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Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 68 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909
Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Re: Telex
Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909
Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909
Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909
Re: Telex and TWX rates 1970s
Re: Telex and TWX rates 1970s
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Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 18:39:11 -0800 (PST)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909
Message-ID: <a98b9607-6017-41a1-8869-47c80d30a1b4@x38g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 6, 4:45 pm, "Tony Toews \[MVP\]" <tto...@telusplanet.net>
wrote:
> >Vehicles can't crash into power poles that aren't there, winds can't
> >affect power lines that are underground, and the visual pollution of
> >underground power distribution is limited to the access ports on the
> >pavement.
> I've also read reports that indicate trouble shooting and repairing
underground power
> lines near the end of their life is very expensive.
The buildings in our community our served by a private power network.
Yes, the underground cables are very expensive to maintain. Over time
they wear out and break. But it is very common for modern houses to
be served by underground wiring.
The flip side is that storms take an awful toll on overhead lines.
Every major storm knocks power out to people for extended periods of
time. With deregulation, power companies were forced to go lean and
not have as many crews on standby. Being without power is no fun.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 18:45:49 -0800 (PST)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Message-ID: <d8aca86c-0387-4fa7-b4ec-8b1b22d6f7f7@l39g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 7, 7:51 pm, Randall <rv...@insightbb.com> wrote:
> Our electric monopoly, long-ago privatized, said in September and
> repeated in January that it would cost ratepayers a million dollars a
> mile to bury the lines. Overhead lines were said to be one tenth of
> that. No mention was made of what it would cost to cut the damned
> trees that took out the lines both times.
Power companies used to be aggressive to keep power lines clear of
trees. Not so much anymore.
As to burying power lines, obviously individual lines to houses and
lines to a block of houses can be buried. But is there a limit to the
amount of voltage on a line that can economically be placed
underground? I thought at one point higher voltages don't work so
well underground.
I'll note that while in the city phone lines are buried, in the
suburbs they're on poles.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:02:52 GMT
From: Stephen <stephen_hope@xyzworld.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Message-ID: <dfj8r4p9s5td9t9e5842mbu8r998rsu7lm@4ax.com>
On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 10:12:25 -0400 (EDT), hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>On Mar 7, 7:51 pm, Randall <rv...@insightbb.com> wrote:
>> Our electric monopoly, long-ago privatized, said in September and
>> repeated in January that it would cost ratepayers a million dollars a
>> mile to bury the lines. Overhead lines were said to be one tenth of
>> that. No mention was made of what it would cost to cut the damned
>> trees that took out the lines both times.
>
>Power companies used to be aggressive to keep power lines clear of
>trees. Not so much anymore.
>
>As to burying power lines, obviously individual lines to houses and
>lines to a block of houses can be buried. But is there a limit to the
>amount of voltage on a line that can economically be placed
>underground? I thought at one point higher voltages don't work so
>well underground.
there was a new line strung thru a national park in N Wales (UK) to
get to a pump storage scheme a couple of decades back as part of the
UK Grid.
so - it will be 400 kV......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
>
>I'll note that while in the city phone lines are buried, in the
>suburbs they're on poles.
--
Regards
stephen_hope@xyzworld.com - replace xyz with ntl
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:07:09 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Message-ID: <pan.2009.03.08.23.07.05.642897@myrealbox.com>
On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 10:12:25 -0400, hancock4 wrote:
> On Mar 7, 7:51 pm, Randall <rv...@insightbb.com> wrote:
>> Our electric monopoly, long-ago privatized, said in September and
>> repeated in January that it would cost ratepayers a million dollars a
>> mile to bury the lines. Overhead lines were said to be one tenth of
>> that. No mention was made of what it would cost to cut the damned
>> trees that took out the lines both times.
>
> Power companies used to be aggressive to keep power lines clear of trees.
> Not so much anymore.
>
> As to burying power lines, obviously individual lines to houses and lines
> to a block of houses can be buried. But is there a limit to the amount of
> voltage on a line that can economically be placed underground? I thought
> at one point higher voltages don't work so well underground.
>
About 15 (20?) years ago there was a public campaign in the city where I
am to put a new major power interconnect underground rather than the
original overhead, and it eventually went that way - so it can be done for
HV.
My state recently started using a major undersea power feed (480 MW
continuous capacity using DC with appropriate conversion at either end)
from Tasmania where they have major hydro supplies - the cable feed power
one way for peak use and in off-peak times base load power flows the other
way to pump the water back up to provide more peak supply.
We also (apparently) have the "the worlds longest underground power link":
http://www.abb.com/cawp/gad02181/c1256d71001e0037c1256a4e00266978.aspx
Here's a Wikipedia link with some more general underground info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Underground_transmission
> I'll note that while in the city phone lines are buried, in the suburbs
> they're on poles.
