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Should stronger, composite utility poles be required in all new installations, eventually replacing the old infrastructure of wooden or metal poles?

Do some research, composite is not the answer, compostie can break down just as easily as conventional poles if not more.

UV, weather, wind, accidents......

p911

For around 30 years now our local power providers have been putting everything from the substation to the customers service transformer underground.

Its solves a load of pole and weather related maintenance problems!

Despite our sparse population per square mile we have some of the lowest outage numbers in the country when compared to lengths of line Vs people served!

If they are going to be in the side of the road, as many have to be because that is where the ROW is, they are required to have breakaway bases. They are still strong in flexure but will shear off if hit by a car or truck.

Let's go back to the question: Questioner, your question infers that you think the wood poles are inferior. Provide some back up for your assertion. Your link is to a biased source.

Regarding "composites"--What composites are you referring to ? Carbon fiber?--Carbon fibre spars on sailboats have been linked to increased lightning strikes, in instances where they were not properly grounded, due the fact that you are installing a carbon rod into the atmosphere--do the math and physics. Wood is resilient in this matter, compared..

it is my opinion that the entire grid needs to be eliminated because of the costs,financially and of lives associated with keeping it going,let alone the costs and fossile fuels that will be used creating the new "smart grid"system. Every home or at least every community should have their own independant power system installed.With the advancement in biofuel,woodgas,solar and wind power, this is becomming more and more possible day by day.I am looking at maybe $25,000 to convert my house,doing the work myself, to an off grid home. my heat is provided by a very efficient wood stove i built for about $40.00, It takes one good armload of wood to heat my 1800 sq ft house in ky for 24 hours right now. When it gets colder,it will take 2 armloads a day.I am plumbig in an attatchment to preheat my hot water heaters supply water as we speak.There is no better feeling than stepping outside to smoke a cig,and hearing the neighbors heat pumps kicking off and on.Most areas are already supplied with natural gas lines closeby. A small natural gas generator can charge a bank of batteries with 3-4 hours of runtime,to power the house all day.If someone would start making nickel/iron storage batteries in this country again, it would be on. Those batteries have been known to survive over 100 years of use,being used daily.Jay lennos, 1908 edison electric car has its original battery pack,and runs fine. Unfortunatly,at this time the only place to buy them in the US is from an outfit called www.beutilityfree.com ,and you will pay close to $1000 for a car sized battery.too bad a product that lasts 100 years doesnt fit anyones idea of a business plan,at least not here. Those batteries are inexpensive to make,and do not contain harmful chemicals,like the normal lead acid batteries in common use.Personally, my generator is going to run off of scrap wood from my tree care business,via a method known as woodgas. It is a simple,inexpensive conversion that will make gasoline engines run from the smoke off of wood or charcoal.Everything in the home i can convert to dc power will be converted to run off of the battery bank directly,so as to minimise inverter losses.There are tons and tons of woodchips left after cleanup from ice and windstorms throughout the country, and as soon as i get things set up, i will probably start composting them and using that heat and methane to heat the house,insted of burning wood.Farms all over the world are starting to digest the animal crap to produce methane gas to run heating and power generators,insted of being dependant on the utility grid. Thousands and thousands of homes in china and throughout asia are now starting to save the human and animal wastes to produce methane gas for lighting,heat and cooking.Search biogas for that one.The old gas lights on the streets of london were run off of sewer gas before electricity was available.God gave us fuel,greed gave us gas,and big utility companies.

So how do you expect the rest of the modern world to do the same as you?

Where are you going to get your wood and other free fuel materials when demand starts making them worth selling and not giving away. And what is your proposal for how those factories and businesses that you get your free fuel from power their heating an other systems? If they go to alternative fuel as well I suspect they wont be letting you have their byproducts for free being they would then be more valuable to keep for themselves in order to offset their own operating costs!

At one time every community had its own independent power system. The reason they developed the national power grid was because it supplied a better, cheaper, and more reliable power than they the average comunities and individuals could make themselves. Less cost and more convenience was the driving force behind the modern grid system we have.

Most people don't want to spend their time scrounging for fuel and doing the necessary work that having an independent power system takes. Most don't have the money, knowledge, skills or resources to even start building one even if they wanted too!

Do some honest and serious research into what typical daily life was like before the industrial revolution, say Pre 1900 and back. Then ponder on how many people you know that would be willing to give up their lifestyles they have now for a life simmilar to that in the pre 1900 era!

If properly used,there will always be enough biomass,solar,wind,hydro etc available to power our lives.And,so what if it costs somthing,is your sourse of power free to you.Wood and wood chips will,for my lifetime,heat my family free. And as soon as i get this woodgas power generator finished,it will supply my power as well.And as a by product of the woodgas system,with the excess heat, i will be able to no longer use my wood heater.I am clipping in a post from another group here, but here are a few answers to your objections. To: alternatepower@yahoogroups.com

