Reaction to the recent storms by the utilities (Power line ROWs)

[IHDiesel73L]

Ponyexpress posted this in my thread about my growing storm pile-it made me think about how its not just homeowners/landowners who are thinking about tree overgrowth-see below:

People got scared by trees that haven't been or never were trimmed/thinned. Now they wan't em gone. Most tell me they felt like they dodged a bullet and don't want to take that risk again.

Pony maybe you can corroborate this, but it seems like the utilities have got their forestry crews and contractors in overdrive since the Hurricane, the Nor'Easter (Oh, BTW, logbutcher if you're reading this-we were both right) and the public relations :censored: storms that followed. I’ve seen more tree trucks on the road every day than I’ve probably ever seen. I commute 40 miles each way through a fairly rural part of NJ (Hunterdon and northern Mercer Counties) and basically every morning I’ll see trucks from Nelson, Bartlett, Asplundh, Davey, and others whereas prior to the Hurricane I would maybe see a few here and there. Being in the government relations field I’ve heard a fair amount of talk about the theory of the recent power outages being due in large part to utilities (in NJ and elsewhere) cutting back on tree trimming over the past few years in an effort to cut costs. I would venture to say that the utilities are now pretty skittish and are cutting wider swaths around their lines than ever before. Just on a ROW near my house I’ve seen Nelson trucks three times in the past two weeks. Basically the point is-if you keep a sharp eye out there is likely to be quite a bit more wood coming down on top of what was taken down by the storm. I’m betting that the utilities are going to be very aggressive when it comes to trimming at least for the near future. None of them want a February or March ice storm to create another public relations disaster with extended outages in freezing temperatures. All of that said-do your homework before picking anything up-the ROWs are usually easements so the ROW is not power company land-it’s someone else’s land and they just have the right to run lines over it/maintain it. The wood belongs to whoever owns the land. Luckily my county has all of their GIS data online (many counties are doing this now) so that one can easily look up the landowner. As was talked about in some earlier threads, often, all you have to do is ask. I’ve had a lot of luck sending letters to folks. Food for thought…

 

[mtfallsmikey]

Even though I am not located where the major damage took place, the ROW maintenance in my area going back at least 10 yrs has been skimpy. I personally wouldn't care if they whacked 50 ft. on either side. The "new" co-op won't cut until growth is within 15 ft. of the lines, oy vey!

 

[Chris-PA]

That's interesting - I have not seen any increase at all. Now our utility is MetEd (First Energy), and they don't spend a penny on anything they don't have to, but most of my commute is through PPL area and I have not seen anything noteworthy there either. I'll have to keep my eyes open. Somebody must have a gun to their heads over where you are or they wouldn't be doing a blessed thing.

 

[Dalmatian90]

To place things in perspective:

Crooked Light & Sometimes Power in 2007 asked regulators to approve $19 Million in regular tree trimming, $4.5 Million in "priority" tree trimming (it's not clear to me from the article if that's just key distribution lines along main highways and such, or if it includes/means trimming along the Transmission Right-of-Ways i.e. High Tension Lines).

And for $2.5 Million to boost the pensions of 20 current and 110 retired executives.

The gory details as the folks at the Hartford Courant could best write is here: Pension payments to CL&P executives rising - Hartford Courant

What is even more worrisome to me -- seriously, a giant WTF troublesome worry -- is just after the Nor'Easter CL&P was explaining how they had 50 (FIFTY!) transmission line failures.

This wasn't like the Quebec Ice Storm in the 90s when they could measure the ice build up on wires and towers in inches...this was from trees falling onto the cross-country high tension lines.

How the hell do you let that happen? CL&P even tried in the paper giving the lame excuse that the trees have grown taller then their ROW so they don't have authority to trim them. Well damn it, you ask...and if the property owner says no ...you're a fracking utility -- eminent domain the right of way wider and cut the fracking trees.

But hey, we have the money to raise the pensions of our retired executives and we want to buy NStar (the Boston electric utility)...why should we spend any money maintaining what we have? If it breaks, we'll just jack up the rates then! (They're looking at $200 million in rate increases to cover the recovery costs from Irene and the Nor'Easter).

It wasn't the storm. It was the company. Connecticut's other private electric utility and the municipal utilities all recovered within 4 days of the Nor'Easter and Irene. Same story in Massachusetts and New Hampshire -- several big corporate electrics (CL&P sisters WMECO & PSNH, National Grid, and NStar) all struggled while adjacent corporate, municipal, and co-op electrics all had their systems back up and running.

