California utility to cut power to 27k customers to reduce wildfire risk

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-wildfire-pg-e/california-utility-to-cut-power-to-27000-customers-to-reduce-wildfire-risk-idUSKCN1T90I1

by onetimemanytime • 7 years ago

115 183 7 years ago

reuters.com

BillinghamJ• 7 years ago

So it sounds like because they've been held liable for presumably setting up their power lines in an unsafe manner, they're turning off the lines rather than, yanno, fixing the problem.

Hopefully have delivered some chunky UPSes and decent support SLAs to those with medical equipment.

Could see this backfiring if eg people start using lots of generators instead...

CydeWeys2• 7 years ago

The dark side of this is, what if it's not economical at all to service these outlying customers? What if the cost of retrofitting those lines is greater than the total future amortized profit from servicing those customers during wildfire conditions?

I don't think there's a law on the books requiring that everyone have access to electrical service (like there is for, say, USPS service).

Maybe beefy solar setups with battery banks and ability to run off-grid will start becoming the norm there. It is California, after all; it's a great place for solar. Heck, it might easily be cheaper for PG&E to subsidize the installation of these systems vs committing to maintaining all those lines properly in perpetuity.

chroem-• 7 years ago

I don't think there's a law on the books requiring that everyone have access to electrical service

As far as I'm aware, that's the main point of having a regulated power utility. They have to deliver universal service.

lacker7• 7 years ago

What if it's not economical at all to service these outlying customers?

This is almost definitely the case. Consider that PG+E just went bankrupt from fire costs. If you split PG+E into two parts, the "safe utility" that served urban areas, and the "risky utility" that served rural areas, the fire costs would almost all go to the "risky utility". If they were allowed to, PG+E would be better off simply dropping every customer more than 60 miles away from San Francisco.

But it just doesn't work that way. PG+E is technically a public company, but the customers they are required to serve and the prices they are allowed to charge are so heavily regulated, it often seems more like it's a complicated extension of the California government.

dragonwriter2• 7 years ago

The dark side of this is, what if it's not economical at all to service these outlying customers?

PG&E is a regulated regional monopoly with a universal service mandate within it's service area that has huge piles of money to throw at political fights to stop having public power retailers take over some of it's service areas, so it can just suck up the cost of dealing with uneconomical rural customers as the cost of the privilege of being allowed to own profitable urban and suburban customers it is willing to fight for.

pixl977• 7 years ago

Maybe this is just another sign that people should stop building in the wildland urban interface. Not that they will. We as a country feel quite entitled to build in unsafe places.

dehrmann• 7 years ago

it might easily be cheaper for PG&E to subsidize the installation of these systems vs committing to maintaining all those lines properly in perpetuity.

With how liability works in California, I'd be really curious to see.

stakhanov• 7 years ago

The thing about generators was the first thing on my mind as well.

AFascistWorld2• 7 years ago

Is there a way to fix it? Underground lines would be prohibitively expensive.

Svip3• 7 years ago

I am genuinely curious why in a rich country like the USA, wires aren't dug down. I realise using my own country - Denmark - is an unfair comparison, since it's much smaller, but all wires leading to houses are dug down here. Even out in the rural countryside.

However, even a small state like Rhode Island has plenty of overhead wires, despite being a tenth the size of Denmark.

But surely a rich state like California could dig down wires in areas where it would significant benefits. The benefits are everywhere, obviously, but some areas would gain more benefits than others.

Can a state/country really be considered rich, if it cannot afford to dig down electric wires?

amluto4• 7 years ago

Petersen coils, “ground fault neutralizers,” and similar devices could help considerably.

Underground lines have their own set of issues, primarily that they have dramatically increased capacitive current. This is manageable, I believe.

rdlecler1• 7 years ago

The challenge is that they need to run on a budget and so buried cables in a earthquake prone area may have been prohibitively expensive. Not a great situation to be in.

lacker7• 7 years ago

The rural area around Paradise isn't very earthquake-prone. It's just pretty large and sprawling, which is what makes burying all those cables so expensive.

behringer• 7 years ago

No doubt the government will take over the operation if they fail to deliver.

lacker7• 7 years ago

There is an important point here. They aren't being held liable for setting up their power lines in an unsafe manner. The way California fire liability works, even if you set up your power lines according to best practices, if your equipment happens to have caused the initial spark that causes a $25 billion fire, then you are liable for that entire amount.

