I can absolutely verify, first-hand, that the random raccoon climbing around a substation works pretty well, too. Especially when one is sleeping 100 yards from said substation at around 3am. And when those things go, man do they go!
Preparedness in our infrastructure is clearly a problem. Stuff thatâs not meant to be used except in an emergency can decay and fail when go-time comes. Down here in Florida, when weâre not drunkenly handing our half-eaten Tacos to the cops from our flaming vehicles (what, doesnât everyone?), we tend to get a hurricane every now and again. A good disaster kit helps when the power goes out or the splinter-cell terrâist group takes out the local Publix (which, now that I think about it, would be a national disaster. Publix is that good).
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HyperboleâŚ
I assume that most have some sort of battery backup that will last a few hours.
I see that Verizon claims 8 hr backup at all of their towers. I seem to recall that newer at&t towers have back-up, but older ones donât (I assume that the other carriers are similar).
This quote from a Hurricane Sandy article appears to support that â new 4g service was available, but voice/3g was not.
Up and down the East Coast, coverage on all the major mobile networks remains spotty. In New York City, for example, 4G data networks are available even though voice and 3G data are not.Here's a forum discussion where they discuss the spotty availability of at&t service during a power outage (and the availability of the Verizon towers). Cell Sites During Power Outages: Howard Forums
I was really surprised that they didnât have the generators on a test schedule â that seems to be common-sense practice.
It is only a problem because those who manage and finance the system are more interested in profit than resilience, and that includes the customers. The blackout that occurred in the north eastern US a few years ago happened without the intervention of vandals largely because the system was poorly designed and an overload on one part of the system tripped a protective switch which meant that the load had to be supplied by the rest of the system which of course did not have sufficient capacity so it too tripped out. Such cascading failures can be avoided but it costs money and time. Fixing the system so that such failures do not occur would also prevent attacks on substations having any more than local effects.
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somehow I doubt the shooters fit the dark skinned traveling to Middle East profile.
About 25% of active military, and about that for ex-military, are minorities who have traveled to the middle east, so I am not sure I can agree 100% with that. Maybe 75%.
I am imagining someone who was special forces-ish, and maybe also a lineman for the county, and also batshit crazy but that sort that you never see coming.
Hi. Many active cell towers have either diesel or propane or utility natural gas emergency generators. Not all. Yet.
I can assure you that whenever installing any new equipment to existing locations, ALL carriers are currently installing generators with runtimes that will exceed 8 hours, I estimate 24-96, at pretty much every location. Citation: First hand knowledge, cant say more.
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That is good to hear. I would think that generators would be a bit hard to do in urban areas â especially in CA where they have strict emissions regs.
True about emissions, and especially CA. Iâm not there. But there is a lot of money to be made, and since there is, the permitting can be worth doing. In some locations I have seen large battery systems as well. They might go for just 8 hours. Iâve heard about solar co-installations and systems near turbines as well. I work in another part of a related industry, so I get to see a lot of stuff and hear which way the wind is blowing.
'ZACTLY! And then thereâs all this sciency-talk about âglobal warming.â I HAD A SNOW DAY YESTERDAY!
pshaw! Wake me when something serious happens.
Not before !
At a former job they had schedule to test the generators â once or twice a month, I think.
Then, big power outage due to a nearby fire.
Aaaaand⌠the generators wouldnât start.
Seems the batteries had been dead for some time, and the test-starts had relied on them being plugged into the gridâŚ
oops.
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I donât think so. In fact, the last person to launch a suspiciously similar-sounding attack worked as a PR person for a southern California electrical utility. Do you?
Marin County and Berkeley are, the last I heard, figuring out how to run with a distributed grid, as is the tiny country of Germany, which you may have heard of. Itâs far from technically impossible.
I also have friends with solar power who pointed out that most home systems have simple cut-offs that deal with the safety complaints that the grid operators have proposed. For example, does electrical power leak from solar panels during power outages and electrify nearby electrical lines? Not if the system is properly installed with an automatic cutout switch between the house and the street. Moreover, any electrician working for a power company who assumes any line is dead without testing it should be fired as a danger to himself and others. Iâm not an electrician, and even I know to check first.