BTW -- for those in the rest of the country, to truly understand the anger in Connecticut you have to realize we pay 18 cents / kWh for residential electricity. Roughly 9 cents is the regulated "transmission & distribution" that CL&P provides, and 9 cents is the unregulated "generation" that is marketed separately. The national average for both combined is 12 cents / kWh.

We pay the most for power of any state other then Hawaii, and if you live in most of the state it's obvious we've gotten a complete #### of a network to show for those bills.

 

[Chris-PA]

It's all good as long as someone's getting rich. I've been designing, manufacturing and selling products to the electric utilities for 25years, and believe me that the line maintenance budget isn't the only thing that's been gutted. But it's better now see, because it's for profit, and profit's always good. Except it isn't your profit. These organizations are hollow shells of the organizations they used to be - remember that when someone tells you about the wonders of the coming "smart grid" and how we'll all be driving electric cars powered off it, with windmills and solar PV stations on our roofs. Whenever you hear those fantasies, go out and fire up the generator just to make sure it's still working well. I'm frankly amazed that the system still delivers any electricity.

 

[mtfallsmikey]

To place things in perspective:

Crooked Light & Sometimes Power in 2007 asked regulators to approve $19 Million in regular tree trimming, $4.5 Million in "priority" tree trimming (it's not clear to me from the article if that's just key distribution lines along main highways and such, or if it includes/means trimming along the Transmission Right-of-Ways i.e. High Tension Lines).

And for $2.5 Million to boost the pensions of 20 current and 110 retired executives.

The gory details as the folks at the Hartford Courant could best write is here: Pension payments to CL&P executives rising - Hartford Courant

What is even more worrisome to me -- seriously, a giant WTF troublesome worry -- is just after the Nor'Easter CL&P was explaining how they had 50 (FIFTY!) transmission line failures.

This wasn't like the Quebec Ice Storm in the 90s when they could measure the ice build up on wires and towers in inches...this was from trees falling onto the cross-country high tension lines.

How the hell do you let that happen? CL&P even tried in the paper giving the lame excuse that the trees have grown taller then their ROW so they don't have authority to trim them. Well damn it, you ask...and if the property owner says no ...you're a fracking utility -- eminent domain the right of way wider and cut the fracking trees.

But hey, we have the money to raise the pensions of our retired executives and we want to buy NStar (the Boston electric utility)...why should we spend any money maintaining what we have? If it breaks, we'll just jack up the rates then! (They're looking at $200 million in rate increases to cover the recovery costs from Irene and the Nor'Easter).

It wasn't the storm. It was the company. Connecticut's other private electric utility and the municipal utilities all recovered within 4 days of the Nor'Easter and Irene. Same story in Massachusetts and New Hampshire -- several big corporate electrics (CL&P sisters WMECO & PSNH, National Grid, and NStar) all struggled while adjacent corporate, municipal, and co-op electrics all had their systems back up and running.

BTW -- for those in the rest of the country, to truly understand the anger in Connecticut you have to realize we pay 18 cents / kWh for residential electricity. Roughly 9 cents is the regulated "transmission & distribution" that CL&P provides, and 9 cents is the unregulated "generation" that is marketed separately. The national average for both combined is 12 cents / kWh.

We pay the most for power of any state other then Hawaii, and if you live in most of the state it's obvious we've gotten a complete #### of a network to show for those bills.

Hmmm. one of my buds in Ct. was without power for 8 days...

 

[mtfallsmikey]

It's all good as long as someone's getting rich. I've been designing, manufacturing and selling products to the electric utilities for 25years, and believe me that the line maintenance budget isn't the only thing that's been gutted. But it's better now see, because it's for profit, and profit's always good. Except it isn't your profit. These organizations are hollow shells of the organizations they used to be - remember that when someone tells you about the wonders of the coming "smart grid" and how we'll all be driving electric cars powered off it, with windmills and solar PV stations on our roofs. Whenever you hear those fantasies, go out and fire up the generator just to make sure it's still working well. I'm frankly amazed that the system still delivers any electricity.

I think it's time for a pick-me-up kind of song to go along with that post...

