California Fires and Electrical Reliability Around The World

[anorlunda]

TL;DR Summary

Are the blackouts in California the result of inferior design and practices in the USA electricity grid?

One of the big news stories this week is the pre-emptive blackouts in California. Some commentators have said such events could never happen in their country. Why do we read of USA electric supply problems more often than in some other countries?

1. Are there significant differences in practices and design in different countries?
2. Does anyone have non-anecdotal electric reliability statistics for several countries or regions?
3. How do non-electric factors like population density, geography, weather, economics, influence electric reliability?

To discuss this accurately, we must distinguish between transmission and distribution. The power transmission grid moves power from remote power plants to your city or area. Power distribution, then moves the power from a substation to your building. Failures in the transmission system blackout a whole city, state, region, country or continent. Failures in distribution blackout a single house, or one street, or a neighborhood. The 3 questions apply separately to transmission and distribution.

I want to stress that this thread is not about personal anecdotes, but statistics that apply to entire populations. Some of us live in multifamily buildings in urban or suburban areas. Some of us live in places as wild and remote as possible. The broad range in a public forum makes comparison of personal experiences not meaningful.

 

[jedishrfu]

The wires stretch and sag as they get hot too making it easier to come in contact with trees. There are sensors that can measure the sag dynamically without getting impacted by the EM fields surrounding the wires.

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/lets-physics-power-lines-sag/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5795940/

 

[anorlunda]

That's true. Sag primarily effects transmission, not so much for distribution. Ice on the wires in winter also causes sag.

I believe that last years fires in California were triggered by neighborhood distribution lines, not transmission lines. The 2003 blackout that started in Ohio, was indeed triggered by transmission lines sagging.

To help us remember the diversity of the topic, I'll post a few pictures. The 3 questions in #1 apply to all these circumstances.

Power transmission, showing area cleared of trees. The height of the trees determine the width of the cleared area.

A traditional neighborhood may still have overhead power lines.

Most modern neighborhoods have underground utilities.

High density. Almost always underground.

Utility tree trimming around distribution lines. The locals protest if the trees are clear cut instead of trimmed.

Edit: I almost forgot. In addition to sag, transmission lines sway from side to side in high winds.

 

[mfb]

http://www.cliffordpower.com/trends-in-power-outages
Two interesting quotes:

[...] over the last decade, Americans have had to endure more power outages, and of longer duration, than any other developed nation in the world.
[...]
In some cases, those outages were simply due to the increasing severity of such storms, but there is also another factor at work - the aging and weakening of the entire electrical infrastructure.

Caveat: This was written by a company selling diesel generators.

German Outages Are 12 Minutes Per Customer/Year
For Japan it is just 4 minutes (from the previous article). The article doesn't give a direct comparison, but from the long-term outages alone the US average must be over one hour, and I think I saw ~2-3 hours per year being reported a while ago. That's a factor 10-15 above Germany and a factor 30-50 higher than Japan.

Why Does NA Have So Many Blackouts?
Someone from Duke Energy emailed the ECOreport to say that in the US “most electric service is above ground covering vast expanses, and weather frequently knocks down lines and disrupts service. In most of the developed world, reliability is almost never impacted by generation disruptions.”

 

[russ_watters]

Thanks for posting this thread. I had a rant ready for the thread in the Mentor's forum, but the issue deserves a public airing.

Summary: Are the blackouts in California the result of inferior design and practices in the USA electricity grid?

I want to stress that this thread is not about personal anecdotes, but statistics that apply to entire populations.

Well, it's also about policy, and that's what my rant is about, with respect to the current blackout:

The US isn't a 2nd/3rd world country. Our power grid is reliable -- even if other 1st world countries' are more reliable*. IMO, the expectation of a reliable power grid is one of the hallmarks of being a 1st world country: We get mad and we whine when we lose power. In 2nd/3rd world countries, it isn't like that. They expect to lose power. It happens all the time and they act like it isn't a big deal -- because they expect it. I've experienced it, and it's bizarre to someone who doesn't expect it, to watch people react as if it is normal**.

2nd/3rd world countries have unreliable power precisely because they aren't developed enough to have it. They don't have enough money to have grids with a high degree of redundancy. Their governments are not strong and free of corruption to ensure construction codes are followed. I sympathize, but that's not our reality, and it's not what is causing the current blackout, or more broadly the higher than typical rate for developed countries.

