PG&E Says It Could Impose Blackouts in California for a Decade

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-ceo-says-it-could-impose-blackouts-in-california-for-a-decade-11571438206?mod=rsswn

by spking • 7 years ago

54 78 7 years ago

wsj.com

CameronNemo4• 7 years ago

Hit the paywall.

meritt• 7 years ago

http://archive.is/ra9UL

CameronNemo4• 7 years ago

DNS

jitl• 7 years ago

It should be nationalized so they can fix the problem instead of optimizing for bankruptcy liability or whatever.

TaylorAlexander2• 7 years ago

Or perhaps a customer owned cooperative.

rosybox• 7 years ago

Sacramento has that, it's called SMUD. I don't know if it's any better. Are they keeping their lines and equipment free of tree branches? Are they having power outages? Are they blowing up neighborhoods?

vnchr• 7 years ago

On behalf of the rest of the nation, no thank you.

What are options for Californians to communicate concerns to state and local legislators?

CameronNemo4• 7 years ago

The Public Utilities Commission is most directly responsible for these matters. Just need to trace an elected official to there.

aerostable_slug2• 7 years ago

The primary regulator is the California Public Utilities Commission, whose leadership consists of five governor-appointed commissioners.

https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/Contactus/

https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/

bhl• 7 years ago

Not sure how nationalization would help. PG&E has a state monopoly right? What if we went in the opposite direction and allowed smaller companies in to start competing, like what we have with ISPs?

AnimalMuppet• 7 years ago

Most ISPs aren't able to start wildfires.

What you'd get is a bunch of small companies competing. And, human nature being what it is, at least some of them would scrimp on maintenance and tree trimming, and hope that they'd continue to be lucky. And some of those wouldn't be lucky, and you'd still get fires.

The difference would be that when Billy Bob's Power Company set off a multi-billion-dollar fire, it would just fold. Sally Sue's Power Company would buy up their assets (but not their liabilities) for pennies on the dollar, and you'd be left hoping that Sally Sue did better at maintenance than Billy Bob.

rubyn00bie• 7 years ago

You can vote out elected officials, it forces transparency, and also has the bonus of a government multiplier[1], you can't do that with the C-levels of PG&E and a private company.

Additionally, and I think this is non-debatable in the USA (though I'm up for debate, and to be wrong), C-levels have their primary and sole obligation to shareholders. When push comes to shove, and tough decisions need to be made, in the USA it is always in the interest of shareholders unless mandated by the government. Sometimes better businesses push for that mandate, so they can remain competitive and not be flaming piles of shit unable to compete... [2].

PG&E executives, right now, can use this (shareholder returns) as disguise for moral ineptitude in their social circles allowing them to escape ridicule as monsters.

No amount of competition will fix these problems and incentivize the correct behaviour for a _utility_ as long as they're obligated to return dividends before moral decency.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_multiplier#United_State...

[2] This is also a vector for abuse by monopolies and oligopolies; where, they lobby for regulation which creates a barrier to entry (in the market) insurmountable to new organizations and institutions.

millstone4• 7 years ago

There's already growing competition in power generation. But power transmission is a natural monopoly, and that (the power lines) is what causes fire risk.

The fact is that many Californians are served by an under-maintained aging grid, nominally maintained by a public-private utility with regulated pricing. PG&E is thrashing because they can't raise rates and they can't cut off customers and they don't have a maintenance time machine, so they are made a whipping boy for not solving the impossible.

At least this is focusing our attention on our electrical grid issues. There's major fire risk, but solar demands modernization as well. Let's hope this crisis does not go to waste.

dragonwriter3• 7 years ago

What if we went in the opposite direction and allowed smaller companies in to start competing, like what we have with ISPs?

So, multiple competing electric distribution systems with the total fire danger being worse than that of the worst maintained? That would be...very, very bad, strictly worse than the status quo.

If you mean basically competing retail providers using PG&E’s distribution infrastructure, then that doesn't change anything relevant from the status quo.

Make it a public service run by the California Resources Agency, answering to the same cabinet secretary as CalFire does, then you've got both the Agency Secretary and the Governor who have a pretty strong incentive to ensure that: (1) deferred maintenance doesn't cause massive fires, and (2) deferred maintenance doesn't require blackouts to prevent causing massive fires.

Pinckney• 7 years ago

Do you think taxpayers ought to be on the hook when a state-run electric company burns down a town, or should California invoke sovereign immunity when that happens?

oldgradstudent2• 7 years ago

They're on the hook anyway. Be it with rate increases or with discharging of debts in bankruptcy.

At least elected officials can be replaced.

