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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

#61

Post by Spooky23 »

rb808 wrote: post #39
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.

You'll say that until the company is full of public service workers who dont care and electricity costs 3x as much. Pretty much every developed country has privatized electricity generation to keep prices down.

Look at any of the municipal utilities or coops in the US. They are all cheaper and better.

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

#62

Post by maxerickson »

patfla wrote: post #56
maxerickson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

They are welcome to pay for it, especially if they are rich and want it bad.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #60
BurningFrog wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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?

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by generalpass »

hackeraccount wrote: post #51

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 muc…

If PG&E were not heavily regulated, why wouldn't they have even just one private competitor? I mean, how hard of a sell is it: knock on door and say, "We're not PG&E." I'm pretty sure 60% of prospects would sign up right away. I've lived 30+ years in California and everybody hates PG&E. I've never talked to someone who had a different opinion.

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

#65

Post by roenxi »

electic wrote: post #50
rb808 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll say that until the company is full of public service workers who dont care and electricity costs 3x as much. Pretty much every developed country has privatized electricity generation to keep prices down.

This isn't accurate. In the Bay Area some cities have decided to run their own public utilities instead of relying on PG&E. For example, Santa Clara runs their own public utility[2]. The average resident pays about 10.4 cents per KWh. That's about 30 percent less than rates PG&E charges. Also, their energy is greener and their infrastructure is better maintained. The problem with for profit utilities is that they are…

> The problem with for profit utilities is that they are incentivized to keep things as lean as possible. They neglect maintenance of their infrastructure and use that money for bonuses and dividends.

They aren't incentivised to be excessively lean. The incentive structure for someone who has spent a fortune on expensive capital investment is to maintain it.

There is no point incentive to build a vast system of poles and wires then letting it degrade over time.

Anyway, it won't be capitalist incentives at work; it will be something in the details of the regulations. In Australia, due to poor market regulations, we have the opposite problem where our utilities spend far too much on grid maintenance.

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

#66

Post by Gibbon1 »

kolbe wrote: post #43
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.

I think one glaring hole is that it’s very hard to incentivize people to maximize someone else’s utility. You don’t just say the words “maximize utility” and it just gets done.

I keep coming back to; simpleton economic incentives can't fix a lack of good faith. I first noted that when reading Samuel Pepys diary entry where he crows both about the fat kick back he got on an order timber for ships masts. And the really good price he got as well.

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

#67

Post by dredmorbius »

rb808 wrote: post #39
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.

You'll say that until the company is full of public service workers who dont care and electricity costs 3x as much. Pretty much every developed country has privatized electricity generation to keep prices down.

There are numerous public utilities in California, and elsewhere.

Generally the costs are lower and service levels higher than privately-held corporations.

Granted, most munis don't have to deal with long-distance distribution, though there are four federal power administrations which do, the Bonneville, Southeastern, Southwestern, and Western Area Power Administrations. Also the Tennessee Valley Authority.

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

#68

Post by dredmorbius »

tomohawk wrote: post #32
luckydata wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My money is they get taken over by the state. Privatizing a utility was always a stupid move to begin with and they are finally proving it beyond any reasonable doubt. It's time we get to fixing all the damage Regan did to this country.

Private companies electrified the US. This model was pioneered by Samuel Insull. https://www.masterresource.org/insull-samuel/insull-rural-el... FDR didn't like competition for attention, and hounded Insull in court for years.

Private companies electrified ... specific high-profit regions of the United States. They were profoundly indifferent to most rural regions, leading to the Rural Electrification Act (1936).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act

Thomas Edison's first power plant, the Pearl Street Power Station (1882) powered just 82 customers initially, largely commercial and industrial users.

Large-scale electrification within the US was developed through public works including the Tenessee Valley Authority, Bonneville Power Administration, Hoover Dam, and numerous others. Four federal regional power administrations, the BPA, Southeastern, Southwestern, and Western Area Power Administrations, still exist.

Many rural regions are served by electric (and telephone) cooperatives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_utility_cooperatives#U...

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

#69

Post by sargram01 »

sidlls wrote: post #42
sargram01 wrote: post #27

I used to think power outages we’re mainly a developing country problem, this definitely changes my understanding of the tiers of maturity of countries.

Many aspects of PG&E should bring to mind developing countries: corruption, graft, incompetent management, etc. It's an embarrassing situation to be in, and both PG&E and the state government are culpable.

TIL graft = political corruption, using ones political office for personal gain, misdirecting public funds to private interests.

Shocking! (not really)

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

#70

Post by dredmorbius »

whatshisface wrote: post #15
luckydata wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My money is they get taken over by the state. Privatizing a utility was always a stupid move to begin with and they are finally proving it beyond any reasonable doubt. It's time we get to fixing all the damage Regan did to this country.

How did president Regan privatize a California utility?

PG&E was never a public utility.

I suspect the harm meant was more of the general form of "government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem".

http://factmyth.com/factoids/reagan-said-government-is-the-p...

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