well,lets see, in 1900 did they have thousands of rebuildable ford type 300 six cylinder engines laying around for under a thousand bucks,which are great for almost any type of conversion,and,for less than 1000 bucks, could you buy a kick a generator head on ebay, and have it in your hands in a week or so to stick on that motor,and with a woodgas,biogas,biofuel fuel power supply then power 8-10 homes? Times have changed,dude,this aint the 1900's. back then, the grid worked cheap and made sense,now,spending billions of dollars that you and i and our future generations will HAVE to pay back,from higher and higher utility costs doesnt make sense. putting up steel transmission towers,instead of solar or wind stations locally enriches the common citizen,multimillion dollar powermongers do not. And in the early 1900's i dont think you could buy too many solar panels,especially not from china.unfortunatly then,and not now, you could buy edison nickel iron batteries for your system that would last a hundred years.(well,actually,you can buy them. www.beutilityfree.com sells them,imported from china.A good car sized one costs around $1000,but has only about $100 worth of nontoxic materials inside,the chinese army spends the rest arming themselves up)I do not think there were too many treadmill and electric scooter motors,or vehicle axles and wheelhubs,which make good small scale wind,steam or hydro power generators,lying around dumps and recycling centers for under $25 through out the country,in the early 1900's. wake up,america. Feeding the rich with our hard earned cash sucks,and there are alternatives.Why do you think the power companies are suddenly getting so picky about grid intertie systems and people are starting to move to grid independant systems. They know every watt of power you make at home snatches some money right out of their hot air mouths,and as people switch over,THEY WILL BE THE ONES GETTING LAID OFF.The green collar jobs and economy are not there to make us rich,they are to make big business richer,and us as their low paid servants.My wood, and my friends, will, for our entire lifetime,have a free supply of wood at our disposal.Anyone else who wants a lifetime supply can have it for the asking.Start calling tree services,stop an asplundh truck,they will bring you truckloads free anywhere in the country.The demand already exists,and i am one of the ones with a supply,and am SELLING wood to pay my little,under$100 a month electric bill now.And slowly getting my off grid system together(excuse me while i go open a few windows,This woodburner is really putting out the heat).Big business cannot come out ahead,trying to sell wood yet,because the corporate labor costs outweigh the cash generated,because for the last 200 years,there has been a surplus.Even the few tree companies that do sell firewood mainly do it off the books,and let employees come in on slow days and split wood for a percentage of the sales,because the money aint there to do it corporate.There is too much available. Waste cooking oil/the diesel alternative,if you didnt know,can still be obtained free,with some legwork,but it also has a price. It is refered to as yellow grease, and is exchanged on the same commodities market as gold,silver and oil.People have been procecuted for stealing griffon oils waste oil from restraunts. There is a small little alternate fuel community now that sells filtered waste oil to each other,usually for $1.50 a gallon or less scattered throughout the country. If you know where to get it, you can drive cross country without ever paying a fat cat or warmonger for your fuel.And as the oil comunity is so small now, most of the tax laws dont tax waste oil as a motor fuel and ignore those of us who travel freely upon the highways.The waste oil crowd is building our own heating and power systems,as well.This will change, but i would rather my tax on it be paid from and profits go to Bob's Greasy Chicken Shop Instead of G.w. bush and his corporate fat cats,war mongers,etc.Back to asplundh and free wood,They have the largest fleet of vehicles in the world,and usually have to pay to get rid of the wood and wood chips that they dispose of daily FROM TRIMMING THE UTILITY COMPANIES TRANSMISSION LINE TREES WORLDWIDE.They are on 3-5 year trim cycles and come back to clear the same lines,over and over again.Guess what,it keeps growing back.UNLIMITED<LIFETIME SUPPLY Got any idea how much that ads to your power bill. Just the crew costs YOU $40 an hour or more on each truck,Yes YOU, because YOU have grid power.And we will never be free of this cycle if YOUR attitude/type,gets to run things BY the way asplundh doesnt officially do ANY private work for business or homeowners.They work exclusivly for utility and train line multibillion dollar corporations but,keep in mind,to get that free wood, you might get a splinter in your girly soft executive stock holding(howd the crash feel,btw)hand,touching that dirty wood. And, you must have missed the part about new industry having to build their own power systems. I dont think their use of solar,wind,geothermal, hydroelectric or biogas,heat recovery thermoelectric generators,stirling heat engines,etc, will infringe on anyones wood supply or waste cooking oil supply.None of this technology was around in the early 1900's off the shelf,and none of the corporations had the money to buy it if it were.BTW, there was a 50 hp solar/steam powered electric generator on exhibit at ,i believe, the 1908 worlds fair."less cost and more convienience"Doesnt apply now,as when the grid was first built.Now it costs more and more, and is a very convienient place to fly kites or cheap r/c airplanes with carbon fiber lines draped off of them if you are a terrorist."most people dont want to spend their time scrounging for fuel...etc"You didnt read my post, i said community power stations. The people who didnt want to would,as in this society,hand their money over to the ones that will do what it takes to bring the neighborhood power. Except this time,you would pay your neighbor for the electricity he helped create.Not some multibillion dollar corporation,destroying forests and ecosystems to bring you your power.And it would cost much less,without all those mountains and forests between you and your power.Do you know they fly helicopters with giant sawblades spinning beneath them, to cut trees away from powerlines where there are no access roads,or the lines are too high? How many homes could you power,solar or otherwise, with the money and fuel that goes into building,fueling and maintaining one of those monsters,let alone the pilots pay,all added to your bill, day by day,just so the powermongers can light up your life. No, i dont want to research the early 1900's, as it has nothing to do with the types of fuel and power generation options we have available today.If you want to know what it was like in the early 1900's, just wait untill some terrorist goes and pops off a few nukes 10 miles over our country.This was classified,but now it is not,every piece of electronic equipment will be fried throughout the country,look it up, its called EMP electromagnetic pulse effect,When your precious grid goes down,and your electronic toys,banks and financial systems electronics go down with the grid, me and my family and others like me will be warm and cozy and enjoy the newly visible night sky,without all those citys causing light polution.And,also, in the early 1900's i doubt more than a few hundred people across the country would have noticed if china just died of a plague,or if the mideast blew itself up. Now, the wills and actions of both of those countries completely run our lives.On a day to day basis, the price of oil goes up and down,depending how much money the warmongers,etc want today. Your fuel price,controled by a power that did not exist in the early 1900's, is this what you want to leave your kids. Just think, how many people would go out of business if china didnt ship anything else out.The country would be in turmoil, if walmart couldnt re-up from china next week. Any more objections to making our own power,independant of the fat cats,war mongers,etc.