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Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

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Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#21

Post by NDizzle »

dbcurtis wrote: post #9

PG&E has is not trimming vegetation back sufficiently. It is an infrastructure expense that is easy to defer -- for a while. In the Sonoma County fires, trees contacting power lines and either catching on fire directly, or causing a short leading to a transformer explosion sparked a lot of fires. Of course, 100kph winds will cause the fuel to burn wicked fast. I saw a photo of a melted cast metal BBQ grill after the…

I came here to make this point, but you made it better than I would have. The Carr fire started in a similar way. A blow out on a trailer tire, and the sparks from the wheel hitting the asphalt started the whole thing. One of the large fires last year was started by a backfire. Seriously.

Way back in ancient history, the 90s, I saw 'brush hogs' all over the place in Arkansas keeping the side of the roads neatly trimmed. Dense forest existed, but it wasn't directly next to the road. Why we don't have that in California I don't know, but we don't. I have only seen brush hogs at work here a a handful of times in the 19 years I've been in California. Instead they do ridiculous things like bring in a herd of goats or sheep to graze on the medians. Just 'hog it. For starters.

I don't even want to get into the logging conversation - this isn't the time or the place. The enormous forests should have some kind of logging happening to thin them out. I'm not talking about Muir woods - I'm talking about a 50 mile radius around the great city of Redding, for example. All of the area surrounding Clearlake. All of Lake County. It's a start.

Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#22

Post by aardvark291 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #18
aardvark291 wrote: post #16

This is why the rest of the world has abandoned above-ground power lines in favor of secure underground power lines. Fewer fires, fewer black outs...

"The rest of the world" is a bit of an overreach, but yes, in a lot of countries they are underground. I would say most cable runs above ground worldwide, but I have nothing to base that on besides traveling a lot.

meant to write, "rest of the _civilized_ world". :-)

Germany is my main example ... my German friends were astonished when they visited the US to see our rickety electrical infrastructure (among other things).

Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#24

Post by mikec3010 »

vixen99 wrote: post #20
JshWright wrote: post #6

Anthropogenic climate change is a real and significant threat to the current state of our planet. That being said... It is likely a fairly minor player in the uptick in major wildfires over the past few decades. That is more due to mismanagement of forests, and a "zero tolerance" policy towards fires allowing a huge build up of fuel loads.

What uptick? A 2016 study by the Royal Society has shown that 'Global burned area have dropped by about 25 percent over the previous 18 years'. 'Even in California, which for years has wrestled with fire devastation, a study in the International Journal of Wildland Fire found that the number of wildfires burning more than 300 acres per year has been tailing off since a peak in 1980.' Stefan H. Doerr, Cristina Santín.…

That must means more fuel is building up and burning all at once. Fires are an integral part of the forest ecosystem.

Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#25

Post by throwaway427 »

NDizzle wrote: post #21
dbcurtis wrote: post #9

PG&E has is not trimming vegetation back sufficiently. It is an infrastructure expense that is easy to defer -- for a while. In the Sonoma County fires, trees contacting power lines and either catching on fire directly, or causing a short leading to a transformer explosion sparked a lot of fires. Of course, 100kph winds will cause the fuel to burn wicked fast. I saw a photo of a melted cast metal BBQ grill after the…

I came here to make this point, but you made it better than I would have. The Carr fire started in a similar way. A blow out on a trailer tire, and the sparks from the wheel hitting the asphalt started the whole thing. One of the large fires last year was started by a backfire. Seriously. Way back in ancient history, the 90s, I saw 'brush hogs' all over the place in Arkansas keeping the side of the roads neatly trimm…

I don't know why you are downvoted -- there isn't enough management of our resources happening. State and national park services are stretched thin due to ongoing fires they don't have the time or resources to do controlled burns or clear land (they want to, they are just limited). Our forests are too dense and turn into tindersticks with one or two years of drought.

Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#26

Post by eigenvector »

aardvark291 wrote: post #16

This is why the rest of the world has abandoned above-ground power lines in favor of secure underground power lines. Fewer fires, fewer black outs...

There is nowhere in the world that power lines are put underground unless there is a reason they can't go above ground: dense urban area, unable to secure a right-of-way, crossing another piece of linear infrastructure like a highway, etc.. It's way more expensive to go underground, it causes technical challenges at high voltage necessitating additional, expensive infrastructure like capacitor banks and point-on-wave energization control and it's harder and more costly to inspect, test and maintain. Insulated power cables are subject to third-party intrusion (technical jargon for people digging and hitting them), water and contaminant ingress, and it's hard to determine their condition without taking them out of service and using specialized equipment for testing. Even then, it's very hard to pinpoint the exact location of degradation and you have to dig to access it. Splicing them requires very highly trained workers and if the work isn't done right it fails in the middle of the night 5 years later.

There is more underground distribution (medium voltage) in Europe because cities are denser and older and there's less space for overhead lines. Transmission (high voltage) is still 99% above ground.

I'm a power systems engineer and I have no idea what 'rest of the world' you're talking about. The first choice for cost, reliability and ease of maintenance is always overhead.

Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#27

Post by [deleted] »

mikec3010 wrote: post #24
vixen99 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What uptick? A 2016 study by the Royal Society has shown that 'Global burned area have dropped by about 25 percent over the previous 18 years'. 'Even in California, which for years has wrestled with fire devastation, a study in the International Journal of Wildland Fire found that the number of wildfires burning more than 300 acres per year has been tailing off since a peak in 1980.' Stefan H. Doerr, Cristina Santín.…

That must means more fuel is building up and burning all at once. Fires are an integral part of the forest ecosystem.

[deleted]

Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#28

Post by tluyben2 »

aardvark291 wrote: post #22
tluyben2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The rest of the world" is a bit of an overreach, but yes, in a lot of countries they are underground. I would say most cable runs above ground worldwide, but I have nothing to base that on besides traveling a lot.

meant to write, "rest of the _civilized_ world". :-) Germany is my main example ... my German friends were astonished when they visited the US to see our rickety electrical infrastructure (among other things).

Yeah, same for the Netherlands, but in many other 'civilized' world (Asia / south EU) there is a lot above ground generally. Cities are usually better than outside, but it's definitely not uncommon in big cities either.

Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#29

Post by walrus01 »

At a certain point, it's going to cost less to cover every sun facing surface in ultra low cost photovoltaics, and have on site battery storage, than to maintain, replace and repair last mile power lines and middle-mile + long distance high voltage lines. Imagine eliminating all of the salary and benefit costs for thousands of linemen, bucket trucks, insurance, consumables, transformers, substations, not to mention the cost of poles and lines themselves.

If PV panels were $0.10/watt and Powerwall-like batteries were 1/5th of the cost they are now, per kWh stored, I can totally see a future where suburban density homes have no power grid connections at all.

Re: Facing $17B in Fire Damages, a CEO Blames Climate Change

#30

Post by BurningFrog »

jerkstate wrote: post #4

If she's blaming climate change, doesn't that make PG&E culpable? IIRC the majority of their power is generated from natural gas (at least since they shut down San Ohnofre and planned closure of Diablo Canyon), not to mention what the "G" stands for.

If you do the math, I'd guess PG&E's share of the blame is maybe a millionth of a percent.
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