Puerto Rico is Experiencing an Island-Wide Blackout (engadget.com) 245
An anonymous reader shares a report: Seven months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico, the power grid is still unstable. But progress was being made; according to CBS, less than 10 percent of the island was without power as of a month ago. But now, the Associated Press reports that the island is undergoing yet another full blackout. The power company is still investigating the cause and estimates it will take 24 to 36 hours for power to be restored. The saga of Puerto Rico's power grid has been an unhappy one. The US territory was already facing a financial crisis before the hurricane hit. The island only has one electric company, and prior to Maria, it was $9 billion in debt and utilizing outdated infrastructure and equipment.
How is that possible?? (Score:3)
Re: How is that possible?? (Score:2, Insightful)
If it's so unprofitable to operate there, other companies won't want to buy in just to lose money?
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PREPA is in the process of being sold off.
The modern standard would be to setup an independent system operator (ISO), a transmission operations company, sell each of the generation units separately and dispatch via power bids into a pool.
We'll see what the corrupt government of Puerto Rico does. I bet the whole thing ends up in the hands of contributors, particularly any profitable, low cost, generation stations.
The key problem the power company has is not getting paid for the power they generate, wh
Re: How is that possible?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Source- PREPA owes my company a large sum of money for power plant work done before the hurricanes.
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We'll see what the corrupt government of Puerto Rico does.
Before you lay the entire blame on the Puerto Rican government I suggest you broaden your sources a bit. Quoting from Wikipedia
The Government of Puerto Rico is a republican form of government with separation of powers, subject to the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the United States.
(emphasis mine.)
For more on that, please see https://congressionaldish.com/... [congressionaldish.com].
I doubt that PR is entirely blameless for their present situation, but they've had a lot of help from our congress.
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We'll see what the corrupt government of Puerto Rico does.
Before you lay the entire blame on the Puerto Rican government I suggest you broaden your sources a bit. Quoting from Wikipedia
The Government of Puerto Rico is a republican form of government with separation of powers, subject to the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the United States.
And? So is Chicago.
Both are leftist fiefdoms. They reap what they sow.
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Yet the bastards still won't leave and sell their property cheap, what do we have to start shooting them. Don't they know they are holding up billions in highly profitable developments done for maximum profit on cheap land provided by US legislative action and US government inaction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] just so you don't think they are picking on you https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] whoops wrong one, how about https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] (get past the US tiny bit).
Re: How is that possible?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Congress is responsible for a lot of the poverty in PR. Christ, a ship from China isn't even allowed to dock in PR because of US laws - everything has to go to mainland US and brought over on US ships. The costs are staggering - one Walmart with access to direct shipping could do more to help PR than dozens of hair-brained political schemes. And good luck attracting private capital when the markets are regulated beyond the breaking point.
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It's not their choice. It wasn't ever their choice.
I was in Hawaii back when it was a territory, and it wasn't their option whether they would be a territory or a state. Being a state would have advantages. Being independent would have advantages. Being a territory... the only advantage is passport-free movement between there and the US.
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The answer is cutting off deadbeats. Same as in your hometown.
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Keep it up. That's how your going to get a second term.
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Keep it up. That's how your going to get a second term.
My going to get a second term?
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Corporations go bankrupt all the time. Businesses spin up, they stand or fall on their own. That's how it's done.
Enjoy the next 7 years.
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Keep up the shrill screeching.
4 more years!
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Poor people assuming no one will ever try to reclaim their debts. Local Government has always assumed the US would bail them out, thus the corruption. What you're seeing now is quite calculated, PR to make the US Government look bad. Media will eat it up too.
Never let a tragedy go to waste where profit an be exploited. It's unlikely _any_ of these fuckers will spend a day in jail let alone pay.
Fun fact, it happens everywhere a service is deemed a necessity. Ontario for example is STILL paying off d
Re: How is that possible?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: How is that possible?? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Government. It is both the cause, because it is seen as the only solution.
Re:How is that possible?? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:How is that possible?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Socialized utilities work pretty well in other parts of the United States (e.g. TVA). So what's different about Puerto Rico? Oh, yeah. That's right. It's dirt poor in large part because of bad U.S. trade policies that actual states don't have to deal with (the Jones Act in particular). They wouldn't be in this mess if the Puerto Rico statehood referendum had passed back in 1998. This has jack to do with socialized utilities and everything to do with Congress treating Puerto Rico like America's bastard child.