For more detail see articles like: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-s-st...

It isn't clear that PG+E did anything wrong in maintaining power lines. That just isn't how liability works here. There is always some chance that power lines cause a small fire, and recently the costs of a small fire have grown massively, as it has become more common that a small fire expands into a large fire. PG+E is facing rising costs, and they don't really have many ways to lower fire risk that they haven't already taken. They are not legally allowed to stop serving this area. So they are forced into measures like these.

(They also just went bankrupt, so it's not like PG+E investors are making a killing while underserving their customers.)

amluto4• 7 years ago

With all due respect to PG&E and the CPUC, no, they did not.

The best practice is to install substation equipment that prevents enormous current from flowing through a phase-to-ground fault. Petersen coils and similar devices do this, and they appear to be reasonably widespread in Europe.

Heck, suppose PG&E turns off power during high wind events. Do they even have the required equipment to avoid starting a fire if a line fell and is still on the ground after the wind stops when they turn power back on? This type of equipment exists.

Someone• 7 years ago

”They are not legally allowed to stop serving this area. So they are forced into measures like these.”

How many days a year can they do this before “measures like these” become stopping serving this area?

agwa• 7 years ago

The Camp Fire was started because a transmission tower failed in an area which had a history of transmission towers failing during high winds.

PG&E knew that the towers in this area weren't sufficient for the weather conditions and did nothing about it.

onetimemanytime• 7 years ago

Devil's advocate: Utilities are for profit orgs but rates and (kinda) by extension profits are all heavily regulated. You say that they should bury lines or spend a gazillion improving them, but what if the state balks at letting them increase rates to cover expenses? Where should they get the money for that? I guess that building in th middle of nowhere and expecting power at $0.xx kwh and safe power lines in all terrain and weather might be a dream.

cbhl• 7 years ago

From what I can tell of the notice PG&E sent me in the mail, they're not turning off the lines permanently. They're temporarily turning off the lines for a few days so they can fix the problem (trimming trees near power lines, performing maintenance on substations).

By my read, after two consecutive years' of fire lawsuits being judged against PG&E and going bankrupt, someone decided to listen to the engineers and technicians on the ground.

14• 7 years ago

If I was one of those 27000 customers I would be doing my best to never again be a customer of them. If I had to buy solar, gas generators or a giant hamster wheel powering my stuff I would because cutting off power in this manner for this reason simply is unacceptable in this day and age.

human20190310• 7 years ago

The utility might be glad to see such customers go away.

It may be the case that the utility is providing service in areas it would not choose to serve today, given the fire risk.

lacker7• 7 years ago

That would be fantastic for the utility. PG+E would love to just drop those customers entirely. The cost of fire risk alone is more than they make from this region. They can't because they're legally required to keep delivering power there.

pixl977• 7 years ago

So you're pissed that you finally have to pay the true cost for your utilities. You've been subsidized for the last 50+ years. It's time to stop subsidizing your sprawl.

skybrian2• 7 years ago

In rural areas, power can go out and stay out for quite a while due to a storm. Cutting power preventatively is new, but it seems like if you should have plans for getting by when the power goes out in any case?

dsfyu404ed4• 7 years ago

Rich people have whole house generators and will be mostly unaffected. This is a major PITA to everyone else.

anonuser123456• 7 years ago

A generator is not that expensive.

bearjaws4• 7 years ago

Living in the country side is supposed to be expensive, but for the past 40 years or so all of the population centers of America have been subsidizing rural life. My parents live 30 miles inland in Florida and recently wanted their 5 mile dirt road paved, total cost would have been north of $2,000,000... Even if that was split among everyone living there you are looking at $133,000.

Things don't get better once you consider their power lines, at $285,000 per mile you are looking at $95,000 just to run power to their home and all adjacent homes.

Then add in water + sewage, at $25.18 per foot, lets say to all the same houses getting power, that is an additional $86,619.

You also probably want modern internet connectivity (cable, fiber) you are looking at another $10,000 per household.

Assuming there is 5% maintenance per year for all this infrastructure, that is $16,230.95 a year.

Meanwhile in a city, the amount each individual is paying is a tiny fraction, probably less than 0.01%. Sure a urban home is probably more expensive, but given that a rural home should incur a near $400,000 premium, you shouldn't have been able to afford that rural home to begin with.

