PG&E Shutting off power.

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Linus

Active member
Joined
Sep 11, 2019
Messages
26
Location
Vancouver BC
Reading the news this morning I see PG&E is shutting off power to 500,000 people and it could be up to 800,000 by the end of the day. This is being done to mitigate risk of wild fire.

My thought is WTF do you do if there is a fire or a medical emergency and you have to get out of there and all you have is an EV not sufficiently charged? If I lived in that area, I would be going back to ICE vehicle.
 
Yeah, because there are NO other ways to get anywhere in an emergency. :roll:

Taxis, Rideshare, and ambulances are all still available... also since they warned people in advance, they could always charge up and then conserve the battery for evacuation.
 
Wow, it's like they're turning California into a 3rd world country.
This is the sum result of virtue signaling obsessed politicians who don't know anything about forestry, power transmission infrastructure or the environment trying to save said environment.
 
Oilpan4 said:
Wow, it's like they're turning California into a 3rd world country.
This is the sum result of virtue signaling obsessed politicians who don't know anything about forestry, power transmission infrastructure or the environment trying to save said environment.


Our NorCal office in Loomis is currently off-line for Internet, even though they're getting power from a generator. The Internet provider has told us that the don't intend to even try to get services going again using power alternatives. Not the end of the world, but not ideal either, especially as our alternative connectivity is 4G and cell towers are clearly running at high-loads.

The office manager up there tells me that power distribution lines running through forest areas are simply fastened to the tree trunks!?!? I find that a bit hard to believe, but I'll take his word for it.
 
Oilpan4 said:
Wow, it's like they're turning California into a 3rd world country.
This is the sum result of virtue signaling obsessed politicians who don't know anything about forestry, power transmission infrastructure or the environment trying to save said environment.

I don’t believe the blame lands anywhere than with PG&E for the run down condition of their infrastructure.
If you want another target for blame, blame the lawsuits after the camp fire. Not saying the lawsuit was undeserved, but that PG&E may have taken the wrong lesson from it.
 
Zythryn said:
Oilpan4 said:
Wow, it's like they're turning California into a 3rd world country.
This is the sum result of virtue signaling obsessed politicians who don't know anything about forestry, power transmission infrastructure or the environment trying to save said environment.

I don’t believe the blame lands anywhere than with PG&E for the run down condition of their infrastructure.
If you want another target for blame, blame the lawsuits after the camp fire. Not saying the lawsuit was undeserved, but that PG&E may have taken the wrong lesson from it.


More like the only lesson they could, which is that they can't afford any more fire liability. But this is on their backs, for cutting back on routine tree-trimming and other maintenance, that combined with the effects of the drought, led to the horrific wildfires of the past few years. I suspect the state government will be likely to pay much closer attention to make sure utilities actually adhere to required trimming intervals from now on, assuming PG&E actually survives bankruptcy this time (unlike this one, the Enron one wasn't their fault), and isn't simply taken over and made a non-profit. Given that their reputation with the public, after the San Bruno gas explosion and the recent fires, was already in the crapper, and this outage while necessary will cost businesses a lot of money, I'm not at all sure that they will survive as an IOU.
 
Oilpan4 said:
Wow, it's like they're turning California into a 3rd world country.
This is the sum result of virtue signaling obsessed politicians who don't know anything about forestry, power transmission infrastructure or the environment trying to save said environment.

It's not about saving the environment or even virtue-signaling. More like a "CYA" dance both on the part of the utility and the regulators, after last year's wildfires and resulting judgement.

But I agree, it is decidedly 3rd-world approach. Ludicrous that the Tech Leader of the world can't keep the bloody lights on.
 
They aren't practicing responsible forestry, don't appear to be maintaining electricity infrastructure.

If responsible forestry was practiced fires wouldn't be so deviating.
If responsible home and property maintenance happened then forest and grass fires wouldn't jump to homes so easy.
If the electrical infrastructure was maintained it wouldn't start fires.

Luckily nm has a public regulatory commission so they aren't as influenced by twitchy political winds that can blow both ways.

But the fake environmentalists here are getting away with banning the practice of responsible forestry out west of here near abq because it might hurt the spotted owl.
 
I'm part of the PG&E mess. My power went out ~11:58 pm on 10/9. My Comcrap broadband access went out at ~12:45 am so I turned off the UPSes that powered my router and cable modem. I've tethered my laptop to my phone.

I'm running a Samlex 1000 watt pure sine wave inverter off my Bolt in READY mode. I've been experimenting to see if the various workarounds for the stupid car turning itself off while in P after 1 hour work. So far, I've had to put the car in neutral w/the parking brake on by entering from the passenger side, pushing the brake pedal w/the metal rod to shift to N then exiting from the passenger side. We'll see...