The current blackout infuriates me because California/PSE&G have chosen to make unreliable power a reality. They've chosen to make Californians deal with things people in the US shouldn't have to deal with. It's worse than in a 2nd/3rd world country because in a 2nd/3rd world country they don't really have a choice, and they at least are trying to fix it. We do have a choice, and we've decided not to try and fix it.

/endrant

Some commentators have said such events could never happen in their country. Why do we read of USA electric supply problems more often than in some other countries?

Please note, per my framing above, I think there are two very, very different issues at work here. I would say that a system that is switched-off manually is *not* unreliable under a strict definition because by definition unreliability is the rate of unplanned outages (again, this is why it infuriates me).

The current blackout is happening because the operators *think* they might experience a reliability (and safety) problem, not because they actually did.

By a broader definition - which I would expect to see in statistics - any outage should be counted. This includes somewhat planned rolling blackouts due to lack of capacity as well as pure unforeseen accidents.

*Poorly-planned over-implementation of intermittent renewables may change that.

**Similar situation: I once did some subcontracting for an Indian in-sourcing company in Philadelphia. I spent a few weeks working in their office. One day, the air conditioning went out on a warm day. Nobody batted an eyelash. Except me, of course. I all but flipped-out, and eventually went home. I want to say it was 85F in there when I left, but I can't remember for sure.

 

[russ_watters]

A concise summary of the problems as I see them:
1. Bad policy that doesn't enforce capacity requirements to avoid rolling blackouts (I don't think that's as common as it used to be).
2. Bad maintenance/construction policy that prioritizes construction costs over long term costs and reliability in some cases.
3. Shortsighted/provincial/NIMBY concerns such as aesthetics.
4. In the case of the current blackout, an overly litigious society (that one's new).

An example of #2 and/or #3:

...trees.

Yeah. It's ridiculous how we deal with trees:

This happens to be Califonria, but it's like this everywhere in the US. A few things to note:

-This has to be trimmed yearly.
-Clearly, if these power lines fall, they can go nowhere else but into the tree.
-The tree is *directly below* the power line. Which came first doesn't even matter: we should not have trees planted directly below power lines.

Removing/avoiding trees below or within a certain distance of power lines would be an easy way to both save money and improve reliability.

 

[fresh_42]

Does anyone have non-anecdotal electric reliability statistics for several countries or regions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outageshttps://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/IC.ELC.OUTG/rankings

 

[anorlunda]

Wow, @russ_watters shows that it is almost impossible to draw a boundary around these questions. Broader issues always become important. Let me say just a few things.

I predicted this last April.

The California fire problem is serious and difficult. If I was the PG&E risk manager, I would not depend on technology to protect my company from liability. I would order the whole grid to be shut down in all counties where and when the fire risk is red. Of course that would get me tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

Who to blame? In the USA, regulators (e.g. public service commission) dictate policies such as prioritization of capital costs versus other costs, tree trimming, and much more. The PSC acts to make voters happy. Voters are almost never informed that their desires may have negative consequences. Everyone likes to say "The lights will stay on no matter what we do or don't do."

A root issue here is habitability of certain regions. In some parts of the country, there are severe problems providing adequate electric/water/sewer infrastructure. In some places, recurring flooding is inevitable. California has fires, mudslides, earthquakes all in the same year.

No entity such as PG&E has the authority to declare, "Northern California should never have been inhabited." Government mandates that they provide service to nearly every square mile within the borders regardless of difficulties.

No government is brave enough to say something like, "No more people. Arizona is full." The federal government and the voters would strike them down if they did say it.

Even international organizations have no stomach to say, "Earth is overpopulated. The sustainable population is 1 billion people."

See what I mean about a boundary around the issue?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outageshttps://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/IC.ELC.OUTG/rankings

Thanks for the data. We're getting closer.

The first link includes only blackouts affecting 1 million or more people; thus transmission. But most complaints come from chronic distribution problems, that may effect only a few hundred people per incident, but many more incidents. Even the following curve cuts off at 10000 customers.

That data is consistent with the part I am most familiar with: New York City, Manhattan Island, blacked out in 1965, 1977, and 2003. 3 times in 38 years.