America stands to save hundreds of billions if we actually force the cost of living in rural areas to be what it is, rather than subsidize it.

WalterBright2• 7 years ago

A portable generator costs about $250. A whole house generator is around $5-10K.

NDizzle• 7 years ago

My favorite pizza place was affected by this action. I'm about 25 minutes away from the affected area. It's not a very remote location.

Keverw• 7 years ago

Wow, is this forever or only temporary? I know just a few hours or a day without power is a huge downside for me... Sounds horrible. I guess they are forced to get a solar setup or move somewhere else... Which if no power, probably lowers home values so moving is a hassle. Plus you got to sell your house, finding another house that you like and is comparable, moving your things... Some people live paycheck to paycheck so moving right now would be a huge pain.

I got a friend in Florida and we were talking about solar a few years ago. Apparently in Florida if you set up your house for solar and make enough and store it to power everything... You are still legally required to pay the utility company to be hooked up or the county can condemn your house and kick you out. Sure you might end up using zero kilowatt hours, but still, all these other fees tacked on. Also required to get permission and inspection by that same power company too. So the sunshine state isn't friendly to solar, so ironic. I love Florida otherwise though, a bunch of nice places and things to do there.

I've been watching some full-time RV and digital nomad YouTubers on and off... Really makes me feel like minimalist and enough solar to be self-sufficient in an RV would be a great lifestyle. If you want to move you just have to put your things away, bring in the awning, slides, jacks then turn the key and go! I figured if I did it I'd try to stay in an area for a week or two though as I think moving every day would be annoying since I'd probably go for a bigger rig more home feeling. Probably private RV parks, national parks, state parks. Some cities and counties also have RV parks to try and attract tourists to their area. so mostly paid options, but then national forests and out west tons of BLM land to boondock on for free, however, some of these agencies do have some paid areas too.

Plus I kinda feel like you don't even own your house truly. Some places are so picky you even need a permit to install a doorbell. Then HOAs are even more of a pain, I heard in some if your mailbox paint is chipping the HOA can fine you and even take away your house at some point. At least with RVs, they are considered vehicles instead so the local building code guy has no power unless you are parked someone that disallows RVs. Then I remember hearing about an HOA who was harassing a veteran for flying the American Flag.

If you decide to full-time RV since you no longer own a house or rent an apartment you can choose to be a resident in any state friendly to nomads, such as domiciling in South Dakota or Texas which each has their own list of pros and cons. Some people are even forced to change their residence anyways as their former state won't let them use a mail forwarder. Was reading someone who formerly lived in Michigan changed their license and reg online to a mail forwarder located in the state as they wanted to still be residents there, and got a nasty letter with like only 10 days to correct their address or face suspension of their license and registration. I guess in a way RV people are considered homeless even if you have a half a million dollar RV that costs more than the house it's parked in front of. I think states do this also to try to discriminate against homeless people's voting rights too.

So forced to change their domicile to another more friendlier state or use a relative address. But I guess if Michigan doesn't want full-time RVers to call them home, oh well as they can lose out on those resident income taxes since they no longer had a job in MI but being a resident still means all income is still taxable there even if they worked in no income tax Texas for a seasonal job they'd still owe back to MI even if they haven't been there in over a year as they still claimed MI as their domicile. At least with South Dakota, you can spend only 1 night there at a hotel, rent a mailbox and be considered a resident. Then can register your car and RV without bringing it with you if you flew there on a short notice as given little choice. SD even allows you to register by mail too unlike some states that require you to physically bring it with you to be inspected. if SD was like that then you'd have to pretty much drive straight to SD before that 10 days was up, hoping you still have time left by time you even got the notice. So if you had to change things on short notice, South Dakota is a perfect state if your former home state you lived your entire life in decides to make you a refugee.

So I guess living in an RV would work out if you made enough money remotely or retired... Probably someone who lives in a big city with a 2,000 a month apartment would save a bunch possibly. However, while it has it's pros, there's also cons and challenges too like the whole where do you live on paper.

