Thursday, December 28, 2023

Climbing an Electrical Pylon



If you've ever watched a lineman up on a telephone pole (do we still call them that?) or an electrical tower of some sort, you first gasp at their bravery. But you may  have also wondered how they learned to do that. They say you learn from your mistakes, but in this kind of work, one mistake can be fatal. Tom Scott visited the National Grid Training Centre in Yorkshire, UK, to see how that training goes, and of course the first thing he does is climb an electrical pylon. Don't look down! Being an internet star must pay well, because he keeps doing scary things even though he does have a normal sense of self-preservation that is lacking in certain stunt YouTubers. And that's why we can feel his trepidation like a normal person. But this is just tower climbing. If there were real electricity involved, Tom would have had to undergo a lot more training.        

Another thing about this video is our opportunity to look at how other countries get their power. Coal is being phased out in the UK, and natural gas has to be liquified and shipped in. The US has plenty of oil and natural gas, and plenty of room for wind and solar, while European countries have to import so much fuel of one kind or another. That's why electricity prices and heating bills are so much higher in western Europe.

2 comments:

  1. The US has plenty of oil and natural gas

    First of all: The US of A import more crude oil (> 5 mio. barrel per day) than it exports (~ 3.6 mio. barrel per day); seems it has not that plenty and depends on imports, too.

    Second: Sometimes I wish, fossile energy wasn't that easy available. That fact downs the motivation to work on the very much needed shifting away from CO2-intensive energy.

    Hope, you all had a merry christmas;
    with the best wishes for the upcoming new year
    from Bavaria

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  2. The USA was a net exporter of crude oil from 2005 through mid 2021. The USA is in the top 5 countries ranked for oil deposits.

    We could greatly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels if we did not have a phobia regarding nuclear energy...

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