Thread by @PatrickHerd

Disaster response megathread: From the perspective of a rural engineer.
I’m seeing a lot of opinions being shared by people who claim to be experts, but to those of us with experience they demonstrate only their ignorance. 1/n

I don’t claim to be an expert in disaster management (I leave that to NEMA), I however do claim that I have relevant experience to provide some informed opinions which may be helpful you at either a personal or a community level. 2/n

Some names and products are deliberately misspelled to reduce the potential for fanboi pile ons. 3/n

I’m going to start by sharing a bit of background about myself to hopefully give some confidence in what I have to say. 4/n

I also acknowledge a lot of what I’m about to say will come across as very privileged, not everyone has the skills and resources available to them that I do. The goal here is to hopefully convey some of the out of the box thinking that can be applied to some situations. 5/n

By formal training I am a heavy electrical engineer: I completed an Electrical Engineering diploma in 2006, and an Electrical Engineering degree in 2010. 6/n

I gained my electrical practicing licence in 2011: (I am licenced to perform the same prescribed electrical work as an electrician in Ao/NZ) Big motors, substations, switchboards, generators, and phat wires are my jam. 7/n

Whilst studying for my electrical engineering diploma, I worked for a company who specialised in building cellphone sites for the major carriers in Ao/NZ. This involved lots of wiring, commissioning and testing of microwave radio links, generators, and backup battery systems. 8/n

Being interested in radios and other electronics pretty much since I could walk, I completed my amateur radio licence at age ~14 this lead me into involvement with emergency communications by way of the AREC arec.nz 9/n

AREC lead to quite a bit of initially voluntary involvement with the local branch of Civil Defence where I was living at the time. I spent a number of years designing, building and testing emergency radio communication systems. 10/n

Along with providing input on emergency power backup and generation. Latterly I was involved with training local volunteers in various townships. 11/n

Nowadays I work as a power systems and automation engineer. At home due to living in the country, we’re a bit inclined to have backups to backups. Whether that be power, water, or telecommunications. 12/n

With that out of the way, the following is a hopefully understandable summary of thoughts and observations that I think are relevant. 13/n

I see what to me appears to be a lot of very short term response thinking applied to managing disasters: “Three days water” “buy a generator” “stockpile some sandbags” are some (I’m sure that my cognitive biases are a factor here) 14/n

Electrical power:
Because rural living, we have a number of freezers full of garden produce, feral goats I’ve shot, animal feed… You get the idea. For us, losing the contents of those freezers is a very small step away from abandoning the house. 15/n

“You should buy a generator!” I hear you say? Cool, sure we have one. But, generators need fuel, maintenance, and if you don’t test it monthly then you might not have a working generator when it’s really needed. 16/n

Case in point: Our generator took nearly two hours’ servicing to get it to go prior to Cyclone Gabrielle arriving. 17/n

Our (and quite possibly your) local petrol station also can’t pump diesel or petrol if there is a power outage. 18/n

Thinking about power from a slightly longer term point of view: We have a solar array on the roof of the shed from when our house was “off the grid” Not connected to mains power but it was still very reliant on fossil fuels to function. 19/n

The solar array is now configured such that in an outage we can power most electrical loads, including the freezers indefinitely in fine weather. As I said before, backups to backups. 20/n

If the sun is shining every few days then we don’t need to run a generator to keep the freezers cold. Unrelated to resiliency we also have the tools, materials, skills, and fuel to preserve the freezer contents before they go bad in a truly catastrophic situation. 21/n

Fundamentally PV solar panels are a great resiliency tool which is also good for the environment and the bottom line of your power bill. 22/n

Your local schools, medical centres, or community emergency hubs are great places to start when thinking about where adding solar panels would massively benefit the community. 23/n

In my professional opinion, I feel that this is a responsibility for central government to fulfil sooner rather than later. Us electrical workers are required to build solar installations with a 25 year design life with minimal maintenance other than cleaning. 24/n

Any solar array is going to have long term benefit with minimal ongoing input from the community. 25/n

“But solar batteries are really expensive, and your solar panels won’t work without a battery!” I hear you say? Yes, I agree that off the shelf solar battery systems that can provide backup functionality are stupidly expensive. 26/n

A "solar battery" is something we don’t have in our system either. However the insistence from the industry that batteries are essential for backup power is quite frankly a dishonest lie. 27/n

Fronius for example make solar inverters which can provide some backup power whenever the sun is shining without a battery.
fronius.com/en/solar-energ… 28/n

Definitely enough power to charge up your phone and laptop during the day, potentially enough to keep your freezer cold and (slowly) charge an electric car. These inverter systems can also have batteries added at a later date with minimal additional effort. 29/n

V2G, V2H, V2L, and even DIY solutions from EVs and hybrid vehicles are becoming more and more of a reality 30/n

Using our Nissan Leaf as a power source in an outage with a DIY 230V inverter hookup: 31/n

Cooking:
Our primary means of cooking in the kitchen is an induction hob: Something that we’re not going to be running in a power outage without a big generator (waste of fuel) or a very large (and expensive) solar system. 32/n

Our backups consist of a cheap camp stove, the gas bbq outside, and a couple of spare gas bottles. Not stupidly expensive to implement and a hot meal goes a lot way towards boosting morale in a dire situation. 33/n

We can cook on the wood burner in our living room if we really have to as well. 34/n

Community pizza oven or cauldron anyone? Does your local Marae rely on piped gas for cooking? 35/n

Telecommunications:
At home, communications is primarily provided by our POTS copper land line with VDSL for internet. Cellphones are our (potentially unreliable) backup. 36/n

I insist on having a copper landline for a number of reasons: For one exchange hardware is programmed at a very low level to prioritise emergency calls. The dial tone and AC ringing signal voltage are exceptionally useful faultfinding aids. 37/n

Traditional telephone exchanges also have extensive battery and generator backup systems. 38/n

At least in our case, where we live neither of the cell phone sites we can get coverage from have permanently installed backup generators. 39/n

In the event of a power outage and the 4wd tracks being impassable, then we have zero cell phone coverage after about 16 to 20 hours. These are sites which carry significant traffic. 40/n

Perhaps consider these points if your carrier wants to move you to a fixed 4g or (4+1)g internet and phone connection.
Make sure your local community emergency hub has a functioning VHF radio, perhaps volunteer and get some training in its use as well. 41/n

“Buy a starl1nk then!” I hear you saying? 42/n

For one that service is administered overseas meaning it is unlikely to ever join the Ao/NZ Telecommunications Service Obligations framework.
mbie.govt.nz/science-and-te… 43/n

The cost of entry for the hardware is somewhat high. 44/n

The CEO of the organisations is a somewhat arbitrary and frankly egotistical maniac. 45/n

I worry that people who can’t afford it will buy starl1nk terminals on loan shark finance only to have that purchase written off when eloon decides to implement surge pricing for disasters for example. 46/n

In my professional opinion I believe that central government should be requiring carriers to engineer their networks for greater disaster resiliency: Backup generators, solar arrays, and microwave backhauls for cell phone sites are all things that exist and work well. 47/n

I’m going to pause on this thread for now, much to think about. Much to learn. 48/48 or 48/n if I add more points in the future.

Many thanks to @sauramaia @SarahTaber_bww @farmgeek @0seiler and a number of other twitterless friends for their immensely valuable and constructive feedback while writing this thread.