Historian discusses the threat birds posed to the power grid in 1920s California
Thursday, June 4, 2015 - 21:30
in Earth & Climate
In 1913 in Southern California, two 241-mile-long electric lines began carrying power from hydroelectric dams in the Sierra Nevada to customers in Los Angeles--a massive feat of infrastructure. In 1923, power company Southern California Edison upgraded the line to carry 220,000 volts, among the highest voltage lines in the world at the time. Now a new paper examines a threat to that power grid: voluminous streams of bird excrement.