[FirstClassSkeptic]

Tucson Electric warned customers the fire was threatening its two 345-kilovolt lines and could reach the grasslands near its 1,200-megawatt Springerville coal-fired power plant.

And Texas-based El Paso Electric, which imports around 40 per cent of its power on those lines, warned any damage could reduce its ability to import power from the Palo Verde Nuclear Station, west of Phoenix.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... kness.html

[FirstClassSkeptic]

http://www.aps.com/general_info/aboutAPS_18.html

[rerevisionist]

Note for people investigating nuclear power scepticism:-

FirstClassSkeptic and others (the originator beiong, as far as I know, 'cactusneedles' in Canada) say it's likely that nuclear power never worked, and, though I'm not certain, I can see the argument. I'm trying to summarise here why FirstClass posted his URLs----

One line of reasoning is the problem with 'criticality': if a certain mass of U235 'goes critical', this presumably means there is a massive increase in neutrons, and heat, resulting in an almost instantaneous release of huge amounts of heat. In the same way, experimenters at Los Alamos supposedly eased together two hemispheres of U235; at some point, the room was filled with weird light etc but luckily - just in time -the two halves were separated. In each case, the problem is that, once fission starts, it's hrad to see how it could be stopped - imagine a stick of dynamite being set off, but then a decision being made to stop the complete explosion.

Hence the belief that nuclear power stations are fake, and are 'dumploads'. Read the piece on these, which explains (I hope) exactly what 'dumploads' are and why electricity suppliers need them.

Anyway - what FirstClassSkeptic is getting at with his quotations is that a large fire is (allegedly) damaging high-voltage supply lines from a coal-fired power station in Springerville, which run from Arizona to Texas, presumably through New Mexico. However, Phoenix, Arizona, and the Palo Verde 'nuclear power plant' is hundreds of miles from the fire. If its electricity is routed differently to Texas, there's no reason why its nuclear output shouldn't get to Texas.

'Cactusneedles' made a similar claim about a power outage in north-east USA, when nuclear power (he said) could not generate any electricity at all, when a coal-fired supply went down.

Obviously the situation is complicated by interconnected grids, and by the fact it's not easy to tell what current is going where.

Maybe we'll be able to compile maps showing the traditional story can't be true.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

The Palo Verde power station seems to be surrounded by natural gas plants. And a 1.2 giga watt coal burning plant is fairly large. So the Palo Verde could be a regulator for the coal and natural gas plants, or it could be a natural gas burning plant itself.

Or it could just be a sewage disposal plant.

I am just wondering what will happen if the lines burn down.

[rerevisionist]

A friend of mine (with a double first from Cambridge) has spent his life in the nuclear power industry. I'm hoping he might comment. But it seems unlikely. Sigh. (Still no reply from the 'Pakistani-American' who I thought might say something). Another sigh.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

http://www.10news.com/news/29124110/detail.html

There's a power outage in San Diego. I hear that it's also in Mexico. I don't know if it's related to the fires in Arizona and Texas or not. I keep looking for what would happen if a power line got destroyed by a forest fire. Then it would be revealed where the power is really flowing from. But I don't know where the power lines are or where the fires are.

On a side note: If there really were 'terrorists' out there trying to destroy the USA. the thousands of miles of unprotected power lines would be an easy target. And would cause great economic and social harm. But it doesn't happen. Instead we have terrorists flying planes into buildings; a complicated and risky action that did little except make Silverstein richer when he collected the insurance on two buildings he owned, which were losing money. Jewish Lightning on a grand scale.

[FirstClassSkeptic]

The Daily Mail tabloid is carrying the story about the California blackout:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ornia.html

APS, Arizona's largest electricity provider, said a utility worker doing maintenance near Yuma triggered the blackout.

The error, on a high-voltage power line linking Arizona and San Diego, causing a cascading series of electrical grid failures stretching into Southern California.

Authorities say the outage was accidentally triggered sometime Thursday afternoon when an APS electrical worker removed a piece of monitoring equipment at a power substation in southwest Arizona.

An APS statement said: 'The outage appears to be related to a procedure an APS employee was carrying out in the North Gila substation.

'Operating and protection protocols typically would have isolated the resulting outage to the Yuma area. The reason that did not occur in this case will be the focal point of the investigation into the event, which already is underway.'

...

A transmitter line between Arizona and California was severed, said Mike Niggli, chief operating officer of San Diego Gas & Electric Co., causing the outage. The extreme heat in some areas also may have caused some problems with the lines.

'Essentially we have two connections from the rest of the world: One of from the north and one is to the east. Both connections are severed,' Niggli said.

Power officials don't know what severed the line. Niggli said he suspects the system was 'overwhelmed by too many outages in too many places'.

Niggli said his 1.4 million customers may be without power until Friday.

The San Onofre nuclear power plant went offline at 3.30pm as they are programmed to do when there is a disturbance in the power grid, said Charles Coleman, a spokesman from Southern California Edison. He said there was no danger to the public or to workers there.

So, only one line was cut. But the other line went off automatically, they claim. So San Diego is only feed power from two lines? Actually, it appears, they only get power through one line, according to this 'experiment'.

They are saying the heat contributed to this. They must be implying the air conditioners running, using electricity.

Residents have been left sweltering in the late-summer heat.


In the moonlight: Even Mexico was affected by the outage, cutting power to buildings in Tijuana

'It feels like you're in an oven and you can't escape,' said Rosa Maria Gonzales, a spokeswoman with the Imperial Irrigation District in California's sizzling eastern desert.

It was about 115 degrees when the power went out for about 150,000 of its customers, she said.

I looked up San Diego on WeatherUnderground:
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/fin ... iego,%20ca

The temperature is running about 74, with humidity of 60. But it says this is cooler than yesterday.

So I looked up the history for yesterday:
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/fin ... iego,%20ca

And it says it hit 86 max. That doesn't sound so hot.

Average humidity, 64. Not too bad.