The second link you gave is closer to the problem because it is at the customer level, but the list seems to be limited to 3rd world countries. The link below comes closer. It has EU data (0.6 interruptions per business per year) but is is missing data for North America.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.ELC.OUTG

 

[fresh_42]

The second one has data, depending on year and e.g. continent (scroll down). The main problem with the second source is, that it only says something about companies, i.e. economic data. Since those are mainly in high populated areas in the US, and outages rarely happen in e.g. big cities, the data are not broad enough. I was looking for a measure in total man-years, the accumulated sum of outage times per capita and time period, but couldn't find any. Maybe one has to look for the data of statistical offices by country. We have such offices here (on state as well as on national level) and I assume the US, too.

 

[russ_watters]

Wow, @russ_watters shows that it is almost impossible to draw a boundary around these questions. Broader issues always become important. Let me say just a few things.

I predicted this last April.

Who to blame? In the USA...

Yep, you got it. The only thing I didn't explicitly see in what you described that I think is important is litigiousness -- but it's implied in your prediction.

Perhaps if PG&E were penalized for outages they would have calculated a different optimal course of action.

 

[phyzguy]

The current blackout is happening because the operators *think* they might experience a reliability (and safety) problem, not because they actually did.

Of course this is true, but if you were running PG&E, what would you do? They have had to declare bankruptcy due to their liability from last year's fires. Should they just let it happen again? It hasn't rained here since May, so all of the land is tinder-dry. The smallest spark will start another wildfire. I live in California, so I am directly impacted by it, but I'm not sure what we expect PG&E to do. Wave a magic wand and bury all the power lines overnight so they don't blow down in high winds?

 

[russ_watters]

Of course this is true, but if you were running PG&E, what would you do?

I'd almost certainly make the same decision.

I'm not blaming PG&E. I think they are among the least responsible for this situation because they are heavily regulated and they have very little control over how they do business. For example, they aren't allowed to decide that it's stupid to plant a tree under a power line and then shape it every year into a hollow U, only to have it catch fire when the wind blows the power line into it, or it onto the power line -- but they can get sued for it. They aren't allowed to decide they want to raise their rates in order to upgrade their infrastructure -- but they can get sued for it. They aren't allowed to change building codes to force people who build houses in fire-prone areas to build them out of less combustible materials so they don't go up like a tiki-torch from the slightest spark -- but they can get sued for it.

I blame the state and people of California -- though I'm not naive and realize many if not most others are making similar mistakes.

Wave a magic wand and bury all the power lines overnight so they don't blow down in high winds?

The problem didn't start overnight and yes it is unreasonable to expect it to be fixed overnight. Decades of neglect and mismanagement by the state and people of California will take decades to undo, if they even choose to undo it.

 

[OCR]

They have had to declare bankruptcy due to their liability from last year's fires.

Sure looks that way. . .

Reorganization Information

.

 

[dlgoff]

I predicted this last April.

I would order the whole grid to be shut down in all counties where and when the fire risk is red. Of course that would get me tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

I'd like to know, how is this decision's effect any different than load shedding?

Standard EOP-003-2— Load Shedding Plans,

A Balancing Authority and Transmission Operator operating with insufficient
generation or transmission capacity must have the capability and authority to shed load rather
than risk an uncontrolled failure of the Interconnection.

 

[anorlunda]

I'd like to know, how is this decision's effect any different than load shedding?

Standard EOP-003-2— Load Shedding Plans,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout

The difference is in duration. Underfrequency load shedding typically lasts only a few minutes until balance is restored.

The red flag fire condition could last much longer. Weeks? Months?

Obviously, duration is very important to consumers and businesses.

 

[artis]

Well if anyone is interested , I live in Latvia, we are part of the EU for some time now , formerly USSR. Most of our electrical infrastructure is from the USSR and lots of (mostly transmission/distribution) have been changed over the years and upgraded. We have the luxury of being in a modest climate with average temperatures and very rare occasions of severe weather, (which tend to shift towards a more frequent weather anomalies due to climate change, this I can report with certainty from my own experience) Our grid is mostly 330kV lines with step down to 110kV for smaller cities and 20kV for inner city and rural areas, then the distribution is then 20kV to 0.4kV or 400v 3 phase with 230 volt single phase , in other words just as in most other EU and Russia. Currently we are interconnected with Lithuania (where HBO Chernobyl was filmed) and on the north with Estonia which is then connected with Scandinavia. Most of our power comes from 3 medium sized Hydro plants located o0n a single and very predictable and stable river, not counting local circuit breaks and small tree falls on local 20Kv lines we haven't had a blackout (major one that affects more than half the country with a population of 2 million) for more than 10 years.
The last one happened in 2005 after a severe storm ,since then they cleared most trees and now they built a new 330Kv line in my region so this has been made even less of a possibility.

