Friday, December 30, 2011

NYC Turns To The Only Country In The World That Can Handle Two Ultra Complex Projects

Posted by Peter Quennell





New York City turns to (of course!) Italy for two large infrastructure projects.

One project is the laying of a 660 megawatt power cable diagonally across the Hudson from midtown Manhattan to Edgewater in New Jersey just below the George Washington Bridge.

The ultra high capacity cable was manufactured in Italy and is now being laid by a specialized Italian cable laying vessel, the Giulio Verne (home port Naples), which every night is lit up on the Hudson like a Christmas tree.

The ship digs and backfills a trench for the cable as it goes. The Italian crew is fired up with expresso coffees every hour on the hour as this New York Times article describes.

The other project is the excavation, now largely complete, of three tunnels through Manhattan’s hard granite using giant Italian-made tunnel boring machines which are half a mile long and cost $10 to $20 million for each one. They are assembled below ground and only ever used once.

The tunnels are the Second Avenue subway, the East Side Access to allow Long Island trains to arrive at a new station deep below Grand Central Station, and the extension of the 7 subway from Times Square to 34th Street on the west side and possibly also to New Jersey.

Italy excels at these large and complicated projects. Some of the autostradas which sweep through the mountains along tunnels and bridges are astonishing. Two very large Italian projects due to begin soon are the re-engineering of Venice to stop it sinking, and the suspension bridge (the world’s longest) between the Italian mainland and Sicily.

Perugia has its share of dazzling projects too. The minimetro already running and soon one of the world’s longest escalators which may result in Meredith’s house coming down to allow for parking expansion.


Posted by Peter Quennell on 12/30/11 at 10:25 PM in The wider contextsItalian context

Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YR12Z8f1Dh8

The song above for your enjoyment.

Wishing you ALL a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2012

Posted by chami on 12/31/11 at 05:34 PM | #

Two words spring immediately to mind: ‘antiquated’ and ‘mediaeval’.

Posted by thundering on 01/01/12 at 09:29 AM | #

An explanation for our Italy boosters and power buffs of what the Italian ship is doing here.

The Julio Verne (which is much in the NYC news) is laying the huge cables for a much needed connection between NYC and the PJM Interconnection grid (see the description and map below) where power is cheaper and highly reliable (we were in Manhattan during the blackout of 2003 and wouldnt want to experience that again). Most of the power in the PJM area is either nuclear or Canadian hydro. From Wikipedia:

“PJM Interconnection LLC is a Regional Transmission Organization which is part of the Eastern Interconnection grid operating an electric transmission system serving all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.

PJM, headquartered in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, is currently the world’s largest competitive wholesale electricity market. More than 650 companies are members of PJM, which serves 51 million customers and has 167 gigawatts of generating capacity. With 1,325 generation sources, 56,000 miles of transmission lines and 6,038 transmission substations, PJM delivered 682 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2009.”

The images below are of (1) the route of the cable up the Hudson River; (2) the PJM Interconnection area; and (3) some shots from our apartment windows; Manhattan’s west side is in the background. .

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Posted by Peter Quennell on 01/02/12 at 09:02 PM | #

1/5/12
If they bulldoze down Meredith’s cottage to make way for the parking area for Perugia’s supersized escalator, could that heavy equipment perhaps unearth something AK and RS buried on the grounds of the cottage? Maybe they will find the keys, a different knife, Meredith’s credit cards, bloodstained clothes or tennis shoes or other stuff. I wonder how thoroughly the yard around the cottage was searched, they didn’t have canine units, did they?

Sometimes old properties like 7 via della Pergola have sunken spots or old wells where items could easily be shoved into the ground without shovels and hard digging. Would they have dared to hide incriminating items close to the cottage?

Posted by Hopeful on 01/06/12 at 07:05 AM | #

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