from the your-package-is-experiencing-unexpected-delays dept.
Delivery drone crashes into power lines, causes outage:
A delivery drone operated by Alphabet subsidiary Wing crashed into power lines in the Australian town of Browns Plains yesterday, knocking out power for more than 2,000 customers.
The drone, which was carrying an unknown payload, made what Wing described to Australian media as a "precautionary controlled landing" that led it to "[come] to rest on an overhead power line."
The crew who responded to the incident, Energex spokesman Danny Donald told The Age, they didn't even have to get the drone down off the lines. "It landed on top of 11,000 volts and whilst it didn't take out power, there was voltage tracking across the drone and the drone caught fire and fell to the ground," Donald said. "So we didn't actually have to get the drone off, as such."
Energex, the electricity company responsible for power in the region, said that there was no permanent damage to the network, and so Wing wouldn't be responsible for any repairs.
While 2,000 locals lost power for around 45 minutes, an additional 300 were left in the dark for three hours so Energex workers could be sure there was no damage to the lines, Donald said.
[...] While Wing's drones don't appear to have ever caused another power outage, hobby drones have been responsible for similar occurrences – like in 2017 when a quadcopter took out power in Google's home town of Mountain View, California, for close to three hours after crashing into a power line and burning to a crisp.
In that instance a lot more damage occurred, with city officials saying the crash necessitated tens of thousands of dollars in repairs.
It's those sorts of incidents that Energex seems more concerned about, as Donald said he'd never seen a commercial drone accident like the Browns Plains one. What he has seen, he said, were a lot of power line-related accidents over the years involving toys.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday October 03 2022, @09:20AM (3 children)
Google. It's GOOGLE. Not Alphabet. Alphabet is to Google what Meta is to Facebook: a smokescreen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2022, @10:41AM
I know GOOGLE, it started when I was much younger, they had a good search engine, but...what are those Facebook/Meta you talk about and why the expectation they would be better known that Google? Why, a bit further down this slope and you'll expect for us to know that Tencent is to WeChat as the Alphabet is to Google.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday October 03 2022, @04:33PM (1 child)
No, it's definitely an Alphabet subsidiary. Now, you can say Alphabet is Google. Like Meta is Facebook. Except then you're just trying to meet some personal agenda. Meta and Alphabet were created for a reason. In the event that Google or Facebook do eventually become obsolete/not popular. Meta and Alphabet can live on as their own brand, doing things that Google and Facebook aren't known for.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Monday October 03 2022, @09:21PM
Meta and Alphabet can live on and do things that Google nor Facebook would have dared to do under their own brand names.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Monday October 03 2022, @10:52AM (1 child)
"Honest officer, it was a precaushunary controlled landing againsht the shide of a tree... completely shober....".
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2022, @10:58AM
Weird the see an excuse to be allegedly used by a driverless entity. Just sayin'.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Monday October 03 2022, @01:16PM (4 children)
Brownout in Browns plains. One would think this place was made for it.
So do they send the bill to Google for the outage and repairs or is this just considered an accident and the cost is pushed onto the consumers? They do mention that Wing wouldn't be held responsible for any repairs but I would assume those technicians they had to send out etc wasn't free? How about the thousands of people that lost power?
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 03 2022, @03:17PM (3 children)
In the world of power lines, shituff happens. Power companies distribute the bill for line maintenance to all customers, and they generally don't make a fuss about special events like hurricanes, forest fires, tornadoes, drunk hits a power pole, etc. In a lot of cases it would cost more to pursue the billing of the event than the repair itself costs. Plus: accounting for the cost of repairs is somewhat dicey because during normal times there is a bit of over-capacity sitting around and waiting for something to do. So, in a case like this one, it's likely that the differential cost of deploying the crew to do the inspection basically comes down to mileage cost on the vehicles - the crew were going to be paid whether they had something to do or not. Then you can get into the fact that this "early inspection" of the transmission tower and lines means that the next future regular inspection can be pushed back... all in all, we're better off not feeding the lawyers and just taking this one as a team.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by weirsbaski on Monday October 03 2022, @09:11PM (2 children)
Your examples remind me of the old Sesame Street song-
"One of these things is not like the others ..."
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 03 2022, @09:23PM
Replace drunk with self driving vehicle that has a virus.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday October 04 2022, @12:59AM
You can try to sue a drunk driver for damages, you could even win a judgement, but how often would you actually collect payment?
🌻🌻 [google.com]