I can say that it seems Hydro is among the most reliable power sources for electricity, our plants haven't had an accident since they were opened and everything that is done is routine inspection and upgrade.I also have to agree with @russ_watters and @anorlunda, I too think that if people choose to live in places where the climate is severe they also have to keep in mind that these places come with a cost just like for rich people hiring bodyguards is a thing. In our country also some very rich people live right next to the sea in lavish houses , some of which are literally meters away from water but nobody gives a damn when they get flooded or lose electricity because there is plenty of nice land to live on yet when one goes over his way to pay billing fees and arrange a house next to sea one also has to take into account the risks involved.

It is really funny to watch people trying to be woke about climate and saving trees yet at the same time on purpose living their life in a way and in a place that only makes it worse for both themselves and the climate.PS. @russ_watters , when you said that 85F was enough for you to leave work, well I work out in a gym with no AC and sometimes in summer I make a full workout routine in 85F, how about survival of the fittest? :D

 

[artis]

PS. surely this is a stupid suggestion but I can't understand why everyone (well many people) have moved to Cali and now they are whining about the conditions , as far as I know the USA has plenty of land in the middle and lots of normal cities with average climate,

also @russ_watters I would disagree that such a planned shutdown is not the same as having an unreliable grid, surely there are many factors involved like weather, grid condition etc but if you have to turn something off for the fear of there being problems that for me is the very definition of unreliable, otherwise why would you turn it off especially if it is something as vital for society and modern economy as a power grid.

 

[sandy stone]

Who to blame? In the USA, regulators (e.g. public service commission) dictate policies such as prioritization of capital costs versus other costs, tree trimming, and much more.

I had no idea PSC's had such authority over utilities' business decisions. There is certainly the question of just how independent the PSC's are from the utilities they regulate. I'm sure there are lobbyists doing their best to convince PSC members that the utility just won't survive if they can't raise rates/cut maintenance expenditures, etc. I'm also sure that we would consider some of the methods used to convince them to be unethical. Sort of like the military-industrial complex, in a different venue.

Regarding the issue of litigation, I feel that if a company's equipment starts a fire that kills over a hundred people, then civil action should be only a start. Whether it was the utility's management who decided that tree-trimming was not really that important, or the PSC, if a few people went to jail it would be a big encouragement for everyone to act more responsibly in the future.

 

[anorlunda]

@sandy stone ,
You should study the history a bit. Public utilities in the USA operate as regulated monopolies. That gives government great (but not total) control over how they operate. In return, the utility is granted a guaranteed return on investment (profit). Their price is cost plus a markup.

In practice some PUC s have a staff with a 400 to 1 ratio of lawyers to engineers. That makes them pretty clueless about the technical issues, and unable to do the best job of regulating technical issues. Speaking as an engineer, I would prefer a 1 to 400 ratio
---
If we have a region that is a tinderbox, given weather and amount if dry fuel on the ground, I think a fire is inevitable. It could be triggered by a match, or lightning, or a sparking wire, or dozens of other ways. It is not a question of if there is a fire, but where, when and how.

Does it make sense to allocate all the liability to the trigger source? None of the liability to people who build in fire prone or flood prone locations? No share of liability to forrest management policies that allow dry fuel to accumulate?

In other torts like auto accidents, we often allocate shares of the liability to several parties.

I know the question is sensitive. If this thread gets too hot, I'll move it to general discussion.

 

[sandy stone]

@sandy stone ,In other torts like auto accidents, we often allocate shares of the liability to several parties.

This is usually the case in marine accidents also. Makes sense to me.

 

[Windadct]

The system was originally designed and structured as a completely regulated Utility - where the "mission" was to safely deliver reliable electrical energy.