Aloha8• 7 years ago

They of course would be, if they were held to the same standard as PG&E.

gigatexal• 7 years ago

What government run entities are well managed? The federal government runs a deficit every year. State schools are always screaming for more funding and yet US children lag behind the world in math. The same incentives that exist while private will exist if public: avoid punishment and avoid losing your job at all costs because it’s just a simple infrastructure company with a monopoly to be a utility.

thrwn_frthr_awy• 7 years ago

What government run entities are well managed?

The National Park Service.

The federal government runs a deficit every year.

There are many reasons for that, but it doesn't matter in deciding who should control California's power system.

State schools are always screaming for more funding and yet US children lag behind the world in math.

Change "and yet" to "because" and I'm right there with you.

The same incentives that exist while private will exist if public: avoid punishment and avoid losing your job at all costs because it’s just a simple infrastructure company with a monopoly to be a utility.

A publicly traded company is legal bound to motives ulterior to what is best for the people of California.

pbreit• 7 years ago

I never quite understood what the purpose of the blacking out was?

Baeocystin2• 7 years ago

Reduction of legal liability in case of fire.

nickodell• 7 years ago

Or, less cynically, reduction of the number of fires.

millstone4• 7 years ago

It was to soften up Californians in preparation for a legislative push towards insulating PG&E from liability.

anonu• 7 years ago

So you blame a private company for sparking a wildfire which isn't really under their control. What do you expect them to do?

ajross2• 7 years ago

PG&E equipment is believed to have started multiple fires, including the Camp fire. I don't understand your usage of "under their control".

adrianmonk• 7 years ago

They were the proximate cause but not the ultimate cause. When the state is that dry, something is going to start a fire sooner or later, and when it does, it's going to be bad.

They are basically being penalized for being the straw that broke the camel's back.

Probably better maintenance would have helped some, but it's not like they bear all the blame for the destruction caused by the fire.

closeparen• 7 years ago

In the same way WWI was not really under the control of Franz Ferdinand’s assassin.

shkkmo• 7 years ago

Given that a great deal of the risk is directly cause by maintenance that PG&E has chosen to defer for years... how is it not under their control?

I can accept that perhaps some other parties should share some of the liability, but it seems completely unsupportable to claim that PG&E has no control over these risks and should be absolved of all responsibility.

14• 7 years ago

People expect them to properly take care of the lines and surrounding area which means spend money at the problem but hard to do if you are maximising profit over safety.

smsm42• 7 years ago

Cleaning up accumulated kindling and fixing up their infrastructure is actually under their control. It's just they never gave priority to it. It's a pattern of behavior for them: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-E-diverted-safety-...

And why not? If they get hit with a lawsuit, they can just jack up the rates or if citizens get too noisy, just shut them off for a week or two and show them who's the boss here. It's not like the customers can go elsewhere, and they are guaranteed 10% return on the money by the state by ROE rate arrangements, whatever happens. How many other "private" companies do you know that are guaranteed to make money no matter what?

twblalock• 7 years ago

I expect PG&E to find a way to deliver power without causing fires.

We shouldn't have to choose between having blackouts or having wildfires. I can't think of any other first-world country where that happens.

ecf• 7 years ago

They could just put the lines underground and be done with it.

Aloha8• 7 years ago

And your electric rates would reflect the multi billion dollar investment to do that.

plorkyeran2• 7 years ago

Well, they could start with actually trying to avoid starting fires rather than just not bothering with routine fire prevention tasks. They are not remotely close to a company that did everything they could to avoid starting any fires but did anyway because it was unavoidable.

greesil• 7 years ago

There's a drinking joke in here somewhere.

My question is if it's cheaper to fire-proof everyone's house, or to have everyone go and buy solar for their properties, or to just accept some people and properties are going to burn in a fiery inferno from time to time.

A quick Google shows that there were $7B in insurance claims for the Camp Fire. At $15K per install of solar, that's ~500k homes. Apparently fire-proofing a house has similar costs. There are something like 7M homes in California. Many of those are in urban areas, so let's say there are 2M in fire-prone areas.

It actually seems worthwhile to just pay for the upgrades.

CameronNemo4• 7 years ago

We can take lessons from flood insurance. Efforts to subsidize can distort incentives such that homes are rebuilt in flood zones.

I really hope PG&E can cut down the time needed for these outages.

economics93• 7 years ago

We can take lessons from physics: economics are nothing more than the ideology of politically advantaged humans.

We’re under no political obligation to keep enabling the private control of our collectively built and maintained communities.

