number tenfold Friday morning to 25,000 customers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg estimated that would translate to about 100,000 people considering that each "customer" could be more than one household in an area where homes are often sectioned into multiple units, and could even be an entire apartment building. "The sad thing is, this shouldn't have happened," Bloomberg said. "We don't know why, but the most important thing — make sure nobody dies or gets hurt and then help Con Ed to get it back up."...

Since then, hundreds of businesses have since been idle, and the city's jail complex on Rikers Island has had to operate on backup generators. Some building's elevators were not running, and traffic lights at some intersections were not working. "This is outrageous," City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. said. "When is this going to be fixed? If it's going to be days, they should tell people it is going to be days." The blackouts were at their worst on Wednesday, when 10 of the 22 feeder cables that supply the area with power were down simultaneously. The temperature had hit 100 degrees in the neighborhood the day before....

Olert said the power company was making every effort to get the situation fixed but couldn't estimate when that might happen. He said the company didn't know why things went wrong. "Chances are fair, but not firm, that it was heat related, but right now that is just a hypothesis," he said.... Bloomberg demanded that the utility investigate and deliver a report on the cause of the outages in Queens within two weeks. That was little consolation for Gianni DellaPolla, 26, a baker at Gian & Piero Bakery. "We probably lost $25,000 in business in three days," DellaPolla told the Daily News. "Everything like wedding cakes, eggs, creams, we had to throw all that out."

<snip>

The Power Company doesn't know why the power is down in NYC for 5 days? Would it possibly be related to that phenomenon we can't talk about publicly, known as "Peak Oil" ? :shrug:

[LiberalEsto]

1. I hear 300,000 in St. Louis MO are without power too.

72 hours to restore power, according to the radio

[Warpy]

5. Well, they know what caused it in St. Louis

and the NG is helping locate folks at risk of death for lack of power to fans and AC.

The NY problem sounds more like a switching problem, maybe somebody hacked the computers and is gumming up the works.

[sabbat hunter]

22. problem in NYC

was that con ed failed to do routine maintenance and replace old feeder cables. one went down, over loading the others causing them to burn out, underground and over head wires catching fire.

all of this could have been prevented if con ed did its job and replaced the cables as needed as a part of routine maintenance instead of waiting until they failed.

[pooja]

2. Well, seems like the grids are on overload and there's not

enough juice to deliver the demand.. now don't ya'll just wish we'd develope better solar electric systems that could be installed on each business and home with a backup battery pack to store the energy through the night... would make everyone's need for carbon products just drop.

[DLnyc]

3. Peak oil and Enron II?

California, back in 2000, had a series of outages later shown to be engineered by Enron, in order to jack up the price of energy in CA. Could be same game going on here in NY now.

[sabbat hunter]

23. different situation

in CA they had an "open market" system for electricity in which electricity was bought as needed, causing shortages. in NYC con ed owns the power plants and the power lines.

[Cassandra]

4. No, old wiring.

I think Con Ed is gas and coal fired anyway.

[Pooka Fey]

6. Natural Gas is also peaking.

I should have more correctly written "Peak Oil and Natural Gas". Or "PO&NG w/ CCC" (Peak Oil and Natural Gas with Catastrophic Climate Change). No need to scare anybody though.

[Cassandra]

9. The copper cables literally melted in the heat.

Thunderstorms have been doing damage as well. I'm well aware of Peak Oil but this wasn't that.

[Pooka Fey]

10. The melting point of copper is 1983 degrees Fahrenheit

http://www.kitco.com/jewelry/meltingpoints.html

[Cassandra]

18. Maybe it's hotter underground...

where you have to add in the heat that the copper generates while conducting electricity (actually, I don't know if the wires are above or below ground in Queens). Maybe they were hit by lightning. My VCR seems to have been zapped a couple of days ago. I'm grateful it wasn't my computer.
Anyway, Con Ed said they melted.

[Pooka Fey]

7. Re: Privatization of Public Utilities and Deregulation

January 4, 2006 0800 PST (FTW)
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/010306_end_grid.shtml

<snip>
Since the passage of America’s most recent energy bill on August 8th, many public utilities have been acquired by some of the wealthiest people on the planet. With the loss of public regulation that came with the repeal of the Public Utility Company Holding Act as part of that measure, these “cash cows,” to which tens of millions of people make monthly payments, are being converted into liquid giants that can be used to acquire other utility companies, or to trade ever-diminishing energy resources for profit....