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The government must keep it running regardless of its financial woes. It's not Sears losing to Walmart.
Re:How is that possible?? (Score:5, Interesting)
The government of PR has over spent on other things so are incapable of bailing out the electric company. The electric company hasn't been maintaining it's infrastructure for decades. Hurricane comes though and blows away what little infrastructure was there. This is the result.
It's a catch 22... Folks are leaving the island in droves because living conditions suck, reducing economic activity and reducing tax receipts the government has to service it's debt and sucking any cash available to improve living conditions, public infrastructure and law enforcement which leads to a lower standard of living... Rinse lather and repeat... But this downward spiral has been going on long before last year's storm, it just hastened the process.
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People leaving the island is a free market working.
it's just that the free market they are migrating to isn't on the island...
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Only if the customers have the money to pay for the product.
Stiff the creditors (Score:4, Insightful)
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The power company is owned by the government. While governments can declare bankruptcy it is not really a good idea if you are going to expect credit in the future.
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You can't really do that (Score:2)
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Then re-capitalize the whole thing without debt and move on with what you can actually pay for. If that's impossible or they are too corrupt/incompetent to get that done
You idea works well in practice for a company with working valuable assets. That's not the case here. You can't stiff all your creditors, declare bankruptcy, recapitalize, and then expect any 3rd party to work with you when it comes to repairing your broken crap. Not after you just failed to pay the previous people you owned money to.
It's good old anti-mates-rates. Normally I charge $1000 for this work, but hey, because it's you .... I'm gonna need it up front.
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Common talking point but completely false. Countries that have defaulted on debts have been able to get credit at much lower rates than that, and quickly. Why? Because their economy is now free to grow without their GDP being siphoned off into making debt payments to colonizers. [telesurtv.net]
Re: Stiff the creditors (Score:4, Insightful)
Please stop with idiotic comments about "the left" or "the right," and what they may or may not know. There are smart people across the spectrum, and it doesn't help discussion to denigrate broad, unspecific groups of people. Interest rates being tied to risk is pretty darn basic.
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The only smart people on the left are those angling to be in charge. The rest are just chumps.
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Counter: the 20th century. You lose.
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You attack the US for not being left enough. ..That's why it did so much better in the 20th century.
Your gang _owns_ Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and (slightly arguably) Hitler. At least 250 megadeaths in the 20th century.
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Do you realize that there is no racial classification "brown"? Of course the vast majority of Latinos from Puerto Rico going to say "white" as virtually none of them are "asian" leaving "black" and "amerindian" as the only other options. Most who are not "white" will self-identify as "black" due to significant African ancestry, a small number may self-identify as "amerindian".
This is one of weirder bits on nonsense I have seen from the right lately - declaring that ethnic discrimination against Latinos can
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No, no, you spin off the assets into a new company and the debts into another new company. Then, the second one files for bankruptcy. It's the American way.
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Except they aren't. The Jones Act means that PR can't usefully import from other countries without going through U.S. importers, which usually means significantly higher costs than they would otherwise pay if they could do direct importing from random countries using whatever shipper happened to be going the right direction.
IMO, the only real a
How did the people of Puerto Rico allow this? (Score:3)
I've lived in the USA both in the Bay area and in a wealthy part of black Decatur Georgia. I like Americans. I really don't understand their support for their government.
Re:How did the people of Puerto Rico allow this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Any time you create a situation like that, there's a risk the people managing the utility will become complacent about doing their jobs or in some cases simply not doing their jobs, because there's no way for them to lose their jobs. There's nothing wrong with government-owned utilities and programs so long as you're careful to monitor for and stomp out such complacency. But if you fail to do so, you wind up with a sub-par infrastructure which costs far more to operate than it should.
That's the thing most people don't seem to get about the public/private debate. It isn't that public ownership is always better than private ownership, or private is always better than public. It's that sometimes public is better than private, and sometimes private is better than public. Depending on the problems you're experiencing, it can be beneficial to make a publicly-owned company private. Or make a privately-owned company public. The key is to take the right action depending on the exact circumstances which are causing problems. Both have their advantages, and both have their failure modes.
Unfortunately, we've developed philosophies where people think public ownership is always superior, or private is always superior. Meaning the people will keep voting for the very people who caused the situation they're suffering with, and the problem never gets fixed. That's the Achilles heel of democracy - it relies on the public being informed to function properly. A deceived public can steer a democracy straight into the ground (or in this case, into bankruptcy).