Sunshine Lollipops - YouTube

 

[ponyexpress976]

Here in the Lehigh Valley...mostly PPL, some MetEd...line clearance has been lacking for a long time. The companies need to maintain bottom lines. Since the Administration has put the squeeze on coal, they have no where else to trim budgets. This is what happens when the enviro wackos wont allow nuclear (the safest form of generation) and pound on coal (the cheapest). The pipe dream of wind and solar will never reach the generation levels needed to supply our energy needs. How many Americans will tolerate a generation source where you can only turn on the lights when the wind is blowing or its sunny out. These sources may be great for a home but do not scale up well at all.

 

[Chris-PA]

Here in the Lehigh Valley...mostly PPL, some MetEd...line clearance has been lacking for a long time. The companies need to maintain bottom lines. Since the Administration has put the squeeze on coal, they have no where else to trim budgets. This is what happens when the enviro wackos wont allow nuclear (the safest form of generation) and pound on coal (the cheapest). The pipe dream of wind and solar will never reach the generation levels needed to supply our energy needs. How many Americans will tolerate a generation source where you can only turn on the lights when the wind is blowing or its sunny out. These sources may be great for a home but do not scale up well at all.

These organizations worked very well for many decades when they were tightly controlled, but when they "deregulated" them they went to heck - they were bought and sold and gutted to become empty shells that take your money and give you as little as possible in return, just like every other corporation. Those that own them got stinking rich while selling off the assets. That was the whole purpose of deregulation, it just got packaged up with some nice entrepreneurial sounding label so it would appeal to Americans, but there was never any possibility of real competition. There's only one set of line that go to your house, and electrons obey the laws of physics and not the laws of economics.

The reason the operating costs are going up is not the enviro wackos, but the increasing cost of fuel. The coal we use now is harder and more expensive to get, has to be transported further, and is much lower quality, more polluting junk - because we used up the good stuff already. At the moment natural gas prices are low, but that's a bubble - there actually making money trading bogus gas leases just like they did lousy mortgages. Meanwhile the wells they make lose production very rapidly and the gas costs more to produce than they can sell it for.

Somehow every thread here gets turned around into some regurgitation of the BS spewed by loudmouth talk radio mouthpieces. Get a clue folks, the lies they spread are part of how we're kept fighting amongst ourselves while the bankers rip us off.

I'm tired of the nonsense, so I my as well come out and say it: I'm an environmentalist. I'm not a liberal or a conservative, I could care less about politicians or political parties, I don't watch TV or listen to the radio or any of the propaganda that passes for "news". I'm an independent country boy and try to be self reliant as I can, and I think for myself. I can do carpentry, mechanical work, masonry, plumbing, electrical, whatever. I can shoot a gun and use a chainsaw and I heat with wood. But I'm a friggin tree hugging environmentalist, and darn proud of it. Just so you know.

 

[slowp]

I should save this thread. Every once in a while, there is a threat to privatize our Public Utility Districts. We generally have lower rates as we own a dam or two for hydropower. Their service is great, they've been quick to get the lights back on after storms, and they maintain the lines well. That's why I never say bad things when three are standing around while one is up in the bucket. I'm happy with their service.

I have had the opposite experience with a large company in CA. We had brownouts and blackouts during the hot summers, and with every big storm, a mudslide would take out the same pole, over and over. When we called to report outages, it was to somewhere far far away and we would have to explain that we did not live in a city or next to a highway and where our community was located.

The PUD is local, and they know the territory. I like our socialist setup. I've found the same to be true with the other PUDs too. :msp_smile:

 

[OLD MAN GRINDER]

Due to the drought down here, we have dead trees everywhere, mostly pines, davey has
been out cutting the ones down close to power lines, they leave them lying with a 3-4 ft
stump, watched a crew the other day spend all day cutting down 2 pines, i'll bet the local
co-op is paying through the nose for this and i am sure we will be seeing it in our bills..

But maybe on the good side i'll get some stump-grinding work out of all this LOL...

Have a nice thanksgiving everybody, going up to missouri to see the grandkids and the
2 new great grandkids...

Bob...

 

[ponyexpress976]

Back to the OP's original thought....ocassionally we will see big orange staging a few trucks/chippers in an area for a few days. Regardless of the reason for the cuts, system maintenance just isn't being performed. Despite the two warning shots given by mother nature in the last 6 months very little is being done. PPL has a hotline for homeowners to call for problem trees...I'm guessing they find it cheaper to have the homeowner get nervous, make a report, then schedule the service rather than have roaming crews inspect all the lines in an area. I don't want to start a political fight here. Regulated didn't work with prices kept artificially low and de-regulated let the bandits run free.

