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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

#181

Post by selectodude »

dragonwriter wrote: post #145
inferiorhuman wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CAHSR died the death of a thousand paper cuts (e.g. SF and south bay routing, grade separation, signalling, trump). All of that created an untenable situation. The closest equivalent with municipal power is the gobs of money PG&E has spent trying to kill local and statewide public power legislation.

> CAHSR died the death of a thousand paper cuts CAHSR is surprisingly alive and active for something that died.

It exists, and they’re building, but it’s only linking the powerhouse cities of Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield. So I’m sure it’ll be packed 7 days per week.

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

#182

Post by qqqwerty »

Just to provide some context, there was a pretty big fire in Southern California[1] the same week as the PG&E blackouts. The humidity across CA was really low, which is just as much as a factor as the wind. On one hand, the blackouts were probably excessive, and possibly politically motivated. On the other, no major wildfires occurred in PG&E territory, but a fairly large one happened in LADWP territory[1]. PG&E is in tough spot, no one will know for certain if the blackouts actually accomplished anything, but if a wildfire occurs and they don't cut the power, then they hold the liability.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/11/photos-saddleridge-fi...

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

#183

Post by sipherhex »

jjav wrote: post #167
skybrian wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty common for rural areas in the U.S. to have power failures during storms. Maybe not in California, though?

Important context here is that there never was any storm. Shutting power as winds approach hurricane force is very sensible. Here (bay area) this week, the forecast was for winds in the 30mph range with gusts into the 40s. Windy yes, but hardly a storm. The kicker is the winds never arrived. PG&E shutdown was scheduled for noon Wednesday but there no wind at all. So they postponed it to 8pm. At 8pm, no wind either. N…

> The kicker is the winds never arrived.

Winds over 60mph on the ridges. https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KCALOSGA177/graph...

We had 40+mph winds at our home all night. Based on previous experience the power would have gone out anyhow.

In the spring we had a tree take down the power line in front of the house and continue arcing. Thank goodness it was a day after rain and calm wind. On a night like this recent night, the mountain would have been ash.

For those that live in rural, fire-prone areas power outages are often fairly normal and the big danger is burning. If someone hears 4th of July fireworks being set off where I live there's a real risk of a vigilante mob. The tradeoff of power cuts seems reasonable.

There has been reporting that preventive power cuts are generally a good idea, but highly unpopular unless they are really targeted. This is what San Diego Gas & Electric learned: put in equipment to enable more targeted cuts and monitoring. I expect this is where PG&E will need to invest next.

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

#184

Post by rrss »

romaaeterna wrote: post #180
rrss wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are trying to reduce the risk of wildfires caused by PG&Es negligence, increasing its legal liability is the best place to push.

No, I'm afraid that you can't materially reduce the fires by preventing some (small) number of ignitions. The problem is the dry brush buildup. Something will spark it eventually. Having someone to blame is fun politics, but it's not going to get California out of the mess. It's not even a fire management problem. California covers a region of the world that has been having decades or centuries-long drought phases fo…

I didn't say you could materially reduce fires, only the ones caused by PG&Es negligence. There will still be fires, but maybe they won't be caused-in-fact by lack of reasonable maintenance of power lines.

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

#185

Post by zaroth »

untog wrote: post #177
zaroth wrote: post #127

Judge William Alsup (remember him?) who is overseeing the PG&E case in San Francisco said about shutoffs; “The prudent thing to do when you’re uncertain is to turn the power off,” he said. “When the public complains that everything in the refrigerator is bad and the ice cream melted, then you could blame the judge. I’m willing to take the heat.” [1] - https://www.kqed.org/news/11737336/judge-pge-paid-out-stock-...

That attitude is all very well until you remember that there are people with medical equipment out there and literally rely on power to live. I’m not saying there are easy fixes but I don’t think flippantly disregarding concern has the right approach either.

Yes, I saw the story that someone who was on oxygen died during the outage.

People with life essential medical equipment which runs on electrical power absolutely must ensure they have a backup power supply, be ready to activate it, and have a plan should an outage continue beyond their backup capacity.

Power goes out, whether it’s a blackout, brownout, planned maintenance, or otherwise. Everyone should have plans for managing during an outage.

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

#186

Post by gnicholas »

qqqwerty wrote: post #182

Just to provide some context, there was a pretty big fire in Southern California[1] the same week as the PG&E blackouts. The humidity across CA was really low, which is just as much as a factor as the wind. On one hand, the blackouts were probably excessive, and possibly politically motivated. On the other, no major wildfires occurred in PG&E territory, but a fairly large one happened in LADWP territory[1]. PG&E is i…

> The humidity across CA was really low

It was 40-50 percent near Palo Alto, including in areas where power was cut. That’s actually relatively high by California standards.

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

#187

Post by Chai-T-Rex »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #110
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…

I'm not sure that's down to Venezuela's power companies. That's right about when the US was trying to coup their government, right? Stuxnet's origin story can tell us a bit about what kinds of sabotage they pull.

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

#188

Post by Aloha »

zaroth wrote: post #178
rectang wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alsup is my favorite jurist. He's 74; may he preside forever. The above quote benefits from a little more context. Alsup's point is that PG&E paid dividends while slashing the maintenance budget — and as a judge, he's willing to step in and say "that's not right".

He also made that point. But his point here is that if we’re willing to assign liability to PG&E for damages from a brushfire sparked tomorrow... if in your mind PG&E is truly responsible for any resulting death or destruction if a tree falls on their transmission lines during a time of critical fire risk and sparks a blaze.... then it is not only prudent, but it would be morally and economically imperative to shut d…

While I think everyone agrees that PG&E has been somewhat negligent in maintaining its network - as someone who works with utilities, I agree with you - I think its absurd to try to bill all the costs of every fire to the utility that may have sparked it - it's exceedingly irrational to do so.

PG&E has no control over the weather, winds, firefighting budgets, or forest policy, yet it alone is now to be held in total responsibility for all fires that originate with its equipment? thats absurd.

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

#189

Post by snagglegaggle »

wavefunction wrote: post #173
rectang wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alsup is my favorite jurist. He's 74; may he preside forever. The above quote benefits from a little more context. Alsup's point is that PG&E paid dividends while slashing the maintenance budget — and as a judge, he's willing to step in and say "that's not right".

I heard a working-class lady on the radio discussing the $150 of groceries in her refrigerator that were going to waste and how that's a lot of money for her family. I'd rather have that $150 than a silly opportunity to blame some old out-of-touch judge.

There is also a man who was on oxygen who died. He was not able to get to his unpowered backup. The cause of death was listed as heart failure, though it is very likely the heart appeared stressed due to the hypoxia.

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

#190

Post by mrep »

jjav wrote: post #163
reaperducer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Hamps…

> California average is 16.06¢ Not sure how they come up with such a number, but California is large and has many electricity providers. But for PG&E in the Bay Area, let me quote from my PG&E electric bill here in hand: Daytime: $0.53476 (delivery) + $0.25069 (generation) = $0.785/kWh Part-peak: $0.28917 (delivery) + $0.10643 (generation) = $0.396/kWh Night: $0.13578 (delivery) + $0.03968 (generation) = $0.175/kWh T…

Oof, that's awful. I just got a bill recently here in seattle and got a $10.67 base charge and an additional $0.0902 charge per KWH for a total price of $48.50 dollars for 415 KWHs used in a 68 day period.
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