Instead of maintaining the grid for as long as possible, these amalgamating giants will now accelerate its demise. What is about to happen is the living embodiment of a statement made by a Dutch economist at a Paris Peak Oil conference in the spring of 2003: “It may not be profitable to slow decline.”1

No more will utilities invest ratepayers’ money in extra capacity for the 20-year drought, the 50-year heat wave or the 100-year cold snap. Instead, every ounce of extra capacity will be sold off, under-maintained, or discontinued to maximize cash on hand for the next buyout or LBO. Ratepayer money will be used for the benefit of shareholders, not ratepayers. When it comes time to decide whether to make a handsome profit or keep people warm, there won’t even be a debate. These privately owned giants will be able to arbitrage energy to the highest bidder. They will be able to buy other, smaller entities just as the major oil companies have been doing for decades, adding the smaller companies’ reserves and net profits onto their price/earnings (P/E) ratios.

The grid will not disappear suddenly, as if someone had thrown a switch. It will behave exactly the way energy supplies behave. Just as the world will never fully run out of oil or gas, it will have to make do with less and less. It will be a protracted death, full of agonies, full of fits and starts, and it will happen sporadically, with the weakest regions being the first to suffer.
<snip>

[NNadir]

8. Not wishing to rain on a conspiracy case, but we know why our power

was out here in New Jersey.

We have been having massive thunderstorms, taking down trees. (I lost a much loved Apple tree.) I saw the powerlines hit in front of my house, and ran outside to see if my neighbor's house was on fire.

I suspect that what is going on in Queens involves heavy loads on some very suspect rotted infrastructure.

Many people in this area have been without power for days. Our power was restored in about seven hours because we were just before the break in the line. Apparently restoring our power involved some kind of reset on the tranformers. One can see pieces of trees hanging from power lines in lots of places. It's rather like what one sees in ice storms.

The weather is what is causing it. It is not some secret conspiracy to cover up peak oil. Oil is hardly used at all for power production, although in New York, the amount of oil so used is unusally large.

New York's energy (statewide) production for electricity can be seen here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/states/statesny.html

We will be having thunderstorms all week end. I face some tough decisions about a giant black walnut near my house. I don't want to lose the tree, but then again, I don't want to lose my house either. There's a rather large cost with removing the tree as well.

[Ready4Change]

14. Black walnut?

If the tree gets removed, be sure you recoup some of the cost with that wood. It is prized by furniture, cabinet and other wood workers. You might even try to find a wood workers club in your area and see if you can arrange a deal.

Be a shame for a nice, big ol' tree to have to go. Be worse for you to get ripped off in the process.

[NNadir]

15. Thanks for that idea. The use for furniture would represent

carbon sequestration as well.

[Ready4Change]

16. Unless...

You're really into that plastic '60's furniture style. :hippie:

Then you could be sequestering petroleum!

[NNadir]

17. I have seen in the Louvre, 5000 year old wooden statues made from

the Cedars of Lebanon.

I have not seen a 5,000 year old Barbie Doll made from polyethylene.

I'm certainly not an expert, but I believe it is now understood that plastics degrade. But to the extent that plastics are made from oil, and to the extent they last, they represent sequestration.

This suggests an interesting idea. In the energy flow chart in my journal it shows about 5.5 exajoules of petroleum being diverted for "non-fuel" use. This almost certainly represents a certain amount of plastic. Thus if we make plastic from renewable sources, or via hydrogenation of atmospheric carbon dioxide, we are effectively sequestering carbon.

Wood ultimately degrades as well, but given the immediate nature of climate change, wooden furniture buys us some time.

I am quite sure that tree contains ton quantities of carbon. Of course there is the matter of chain saws and hauling the tree off to be milled. It would be real interesting to know the environmental life cycle analysis for this situation.

[Pooka Fey]

11. Cross-posting to article in LBN

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2404866

I read this article pretty carefully. I'm not seeing any reason offered by Con Ed other than that the problem, whatever it is, is being aggravated by the thunderstorms. This time I'll avoid oppressing anyone with my speculations about the cause. It could be just random bad luck that it's Queens that has blackouts as opposed to Central Park West or the Manhattan's Upper East Side. If I misread the article and the rich neighborhoods are also experiencing blackouts, please correct me - but I don't believe I'm mistaken on that observation. Anyway I'd put money on a Queens or Brooklyn NYer surviving a heat wave over some Park Ave swell any day of the week. :-)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/nyregion/21cnd-power.html?ex=1311134400&en=274d763843544531&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

<snip>
A spokesman for Con Edison said crews would be working throughout the night to try to restore power to as many customers as possible.

