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Comment by takanori | Hacker News Reader

How does routing work in these power lines? Is it similar to a network where you can route around problematic hubs? So if there is a line going through 4 miles of trees, you can just turn that part off... not the whole county?

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You can turn off a line if you have capacity elsewhere. The problem is that as the current increases in a line the temperature of the line increases. This causes thermal expansion and if not well managed, a line can sag too low and have to be turned off. This was one of the causes of the 2003 northeast blackout.

The other option is to have local generation that can supply local load but that is still quite hard to do with renewables.

That makes sense. This is a century old problem. Are there no viable technical solutions?

There are. More paths (lines) or bigger, beefier lines with operational margin built in. Costs more money though.

You could add more generators over an area to make grid more self sustaining but many people don't want power plants in their backyard and it is costly as you are paying for generating capacity that you don't use(often)

That happened also in the Western US power blackouts of 1996, specifically the August 10 incident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Western_North_America_bla...

Some areas only have one transmission line feeding them power, so there is no way to reroute. If that transmission line goes through an area with high fire risk, PG&E will cut the line and then everything fed by that line loses power.

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