To Catch A Thief

I'd say that my electric utility has about 1.5 break-ins per month at our bulk substations, people cutting a hole in the chain link to steal copper.

There's a fair amount of visible copper in any substation, as each metal structure is grounded via a 4/0 or larger copper cable. These are cut off, yielding about two feet of grade-A copper each, which at, say, one pound each would yield $4, enough for three 24-oz cans of 211 malt liquor. Yeah, baby. While we may store rolls of aluminum wire and conductor at a substation, we'd never store any copper outside as it would grow legs in less than a fortnight.

The obvious problem with these thefts is that the equipment is no longer grounded, which could lead to a ground potential rise during a fault that'll kill anyone in contact with the ungrounded gear. Not a likely event, no, but one that we always protect for. The same thieves can do the same thing on nearly every utility pole -- we always have a copper ground wire running the length of the pole, so that lightning arresters have a path to ground when conducting. Someone with an axe or a hatchet can easily chop off a 7-foot section of copper at the base and as high as they can swing. Utilities generally cover the copper ground wire with a wooden U-channel simply to keep the copper out of view, but many people know it's there.

This sabotage at $4/copper highlights one of the things we'd experience in mass volumes if this nation underwent an economic depression, or if commodities rose up even more. Infrastructure of all sorts would be subjected to thieves, cars couldn't be left outside on the curb lest their fuel lines be cut and gasoline drained into five gallon buckets, on and on.

I'm taken aback at my local news this evening, highlighting two thugs with a modified van stealing 400 gallons of diesel, as diesel is so expensive.

My question is, are fuel thefts rampant in Europe where petrol is twice as expensive as ours? I recall not once seeing any hint of that when I was there twice over the past six years, not that I really would see it to be sure, but no, I wasn't made aware of it when I was renting a car, for example -- the lady behind the counter didn't warn me to keep the car garaged or some shit like that. No, I'd wager that at $7 a gallon in Europe theft still isn't a big deal...yet we can't even handle four dollars. This is America for you. Wonder what it'll be like when it goes to $6.

We have a huge maintenance bill on our infrastructure. Think about how much oil is used everyday to maintain hydroelectric generation stations, to move fuel rods for nuclear plants, to repave a thousand odd miles of old road every week, to inspect power lines, to maintain gas pipelines, to perform levee repairs. We've spent an entire century building this stuff and I'd bet that we blow a million barrels of oil each day out of our consumption of twenty million barrels just to maintain it, let alone use it.

This is why we need a higher level of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) in this nation than virtually every other. If/when energy becomes scarce and more expensive, we will have to blow expensive energy just to keep the sound walls erected between the suburban subdivisions and their freeways. If we move to electric cars, do you think we'll still even need all those tens of thousands of miles of 16-ft cinder block/concrete/steel sound walls we've built? How much oil will we have to burn to power the backhoes and dump trucks to remove all those broken, unmaintained walls in 45 years time?

Our energy intensive lifestyles are the real energy thieves.