Balancing the load with hundreds of micro-suppliers? Yeah, thatâs a problem all right, which is why Germanyâs taking the lead in solving it, as is every other place that wants to sell us the technology to do it. Why arenât Californiaâs world-renowned engineers also trying to solve it? They are, in Marin. They are, in âhigh-techâ Hawaii. In the manufacturing hubs of southern California, not so much.
However, the bigger problem for power companies, especially in sunnier places, is that people may simply choose to go off the grid if they have to with expensive, unreliable electricity coming over the lines. Ultimately, itâs really hard to run a monopoly when people refuse to buy from it.
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I will not dissagree, but they donât need to have ties/training/service in the military. They just need to like guns, buy guns, try guns, own guns.
And by the way, I am pretty sure that active military personel, even of minority descent, does not get stopped by TSA etc for traveling from and to middle east
who brought up the TSA? oh, you did. perhaps you should check the context of what i said. nothing to do with commercial travel.
if they hadnât spilled the dielectric fluid it would probably have been blamed on ecoterrorists.
then perhaps you should check what kind of people are profiled as being potential terrorits, therefore getting thoroough checks, and reread my comment
yes, I did. This, for context, is what you said:
somehow I doubt the shooters fit the dark skinned traveling to Middle East profile.
You said nothing about border checks or the TSA until now.
I didnât fail to read your words, I failed to read your mind.
In my experience with disasters, I would argue that this may not have been due to failed towers. Cellular providers frequently kill voice during a disaster(or extended power outage). I am not an engineer working for the cellular industry, but I imagine it has something to do with bandwidth savings and securing lines for emergencies. i.e. 911 calls receive priority and non-emergency calls are blocked. This has been my experience during similar disasters. You can almost always see reception from the tower, but bandwidth and usage is reduced. If you see ANY bars, then the tower is still running. It just isnât allowing a call to go through.
The main limiting factor for backup generators and similar isnât age. They have been installing backup power and batteries forever. The problem is location. Rooftop towers in urban areas are less likely to have a generator and rely entirely on batteries. New fuel cell backups have extended this time considerably(72 hours) without requiring the installation of a large and noisy generator that may conflict with the lease.
My general understanding from professionals I know within the cellular industry is that backup power is the norm for all providers. The main concern with that federal 8 hour rule was that to meet the requirements they would actually have to start performing battery testing. Most cell providers operate on a âreplace every 7 yearsâ(for VRLA) mentality instead of conforming to IEEE testing and validation requirements. It isnât that the batteries cost so much, it is that the time to have a technician go out there and perform 4-6 hours of destructive testing on a rooftop annually.
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I would imagine blocking voice places less stress on the backup power supplies too, especially batteries.
No grid operators have complained of this issue. It is an NEC requirement that you have the ability to isolate from the grid during an outage. This is true for co-generation(when you are selling back to the electric company) and when you run a generator(when you are simply running a backup when the lights go out). Grid operators are not concerned about this issue.
WRONG. Modern grids have a great deal of switching. When a linesmen goes to work on the electric line, he isolates it by locking out all âupstreamâ power sources. However, non-isolated generators downstream could still be switched into the circuit he is working on at any time. The only way for him to âlock outâ these downstream sources is to go to each house and shut off their power. Oddly, this is the LEGAL REQUIREMENT I discussed earlier. You are responsible for locking out any downstream power source. SAFETY FIRST.
Not so much. Germany has a younger grid and a smaller grid. It is also nationally managed and easier to fund. The US operates 3 main grids with a number of regional grids. The companies tasked with managing grids are essentially receiving an unfunded mandate to make a sub-optimal technology work on their grid. So, should they spend the money to focus on reliability or should they spend the money to focus on micro-generation? Micro-generation requires over-supplying networks and building obscene switching capability into the grid. All of that DECREASES reliability. So, you can pick one. Which would you pick if your paycheck was based on reliability?
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Because obviously most dark skinned people travelling to middle east that could be classified as terrorists willing to blow up USA are former and current military personnel.
