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Comment by throwbadubadu | Hacker News Reader

> Of course, this is Oregon, so "storm" here is what some people would probably consider "somewhat windy", and "winter" here means that the temperature is approaching -10°C.

Hehe, I hope though his time estimate is not correct? Still baffled that certain power strategies and gas dependencies of certain other countries were not too long ago heavily discussed and criticized as the end, with people soon to be dying and freezing (just very theoretically, as this never manifested), largely by not involved US citizens, while these outages seem to be the norm and quite kind of accepted in the US nowadays? Wrong impression, likely very different?

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This is a regional thing, not a "US" thing. There are lots of Dug fir trees (60-120 ft tall, often with shallow root systems. Also many power lines are above ground elevated lines, but shorter then the trees. Most power generation comes from hydroelectric, so plenty of power generation, but in the US Pacific NW, it doesn't freeze too often. Most of the time it is just wet and rainy all winter long. So two things: 1. people are willing to attribute power loss to storms 2. Trees are not generally used to such cold weather, so they will break and snap in this weather.

I'm not excusing such power outages. But this does come from a specific material reality.

Exactly. It is important to remember that the rural somewhat-backwater state that both Linus and I live in, Oregon, is slightly larger than United Kingdom. Population of about 4.3 million (compared to 67 million in the same area in the UK).

The reality of the power distribution network is a continuous threat from trees, of which there are a lot. Oregon has about 10 billion trees (compared to 3 billion in the UK).

As kardianos mentioned - The trees are tall and the power lines are in the fall zone - which is a recipe for problems in ice/winds storms that don't happen often. Just keeping the trees trimmed near the power lines themselves is a huge undertaking of continuous work.

The grid could be much more resilient - But not for $0.12/kwh.

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