By deregulating the Utilities they make their mission about profit - that is what the shareholders expect. In a true non-utility business it's success and failure is practically irrelevant to public benefit and safety ( dare I say the public welfare). It is now less expensive for the Power Companies to spend a million on lobbying and debating with the PUCs, swaying public opinion - etc.. than to spend in operational costs necessary to ensure safety and reliability. Basically profit is competing with safety and when this dichotomy is implemented, over time they may perhaps actually balance, but that balance is not static, it tips one way then the other, and when the Safety is loosing we find it unacceptable. We can not make Safety First and Profit First at the same time.

IMO -The idea that all of societies necessities can be properly served through free market structures is patently false.

 

[anorlunda]

The system was ...

I disagree. However, I fear that we might get too political, so I won't comment.

 

[russ_watters]

Regarding the issue of litigation, I feel that if a company's equipment starts a fire that kills over a hundred people, then civil action should be only a start. Whether it was the utility's management who decided that tree-trimming was not really that important, or the PSC, if a few people went to jail it would be a big encouragement for everyone to act more responsibly in the future.

It's difficult (typically impossible) to sue the government because for the most part, by definition, their decisions are legal. So if the government requires the utility to allow trees to grow directly under and around power lines, there's nobody to sue except the utility if they spark a fire - even though it is really the government's fault.

...or perhaps the owner of the tree, but unless that's a large corporation, there is no point in suing them because you can't make much money suing someone who doesn't have much money.

Of course the government can change either end of that if it chooses to; either re-write the clearances code or indemnify the utility against lawsuits or both.

 

[russ_watters]

also @russ_watters I would disagree that such a planned shutdown is not the same as having an unreliable grid...

I agree that for statistical purposes it should be counted the same, but in terms of the logic of how I think of it, it is different and worse than a normal power outage. Perhaps I just can't think of a good way to articulate it, but it seems to me the media, public, and government of California agree given the unusually high backlash they got over this outage.

 

[artis]

By far the best civilian goods have been produced in societies that have been largely moral and ruled by a free market system with plenty of opportunities.
But there are few exceptions to this and they are almost always complicated projects, sometimes the free market doesn't work as good with respect to such projects, so entities that don't have cost or revenue as their primary factors can surpass them, like for example the USSR with it's first man in space and many achievements and then later the US with NASA and man on the moon , I doubt these achievements would have been made possible if they were left to free market alone.

The same sadly can be said about nuclear energy, Fukushima should have been placed a bit higher up the shore side and the diesels could have been easily put much higher but sure that would have cost more but it would have definitely saved the plant since there was no major structural damage apart from cut outside power and non working on site diesels.On the other hand governments , especially the Soviet one have screwed up a lot of things simply because the people who run the "show" have no personal interest in the things they often have authority over, like the series of flaws of the RBMK reactors and Chernobyl accident which apart from the operators was mostly a long term political screw up since no one in the higher "corridors" gave 2 cents about what happens in a remote area far far away.

So my conclusion is none , private companies tend to screw up large projects because of revenue while governments tend to be slow and sometimes ignorant.
I think this has to be a team play situation where citizens push the initiative and the government helps with resources and funds, in our global world large projects involve multiple entities I think long gone are the days where a few men from a small company can make all the difference, also long gone are the days where one can simply wait for bureaucrats to "guide" everything int he right direction.

 

[artis]

all in all I think nature itself will resolve everything because Californians will have more or less two choices , either to keep investing more and more in a land that will get hotter and drier by the day with regular fires, billions in losses and God knows what or they could simply start relocating to a bit colder and safer places of which there are plenty.

This is exactly like the situation with a housing and rent as the rent goes higher the people who stay there get fewer until only the very rich can afford to pay. Only in California the rent comes from nature and shows up as ever increasing bills for house, car, etc repairs.
In this case nature and free market go hand in hand

 

[OCR]

...long gone are the days where one can simply wait for bureaucrats to "guide" everything in the right direction.

Yeah, it does seem to kind of look that way. . .

The escaped prescribed fire is 15 miles southwest of Lake Tahoe

https://wildfiretoday.com/2019/10/12/caples-fire-spreads-to-the-south/

.

 

[anorlunda]

My fault, but we're getting too far away from the OP topic.

