161–170 of 291 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
San Diego (SDGE) has a plan to bury most lines in the next 50 years. I feel like this would happen faster if they were not beholden to shareholders (NYSE:SRE). Distribution and the charges associated with it are government aided monopolies... Should a publicly traded company have a gov granted monopoly?
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 Hamps…
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
The cheapest rate is 17.5 cents per kWh, that is late at night (currently after 11pm, soon to be changed to be after midnight).
Daytime rate is 78.5 cents per kWh! This is PG&E in the Bay Area.
"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.
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...
Private utilites work just fine in every other state. Do they? The feds already had to step in when private companies deemed large swaths of the United States unprofitable (see also: rural electrification and the TVA).
Yes, they do. ERCOT, as one example, is doing just fine, many of the southwest power companies are private and aren't having issues.
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 basel…
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.
It's pretty common for rural areas in the U.S. to have power failures during storms. Maybe not in California, though?
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. No further news from PG&E. At 11pm they cut power. Still no wind (maybe gusting to 2mph). Overnight - no wind. Next morning - no wind.
Nature really called them out here to highlight it was purely a political move. PG&E postponed the shutdown a few times waiting for the wind but when it never arrived they shut power down anyway.
Despite massive wealth, the California government's slide into 3rd-world standards has been pretty fast.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The numbers you've quoted, from page 7, are per MW mile, not per mile.
Thanks, that was a really quick check. And yeah, that would increase the costs markedly. (My initial thought on posting was that $30 billion would not be enough, though the first read of actual per-mile costs, neglecting per MW-mile, seemed to suggest otherwise.)
https://psc.wi.gov/Documents/Brochures/Under%20Ground%20Tran...
Is there not a technical solution to this? A side effect here will be people creating their own power systems. I have already had my power go off 4 times this year and now I am looking at solar panels, batteries, and a natural gas generator.
Elevators and public transit instead of exurban sprawl out into the redwoods solves the issue completely.
The real problem is incentivizing people to make it happen.