Do I get to allocate the costs? I just think that some of those costs are sunk and would occur whether drone removal occurred or not.
Disclaimer: I am NOT an expert, I just have an opinion.
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Not enough, but they do get songs!
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I am NOT a municipal finance expert. I just have an opinion. I donât know how much of the costs are variable and flexible or fixed. Doesnât seem like they do this type of thing all the time or perhaps we would see more news reports about them, but that was why I ask about other events requiring the same attention to the lines like kites, birds and squirrels. From the article:
While City Light has had to retrieve many kites from power lines over the years, Thomsen said this was the first drone, and the task was made more complicated because the tiny aircraft was stuck in a taller, higher-voltage transmission line rather than the shorter, lower-voltage lines that carry power into homes.
I hate arguing and splitting hairs but I feel like you said something I didnât say. I didnât say they were at home I said (other work)âŚ
I was thinking out loud in this forum about whether the $35,000 represents a real additional cost to the municipality due to removing the drone or is it already included in the maintaining lines budget. It seems inflated to be scary. I still say inflated. Also, donât fly your drones into power lines, kids, it produces a nuisance and is an extra cost for everybody.
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A Seattle City Light crew had to re-route electricity and rent a special
carriage before ultimately taking down a drone that was stuck in the
air for the past week 120 feet above Lake Unionâs Mallard Cove.
It was over water too which made things trickier. Iâm sure a good part of the cost was this special carriage they rented.
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Now that you mention it, wouldnât a water canon be ideal for this? They already wash the insulators on high tension lines with something similar so they wouldnât even need to invest in new gear.
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I did some google searching to try to find the cost of the special truck, but only found out things like it costs ~$300,000/mile to install power lines. For a 48â diesel which I think is not the special tall one that Seattle City Light had to use I can rent it for $675/day. 120â boom lift which also isnât right is $2200/day. Other searches all have request a quote. Someone happy mutant here must know how much it really costs for this type of equipment.
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Thatâs even better idea than the bean bag, though its disadvantage is that theyâd have to deenergize the line.
Take a look at the stuck drone here. Thatâs 120â above the ground, midspan over water (300â away from a pole)âŚdo you really think youâre gonna safely hit it â and dislodge it â with a jet of water or a bean bag?
Line workers earn a median of $70,000 per year. When you add in taxes, training, equipment, admin, etc. they cost anywhere from $70-$100 per hour in the field. Normal bucket trucks run about $150-$200 per hour; big-ass cherry pickers are $400+ per hour. Wouldnât surprise me if the HT carriage rent was $2,000 plus transport. Thereâs also some expense from engineering support and rescheduling other workâŚ$12,000-$15,000 for the removal doesnât seem out of line.
Then thereâs the cost of re-routing power from a matrix of 115KV lines; itâs not just flicking a switch. Maybe six line workers, an engineer or two, a super or two, and three-to-five vehicles on-site, plus some careful load monitoring from the generating and interconnect sitesâŚeasily $5,000-$8,000 for the âoff,â and again for the âon.â
Other news reports gave the cost estimate as $30,000-$35,000; the $35K figure got the most ink. From my experience in building cable TV systems and working around power crews, these numbers donât seem out of line.
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Out fishing in the boonies Iâve flown a kite using a spare fishing rod and reel and some heavy test line so I can get a cell signal from an antenna booster on the kite.
It was actually a pretty sweet rig. You can fly a 2 meter wingspan arrowhead kite to probably illegal altitudes, and the reel makes holding the kite down and bringing it back in pretty easy. Until all of a sudden the tension gives out at 10 meters up and the kite plummets into the lake and sinks.
Reeling in a kite from the bottom of the lake is impossible. The hydrodynamic resistance just doesnât permit it.
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I was thinking one of these, but scaled up a little could be ideal for dislodging objects from power lines:
Vortex cannon. Could work too, though Iâd put my bets rather on a potato gun and a lot of tennis balls. Or maybe even golf balls would be enough.
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