I take pride in being self reliant. That's why I gather my own heat and have a garden. I surf "green" forums for ideas to be even more independent or to save coin, not for a hippie philosophy. Due to the recent incidents, I've moved a generator up several notches on the "to be acquired" list. Im seriously contemplating a whole house system rather than the extension cord method. Gasoline is out since we're sitting a 3.40+-/gal. I have a 300 gal propane tank I could run one off of. But that option is almost as pricey. Im leaning towards a diesel. Especially if push comes to shove, bio/veggie,home heating oil may be easier to acquire. Thoughts anyone?

 

[Chris-PA]

I've long wanted one of those Lister Clone / Listeroid slow speed indirect-injection diesel engines copied from the old British Lister design. They can putter along at 600rpm indefinitely and run on a wide variety of fuel grades. Convection cooled, splash lubed, dead simple designs that can run a long time, and were used for decades all over the world as primary power. It would be a lot of work to set up, but would be sweet once you did.

 

[bbxlr8]

Per the OP: I posted this in the Lehigh valley thread last night. They are going to TOWN on the line on my property & it had the 50' ROW clear. They are going WAY back aggressively out of the ROW to get any ones that MAY cause a problem in the future. Making quite a mess. 4 full truck crews and a tracked skid steer. Rain kept them out today but they said they have about a week more.

"There is SO much damage & really nice hardwood down that anywhere around the area that all of Lehigh County should be ripe for picking (but particularly from Coopersburg up to Emmaus) .

My land extends up South MTN and has a PPL 69kv line across it. Well, just today the contracted Aspulndh guys just heaped several piles (most branches & tops) about 20'w X 12'h X 80'l off the bottom of the cut. Not too happy about that. Mostly poplar & oak and I got all the c..p. However, I do like the power on and support the more aggressive trimming, but this is ridiculous. They are going to "level them out" tomorrow. Now, if I could get them to stack the logs my way... "

 

[ponyexpress976]

My land extends up South MTN and has a PPL 69kv line across it. Well, just today the contracted Aspulndh guys just heaped several piles (most branches & tops) about 20'w X 12'h X 80'l off the bottom of the cut. Not too happy about that. Mostly poplar & oak and I got all the c..p. However, I do like the power on and support the more aggressive trimming, but this is ridiculous. They are going to "level them out" tomorrow. Now, if I could get them to stack the logs my way... "[/I]

I've mentioned this trick a bunch of times here...go out and grab 10-15 gatorades and leave them with the crew leader/foreman. Or if you want them to go the extra mile...offer the gatorade early and show up around 11:30 with a couple pizzas. The guys will all but split and stack it for you!

I've spent quite a few days in your neck of the woods. Seems like Emmaus and Bethlehem got whacked the worst.

 

[ponyexpress976]

I've long wanted one of those Lister Clone / Listeroid slow speed indirect-injection diesel engines copied from the old British Lister design. They can putter along at 600rpm indefinitely and run on a wide variety of fuel grades. Convection cooled, splash lubed, dead simple designs that can run a long time, and were used for decades all over the world as primary power. It would be a lot of work to set up, but would be sweet once you did.

Any different than setting up any other generator? Manual transfer switch. Since you have electrical engineer as your occupation, you have a few steps on me as far as becoming off the grid self reliant. Since they essentially putter along, I'd assume they are relatively easy to keep quiet....put it in a shed?

 

[Dalmatian90]

I should save this thread. Every once in a while, there is a threat to privatize our Public Utility Districts.

Any system you chose, you need conscientious people -- voters, shareholders, board members, executives, regulators, etc. -- overseeing it.

Public may be a bit less prone to corruption, but they're not immune. I've read of some Co-operatives that get pretty carried away too.

Any time you have folks who say a corporation only exists to provide profits to shareholders, they've lost their moral compass even if they are parroting a strictly legalistic line. Organizations -- no matter their form -- exist to collectively accomplish what individuals can't (and that's been true since British East India Corporation was the first corporation); we as a society and government provide them powers to accomplish this; and profit is a very powerful and strong measure of their effectiveness but it can never be the sole measure.

One of the political mucky mucks in Massachusetts just filed sudden retirement papers when it was realized he was being paid $360,000/year to run a housing authority in a city of 35,000. (He started at $70,000 five years ago). So public alone isn't enough.

The conscientious and wise oversight needs to go over ANY organization.