I know people are into van life too, but I don't think I'd be comfortable in a small space, plus people try to just park and sleep wherever for free. Some are successful, some get woken up by the police at 3 AM in the morning. So wouldn't want that stress, rather have an actual RV, and a separate car to explore away from it. For example people with a Class A motorhome tow a car behind such as a Jeep - what people call a "toad" in the RV community. If you went with a travel trailer or fifth wheel, unhook and leave that at camp and drive your SUV, van or pickup around.

As you don't want to try and take the big RV to go shopping or checking out local attractions. Get the RV set up and don't move it until your reservation is up. Be a nice lifestyle! I'm not too happy with where I am now, and I feel like there's so much to do and explore around both the US itself and the world even that staying in the same area all your life from birth to death just sounds sad and is depressing.

Reading things like this just reminds me of how little control people have. Forced to have only 1 utility for power, for water, maybe 1 or 2 phones, tv and internet providers. Well, some areas 1 cable company, phone company offers fiber-based TV in some areas but of course, there's always around 2 satellite options... but then again some cities and HOAs try to prevent people from using satellite even though that violates the FCC's Over-the-Air Reception Devices "OTARD" rule. Some don't like how they look I guess, some try to limit the number of dishes, etc. I was randomly searching and found there's a bunch of cities that still have ordinances banning satellite TV completely... I guess due to giving the local cable company a monopoly as they profit from the franchise fees. Probably would win in court though due to the federal law depending on specifics as some restrictions are allowed to be regulated by the locals narrowly written such as not allowing changes to historical houses or drilling holes into the roof of an apartment building would be a no no as you don't own it, etc type of restrictions but still a hassle. You risk getting a misdemeanor criminal record because you didn't like the local cable company. I find satellite TV annoying when the weather is bad, but otherwise, I feel it's a better choice. Like the boxes, UI feels so much faster. As far as I know, Dish makes their own software and hardware, while the cable company just buys an off the shelf box and installs premade Java-based OS called OpenCable.

I guess RV you are limiting yourself to satellite tv, and mobile internet plans - which is a whole topic in the RV community itself. Certain providers people recommend, with cell boosters, wifi boosters and repeaters and creating your own internal wifi network yourself... So you can have all your devices connect to your own router and then point it towards a cell modem or repeat the RV's park Wifi. Useful too if you have like a TV, game console, and other devices... Can change the internet connection source without reconnecting them all to that new source individually.

Then some people bought a house in a rural area with their own septic system or well. Then when the city or county starts providing water and sewer you are forced to connect to their system instead of being self-sufficient using the existing systems you've already paid for and are maintaining.

bearjaws4• 7 years ago

I am all for utility companies cutting service to rural areas, for cost savings or otherwise.

Things don't get better once you consider their power lines, at $285,000 per mile you are looking at $95,000 just to run power to their home and all adjacent homes.

Then add in water + sewage, at $25.18 per foot, lets say to all the same houses getting power, that is an additional $86,619.

You also probably want modern internet connectivity (cable, fiber) you are looking at another $10,000 per household.

Assuming there is 5% maintenance per year for all this infrastructure, that is $16,230.95 a year.

America stands to save hundreds of billions if we actually force the cost of living in rural areas to be what it is, rather than subsidize it.

People who live in the country side already use wells for water due to the cost of water + sewage, why is it any different for power?

Wowfunhappy3• 7 years ago

And meanwhile, all of these rural services have a greatly increased environmental impact than in urban environment.

It sounds harsh, but some of these people will just need to adapt their lifestyles.

fauigerzigerk3• 7 years ago

On the other hand, rents and home prices are already unaffordable in many urban areas. If building infrastructure outside the most densely populated areas becomes a purely private responsibility, it will exacerbate these issues.

Wowfunhappy3• 7 years ago

The correct solution to do this problem is to build more cities.

rgarrett88• 7 years ago

Suburban and rural have different costs.

refurb• 7 years ago

Those costs get paid for by homeowners generally. Any extension of utilities gets paid for by the developer and passed on when the home is sold.

village-idiot2• 7 years ago

I’m not sure about power lines, but that’s certainly not true for roads. A large portion of road maintenance is paid for by state and federal budgets out of the general tax funds, with the amounts varying based on where we’re talking about. Local drivers pay for some of their road coast in the form of gas taxes, but in no state does this cover even half of the cost road maintenance.

ghouse4• 7 years ago

Well, not entirely. Maintenance liabilities dramatically outstrip compensation. See https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme for another point of view.

hpkuarg• 7 years ago

To be fair, country living also subsidizes the population centers, in that New York and San Francisco are not self-sustaining in terms of food production, not to mention the strategic value (to both the coastal cities involved and the country as a whole) in not having undeveloped wilderness in between major population centers. It seems unfair to say that there is some immoral wealth transfer from urban to rural.

pkaye3• 7 years ago

That is not a subsidy since people are paying for that food. There are benefits to both sides.

pm905• 7 years ago

Are all rural dwellers engaged in food production? If not this is not a good argument.

