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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

#101

Post by inferiorhuman »

williamDafoe wrote: post #80
thereisnospork wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a naive question, but why aren't they being bankrupted (or hurt financially) for cutting off the power voluntarily? Their nominal job is to provide power, not doing so for reasons that aren't acts of god should open them to liability and/or (severe) penalties for violation of contract. If the appropriate legal framework doesn't currently exist I can't imagine a 'The lights stay on' bill would be all that…

Remember that CA impeached the governor Gray Davis in 2000 for power outages .. I bet that PG&e is thinking of doing the same thing today to Gavin Newsom!

How do you figure that?

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

#102

Post by bsder »

heimatau wrote: post #84

What I strongly believe is being overlooked here is not the fact that their 'liability math' has changed but the fact that this is the result of regional utility monopolies. The entire energy sector are allowed to operate in these terrible ways because they have local governments supporting their terrible business models. Price of energy hasn't gone down because there is no actual competition. Without these large gov…

And yet when you try deregulating it, you wind up with Enron.

In my opinion, electricity needs to now become a government function. The more people install solar panels and batteries, the less profitable electricity is going to be.

It's a death spiral eventually completely dominated by the fixed costs of keeping the network connected and enough electricity production in reserve rather than the variable costs of baseline consumption.

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

#103

Post by inferiorhuman »

catalogia wrote: post #14
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…

Historically, aren't most earthquake fatalities due to fires? Cutting off electricity and flushing all gas lines with an inert gas seems like a prudent thing to do after a significant earthquake. Particularly in an environment like California, where it is unlikely anybody will freeze to death (keep the drinking water flowing though.)

PG&E doesn't know where is gas lines are nor what they're rated for — that's how/why they blew up a San Bruno neighborhood.

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

#104

Post by reaperducer »

williamDafoe wrote: post #82

PG&E is the worst power company in the western hemisphere. First in 2000 they had massive power outages due to early deregulation which led to the impeachment of governor Gray Davis. In 2017 the company killed thousands of customers and billions in property because of fires they caused! Now in 2019 they are doing massive shutdowns and directly killing their customers on life support! We have the highest prices (.22c…

PG&E is a terrible company, but spewing a bunch of nonsense hyperbole isn't helpful.

Someone else pointed out that your statements about deaths are false. So I'll point out that California's electricity isn't 22¢/kWh. The California average is 16.06¢.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

States that have it worse:

  Hawaii: 26.05¢
  Alaska: 19.10¢
  Connecticut: 17.55¢
  Massachusetts: 17.12¢
  Rhode Island: 16.42¢
  New Hampshire: 16.17¢

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

#105

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #57
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.

If spending the money on infrastructure without a rate increase bankrupts them, keeping the lights on without spending the money bankrupts them and turning the lights off bankrupts them then the result is always that they go bankrupt.

It's not possible to get around "totally reliable, totally safe, inexpensive; pick two" by passing a law mandating all three.

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

#106

Post by rayiner »

gjouft55 wrote: post #94
tryptophan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private utilites work just fine in every other state. Maybe this just a California being California issue again. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater...

But we live in a free market of ideas. No reason to have one state operate it’s utilities like every other, except to satisfy social memes. We’ve done the privatize it all experiment even given evidence that services like Medicare can be run pretty cheaply, and, well, Kansas and Oklahoma. I’d be curious to see if California could save rate payers money. My guess is the conventional finance wisdom about big government…

Given how California’s HSR project recently exploded due to run away costs, calling the concern about the state take over more things “fear mongering” is pretty dense.

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

#108

Post by [deleted] »

heimatau wrote: post #84

What I strongly believe is being overlooked here is not the fact that their 'liability math' has changed but the fact that this is the result of regional utility monopolies. The entire energy sector are allowed to operate in these terrible ways because they have local governments supporting their terrible business models. Price of energy hasn't gone down because there is no actual competition. Without these large gov…

[deleted]

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

#109

Post by aodin »

navigatesol wrote: post #78
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…

> The stock rose 3% Friday After crashing 30%+ the day before. They are essentially bankrupt.

PG&E filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protections on Jan. 29th of this year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa...

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

#110

Post by freddie_mercury »

williamDafoe wrote: post #82

PG&E is the worst power company in the western hemisphere. First in 2000 they had massive power outages due to early deregulation which led to the impeachment of governor Gray Davis. In 2017 the company killed thousands of customers and billions in property because of fires they caused! Now in 2019 they are doing massive shutdowns and directly killing their customers on life support! We have the highest prices (.22c…

Who are the 2nd and 3rd worst power companies in the western hemisphere? Whenever someone says something is "the worst" or "the best" I wonder how much due diligence they've actually performed to compare it to the alternatives. If you're going to claim something is the worst, surely you should know several others and be able to say why PG&E is worse than them.

I mean, just off the top of my head, I'd put Venezuela's power company as worse than PG&E. More people have died from their power problems than from PG&E's. Just in March of 2019, the entire country was without power for 10 days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Venezuelan_blackouts

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