Since sociopaths float to the top of organizations, when you have fewer, bigger organizations and lack of good people scooping out those floating ####s, you have a few sociopaths who get to exercise more power over more people. When you keep those organizations smaller, you'll have some big fish in small ponds....but most of the small ponds won't be led by them.

In the days before rural electrification was complete, for more prosperous farms their electric system was typically one of those engines, a generator, and a battery bank. Charge the battery system and run off of that.

24v Farm Lighting Plant: http://books.google.com/books?id=Z1...96#v=onepage&q=farm generator battery&f=false

And a bit later, how to make one out of Ford car parts: Popular Mechanics - Google Books

 

[olyman]

To place things in perspective:

Crooked Light & Sometimes Power in 2007 asked regulators to approve $19 Million in regular tree trimming, $4.5 Million in "priority" tree trimming (it's not clear to me from the article if that's just key distribution lines along main highways and such, or if it includes/means trimming along the Transmission Right-of-Ways i.e. High Tension Lines).

And for $2.5 Million to boost the pensions of 20 current and 110 retired executives.

The gory details as the folks at the Hartford Courant could best write is here: Pension payments to CL&P executives rising - Hartford Courant

What is even more worrisome to me -- seriously, a giant WTF troublesome worry -- is just after the Nor'Easter CL&P was explaining how they had 50 (FIFTY!) transmission line failures.

This wasn't like the Quebec Ice Storm in the 90s when they could measure the ice build up on wires and towers in inches...this was from trees falling onto the cross-country high tension lines.

How the hell do you let that happen? CL&P even tried in the paper giving the lame excuse that the trees have grown taller then their ROW so they don't have authority to trim them. Well damn it, you ask...and if the property owner says no ...you're a fracking utility -- eminent domain the right of way wider and cut the fracking trees.

But hey, we have the money to raise the pensions of our retired executives and we want to buy NStar (the Boston electric utility)...why should we spend any money maintaining what we have? If it breaks, we'll just jack up the rates then! (They're looking at $200 million in rate increases to cover the recovery costs from Irene and the Nor'Easter).

It wasn't the storm. It was the company. Connecticut's other private electric utility and the municipal utilities all recovered within 4 days of the Nor'Easter and Irene. Same story in Massachusetts and New Hampshire -- several big corporate electrics (CL&P sisters WMECO & PSNH, National Grid, and NStar) all struggled while adjacent corporate, municipal, and co-op electrics all had their systems back up and running.

BTW -- for those in the rest of the country, to truly understand the anger in Connecticut you have to realize we pay 18 cents / kWh for residential electricity. Roughly 9 cents is the regulated "transmission & distribution" that CL&P provides, and 9 cents is the unregulated "generation" that is marketed separately. The national average for both combined is 12 cents / kWh.

We pay the most for power of any state other then Hawaii, and if you live in most of the state it's obvious we've gotten a complete #### of a network to show for those bills.

18 cts a kw??? criiippeessss

 

[olyman]

I've long wanted one of those Lister Clone / Listeroid slow speed indirect-injection diesel engines copied from the old British Lister design. They can putter along at 600rpm indefinitely and run on a wide variety of fuel grades. Convection cooled, splash lubed, dead simple designs that can run a long time, and were used for decades all over the world as primary power. It would be a lot of work to set up, but would be sweet once you did.

on a forum that used to be,,and aint no more,,guy put a small turbo to a twin...he doubled the hp,,and said he checked bearings after many hrs,,and saw NO ill effects!!!! he ran a MUCH bigger gene that way!!!! and NO extra fuel use because of the turbo......

 

[Dalmatian90]

18 cts a kw??? criiippeessss

They don't even have the ####### common courtesy to give us a reach-around.

I just fact-checked myself ... 17.5 cts/kWh last year, we're down to 15.5 cts/kWh this year.

And the nat'l average is only 10 cts/kWh.

This month's bill: 632kWh, $114.

Looking at my history, I need to buy a(nother) sump mine. Mine runs alot (still cheaper then the work that is needed to replace the french drains, which I will eventually). The 1/3rd HP one died in August and I had to do an emergency replacement with a 1/2 HP. That nearly doubled my usage month-to-month over last year! I had noticed a HUGE savings when I dropped from the 3/4 to 1/3 when the 3/4 died and the 1/3 is plenty to keep up with my normal needs. I was only using 320kWh this time last year with the 1/3rd HP pump.