Dylan16807• 7 years ago

We don't want just wilderness, but we could use more wilderness than we have right now.

rwbcxrz3• 7 years ago

I agree that the marginal cost of providing those services to rural homes is higher than urban/suburban homes. However, I think you're vastly overestimating the actual costs incurred, as many (maybe most) people who live in rural areas don't have most of those things.

I live in a mostly rural county in north-central Colorado. The county maintains ~250 miles of roads of which only 39 miles are paved (the rest of the roads in the county are state and federal highways).

Outside the few small towns in the county, there's no sewer or municipal water. Everyone has a septic tank and a well on their property that they're responsible for maintaining.

Same with cable/fiber. Unless you live in a town, your options are ~1.5Mbps DSL or ~5Mbps fixed wireless (if you have good line of sight to a base station). Neither the county nor any of the ISPs in the area have any plans to significantly improve services, so I'm really hoping that SpaceX gets Starlink up and running sooner rather than later.

Considering all that, I don't think that your calculated premium of $400,000 per rural home actually applies in most situations.

zdragnar4• 7 years ago

If you have cell service, look into a mvno such as Ubifi. It's made working from home as a software developer possible for me.

https://www.ubifi.net/

ip265• 7 years ago

His point is to have urban level utilities would incur that kind of a premium, ergo if you didn't pay that premium don't expect urban utility service.

Taek2• 7 years ago

It's potentially cheaper for a lot of these places to have off-grid infrastructure.

+ Solar + batteries for a home that uses a modest / conservative amount of electricity should be under $50k.

+ Water + septic should be under $25k, assuming you have a well

+ Gas can be installed for well under $10k, you have a large tank in your yard

+ Internet can be done using long range wifi. Takes the whole town to cooperate, but these days everyone wants internet, as long as someone spearheads it you can get an ISP out.

That pretty much just leaves roadways, which you definitely have various qualities of roads that you can build, but I don't see a cheap way around this.

edit: further research has revealed to me that lots of electric appliances can be replaced with gas powered appliances. So if you are primarily depending on gas for things like your refrigerator, you can bring the cost of a solar installation way down.

kolanos3• 7 years ago

Things don't get better once you consider their power lines, at $285,000 per mile you are looking at $95,000 just to run power to their home and all adjacent homes.

Recently looked into this. New rural developments have to paid to get power lines run to the corner of their property (in western states, anyway). If your immediate neighbor has power (which they paid to run) this will cost the resident tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the distance. If you don't have an immediate neighbor with power, you're SOL.

Then add in water + sewage, at $25.18 per foot, lets say to all the same houses getting power, that is an additional $86,619.

Rural areas are predominantly septic tanks and well water. Paid for by residents. The only utility most rural residents get is power.

You also probably want modern internet connectivity (cable, fiber) you are looking at another $10,000 per household.

Give me a break. This doesn't happen in rural areas. Hel, go 15 mins/miles outside a densely populated area and your internet/cable options drop below third world standards.

Assuming there is 5% maintenance per year for all this infrastructure, that is $16,230.95 a year.

Considering rural developments pay to have power run to them, this strikes me as a pretty good deal for power companies.

Meanwhile, there is a trade-off here. In densely populated areas you're looking at complex/dense in-ground sewer, gas and electrical lines that likely cost a magnitude more than the rural equivalent. Sure at a certain population density this becomes economical, but many urban areas don't meet this standard. Take SF for example.

For example, a residential well can be drilled for ~$15k in my area. A septic tank large enough for a home would be ~$10k. When the well runs dry or the septic is full it's the resident that pays.

oasisbob2• 7 years ago

go 5 mins outside a densely populated area and your internet/cable options drop below third world standards.

You mention Western states - which ones are you familiar with? In NW Washington, there are counties with functioning fiber co-ops. It's very possible to get fiber to your property in some areas, economically, with functioning latecomers agreements.

