PG&E Shutting off power.

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DaveinOlyWA said:
Nubo said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
...It is really quite pathetic how we place blame after the fact...

Even more pathetic that the "blame" issues forth from the President of the United States, not for any legitimate reasons, not from any knowledgeable and informed opinion, not from any desire to help the citizens he serves, but simply because of his political animosity towards a state with liberal policies and voting tendencies. Another opportunity to show his inflamed baboon-ass to the world.

I am shocked you take any stock in anything he has to say?

Not sure what you mean by me having taken stock?
 
Regarding the POTUS, I change the station or turn off my radio as soon as I hear the name. I think a lot of the reason he's gotten so far is the media buzz he generates so I'm no longer feeding into it. I do miss out some of the day-to-day shenanigans, but as they say, 'you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows'.
 
Democracy may die in darkness but some democrats appear to be flourishing in it at ratepayers expense.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/11/pge-helped-fund-careers-calif-governor-his-wife-now-he-accuses-utility-corporate-greed/?outputType=amp

Still I'm left wondering just what sort "infrastructure upgrades" are people thinking were neglected?
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Democracy may die in darkness but some democrats appear to be flourishing in it at ratepayers expense.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/11/pge-helped-fund-careers-calif-governor-his-wife-now-he-accuses-utility-corporate-greed/?outputType=amp

Still I'm left wondering just what sort "infrastructure upgrades" are people thinking were neglected?

From what I recall, one of the primary things not being done was clearing trees from lines and poles.
In Minnesota the local utilities do any cutting/trimming of tree branches that are interfering with the lines or local transformers.
 
Zythryn said:
LTLFTcomposite said:
Democracy may die in darkness but some democrats appear to be flourishing in it at ratepayers expense.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/11/pge-helped-fund-careers-calif-governor-his-wife-now-he-accuses-utility-corporate-greed/?outputType=amp

Still I'm left wondering just what sort "infrastructure upgrades" are people thinking were neglected?

From what I recall, one of the primary things not being done was clearing trees from lines and poles.
In Minnesota the local utilities do any cutting/trimming of tree branches that are interfering with the lines or local transformers.
Sometimes, https://twitter.com/PGE4Me tweets examples of damage found during inspections before re-energizing power lines after a PSPS.

Here are some examples:
https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1190102121078808576
https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1189741376616980480
https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1189671217269264385
https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1184302424355475461
https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1183167024622645249
https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1182854531694112770

I found this report filed w/the CPUC after the PSPS that affected me: https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/CPUCWebsite/Content/News_Room/NewsUpdates/2019/PGE%20Public%20Safety%20Power%20Shutoff%20Oct.%209-12%20Report.pdf. Page 93 (Appendix D) has some example pics of damage.

The topic of why not putting more power lines underground has come up but the issue is cost.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/11/bury-california-power-lines-wildfire-blackout-fix-unlikely-work/3946935002/
It costs about $3 million per mile to convert underground electric distribution lines from overhead, while the cost to build a mile of new overhead line is less than a third of that, at approximately $800,000 per mile, according to a section on PG&E's website called Facts About Undergrounding Power Lines.

California has 25,526 miles of higher voltage transmission lines, and 239,557 miles of distribution lines, two-thirds of which are overhead, according to CPUC. Less than 100 miles per year are transitioned underground, meaning it would take more than 1,000 years to underground all the lines at the current rate.

$15,000 for every PG&E customer?

PG&E, the state's largest utility, maintains approximately 81,000 miles of overhead distribution lines and approximately 26,000 miles of underground distribution lines. It also has about 18,000 miles of larger transmission lines, the majority of which are overhead lines.

At a cost of $3 million per mile, undergrounding 81,000 miles of distribution lines would cost $243 billion. PG&E has 16 million customers; distributing that expense equally would amount to a bill of more than $15,000 per account.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/pge-underground-power-lines-cost-14503808.php says
As a 2017 San Francisco Chronicle story notes, it costs about $1.16 million per mile to install underground distribution lines. In cities, that number is much higher; work in San Jose cost $4.6 million per mile. Overhead lines cost about $448,800 per mile in comparison.

Most of the higher costs are associated with digging trenches for the lines. There is also the cost of repaving roads and other environmental factors, such as flooding or earthquakes.
 