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Do you remember there was a hurricane, and since then, well, the president tossed a roll of paper towels around before going back to his golf game.
Ah, you forgot how he graded himself on his effort to aid Puerto Rico 10 out of 10 [washingtonpost.com].
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They didn't (Score:2, Informative)
PR's problem is that they're like a state but they're not. They have the disadvantages (paying taxes, military service requirements, etc) but none of the benefits. They've been trying to become a full state for ages but they lean Democrat and the Republicans have been in charge since Re
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like most poor States they don't have the resources to build a power grid without help. The same is true for KY, AL, SC and just about the entire South. That's one of the reasons they're a net importer of Federal dollars.
PR's problem is that they're like a state but they're not. They have the disadvantages (paying taxes, military service requirements, etc) but none of the benefits. They've been trying to become a full state for ages but they lean Democrat and the Republicans have been in charge since Reagan (I'm not counting Clinton, he was so right wing he might as well have been a Republican).
Every few years they vote on a non-binding resolution to determine their political status [wikipedia.org]. Options are status quo (territory), independence, or statehood. In June 2017, 23% of those eligible voted due to a boycott by the PPD party, but 97% of those who voted indicated a desire for statehood. In the previous referendum (2012), 46% indicated they wanted to keep the status quo; if that wasn't an option 61% favored statehood.
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I believe the GP meant selective service (registering for the draft). And yes, it is required by law for all males under 35.
Now that's just not true at all. Puerto Rico actually pays all federal taxes except for personal income tax and SSI (disability). So they pay:
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That's because you're making enough money to meet the maximum for Social Security. Bear in mind that Puerto Rico is extremely poor. Most people make at or near minimum wage. At minimum wage (about $15k per year), after you subtract the $6,350 standard deduction, you're at about $8,65
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While Congress as a whole has support in the low teens, the support that each congressperson has from their constituentsis actually quite high. How much of that is because of delusion is a valid question, but there's no consent each individual congressperson has the consent of the governed.
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Again, it's not the most Americans approve of the arrangement or the system. It's just most Americans approve of the part that they consider within their control*, and don't see a way of changing it. I'm not sure if there is a way to change it that won't result in a shooting war.
(*Not including presidential results, where at least half the country is constantly pissed. More than that now.)
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Yeah, every state. Not every 3.5 million people. Every 3.5 million people get one Senator on the average, because there are 100 of them for 350 million.
But the 3.2 million people of Puerto Rico don't get one senator; whereas the 3.2 million people of Vermont, Wyoming, Alaska and the two Dakotas get ten of them!
And that would be the heart of Puerto Rico's real problem.
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Have you ever met any Puerto Ricans? As I speak the apartment next door is filled with a bunch of college age Puerto Ricans who should be in school or the military, but are instead smoking weed and playing video games. Not a particularly resourceful or high achieving culture. It's not a surprise their island is a shithole.
And as I speak, there are plenty of college/military age white males sitting around smoking weed and cooking meth in the rural Appalachian town my grandparents live in. Not sure what your point is besides being racist.
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Do you? Which states do you think have EC's to select who their governors are during election years?
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Your knowledge of civics, in a word, sucks. The electoral college exists because we are The United STATES of America. States, and their will, matter. Because the states matter, we give them some power, in this case it is the power to choose the executive. The people choose the Congress, the States choose the president. The method by which the states choose the executive is by the Electoral College. Each state gets a number of votes equivalent to its representation in Congress.
The manner used by each
Also Flint, MI still doesn't have clean water (Score:2)
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political reasons for both
More financial than political. In both cases the utility is short of money because they must provide service even if the customer doesn't pay the bill.
So many dumb posts about corruption and debts (Score:2)
Well,
instead of answering to the dumb posts I just make a new post, so you can flame me :D
9 billion debts are not peanuts, but for a power company that is nothing!
Puerto Rico has a power production capacity of about 5GW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Building a new power plant costs between 1billion and 2billioin per GW, depending on technology used and other construction hassles: https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
So much to: "corruption", "sozialism", "state owned", "burning tax money" ...
The numbers abo
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9 billion in general company bonds. I guarantee you they also have debts secured by 110% of their system's current value, which could be much lower than the replacement cost, being based on projected future revenue.