“We totally understand people’s frustrations,” Michael Clendenin, a Con Ed spokesman, told NY1 News today. “Right now we’re conducting a full assessment of why this happened. Meanwhile, our focus is completely on restoration.” His words may have been small consolation to the thousands of customers in western Queens who have received no definitive word yet on when they would get power back, or why their particular neighborhoods were most affected.

“I think we were not being told the truth,” said Catherine Volpe, who lives on the 12th floor of the Berkeley Towers in Sunnyside, Queens, where power was restored on Thursday, although residents say the supply is so weak that they cannot use air conditioners or other high-drawing appliances. “I welcome the investigation,” she said. “I think we were actually lied to.”...

Many residents had complained that the city was ignoring a prolonged blackout affecting several neighborhoods in western Queens, which happens to be where most of the city’s power plants are located. The mayor himself did not travel to the affected areas until Thursday, when many businesses had already been forced to close, residents were throwing out rancid food, drivers were taking turns creeping through intersections with darkened traffic signals and many people were forced out of their homes to seek relief from the heat.
<snip>

Hang in there NYC!! We love you! :hug:

[dcfirefighter]

12. Utilities are monopolies

an anathema to free marketeers. (but not to crony capitalists).

The monopolies are physical and legal, especially the 'grid'. I've no problem with competition for generation, especially if the competition is divided between peak load and base load generators. I'd be especially keen if Carbon & other pollutants were accounted for.

The 'Grid' should be publicly owned, and more particularly the line right of ways should be publicly owned.

I also feel strongly that utilities (publicly owned or not) should charge extra for customers that cost more to get to - iow, the distribution cost for city dwellers should be much less than that of suburban dwellers, which should be less than rural dwellers - reflecting the cost of electrifying further afield. (What happened to windmills on farms?)

[Ready4Change]

13. More likely due to "Peak Profits"

Power companies have been making good money. Odds are that wasn't good enough, and they skimped on maintenence somewhere. I'm sure they have many aging sections of infrastructure, and if they had the option of fixing it up or making a higher profit...?

Or perhaps they failed to plan on having enough spare generation capability on hand should power demands spike, as they do when temperatures climb.

A more paranoid theory would be that they are building justification for future price hikes, citing the need to avoid such blackouts in the future with new infrastructure.

[IDemo]

19. Guess I won't need to read Jim Kunstler's Monday morning rant

with the topic pretty much self evident (but probably will anyway): http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/

[Pooka Fey]

20. I never miss my Monday Clusterfuck Nation fix. nt

[Javaman]

21. Welcome to the world of tomorrow!!!

Whoopee!

Unless we figure something out right fucking now for our energy woes, these types of stories will be common place in a very very short time.

[Kolesar]

24. Good reason to buy photovoltaic generation for your house

Here is another thread in LBN"http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2409391

[NNadir]

26. Especially if you're a poor person living in Queens,

say in a run down apartment on the third floor of a rat infested 6 story building with a broken elevator. That's why God made fire escapes, to hold the solar equipment.

A $20,000 solar system with $30,000 worth of batteries would certainly represent an ideal solution to the problems of Con Ed.

Queens, I would say, is absolutely the ideal place to live off the grid.

[Kolesar]

27. Now I am especially glad my grandfather went west when he got off the boat

a century ago. That Queens place sounds horrible. Between that and the weirdos Archie Bunker described on the subway, there is no way I could live there!

[NNadir]

28. Thank you John Rocker.

It is true that in most renewable conversations, it's about rich people and their consumption.

The poor can go scratch.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/020700-103.htm

...Rocker’s troubles started when he insulted New York Mets fans during the National League Championship Series last October. Then he elaborated on his views of New Yorkers to a Sports Illustrated reporter during the off-season. "The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners … How the hell did they get in this country?" he said.

Mr. Rocker went on to call one teammate a "fat monkey" and to complain about riding the No. 7 train with "some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS … and some 20-year old mom with four kids. It’s depressing." The reaction was swift, and Mr. Rocker was ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation. Members of the rock band Twisted Sister, whose song, "I Wanna Rock," introduced Mr. Rocker’s appearances at home games, denounced the pitcher. Then, on Jan. 31, Major League Baseball passed sentence on Mr. Rocker with the suspension and a fine...

[Kolesar]

29. It's a TV show...eom

[NNadir]

25. Self delete.