We got the same thing in Florida after the hurricanes, OMG the electric company is so stupid why aren't the power lines underground!
Then the costs and what it would do to everyones electric bill came to light and the first world hardship of being without power for a few days maybe once or twice in a lifetime was quickly forgotten. The end result was more concrete poles so restoration after a storm was much quicker. Also some "smart grid" stuff, I suppose that helps them diagnose issues proactively. Hopefully they get more out of that than sending me an email telling me the power is out.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Democracy may die in darkness but some democrats appear to be flourishing in it at ratepayers expense.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/11/pge-helped-fund-careers-calif-governor-his-wife-now-he-accuses-utility-corporate-greed/?outputType=amp

Still I'm left wondering just what sort "infrastructure upgrades" are people thinking were neglected?

Lol, another poor spending decision by PG&E?

Are you advocating against corporate campaign contributions? If so, we agree!
 
To paraphrase Michael Corleone they're all part of the same hypocrisy.

Sounds like Mr Newsom is jockeying to make it a state owned and operated enterprise. I don't have a dog in that fight (wow that's un pc) but I sort hope it happens because it would be interesting to see how it works out.
 
Seeing as how there are large numbers of government-operated (mostly by municipalities) utilities in the U.S., it's certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that this could be done with PG&E, although they are the largest IOU in the country. LADWP with 1.43 million customers is the largest such in the U.S. (outside of Puerto Rico, whose government utility is an example of how not to run things). PG&E has 5.4 million customers (16 million people), so about 4 times larger than LADWP.

The issue with PG&E is lack of basic maintenance (tree-trimming etc.) as well as the simple aging of their infrastructure and the failure to upgrade/replace it, i.e. deferring maintenance year after year while continuing to pay out dividends to shareholders, at the same time having to deal with lots of independent and even individual power producers (PV on houses) when the existing grid was never designed for that.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
We got the same thing in Florida after the hurricanes, OMG the electric company is so stupid why aren't the power lines underground!
Then the costs and what it would do to everyones electric bill came to light and the first world hardship of being without power for a few days maybe once or twice in a lifetime was quickly forgotten. The end result was more concrete poles so restoration after a storm was much quicker. Also some "smart grid" stuff, I suppose that helps them diagnose issues proactively. Hopefully they get more out of that than sending me an email telling me the power is out.

Power lines fail on their own (at a MUCH lower rate) so burying them becomes a logistical challenge to repair changing the repair time from a few hours to a few days so only the very most EXPENSIVE and vital lines are buried in most areas.

I often wondered the same especially in town but its more than installation costs of excavation that has to be looked at.
 
The trend here for many years has been underground within a neighborhood but the feed coming to the neighborhood is overhead. Still plenty of pre-1980-ish hoods with overhead service to the homes though.

Indeed, going underground makes repairs difficult and time consuming.

Could it be that random know-it-alls on the internet actually aren't smarter than the people with decades of experience building and maintaining these power distribution systems?
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
The trend here for many years has been underground within a neighborhood but the feed coming to the neighborhood is overhead. Still plenty of pre-1980-ish hoods with overhead service to the homes though.

Indeed, going underground makes repairs difficult and time consuming.

Could it be that random know-it-alls on the internet actually aren't smarter than the people with decades of experience building and maintaining these power distribution systems?

Always a possibility, the problem is that the grid many of the people have with decades of experience building and maintaining it, is a very different grid (and perhaps more importantly, operated in a very different regulatory environment) to what the grid needs to be now. The grid they're used to was a top-down monopoly where power was generated in big central plants that they owne,d then transmitted and distributed that pwoer along their lines, and the amount of power sold increased every year.

That all started to change in the '70s, when energy conservation became a thing, then we had 1978's PURPA law which allowed independent power producers access to the grid and the utilities had to take that power at their avoided cost, and then the 1992 Energy Policy Act which forced utilities to get out partly and in many cases entirely from the power generation side of the business, leaving them with only transmission and distribution with minimal rental fees for that. At the same time they had to deal with myriad independent power producers who often were putting highly variable renewables on line, and who had no interest in curtailing them when the utility needed that to happen for grid stabilization, forcing the utilities to pay for those sites to shut down, and also deal with rapid ramps of power over which they had no control and which they found hard to replace quickly enough. The utilities weren't nimble businesses because for most of the 20th century they didn't need to be, and many of the people now running them are leftovers from that era.
 
Certainly you aren't suggesting that dry tree branches bringing down a power line in a windstorm are any more or less likely to start a fire depending on the direction of current flow.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Certainly you aren't suggesting that dry tree branches bringing down a power line in a windstorm are any more or less likely to start a fire depending on the direction of current flow.

Is that question directed at me? If so, no, I wasn't suggesting that, I was pointing out that the utilities' sources of revenue, their stability and their amounts have changed radically since the existing grid's heyday. And large, rapid power ramps that the utility has limited ability to control definitely are a source of stress and failure to the infrastructure.
 
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