I'd feel much safer leaving the car in P, but that may not be possible.
edit: (fixed typo with hour)
 
I have been without electricity for 2 days
I have been getting a ride to work because both my EVs have enough to get me to work, but not home.
The power is off at work and the free L2 charger nearby.
 
Calaveras said:
I have been without electricity for 2 days
I have been getting a ride to work because both my EVs have enough to get me to work, but not home.
The power is off at work and the free L2 charger nearby.

Power off at work and at home....sounds like a "snow day" to me.
 
PG&E is going to have a lot of angry customers. The political fall-out is going to be interesting: Give PG&E a ton of money to fix the problems or build something new.

If this was me I think I would live in my Tesla. Easily 2 weeks of conditioned air, wi-fi, and a big screen.
 
As I expected but was unable to confirm until today (because PG&E's webpage showing outage areas was inaccessible for most of the past two days, apparently due to too much traffic), my power stayed on, as I'm at low level near the bay, and the high winds have been mostly at 1,000 feet and up: Mount St. Helena (North Bay, 4,340') recorded a gust of 77 mph early this morning, Mt. Diablo (East Bay, 3,849') one of 75 mph, and Mt. Umunhum (South Bay, 3,484') one of 65 mph. Fortunately, while the winds have been strong and dry, the temps have been moderate to cool in many areas.

As to the reasons for the outages, here's an SF Chronicle article from Oct. 1st, mentioning PG&Es "progress" in their planned tree-trimming for this year:
PG&E is less than one-third done with its 2019 tree-trimming work
https://www.sfchronicle.com/busines...han-one-third-done-with-its-2019-14483596.php


Here's a McPaper article going into the factors that have led up to this:
'A victim of their own failure': Why PG&E's massive power shutdown in California was inevitable
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...e-stuck-position-their-own-making/3924699002/
 
They're more worried about the spotted owl.
Responsible forestry isn't letting it grow wild.

The useful idiot fake environmentalists have stopped forestry just outside of Albuquerque with in the last few weeks using the same bs they pull in California.
 
Oilpan4 said:
They're more worried about the spotted owl.
Responsible forestry isn't letting it grow wild.

The useful idiot fake environmentalists have stopped forestry just outside of Albuquerque with in the last few weeks using the same bs they pull in California.

Wonder why there were forests before "Responsible forestry".
 
Not much of a shock. This is the modern way of things. Look around you; nothing but a degrading infrastructure that is getting less reliable every day.

Most of the power lines were funded by the government back in the 30's. So utilities only had to maintain them but the remoteness along with the sheer volume of the task has them cutting corners on a budget that barely covers a few hundred acres of preventative maintenance.

It is like that everywhere. Here in the tree ladened Pacific Northwest, we see power outages coming MONTHS in advance as trees grow over , under and around power lines. Add a little wind, weight from snow or rain and we now have emergency crews making TOP dollar at triple time rates out there fixing it instead of paying summer crews basic wages to trim.

Get used to it. This is the new normal... oh wait.. I guess its not new; has been this way for decades. We can start with Reagan if you want to finger point.
 
If anyone's wondering how we got to where we are now, I finished this book last week, an act of serendipity considering what we're currently dealing with:
The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future
https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying...=the+grid+bakke&qid=1570822863&s=books&sr=1-1


I was aware of some aspects of this, especially 1978's PURPA (Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act) and how it affected AE by forcing utilities to take power from anyone (<80MW) and pay the avoided price, and the effect of the 1992 NEPA (National Energy Policy Act) on the utilities more directly by forcing them to get partially or wholly out of the generation business, but this covers a whole lot else, from the very start of an "electric grid" up to the present.


OT, the book briefly discusses the Depression-era REA (Rural Electrification Administration), which was responsible for giving most U.S. residents living away from cities electricity for the first time. It's somewhat hard to believe, given how used to electricity we are, but some years ago I read an account (I wish I could remember where) of the effect of electrification on one rural family when the REA ran powerlines to and wired their farmhouse. The family had been out working in the fields all day, out of sight of the farmhouse, while the crew wired the house and installed light fixtures and lights. Around dusk the family was walking back to the house, when they saw it and immediately began running towards it, yelling to each other that the house was on fire! After finishing the installation the work crew had turned all the lights in the house on and left them on, and what the family thought was a sign of their house being on fire was the bright blaze of electric light, which they'd never experienced before.

See https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/rural-electrification-administration-rea-1935/ for more details of the REA,

and for the effect:
Electricity's Impact on Rural Life
"The Day the Lights Came on"
https://www.ncpedia.org/agriculture/electricity
 
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