When do the hand outs to these screw ups stop?

onetimemanytime3• 7 years ago

do not build in the middle of the forest. simple, really. Well, not that simple since people spent their lifetime savings buying the land and building but nothing else works. You probably need 500-1000 yards cleared forest to avoid the fire (embers in the roof and all) and even then all the infrastructure will be melted.

PG&E is trying to hold the state hostage. Want us to pay for fires? Fine, we'll cut power to danger zones that weren't economically viable anyway.

nostrademons• 7 years ago

It's 100 feet as long as you adopt smart building practices for the roof (use tile, composition, or metal instead of wood shingles; cover all vents with mesh; clear gutters and other accumulations of dead plant matter). Tile roofs do not generally catch fire from embers.

https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-re...

sunstone• 7 years ago

A well planned, high volume external sprinkler system will go a long way.

moneytide1• 7 years ago

You make a good point - deploying local generation on a per house basis (via renewables) would decentralize utility operations and remove the need for the remotely located transmission and pipeline infrastructure that could potentially ignite dry surroundings.

Even maintenance divisions that routinely trim trees and foliage growing up on high voltage lines must cover lots of ground because everything is so scattered (they sometimes even use helicopters wielding huge saws). Preventative measures like this consume labor and profit margins, and apparently aren't always sufficient (Camp Fire).

A neighborhood in a dry area equipped with its own energy storage and generation assets would likely never be completely vacant - at least one resident would always be present to sound the alarm in the event of a Powerwall or solar short prompted fire. Even so, smoke detectors are probably connected on the web or allocated emergency frequencies? Fire hydrants are legally required to be near homes. Fire stations shouldn't be far.

A decentralized grid fire outbreak wouldn't be up a dirt road in the mountains - paved road access to a neighborhood would diminish response time relative to what it would require to scramble expensive firefighting aircraft.

A residential transformer is bringing it down from nearly 14 kV...

9HZZRfNlpR• 7 years ago

Solar is not fireproof either, batteries do catch fire and you can protect yourself from it, but bad things happen nevertheless.

gardnerbickford• 7 years ago

The redox flow batteries exhibit promising attributes for grid storage applications. These types of batteries don't suffer from thermal runaway in the same way lithium-ion do. Check out what RedFlow and ESS are doing in the market.

sfblah• 7 years ago

California has real livability problems even for wealthy tech workers. The traffic has become unbearable thanks to Waze routing everyone all over surface streets, mass transit changes of any kind reliably take 10 years minimum to implement. Heck even closing Market St to cars is going to take more than 5 years for some reason. This is just icing on the cake. It’s really time to think seriously about moving.

bksenior• 7 years ago

Who are you talking to?

rhacker• 7 years ago

Not them, but everyone in CA, as stated in their post??

Aloha8• 7 years ago

This is the result of trying to hold the power company in total responsibility for every fire for which it was the proximate cause.

While PG&E has been somewhat deficient in maintaining their network they have 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.

dragonwriter3• 7 years ago

This is the result of trying to hold the power company in total responsibility for every fire for which it was the proximate cause.

Yes, otherwise they'd just keep burning down the state because of their preference for extracting profits over safety maintenance like they did the last two years, instead of blackouts to prevent fires. But, bad as the blackouts are, the food are worse, so insofar as the blackouts result from PG&E coming to grips with the liability impacts of causing fires, they are a good thing.

A better thing would have been PG&E not underfunding maintenance for several years, but that would have meant less dividends for shareholders.

Aloha8• 7 years ago

The state PUC is ultimately responsible for regulating PG&E, if the maintenance was negligent why was PG&E not held to account before this happened?

sliken• 7 years ago

Well run power distribution do not start fires.

There are standards for how close tree limbs can be to a power line. PG&E asked for money to meet those standards. PG&E accepted that money. Then PG&E didn't meet those standards.

Sure acts of god, environmental changes, and other unusual issues start fires. However California has been hot and dry periodically and the existing standards provide good protection... it's just that PG&E is not meeting them.

Aloha8• 7 years ago

I don't actually agree - sudden equipment failures, protection failures, winds blowing a tree over onto a 10kv feeder, etc.

Well run power systems start few fires, but its not zero fires.

neonate• 7 years ago

http://archive.is/cTjU7

simonblack• 7 years ago

Why does the word "ENRON" keep flashing on and off in my head?

Fake energy shortages was why Enron was able to charge exorbitant prices for electricity. You'd think that Americans would have that seared into their brains.

millstone4• 7 years ago

The Enron rolling blackouts were manufactured arbitrage bookkeeping nonsense, but there was nothing fake about the Camp Fire smoke that covered the Bay Area. It was horrifying.

PG&E Says It Could Impose Blackouts in California for a Decade

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