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To: Rarebird who wrote (1033)	9/14/2003 5:52:01 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1379

RB -- first, peace. I don't deny that there has been terrible neglect of our infrastructure, but I do disagree with that assertion concerning electric generation and transmission -- that is simply media spin. In some areas generation is actually overbuilt. My director put it this way: The electric grid does very well what is was designed to do -- deliver electrical energy to the native load and provide for interchange xactions in support of that mission. Now some areas have purposefully neglected generation to purchase over long distances and you have some bottlenecks -- in the northeast and also in Californis. I would go further than what my director said and say that it also does reasonably well -- many things it was not designed to do. It is HIGHLY reliable still. You must realize that two large scale failures in 20 or 30 years is not many -- furthermore, the protective equipment in place protected more that 99% of the system -- the generation nd transmission could be brought back online quickly. Also -- this is a very important point that should not be lost -- once an engineering system becomes reliable to say 1 hour in 80,000 hours of operation -- each incremental improvement in reliability gets exponentially more expensive. A large part of the argument of de-regulation went like this: If we had less encumbered transactions over the transmission systems -- IOUs would not have to carry near the level of reserve margin -- i.e. generation in excess above expected peak demand. To be honest, I think we've had near the right level for a long time -- less reliable and more businesses would have to have reliable back-up -- more reliability and few would, but with more system reliability -- I think the cost would be higher than having hospitals and other facilities provide their own. There's a balance -- we aren't out of kilter by much. Now when it comes to roads and bridges -- state governments has p*ssed away their budgets and not maintained their infrastructure. Water systems (yes, I do have some experience in this are) in many areas are in terrible disrepair for the transmission and distribution systems. This is an area where regular replacement simply has to be made and it is harder in some ways to assess as the infrastructure is buried, but it is not that hard with some very basic mathematics. Those civil engineers see $ signs and want a piece of the rebuild, but that's OK. Many cities are way behind. So let's send some more money to Iraq, shall we?? <g>