 

[PhanthomJay]

In this region (NE US), by far the number one cause of power outages is trees, mostly coming in contact with distribution lines along the streets during wind or snow/ice events. As opposed to transmission corridors, trees in residents front yard are not feasibly removed. A compromise in lieu of expensive undergrounding is to use insulated tree wire , wire with enough insulation over it to prevent line tripouts during tree/branch contacts. But this is also an expensive task, and its use is not common in many instances. Trees were the problem 50 years ago, and are still the problem now. At least in this region.

 

[jim mcnamara]

In general, there is a problem in the US electric industry - they call it the plant problem. Let's look at RECA coops and interactions with Public Service Company of New Mexico as an example. This is based on New Mexico, Southern CO, and West Texas.

Transformers, new transmission and distribution lines for substations, power generation, wheeling:
1. you can't walk into Parts-R-Us and buy a substation transformer. The lead time in 2016 (last time I checked) was about 9 months. Coops and PNM have "portable" substation, that you drive into a rapidly developing area until the real one arrives. Copper went up by the period 1990-2009 - from $USD 1.15 to $USD 3.55. So new distribution lines are much less cost effective now.
2. a megawatt in 1990 supplied sufficient power for ~500 residences. With the advent of many more household electric devices and refrigerated air, that number now is more like ~400.
3. this means the existing plant (the assets like substations in the field) installed in 1990 is inadequate. So there is a deficit of 20% of the 2016 cost. For no new services. You can imagine what the magnitude of this is from the period 1955 to today.
4. Coops are not publicly regulated like PG&E, but PNM, publicly regulated, does wheel most of the NM coop's power. This means rates are a political football. PNM lost $USD 20-40 million a month for 16 months in 2007-2008 because of an unchangeable rate agreement back in 2000. PNM got a major increase in 2009, laid off 30% of its staff, sold the gas subsidiary + plant + 900 employees to a holding company. In 2011 there was a massive gas explosion caused by PNM's plant problem (deferring gas plant improvement). PNM was fined and had massive lawsuits. The gas company had no repercussions because PNM had swept the problem under the rug. Coops got zapped by the rate increase.
4. The US population in exurban areas is now estimated at 100 million. A large increase since 1990. Getting power transmission and distribution out further is even less cost effective than ever before. PNM and the coops are sometimes unable, fiscally, to build new lines out into the boonies. A proposed privately owned wind farm needed a dedicated tranmission line to connect to the grid. PNM had to go to the Commission to get an 80 million dollar charge assessed to build the new line.

So how does this manifest itself on a more interesting level?

1. coops are unable to replace transmission (there are transmission coops)/generation ad hoc, so they wheel in extra power at higher rates while they scramble to get an NRECA loan for the additional substations. Or new power lines , substations for a new development.
2. Because of wheeling, coops create special interruptible rates. For example, meaning power is cut to your home electric hot water heater during the peak demand times of 6:00am-8:00am and 4:00pm-7:00pm on weekdays. This reduces demand (kW) which reduces system load. When you wheel power you pay penalties for kW spikes, bigtime.
4. The San Luis Valley Electric coop has a potato farmers group who irrigate and chemigate using large electric pumps. The farmers worked out extensive schedules of off/on times for irrigation to get reduced demand. The coop in returned the favor for reduced irrigation rates. If the system could be sized larger cost effectively that would be a better choice instead of limiting access. AFAIK, there is no new "time" slot for anybody wanting to start a new farm. There are areas that could be developed for farming. With power.
[aside]
A few farmers grow restaurant potatoes by contract. You cannot buy them in a grocery store. To say they are enormous is an understatement. One of the potato guys told me a restaurant chain in NY wanted 2 pound russets, and with 20 acres he did not match demand. If he could expand he could have gone to to more than 60. Workers at the Alamosa potato processing plant apparently like them, a lot.

Hmm. Maybe this explains part of the obesity epidemic.
[/aside]
5.The Rio Grande Electric cooperative has the worst NRECA plant overhead as measured by customers/mile of transmission and distribution lines. It also has a very long aluminum transmission line that apparently has the highest line loss of any transmission line in North America. I am assuming Old Leaky is still in service. Plant problem personified.