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:03:12 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Message-ID: <pan.2009.03.08.07.03.10.644443@myrealbox.com>
On Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:51:20 -0500, Randall wrote:
.......
> Our electric monopoly, long-ago privatized, said in September and repeated
> in January that it would cost ratepayers a million dollars a mile to bury
> the lines. Overhead lines were said to be one tenth of that. No mention
> was made of what it would cost to cut the damned trees that took out the
> lines both times.
Overhead lines may be appropriate for third-world environments, but in the
21st Century you would think that we would have learned about their
limitations by now.
As I said in another post, installing fibre with every underground power
service would also update - and future-proof - that side of things at a
very small incremental cost.
Given the way the global climate is going feral, it may be a very good
idea to make as many "Essential Services" as resilient as possible - or
have every home with their own power generator.
I wonder which option is the most cost-effective?
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:11:14 GMT
From: Stephen <stephen_hope@xyzworld.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: To Bury or Not to Bury
Message-ID: <7lj8r4pho1iu45t6j7apqjp9ud9kr0eha1@4ax.com>
On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 10:17:24 -0400 (EDT), David Clayton
<dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:51:20 -0500, Randall wrote:
>.......
>> Our electric monopoly, long-ago privatized, said in September and repeated
>> in January that it would cost ratepayers a million dollars a mile to bury
>> the lines. Overhead lines were said to be one tenth of that. No mention
>> was made of what it would cost to cut the damned trees that took out the
>> lines both times.
>
> Overhead lines may be appropriate for third-world environments, but
> in the 21st Century you would think that we would have learned about
> their limitations by now.
>
> As I said in another post, installing fibre with every underground
> power service would also update - and future-proof - that side of
> things at a very small incremental cost.
When you buy a big power cable, it normally comes with several strands
of fibre in the jacket to use for telemetry.
However - letting untrained telecomms engineers play with HV tends to
increase your insurance costs :)
The National Grid in the UK invented a machine to crawl along [each]
wire on a line of pylons and string a fibre cable - it turned out to
be a very quick way to build a new telecomms backbone (at least
compared to digging in a duct if the power line is already there).
Note you can get composite earth cable with embedded fibres now, which
is going to last longer.
> Given the way the global climate is going feral, it may be a very
> good idea to make as many "Essential Services" as resilient as
> possible - or have every home with their own power generator.
That only pushes the "critical service" back to whatever fuel you
burn.
>I wonder which option is the most cost-effective?
I suspect it depends on local weather and terrain.
My favorites example is Austria - where some power cables go over the
mountains rather than following the valleys.
--
Regards
stephen_hope@xyzworld.com - replace xyz with ntl
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 18:54:09 -0800 (PST)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Telex
Message-ID: <66f09083-f254-485f-bece-3a0d773f9d1c@o36g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>OhMyGhod! A real railroad guy! I've been a railfan for years.
Railroads were always heavy users of telephone and telegraph systems.
In many towns the railroad station doubled as the local Western Union
office, and people would hang out to hear the latest news.
Railroads also had a special priviledge of being allowed to own their
own equipment (CPE) and interconnect to the Bell System. This was due
to the hazardous nature of maintaining the lines and long linear
distances. I believe pipelines and mines also had this option.
Many railroads had local battery (hand crank) phones on branch lines
well into the 1980s.
The Pennsylvania Railroad had a massive telephone system, including
its own long distance test boards.
I remember being in a train station and watching a bank of green
teletypes in the station master's office.
Railroads also pioneered information processing, with the New York
Central pioneering in 1902 (Hollerith equipment, which evolved into
IBM). Circa 1936 IBM had a sophisticated information processing
package for railroad accounting--freight car billings, interline
exchanges, facility rents, etc. Around 1940, one railroad (New Haven,
I think) began sending data over telegraph lines to be processed
centrally.
The private microwave of the Southern Pacific Railroad evolved into
SPRINT.
------------------------------
Date: 8 Mar 2009 11:05:29 -0400
From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909
Message-ID: <gp0mrp$fvk$1@panix2.panix.com>
ttoews@telusplanet.net says...
> One newspaper report I just read stated that underground power lines cost from 4 to
> 10 times as much as overhead lines.
This is true, if you look at the up-front costs. If you look at the long-term
maintenance costs, underground lines often turn out to be cheaper in many
areas. Thing is, some folks don't want to pay the money up front because
they're unable to look beyond this quarter's financial report.
> I've also read reports that indicate trouble shooting and repairing underground power
> lines near the end of their life is very expensive.