I can't say how common it is elsewhere, but you're painting with a VERY broad brush in describing the rural US internet experience.

zrobotics• 7 years ago

This is why my dad installed battery-backed solar in 2008. The power lines would have been 18k, whereas the solar system was 22k IIRC. Note that this quickly stops being a viable option for an actual farmer/rancher, it only provides enough power for a small hobby farm. Regardless, it's entirely feasible for the only utility to be wireless internet via RE, pripane/wood heat, well & septic. None of this is cheap though.

OH, and the reason the power lines were so expensive is his neighbor had paid 30k to run the line, which was within 1/4 mile of my dad's place. There was a period of maybe 10 years where any new customers connecting to the line would pay a portion, which would be refunded to the neighbor who originally paid.

bearjaws4• 7 years ago

So basically you can forego all modern infrastructure and not pay anything, who knew?

I explicitly brought up wells and septic as an example of having to source your own resources, why is it any different for electricity?

notatoad• 7 years ago

Sure at a certain population density this becomes economical, but many urban areas don't meet this standard

can you point me to any data behind this claim?

themodelplumber• 7 years ago

Living in the country side is supposed to be expensive

I don't quite understand this...I have always been able to live in the country for cheap. Doesn't matter if I'm moving to a small town in Wyoming or literally being an Oregon Trail traveler. It takes very little to subsist, especially when the efforts are distributed across a family or small village.

ghouse4• 7 years ago

If as a society we stop thinking about electricity reliability as a binary issue, we'd save a lot of money. We can achieve 99.999% availability with extraordinary safety in fire-risk areas, but it's very expensive. Would some consumers accept 50% off if if they had (only) 99% reliability?

As a regulated (natural) monopoly, price is supposed to be determined by the cost. Fixed-costs are a factor of geography (including density), reliability, and safety. While marginal costs are driven primarily by when the electricity is used. Electricity use coincident with system peak is very expensive, driving marginal generation, transmission, and distribution capex. While marginal costs of electricity use coincident with system trough is very inexpensive, and perhaps negative.

zdragnar4• 7 years ago

Depending on where you live, power outages can be fatal in extreme cold or heat, especially to the elderly.

I abaolutely am comfortable with my current electrical bill if it means not risking an outage when the temperature is -40 or over 100 degrees F outside. In fact, I may install a backup power generator for the home anyway, but the cost of it running is not trivial and I would be happier never needing it.

ip265• 7 years ago

You might like this:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/12/keeping-some-of-th...

tomohawk3• 7 years ago

I am all for farmers cutting off food supply to urban areas.

Living in urban areas where there is no place to grow food - food should be in short supply there.

And while we're at it, oil rich parts of the country need to stop supplying parts of the country where oil is scarce. Do you know expensive and unsafe it is to transport fuel?

We're all in this together, and different areas have different strengths.

evgen• 7 years ago

Sounds great, and all of the urban areas can import their food from places where it is cheaper to grow and where they do not need to pay subsidies to farmers in the form of price floors and subsidies not to grow. You could empty rural America and let it go back to prairie and the cities would do just fine.

bsder2• 7 years ago

I am all for farmers cutting off food supply to urban areas.

You might want to rethink this. The cities wouldn't even notice.

Most cities have quite useful ports and can get food from elsewhere.

Said farmers would now have no domestic market and have pissed off their gateways to the non-domestic market.

In addition, the cities have very little love for the current crop of "farmers" as mostly they are servants of the big agribusinesses.

joshe• 7 years ago

Also solar + battery is (very roughly) only double the rate cost right now, so you aren't really stranding people. I've been to farms with solar + battery only and it's totally fine.

Back in the 1936 (rural electrification act) it was electric line or nothing, you were upgrading from candlelight.

And it's $20,000 for a solar + battery system versus rate payers subsidizing (using your numbers) $95,000 for an electric line. It seems a bit weird.

bparsons• 7 years ago

It isn't just rural areas. Even suburbs relatively close to the city are completely unsustainable from a municipal services point of view.

This article lays out a convincing case as to why most of America's cities are financially doomed because of them.

https://grist.org/sprawl/2011-06-22-the-american-suburbs-are...

oftenwrong• 7 years ago

Basically the point made here:

https://granolashotgun.com/2016/08/31/a-thousand-hidden-subs...

https://granolashotgun.com/2016/09/01/them-thats-got-shall-h...