Why would they have paid an unsecured interest rate if they still had equity? That would make no sense.
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I don't know what kind of debts they have. ...
I only see the $9B and the outrage
As they are government owned or more precisely "state owned" their debts are completely irrelevant.
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Do you know of any company, private of public, that sells unsecured bonds before secured ones?
They don't own a money printing press, their debts are absolutely relevant. Especially as they are currently in the process of being sold to the private market. You can bet they would be worth much more without the debt.
A test bed opportunity? (Score:3)
I'm wondering if Puerto Rico might be a good place for some companies to test and showcase new power technologies. If the country's electrical grid is utter crap, then perhaps the fastest way out of the hole is to abandon large parts of it in favour of localized wind and solar capacity, with battery storage and some fossil-fuel generation capability as backup. Maybe even a couple of those dumpster-sized nuclear generators, if they're buried deep enough...
Yes, it will cost money. That could be partially offset by the good publicity and the possible tax write-offs. It's also an opportunity to try out experimental ideas and processes in a place where the people will be a lot more accepting of failures and interruptions, because right now they have nothing to lose. That's worth money in its own right. And much of the work could be done with cheap local labour. The Puerto Rican economy could benefit in three ways - reliable power, local jobs, and technical training that would raise the level of local expertise. I could see Elon Musk taking the lead on this, and perhaps other companies would jump on board as well.
Depending on the electrical grid to power households and small businesses is kind of quaint anyway. Local power generation provides redundancy, avoids single points of failure, reduces transmission losses, and is friendlier to renewable energy. The Grid should power industry, and serve only as a backup for less power-intensive users. Puerto Rico might be a good place to start moving in that direction.
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Yes, it will cost money. That could be partially offset by the good publicity and the possible tax write-offs.
The good old "paid for by hopes and dreams approach" I do recall Elon Musk providing solar and battery storage only to get grilled in this very forum for doing so. You're better off trying to crowdfund it all.
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Yes, it will cost money. That could be partially offset by the good publicity and the possible tax write-offs.
The good old "paid for by hopes and dreams approach" I do recall Elon Musk providing solar and battery storage only to get grilled in this very forum for doing so. You're better off trying to crowdfund it all.
He tweeted a few hours ago that there are over 600 locations in Puerto Rico being powered by Tesla battery packs and hopes to have several hundred more online as soon as possible
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/s... [twitter.com]
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Cool bananas. One company well known for marketing blitzes like this is on board. But unless you can find more companies like Tesla this isn't going to solve the problem.
We're no longer talking about storm damage mitigation, we're talking about complete overhaul of infrastructure. And I do seem to recall that Tesla originally saw these as temporary loans, especially considering that they were setup in all sorts of inconvenient places like car parks, football fields, etc.
Political Corruption (Score:2)
The people of Puerto Rico have been led by corrupt and useless leaders.
http://politicalvanguard.com/i... [politicalvanguard.com]
Re:Didn't they send away help???? (Score:5, Informative)
Is this the same place that sent away the crews that had started rebuilding the infrastructure after the hurricane because they suspected cronyism with the Trump Administration?
Because a company with an employee count that can totaled on the hand of a drunk carpenter is the best possible choice to rebuild the power infrastructure of a whole island. Not to mention the contract prevented the PR government from auditing the contract and that the company was charging over $300 per hour for each worker.... Their contract was bigger than the one for the Army Corp of Engineers! That whole situation smelled worse than, well, a San Juan fish market after a few weeks of no refrigeration.
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Of course, because that was the ONLY power company in the entire world that could come and work on the island.
/inserteyerollemoji
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And payment upfront. When they were kicked out, they were in the process of stopping work as they hadn't been paid anyhow.
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Of course, sending them away worked out SO well for Puerto Rico.
Letting them try to fix anything probably would have been worse.
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PR has turned into a shitshow so people in the contiguous states can point fingers and pat themselves on the back.
It's hard to figure out what's going on down there. For example, the significant under reporting of hurricane-relate deaths (that requires government complicity) makes no sense. I assume it's to keep the local officials from looking bad and losing their jobs, but the locals are still going to know the government is lying when grandma died but the government reports zero deaths and, if anything, you would want to over report deaths as that would make the situation look worse and therefore more worthy of ai
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How about "Hawaii isn't in the normal path of Hurricanes" or "Hawaii doesn't have it's trade with the rest of the world restricted"?
