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‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

nytimes.com

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Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#51

Post by hackeraccount »

I'm genuinely confused over just how heavily regulated PG&E really is. Some people are saying it's basically an unregulated monopoly that does whatever it wants. That in the course of trying to make lots of money they screwed over the state.

Other people are saying it's a heavily regulated utility. The state of California is saying how much it can make and what it can do with the money it makes. They point to how much it's invested in solar power. They'd also claim the state didn't mandate work on power infrastructure maintenance - indeed it made it harder to cut back trees. It made it harder for residence to clear trees but still allowed them to build amidst a large amount of fuel. That the state basically used PG&E as a cut out for it's own ends - i.e. we're not raising taxes we're just allowing PG&E to raise rates and then mandating what PG&E has to build out.

One of those two stories has to be wrong, correct?

Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#52

Post by hackeraccount »

pascalxus wrote: post #16

The wildfire situation in CA was not helped by all those houses so darn close to each other.

I'm not an expert but from the pictures I've seen the problem didn't look to be building next to houses but middle directly next to trees Why didn't people cut back the trees more?

Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#53

Post by patfla »

chrisweekly wrote: post #48
patfla wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting power lines underground is very expensive - meaning, very nearly prohibitively so. Or actually prohibitively so when you consider that PG&E has to serve vast areas of wilderness in California. Paradise (Camp fire) was sufficiently west that I think its own power lines did not travel through Natl Forest however if I'm not mistaken it was hit by fire from the east (pushed by a wind out of the east), further up…

Need it be an all-or-nothing proposition? I imagine there being some particular places where it'd make good sense to bury some lines.

I assume the denser the population, the more it makes economic sense to put power lines underground.

The particular problem though is wildfires and they're more slowly caught, and can become larger and more destructive, the further away they are from population.

Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#55

Post by hw »

This was a haphazard, poorly planned outage. Similarly to planning for an outage on a website used by millions of people and businesses, communication, status updates and minimizing disruptions are key. I'm surprised no one at PGE thought about making sure their site could handle the extra traffic. Not staffing community resource centers is akin to telling people to check Twitter for information but not bringing in anyone to field DMs from customers.

California pays a much higher $ per kwh of electricity compared to many other states in the US, and I'm guessing 'you get what you pay for' doesn't apply when in this case.

Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#56

Post by patfla »

maxerickson wrote: post #47
patfla wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting power lines underground is very expensive - meaning, very nearly prohibitively so. Or actually prohibitively so when you consider that PG&E has to serve vast areas of wilderness in California. Paradise (Camp fire) was sufficiently west that I think its own power lines did not travel through Natl Forest however if I'm not mistaken it was hit by fire from the east (pushed by a wind out of the east), further up…

If there are areas that we can't afford to safely provide power to, we shouldn't provide power to those areas anymore. This is course a bummer given the past effort to provide power to those areas, but maybe it's okay to acknowledge mistakes.

Unlikely to happen (at least now) in a place that's, uh, culturally like the US.

We're in California and are in a community that was affected by PG&E's power shut off.

I think one problem in California is that since I first arrived in the 1980s, the population has grown from 22 to close to 40 mln. And given, again, US cultural proclivities, there's a significant number of people who'd love to move out into at least near-wilderness - but they still expect to be provided with their utilities. Some may be fine living off-grid - but not others. And there's no way, in the US, you can tell them that they can't have their cake and eat it too. Especially if they're rich and some portion of those people moving out into their dream home in or near wilderness are rich and figure that entitles them to having it all.

Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#57

Post by Dylan16807 »

dstroot wrote: post #11

It will be interesting watching how all this plays out. As others have noted the liability math has certainly changed. Enough to bankrupt one of the largest utility companies in the country. One the other hand this is also a political statement. They are clearly signaling to the politicians that they better shield them from further liability or expect more of this behavior. Shut the power down when the wind blows, af…

> They are clearly signaling to the politicians that they better shield them from further liability or expect more of this behavior.

It's not exactly hard to fight back against that.

Make fires cost them enormous sums of money, and make outages also cost them enormous sums of money. Give them extremely clear monetary incentives to improve as many lines as possible and make shutdowns as small as possible.

Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#58

Post by hackeraccount »

hackbinary wrote: post #38

Natural monopolies should not be private.

At some point - and I suspect PG&E has reached this point but I'm not sure - a regulated monopoly is the same thing as a public utility.

If you tell someone what they have to do, what they can charge and how much they can make then what's the distinction but that entity and part of the government?

Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#59

Post by Spooky23 »

simpsond wrote: post #28

Public utilities should not be for profit companies, especially public listed companies. They shouldn’t aim to maximize profits. If they were to instead maximize utility, they may re-invest in infrastructure more heavily and put power lines under ground. Maybe I am missing something and someone can offer a counter argument.

They should be what they used to be, pre-regulation. Boring companies that generate a near fixed return in assets, enforced by a heavy regulatory hand.

I don’t know about PG&E specifically, but in my region deregulation led to an attritted workforce and suspension of capital improvements. Shockingly, the infrastructure is a dumpster fire 20 years later.

Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room

#60

Post by Dylan16807 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #37
danans wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe this just a California being California issue again. California is a high fire risk state regardless of whether the utility is publicly owned or investor (aka privately) owned. The risk is on a level that doesn't occur in many other states. If the costs of fires are going to be socialized anyways (by immunizing utility from the liability, hence putting the burden on the ratepayers), the question of whether th…

> ...or PGE will have to [...] which is not permitted under current PUC rules Sounds a lot like California being California to me...

Your "[...]" skips over the option where they have smaller immediate profits in exchange for securing the future of the company. Is that a bad option for some reason?
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