These kinds of plant problems for marginal coops have resulted mergers of coops. They also result in other symptoms like very, very outdated system components. One coop, that I won't name, had hundreds of 2 dial electric meters up until 1998. The most kWh that can be recorded on a 2 dial is 99kWh, then you have rollover, which sets an ultimate limit of 199kWh. This did NOT work for most of the places those meters were installed, i.e., the coop was giving away billable consumption. They had known about them all along, but could not afford the update.

Outdated, capacity deficient "plant problem" is a pervasive problem in New Mexico. From what I see, PG&E has the same problem. Except they have much higher population density and many more nimbys.

I won't even go into vegetation management... In 2016, PNM was as much as 3 years behind schedule in some areas with lots of trees in the right of way.

 

[artis]

To be honest I see only one solution to this whole drama. The high voltage (in our continent20kV and above) lines have to go on poles as usual with trees removed below and regular maintenance while inner city or private house neighborhoods need to have all their low voltage lines underground, since the low volt lines are far more than the HV ones it is easier to take care and regular work on the HV ones while the low voltage ones are simply buried and done with.

In my country since we "joined voluntarily" the USSR in the first half of the 20th century, history went like this, before WW2 we had mostly old few story city blocks with wires underground already and then mostly rural private houses with wires above ground, then in the 1950's and 60's the USSR developed a very aggressive electrification policy (after all the socialist kingdom couldn't be complete without modern wonders)
apart from building power plants they built a lot of HV and LV infrastructure and it went like this, all HV lines like (750, 330, 110, 20 kV) were on poles and above ground mostly except from places were cable was needed, then most of LV below 20kV was buried underground in cities with the only exception in rural areas and countryside small scale factories.
This helps kind of because as long as you trim the trees under the large HV lines the low voltage lines usually supply only small local regions and the city low voltage lines feed off directly from the large HV ones via local substations so basically as long as the main large ones are intact the cities are fine and most rural countryside is fine also.
I understand why in the US it might be different because we had communism while you had capitalism , that means that back in the day (1950's etc) we built massive "socialist" reinforced concrete jungle blocks with all wires underground while you built private houses and whole neighborhoods of them and back at that time it was still preferred to use wires on poles in those areas, while in our case we couldn't have used wires on poles for these big buildings. In my country we only started building private houses after 1990's after the breakup of USSR and by that time the technology was such that all cables were buried underground. Back in the USSR only a few were allowed to build private houses, and both policy as well as cultural trend was to live in large city buildings rather than in private houses.
I have attached few images of how an ordinary city here looks like as well as residential private house neighborhoods.
I would love to hear some info about how distribution and infrastructure is built in say California and what type of housing dominates the area in terms of where most of Californians live? (I would imagine private housing)

 

[artis]

In both cities as well as residential areas we have buried cables with these square like little houses as our substations , the picture with the wooden poles is a 20kV rural line, smaller poles are for 0.4kV they look the same except being smaller with 4 wires on them (3 phases and neutral) they only go in very remote areas where there is a central substation and the poles extend the 3 phases from the small substation to individual houses.

One notable exception that we don't have at all here is those small " pole pig" transformers on poles, we have never had them.
So from what I can tell is when all traffos and switches are under a roof and all cables in cities and private house areas buried then there is almost no problem whatsoever.

 

[artis]

@jim mcnamara interesting to hear, well it is kind of hard to compare because these problems are also largely connected to population density and overall population, also the wealth of the population (which will determine how much power they can afford to use) so I would imagine places like China have 5 to 10 times the poeple density as US but probably 2 to 3 times lower consumption per person.
Here in Latvia we have roughly 2 million people, most infrastructure was built in the 60's but since 1990's and especially after 2000 there was a big increase in private house building as well as there are more appliances these days than before, all in all our grid is holding up nicely.
I must also note that we had a very specific situation where before 1990 while still part of the USSR we had many factories and military installations so the grid had extra capacity built for that, after 1990 most of those factories stopped production and only half or bit more of that capacity has been regained since then, also many military installations have ceased like the "Darjal" type radars which were used for monitoring of the airspace above the Atlantic etc, so that gave up some extra capacity for civilian needs.

We also have mostly centralized heating for winters, in most cities that is natural gas fired or back in the day it was coal or oil, now converted to wood chips mostly. In places that had nuclear reactors we used the heat from them to heat neighboring cities, one notable place which was featured in the "hype drama Chernobyl" was Ignalina npp which dumped it's return feed from turbines to local neighboring cities.

