Re: 1GW (sic) Battery Energy Storage Systems

On Tue, 26 Nov 2024 15:34:06 -0800, john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com>
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Nov 2024 19:42:54 +0000, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
>

On 26/11/2024 03:15, john larkin wrote:

On Mon, 25 Nov 2024 17:55:35 +0000, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
 

>

There is some ageing nuclear still running and large scale biomass
greenwashed wood burning facilities like Drax (sounds like a Bond villain).
>
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68381160

 
Having electricity used to be normal.

>
Most of the time we still do. But the final leg of the electricity
distribution was sold off and the vulture capitalists found a cunning
way to extract value by ceasing to do any preventative maintenance!

>
The US "regulated monopoly" scheme, shareholder-owned companies with
guaranted returns and  performance incentives, worked great for 100
years, until the regulation got amped up (pun intended).
>
The power here is very reliable. Sometimes something local, an old
transformer or something, breaks, but they fix it fast. City-wide
outages are very rare, basically unknown, between earthquakes.
>
An old wood pole leaned over and broke on our block a couple weeks
ago, and we lost power. An army of PG&E guys and trucks and heavy
equipment moved in and installed a new pole in about 5 hours.
>
The fix was amusing. I'll post a pic.
>

PG&E did a clean fast  job repacing the pole and restringing the high
power wires.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3xscsxd9urda2ct6kr4t2/Arbor_Pole_1.jpg?rlkey=69affbdc9x1wofbhlkcx1kse8&raw=1

But they are not responsible for the mess of POTS, cable, fiber, and
whatever was below, so they just chopped off that part of the old pole
and strapped it on.

The City intends to underground all the wiring some day. I figure it
will take 75 years and a hundred billion dollars.

Too bad they didn't dig big utility tunnels back when gas and
electricity were invented.

Note that we don't have a high ground wire like many places do. We
basically never get lightning strikes here.