Hurricane Odile and Inventions
I have had the fortune or misfortune to be dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Odile http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurr.... I have a client that has an invention that would have been able to restore power in just two days. His invention is described in patent number 7589640 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7589640.... It senses the force load on a power pole and if it exceeds a certain level, the invention lowers the cross bars and power lines gently to the ground and turns off the sector switch (power). Once the electrical lines and cross bars are on the ground, the wind loads are almost eliminated, which means the power pole is standing at the end of the storm. Utility workers then remove the debris and use a winch type mechanism to raise the power lines and cross bars.
This invention cannot only save billions of dollars in utility repair damage per year, get power up in a tenth the time of present techniques, eliminate billions in lost business per year, it also reduces the risk of injury to utility workers who are no longer required to climb utility poles and bystanders. But that is not all, the inventor has engineered his poles so that they are less expensive to install originally than present utility poles.
GUESS WHO is opposing the inventor? Unions. Their members make a lot of money working storms and they don’t want any system that allows less skilled workers to setup utility poles. Utility companies are ambivalent, because they are regulated and only allowed a certain return on capital. Thus, all the money they save using the inventor’s system will not improve their bottom line one iota. This is just another example of how a regulation stifles inventions and makes our lives worse, more expensive and less safe.
This invention cannot only save billions of dollars in utility repair damage per year, get power up in a tenth the time of present techniques, eliminate billions in lost business per year, it also reduces the risk of injury to utility workers who are no longer required to climb utility poles and bystanders. But that is not all, the inventor has engineered his poles so that they are less expensive to install originally than present utility poles.
GUESS WHO is opposing the inventor? Unions. Their members make a lot of money working storms and they don’t want any system that allows less skilled workers to setup utility poles. Utility companies are ambivalent, because they are regulated and only allowed a certain return on capital. Thus, all the money they save using the inventor’s system will not improve their bottom line one iota. This is just another example of how a regulation stifles inventions and makes our lives worse, more expensive and less safe.
SOURCE URL: http://www.griddefender.com/
Stay safe and I hope you have power again soon.
Or alternately call up politician's brother's company and amend the contract such that they perform the lubricant application every year. It would provide much steadier work than line repair.
Nevertheless, this invention could still be used where appropriate and provide the benefits as described.
While I am on a roll here: It used to be the custom for suburban homes to have septic tanks. Septic tanks are a pain, but at least you are not transporting sewage tens of miles to be processed. My current home has a high-tech sewage treatment system...which the State of CA rates as 'output can go into the Pacific Ocean'. So, the output is essentially 'clean' (though not potable). One could potentially re-use this output for agricultural purposes. Since we have this technology, why do we still build around the concept of sewer lines?
If I build a home from scratch, it will have a large 'channel' on the inner walls, at a convenient height. In this channel will run my electrical, gas, water, and com lines. The channel will be covered with a piece of wood trim that is part of a wainscoting or chair rail. When I need to do a repair, I will just yank off a section of the wainscoting and I will be able to do the repairs. I will be able to do the repairs, standing up, in a temperature controlled environment, with plenty of light and no spiders.
It seems obvious to me that one should not build utilities on any scale such that you have to tear up a street or a concrete pad or a wall in order to repair them (and spend most of your time tearing and rebuilding too).
Jan
I consider it a black mark on the reputation of my fellow engineers that they don't seem to design things with repairs in mind. Sometimes the cost to build a system with easy access for repairs is just too high compared with the anticipated frequency of malfunction.
But other times is just seems like sloppy work.
Take a situation that many of us encounter - a very simple maintenance item on your car, like an oil change, air filter change or cabin air filter change. I had a 2000 Buick Regal that I loved, but I never once replaced the air filter without bloody fingers and prodigious amounts of cursing. Sometimes the neighbors gathered 'round just to witness the event. My current Mazda 6 has a large plastic shield that covers the entire bottom of the engine. The oil filter is inaccessible without removing it. It's easy to remove if the car's on a lift but nearly impossible otherwise.
Enough off-topic ranting...
Whine! Whine!
Jan
*Yes, I still have that car - though Betsy is not running right now.
The reason for my bringing this up in a prior post, slfisher, is that we have gotten to a point where most suburban homes with most soil conditions could actually support local treatment of sewage and recycling of water for agricultural purposes (eg watering your lawn or orchard). While you (as an individual who is presumably not in the construction industry) have no particular reason to know about such high-tech sewage treatment systems, an architect or a builder or a city planner should know about these - but they continue to build Better Homes and Gardens style houses.
The topic on this thread is 'we do not have to wait for the future we can do better with what we already have'. My contributions have been some ways that I see as being better...but which lie well within our current model of technology.
Jan
Jan
The biggest change I'd like to make is to make it easier for people to generate their own power; the power companies often limit it or put arduous charges on it using specious reasoning.
I know that jbrenner has an enviable power pallet design (again, beyond my budget). Do you have any suggestions?
Jan
"If I build a home from scratch, it will have a large 'channel' on the inner walls..." Yes, I have had the very same idea in mind for years. " do the repairs, standing up, in a temperature controlled environment, with plenty of light and no spiders." No spiders! I loathe spiders even though I know that without them the planet would be 10' deep in insects. In my current home I keep the unfinished-but-otherwise-modern basement free of them with minimal effort, but my previous house was built in 1900 with a fieldstone foundation and dirt floor. I was physically unable to go down there. I broke out in a cold sweat if I even stood in the open doorway for more than 20 seconds. If I blew a fuse I had an understanding neighbor who would replace it for me!
Regarding buried utilities, electric, twisted-pair copper, co-ax cable and fiber optic cable are *usually* accessible without digging up the street. If troubles pop up that proved to be located between the street and a home it usually just requires digging a shallow trench if there's a reason to have to expose the conduit.
When I repave my driveway in a few years I'll have the contractor install the necessary conduit(s) to run my utilities underground from the pole.
Oh yeah: in cities, the berm would be planted and would provide longitudinal parks crisscrossing the city.
It has provided literally an two or three hours of backup power when the mains failed... over the past nine years we've been here.
Of course, back in Cupertino, Silly-con Valley, a utility crew once drilled through one of the few main power feeds for the entire city of Cupertino, taking out a good portion of the city's power supply for several days... Nothing is fool-proof because there are VERY resourceful fools all around...
:)
capitalistic system **still** outperforms the competition,
hands-down. -- j