Yes, this is can be true, but THIS is the result of folks trying to get
much longer life out of buried cables than they were ever expected to
have. (And this is related to the subject above, in that replacing
underground infrastructure is very expensive. You don't have to do it
often, but when you do it's a killer. So power companies will do nearly
anything to keep old cable plant operating a little longer.)
> So I'd want to see some detailed cost estmates and real world experiences before
> agreeing that underground power lines are a "good thing".
The problem is that the costs vary widely from job to job, and sometimes it's
hard to predict the costs in advance. There are automatic trenching trucks
that can put lines down for very low cost if the soil is right and if the
ground is clear. There are also big cities with huge amounts of undocumented
infrastructure under the streets, where the excavation has to be done by
hand and the cable laid a foot at the time to prevent disturbing other
services.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 10:45:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909
Message-ID: <64d4a478-b63c-4747-b47d-f739ac659e72@p11g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 8, 11:12 am, klu...@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
> Yes, this is can be true, but THIS is the result of folks trying to get
> much longer life out of buried cables than they were ever expected to
> have.
What is the expected life of underground cables, particularly older
ones?
>(And this is related to the subject above, in that replacing
> underground infrastructure is very expensive. You don't have to do it
> often, but when you do it's a killer. So power companies will do nearly
> anything to keep old cable plant operating a little longer.)
So, true.
------------------------------
Date: 8 Mar 2009 15:48:32 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Technical Demo turns political 2/26/1909
Message-ID: <20090308154832.50283.qmail@simone.iecc.com>
> That is all industry bovine effluent. First of all automatic
> trenching equipment is available these days. Cut and cover and bury
> it all. Second of all you [can] run everything through massive
> conduits.
In the sandy mud underneath Rhode Island that is doubtless true, with
the biggest issue for underground wiring probably being salt water
infiltration. The ground is not as cooperative everywhere.
NYC is probably the worst case example, where the city is built on a
slab of rock, and digging the tunnels involves jackhammers and
blasting. They flood, too. But given the density of wires there,
overhead simply stopped being practical in the heart of the city,
although there's still plenty of overhead in the outer boroughs.
R's,
John
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 10:52:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Telex and TWX rates 1970s
Message-ID: <a7842d31-37fb-4e1d-b1a8-ee038e2b90f5@c36g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 7, 2:04 am, Jim Haynes <hay...@giganews.com> wrote:
> On 2009-03-06, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com <hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>
> > I get confused--does ASR refer to the paper tape capability, or the
> > ability to automatically answer incoming calls? I thought it meant
> > the paper tape, and the KSR was a unit without paper tape.
>
> In Teletype terminology, ASR is a machine with paper tape capability.
> I just didn't know the G.E. Terminet ever had those - so at least you
> have seen one.
Oh yes, our machine had paper tape. Since we were using their
timesharing service and the 'meter was running', all work was pre-
punched on paper tape off line in advance.
(In thinking about our application, a fairly simple spreadseet program
would do the job, but at that time they weren't invented yet.)
What was the term for Teletype 33s that had the built in modem and
control buttons and a dial on the right hand side? Those machines
would power up and answer incoming phone calls. Calling out simply
meant pressing a button and dialing, the machine would automatically
handshake and connect in.
Many other Teletypes had nothing on the right side; only a simple
knob--
OFFLINE OFF ONLINE. Those machines required a manual dial up, after
hearing the squeal, flip a lever or put the phone in the acoustic
coupler. What were these machines called, even if they had paper
tape?
Thanks.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:35:28 -0400
From: Howie <howie@pobox.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Telex and TWX rates 1970s
Message-ID: <20090308223533.47450.qmail@gal.iecc.com>
On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:12:47 -0600, Jim Haynes <haynes@giganews.com> wrote:
>On 2009-03-06, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> >
> > I get confused--does ASR refer to the paper tape capability, or the
> > ability to automatically answer incoming calls? I thought it meant
> > the paper tape, and the KSR was a unit without paper tape.
> >
>In Teletype terminology, ASR is a machine with paper tape capability.
>I just didn't know the G.E. Terminet ever had those - so at least you
>have seen one.
I was a technician at Wiltek back in the day, responsible for
repairing and refurbishing various I/O devices, and the GE TermiNet
was one of them. Haven't thought about them in quite a while. I
think there were two models that we used, one operating at 300 baud,
the other blazed away at 1200. It had a unique belt that held metal
"print fingers", each with a single character, that moved across the
platen area, and there was a bank of hammers, one solenoid-driven
hammer at each print position. To reduce latency, there were two
full sets of the character set on the belt. At the appropriate time,
a hammer would drive a print finger into a ribbon and transfer the
image onto the paper. It was capable of making several copies using
NCR paper or carbons. And noisy! I never saw a paper tape
reader/punch on them, but it's possible that we just didn't offer them.
-Howie
------------------------------
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