I've seen this sort of thing in person in some African cities, but never quite this bad! The Telegraph has published a photo essay about the illegally-strung electricity cables that festoon Old Delhi in India, posing a hazard to life and limb all over the city. Here are a few examples, scaled down in size to fit this blog.
There are many more images at the link. Truly frightening to look at . . . but amazingly, they go wrong relatively seldom. Some of those Hindu gods and goddesses must be working overtime!
(The same sort of problems exist with the water infrastructure. Read this lengthy and very detailed article to see what decades of incompetence, corruption and mismanagement have wrought.)
Peter
Seen that in other places as well. France, for one, but that was in the mid 80s. Maybe better now?
ReplyDeleteComing soon to major US cities!
ReplyDeleteUsed to see that in the shanties around the cities in Venezuela.
ReplyDeleteIraq was the same way. It traces back to their lack of capitalism. They didn't have individual electric meters. But they had to pay exorbitant hookup fees. Once "hooked up" they could use as much as they liked. So they would let friends and relatives who lived nearby to run extension chords and scrap wires to get electricity. Like back in the day when one person could pay for cable and everyone else in the building run a splitter off of it. And so, the electric company also has no incentive to generate more power to meet peak demand, so you get rolling blackouts. With individual metering, no one would let a neighbor suck at his tap.
ReplyDeleteManila is wired that way too. It get's worse every time a typhoon hits and topples the poles.
ReplyDeleteGerry
and no way to even begin rationalizing the whole mess without years of government inspired instigated and mandated insanity. The level of incredible waste such systems represent to my circuitry and systems trained mind. They are wasting far more than they use,the potential for catastrophic failure is extreme and the consequences of such flouting of the Demon Murphy's rule will be devastating, or not if the gods smile but the political cronyism at the base of the problem everywhere seems to endure forever.
ReplyDeleteThe US cities used to be the same, if not worse. Google "old wires in New York" for some examples.
ReplyDeleteWorked with an ex-Enron person. They built some power plants in India, it did not go well. He said the 3 biggest users of electricity were supposedly 1) Farming, 2) Theft of Service, and 3) Government. And supposedly Indian Farmers and the Government get free electicity. It is hard to make money when your 3 biggest customer classes do not pay you.
ReplyDeleteShocking, simply shocking! (grin)
ReplyDelete