All in all we have 3 hydro plants. with combined capacity of about 1800 MW, which makes roughly 50% of our annual net electric consumption, Then we have 2 large gas fired plants producing both heat and electricity, (back in the day they were coal fired) we import cheap Russia gas and store it in a special naturally occurring underground layer that acts like a large reservoir. In summer the gas is pumped in and then used in winter.
The gas fired plants together with some small scale wind parks and small scale cogeneration make up another 30+% of electricity, the varying 20% we import from Russia. This imported power is mostly made in NPP. All in all we are among the "greener" power consumers in whole of Europe thanks to our small population and hydro and nuclear power.
Plans are underway to add some 300+ MW in wind capacity near my location.Our price of electricity is currently 0.06 Euro cents or about 0.06 usd per kWh. But since our market is now open for competition the price can vary and get lower based on the amount of kWh consumed and the type of customer (single phase vs 3 phase etc.)Also it is interesting to hear that electric companies are struggling in US because here our national energy company is (not kidding) the highest earning company in my whole state, surpassing oil and gas production etc.
Also due to EU policy we now pay an extra per every kWh consumed as a dividend to sustain alternatives , like wind, solar , biomass etc. In other words if an entity gets permission to build certain capacity of either wind or solar or gas/bio then they get about 50% sponsored for building costs from EU and for every kWh produced to the grid they get double the price as hydro or nuclear. (not that good for poor consumers, but these plants would otherwise die without subsidies, they simply can't compete with our cheap and reliable hydro and nuclear)

Also since we had different history and people here tend to submit to authority much more cutting trees under power lines is a normal thing, nobody even thinks about that or considers that bad, I would say nobody even knows about it. We never had the hippie movement nor any "greenpeace" type of NGO's.The only things we care are a bit about nuclear safety and that is simply because thousands of young men and women had to go to Chernobyl in 1986, they were ordered into trains and buses and took part of the major cleanup operation, so radiation danger is kind of personal here. Many lost a loved one and about half of those who went developed cancer and other health issues.
All in all we tend to let our engineers do their work and don't bother them.

 

[anorlunda]

As you all see, it becomes very complicated with multiple factors that differ by location or by country.

One factor not mentioned yet is local level financing. In the USA, if we build a new housing development, all the utilities infrastructure is built into the price of the house and financed by a mortgage loan. Nearly all of them choose underground service.

But upgrade projects that come years later, may not be eligible for mortgage financing. Those costs fall upon those who live along the street upgraded. High costs, may force people living on the margin to lose their homes because they can't afford the fees. Sympathy for such people kills many proposed upgrade projects.

City or commune financing makes some of these problems easier. But then you must give the city the authority to limit people's right to choose. European cities tend to need fewer km² than American cities with the same population. Higher density makes all the utilities and public transportation problems less expensive. Denying building permits for new houses outside the perimeter is one way to enforce that.

So nearly every financial/social/political issue becomes entangled with infrastructure design.

 

[artis]

@anorlunda you basically confirmed what I asserted that the US built a lot more hosing as a single family single house instead of apartment blocks, I would tend to think that even the private houses had more area per house, (how much land area for an average house? )

Here the government finances infrastructure, like roads , water etc also for new projects, the customer has to pay only for the distance from the street connection to his and into his private property. customer only has to pay the full infrastructure price if he/she decides to build a house far away from any existing infrastructure like in deeply rural area or middle of nowhere.
I guess the whole mentality here is different even though we are now a democratic republic we still have a rather clear distinction between private and public, infrastructure is largely considered public property, it is only financed from either budget subsidies or a percentage from the revenue of the company.
As an example the wires coming into my house are only mine to deal with from the moment they cross the fence over my property if something happens on the street I call the official electricians and they do the job while their company pays the bill

on the other hand if something goes wrong with their transformer for example and either overvoltage appears or instead of neutral two phases (there have been a few cases) and your appliances go boom , well 99% chance you will pay yourself and no one will be held accountable unless you are rather wealthy with good lawyers. So I assume because of this system of rights and democracy it is much harder to do engineering in US as the price goes up because of the potential legal pressure.
Here if a hydro dam would burst say or a powerline would cause injury it would be just an accident and that's it no worries and no consequences in case the cause was natural.