"as climate change makes wildfires more frequent and intense." That's reporter bias. I'm not saying it's right or wrong but to throw that in there is clear bias.
Nytimes does this bias every article post 2017
‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
221–230 of 291 posts
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
But they do. They could bury the lines. They literally get a guaranteed profit by doing so due to the way the business is setup.
It is theoretically possible to bury every transmission line through remote country brush, only as long as there’s anyone left in CA willing to pay to draw electricity from the grid by the time they’re done doing it.
Remember state-wide we’re talking about ~$5b of energy (generation cost) per year. How much do you want to pay to transmit that $5b of energy?
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"fire brakes" The accepted spelling is break btw. I was prompted to check though as this spelling if anything fits the usage at least as well as the 'proper' spelling. "A firebreak is a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to slow or stop the progress of a bushfire" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebreak
I think I’ve just read too many complaints about car brakes being misspelled.
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fo…
And people who are not capable of having a backup power supply?
Medicaid should cover it.
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I hate to sound callous - every death is a tragedy to friends and family - but this seems like the least sympathetic victim in the whole affair. If your life depends on oxygen, then it is your responsibility to ensure its continued supply whether or not the wall socket works . The fact that there were generous warnings only compounds the self-neglect. Oxygen-dependent COPD is no joke. PG&E is not your healthcare prov…
Where I live, the power goes out maybe twice a year (typically for between half an hour and maybe five or six hours, depending on the fault). Where my mother lives, in the country, it could go out for two days when it goes. Luckily its not that often, but when it does, there's never an advance warning. If your life depends on continuous power, planning for an occasional no-warning outage seems like the prudent thing to do.
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#226Earlier 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 that clinic in Oklahoma that posts prices methinks you made a Freudian slip there
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 electrifica…
Samuel Insull developed the public utility model and proved it to work by extending publicly regulated utilities into 30 states prior to the advent of the New Deal.
Insull was put out of business by New York bankers who wanted to take over his business.
http://blog.heartland.org/2013/07/samuel-insull-getting-the-...
FDR needed enemies to blame to get his New Deal, and he had Insull hounded in the courts. Insull was found not guilty of any wrongdoing, but died penniless.
If you want to know history, you have to find better sources than wikipedia. There are plenty of books about this great man and this interesting period of history.
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#228It 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…
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.
>My money is they get taken over by the state
This is the same as the "shielded from liability" option, just in a roundabout way.
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you see a legal pathway for this to happen? In one scenario, CA keeps legislating more and more liabilities to PG&E until it goes bankrupt, in which case the state could take it over, but would also be saddled with those same liabilities. Alternatively, they step back the liabilities and try to negotiate a deal with PG&E to take over, which would essentially be a buyout. However, what would the incentive be to sel…
Use the threat of liabilities to get a sweetheart price from the hedge fund owners whos hands are tied. Offer bondolders a good deal, and refinance using state bonds to handle the liabilities.
Don't forget the "legislate away the liabilities after you become owner" part.
Re: ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I think its absurd to try to bill all the costs of every fire to the utility that may have sparked it ... 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. There are two reasons why you're wrong. First, PG&E can't control the weather but did have control over its o…
> a large utility is not like a private company. We cannot let a large utility fail, and therefore they are more like a government organization than a private company.
I see no way utilities provided by a for-profit company make sense. They are monopolies for services across entire swaths of the population. I can’t select which company I receive power from. In this model paying dividends to shareholders simply means that there was either some service/maintenance cut, or they set their rates too high for their customers.
At best, utilities should be government ran. Their “shareholders” should be those that foot the bill at the end of the day. At worst, at least make them nonprofit entities so that they’ll focus their efforts on bettering the product rather than doing what they can to improve shareholder dividends.