Justin_K• 7 years ago

Most water comes from rural America and is pumped into the city. With your logic, rural folks should be allowed to cut off the city when they see fit.

sjg007• 7 years ago

$500,000 a mile seems excessive regardless... but fyi urban roads cost more to pave than rural roads.

1024core• 7 years ago

AKA collective punishment for the people.

torpfactory3• 7 years ago

I think this presents an interesting case for permanent "grid defection" in rural areas.

The theory goes that as solar panels and battery prices drop, it will eventually make sense for homeowners to produce their own power, and "defect" from the electrical grid completely. Obviously this isn't a perfect solution: for example, the homeowner is now solely responsible for fixing their own power supply issues, instead of the collective "insurance" the grid operator provides by fixing grid issues for customers.

I think that rural customers in wildfire prone areas provide one of the best use cases for grid defection. The power company can save money in two ways: by not having to maintain relatively long power lines which serve few customers and by reducing their exposure to liability for wildfire damages. It might even be in the utilities interest to subsidize rural customers defection, to focus on more urban customers. Grid defection relies on low-cost solar and batter technology, and I think we will have both in the next decade. This is something that was not even possible in years past: extending the grid to rural areas was a great example of government sponsored economic equity that market forces alone may not have provided.

Two things that would help aid the transition: (1) Holding grid operators liable for wildfire risk (or at least part of it) and (2) forcing rural customers to pay a greater price for their power, reflective of the greater cost to provide it. I know (2) won't be popular but I think it does align some economic incentives correctly. I would also advocate implementing price increases only when solar+battery is very close to grid parity, so customers actually have a reasonable choice.

magnetic2• 7 years ago

The theory goes that as solar panels and battery prices drop, it will eventually make sense for homeowners to produce their own power, and "defect" from the electrical grid completely.

I think it already makes sense in California (given the amount of sun we get).

A Tesla solar install of 8 kW solar production + 2 PowerWalls (27 kWh capacity) has a loan payment of $188/month, which is probably lower than what your cost would be from the utility company for an equivalent "level of service".

The only tricky part is to figure out the answers to "what size panels + storage do I need so that, given elements (weather mostly), the probability of my storage being depleted any point during the day is less than X%".

Solar companies probably already know the answer to this given the data they already have, but the other part of the equation is changes to the owner's consumption (buying an EV? new child on the way? changing your range/dryer/heaters from gas to electric? etc)

That's the real pain point (it can be mitigated with a generator, but that gets complicated), which leads to a certain amount of oversizing, and as a consequence, waste (since you can't feed it back to the grid).

Also the occasional failure in your own infrastructure could lead to blackouts that could be more frequent than if you were tied to the grid (Mean Time To Repair is higher with your own infrastructure for obvious reasons), although I have to admit that the grid hasn't been very good in that respect. A solar system is generally maintenance free, but failures do happen.

Still, I think it's worth it (that's why I took the plunge a few years ago).

Taek2• 7 years ago

You can do a lot cheaper than a PowerWall. But you can also depend heavily on propane if you are off grid. You can get propane based central heating, propane stove tops, propane refrigerators, propane freezers.

Going to propane also helps with the overbuilding, because that's more or less pay-as-you-go instead of having to build a finite supply all at once.

torpfactory3• 7 years ago

It will almost certainly be necessary to significantly overprovision both panels and batteries in order to avoid running out of power or needing to add more later. Hopefully the cost decreases will reduce the financial headache of this... time will tell.

I think there is an unrealized business model out there where a company builds, installs, and then maintains (incl. emergency fixes) solar+battery installs for a monthly fee, just like what you pay to the electric utility today. Such a business would hopefully achieve some cost savings by buying parts in bulk and be able to quickly fix issues by using similar system designs. It would be a bit like the electric utility, but they wouldn't own any grid or power plants.

tomohawk3• 7 years ago

What's the term of the load in your calculation?

A PowerWall has a 10 year lifespan, where they guarantee that batteries will have 70% capacity or better during that time. I take this to mean you'll need to size for a 30% capacity drop, and plan for battery replacement in 10 years.

Does your loan factor in installation costs, which can be significant?