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So your recommendation is to let a bunch of con-men take your last resources on promises they can't deliver on?
It wasn't just cronyism, though that was pretty blatant, but it was also incompetence. They *couldn't* have delivered on their promises, but they could have charged a fortune to try.
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PREPA is the only entity authorized to conduct such business in Puerto Rico, making it a government monopoly.
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How well do you suppose your solar+wind combo would have held up in a hurricane? How about 2 hurricanes? Do you really think you are going to get those el-cheapo deals when every house on the island has to simultaneously replace their system due to hurricane damage? I am sure you would have no problem finding enough solar/wind installers to install 2 million systems. Should be no problem. What a great idea!
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What? Seriously WTF?
Modern _economic_ wind turbines are huge, they feather the blades and stop when the wind gets too high.
Putting a model airplane propeller and a tiny generator on your roof is useless, unless you're pursuing a hippy chick.
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Hurricanes are not 'high winds'. Have you ever actually seen hurricane damage? Do you really think your 'pole with some u-bolts' is still going to be there when the structure it is attached to is gone?
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Solar is a complete loss.
The 27 MW San Fermin solar plant [electrek.co] in Puerto Rico came through Maria just fine. Ditto the recently built 1100 MW Santa Isabel Wind Farm [newsismybusiness.com]. Gusts up to 118 MPH were recorded on some parts of the island, but San Fermin was built to withstand 155 MPH, and Santa Isabel Wind Farm was similarly properly engineered for the site.
Solar and wind are how Puerto Rico should be largely powered in the future, with some peaking plants to cover when the output of low.
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Renewables are nice, but not a real solution for the individual household consumer and don't remove the need for a power grid.
If you have solar, you need batteries to get you though the night and cloudy days, plus additional generation capacity to charge all these batteries. Windmills are a bit better, but individuals would have a hard time building and maintaining enough capacity to keep the lights on when it's calm so you'd likely need to share capacity with your neighbors, meaning you need transmission
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Just retrofit the local water tower with a lower tank and a turbine to act as the neighborhood's battery for wind and sol
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The purpose of the local water tower is to generate enough pressure to distribute the water properly. If you stick a turbine in there you are taking away the main benefit of having the tower in the first place.
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See the aforementioned "or build a new one if necessary".
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Just how much power do you think is stored in 20,000 gallons, 100 feet up?
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You mean the average backyard swimming pool? Only small rooftop water towers hold that much - in which case they can act as a battery for the building it's sitting on. Standalone water towers typically have many times that capacity, with the largest holding millions of gallons.
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In other words, useless.
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Just retrofit the local water tower with a lower tank and a turbine to act as the neighborhood's battery for wind and solar power,
Methinks you WAY overestimate the amount of power that can be generated from a windmill mounted on a water tower. And the assumption that any given water tower is in a place that gets usable winds is one you might want to do a little research on.
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No worries [youtube.com]
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The reason is that if a component in your household breaks, the system could switch automatically to the microgrid that your neighborhood shares and draw power off of that until you can get your distributed generation fixed. In addition, if you produce more than your battery bank can store, you can sell the power into the microgrid.
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I don't think the cost figures are correct, but with proper design a solar system should survive a hurricane without problems. OTOH, this wouldn't be a normal roof-top system. I don't know enough about wind power to comment on that, but I believe I've seen designs that were *claimed* to be durable enough to survive hurricanes. I have no idea how efficient they were under low wind conditions.
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If you moved to Spain, you would also still pay US federal taxes.
Citizens of Puerto Rico don't, I'm looking for a mail drop there and to change my legal residence. Being in CA, my vote is guaranteed wasted anyhow.
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While they don't pay US taxes, they do pay PR taxes. And, by federal law, PR taxes cannot be lower than US taxes (to avoid exactly what you're planning.)
Could have had it worse.... (Score:2)
....you could have had a privately owned power plant, and paid 3x the rates for worse service. Assuming they even put a line out to your neighborhood if you were in a sparsely populated area.
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He's prohibited by law from doing anything there until the government monopoly utility is broken up and sold.
Which is just starting, don't hold your breath. There are many politician daughters, nephews etc that will need new no show jobs. That takes time.
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Most of the UK's power infrastructure is above ground.
They get just the same, if not worse, weather as Germany.
We don't have these problems.
It's not nothing to do with under/overground, it's to do with designing and maintaining the system properly.