I started a thread sort of similar to this not that long ago but I think this is more general. My grandfather worked and retired from Georgia Power and was talking to me about how eventually he thought technology would replace the current systems. He mentioned a program he saw on Discovery Channel about some type of Hydrogen fuel cell that was being used to power a home. He didn’t think that the current system would be replaced in the next 50 years or anything though. So will eventually lineman and such that work for power companies become obsolete? Is there something I’m missing?
I’m afraid I don’t undererstand your question. Are you saying that Grandpa envisioned some type of home energy system which would allow people to get off of the power grid?
Yes I think he was saying something in that direction. Basically saying that his job, which was a lineman before he became a foreman would become obsolete in the not too distant future.
Does anyone have a plausible way to make hydrogen in an energy-efficient manner? Cracking water is the obvious method, but can we do better?
You could react steam with boron to create hydrogen and boron oxide.
bump* 
Maybe a bit different but a lot of the neighborhoods around here and the new ones being built don’t have power or phone lines running on poles. Everything is underground.
So I guess the guys are doing the same job but they dig rather than using a cherry picker.
Cities sometimes do that for aesthetic reasons but the costs are enomormous. I have heard it costs about $1,000,000 per square mile to bury the lines in a moderately dense suburban environment and much more in an urban one. They are much harder to repair quickly as well.
We also have to ask what the big push is to get rid of powerlines and how big of an advantage some other solution would need to have before power companies and the public could easilly see a need to move over. I can’t really see how some new technology would overcome that ignoring the fact that we don’t have any technology that could do it anyway. If such a thing were to be developed, it would take decaded to roll out at a minimum so I think the lineman position is safe for now.
We can send energy through the air once we perfect Scalar Energy. I hear it can also be used for various era-emulating weapons.
My grandmother is almost 82 years old and she clearly recalls hearing something about that as a small child. She insists that the huge stock market crash put any projects like that on indefinite hold so the ideas faded away rather quickly.
Actually Grampa was a pretty good visionary.
The whole idea of the power grid is that it is an economically efficient way of distributing energy. As processes and machines become more efficient, losses of energy will go down and less will need to be distributed.
Years ago generators weren’t as efficient as they are today. The same can be said of storage devices like batteries. Its not to hard to assume that the future will become even more efficient. More efficient building materials will lessen the heating and cooling energy needed for comfort, cheaper solar panels will be integrated into building material. Many structures will generate power in the off peak to be stored in ultra efficient batteries or circuits. The average home will require less power and possible highly efficient compact generators will be able to power it.
When I worked for a utility, one of our honchos proclaimed that we had to pay close attention to trends. He said, when Honda backyard generators become so efficient that they directly compete with our product then we want to see that in advance…so that we can transform ourselves into Honda generator salesmen.
We do that now - its called micro wave. See my post above why we ma never get to the point of broadcasting or shooting power through the air for distribution needs.
Hmm, would this have been in the 1920s by any chance?
Wouldn’t they be less likely to need repairs? I’m just thinking of a few years ago when Juan hit Halifax, and the downtown area was the only place with power, thanks to having underground lines.
That’s been my experience since movie in a neighborhood with underground lines. If we ever have a power outage it is usually due to a blown transformer and the power company can locate and fix it pretty fast. It’s not like they have to dig for line breaks. The last thunderstorm with high winds we had knocked power out in an adjacent neighborhood for days since trees and branches had knocked down so many lines.
Aesthetically buried lines are nice too.
Less likely but more expensive and time consuming when repairs are required. Often its difficult to tell where the problem occurs. Once the problem is located it has to be excavated. Then unlike overhead lines which are bare and insulated by air, the underground line must be properly insulated before being reburied.
Worst cases are in new subdivisions where a lot of fill and grading were done. As the earth settles it can cause stress fractures in underground insulation.
Is there any comparison on average costs over time between the two methods of wiring residential areas for power? There’s a part of me that thinks that for some areas (Northeast US) the prevalence of weather related failures for above ground power lines would make up for the costs associated with repairing the underground lines. Or to put it another way, how many failures in, say, one mile of linear power line over twenty years would it take to match the costs for one failure during that same time frame for a comparable linear mile of underground powerlines?
And that isn’t even looking at the situation that occurs if there’s a large ice storm, and the whole of the power company’s above ground network has to be rebuilt in a rush.
I feel like everyone is sort of going into a hijack of whether we should have underground or above power lines. My question though badly worded was will there come a day when everyone goes off the grid so to speak? (and how soon will that day come?), thereby eliminating jobs like those of the lineman.
Would guys who work on underground lines be considered linesmen or just the guys on the cherry pickers?
I doubt there will come a time when most people will be off the grid. The only way I see it happening is if things like solar electric generation and some battery like storage mechanism get really really cheap. Right now this is more expensive than being on the grid and is only used by people in remote location where being connected to the grid costs a large amount of money up front.
Every power generation technique I am familiar with gets cheaper per watt as you scale it from family power outputs to community and city wide outputs. In order for the grid to go away local generation needs to be at least as efficient as grid power plants and it needs to have a low initial investment.
The fuel cells just change what sort of grid you are on. Now you need to have some other source, like natural gas or hydrogen gas, delivered to your house some how.