Since the goal is to reduce the chance of fire, what would the probability of starting a fire be with thousands of powerwalls installed all over the place be in comparison?

froindt• 7 years ago

The tricky thing with paying for grid defections would be holdouts. If a group of 8 neighbors take a payout to leave, but #9 doesn't, suddenly the utility lost most of its revenue but maintains most of the same infrastructure.

And the holdout might need really reliable electricity for medical devices or similar.

I wonder what "fair" mechanism could be employed to handle things optimally?

torpfactory3• 7 years ago

I feel like there should be a business model where the customer pays a monthly fee for service but the service is "install and maintain solar + battery". As long as it is a similar price to grid connection, basically just force all users who would be defecting onto the new business model. I think customers would protest a lot less in that circumstance.

As for medical devices and whatnot: the grid is already not 100% reliable. The replacement would need to be of comparable reliability, but I don't think the threshold is 100% reliable. If you've got medical devices critical to your continued existence, you need more redundancy than either the grid or solar+battery.

I don't see is a particularly fair model for stuff like this. Just a bunch of bad or worse options. Honestly I think once cost parity is achieved, a lot of these questions will evaporate.

ip265• 7 years ago

There is plenty of precedent- see urban piped natural gas vs rural trucked propane.

ghouse4• 7 years ago

To serve customers in high-risk areas safely, it's much more expensive than to serve customers in low-risk areas. Insulated overhead conductors or buried circuits are expensive. Yet the current regulatory paradigm requires that the customers in both regions pay the same amount for electricity.

brilee• 7 years ago

So if the utility is on the line for wildfire costs regardless, then here's a thought: maybe they'll do the economically rational thing and "accidentally" trigger smaller fires every so often.

gcb02• 7 years ago

For people thinking like robots on this, and not seeing the social impacts, i suggest reading city of quartz. Or if you don't like to read books, watch Chinatown.

Both will show you how the Water & Power's corrupt officials used aqueducts being artificially shut down, and then magically repaired at their convenient timing, to control price of land for their personal riches.

Also, that cost is paid by city, yes, because this initial work is what enable news cities to eventually came into existence, offloading the first city superpopulation problems. It is not done out of altruism, like limited mind people like to boast when defending such short sighted measures.

freehunter• 7 years ago

Before we talk about the social impacts of shutting off electrical service, maybe we should talk about the social impacts of two million acres of forest fires, over a hundred dead, and tens of thousands of people evacuated from their homes?

gcb02• 7 years ago

That's a very forced comparison. If you took that seriously yourself, you had to weight having a driver's license against the thousands of people run over by cars each year, because by your logic consequences of a bad case are inherent to all the cases!

The social impact is about the cost of doing it properly or not. Not doing it in a way that causes fires, that is something else.

WalterBright2• 7 years ago

If an area is ready to burn, it's going to burn sooner or later from one thing or another. Going after the power company seems like the wrong solution?

nraynaud• 7 years ago

does anyone has a long technical read on the issue? how the fires start, why cutting the trees next to the line is not enough, etc.?

giorgioz• 7 years ago

I was suggesting to invest in solar panels but then I remembered that actually 99% of solar panels setups still require the grid to work in order to work :(

jdsully• 7 years ago

This seems to be more like a negotiating position. With the liability laws the way they are I don't see any way for private power delivery to be economical. When the costs of a single fire are in the billions only a government can insure that sort of risk.

jrs95• 7 years ago

All I've learned from this thread is that a good portion of HN hates rural America. Apparently the privilege that comes from being well educated and working in tech isn't worth "checking" although I'm sure a lot of you would love to complain about how straight and white they are too. Who cares if a lot of them are poor, just cut off their power.

dfeojm-zlib• 7 years ago

I am currently in a mostly burned-out, warzone-looking Paradise (nearly all other houses around burned, and many tall trees have been resource-exploited removed without recompensing property owners) when PG&E cut the power at 9 pm last night and only restored it around 3 pm today. It seems like safety virtue-signaling because ground foilage is still green, humidity isn't low, wind isn't high and the temperature will be hotter in the next few days. If anything, it will happen again.

As an aside, all hardware stores in Chico were out of generators; we had to go to Red Bluff to pick one up. Should've done it sooner, proactively but I'm having to care for a disabled family member.

California utility to cut power to 27k customers to reduce wildfire risk

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