It will be interesting watching how all this plays out. As others have noted the liability math has certainly changed. Enough to bankrupt one of the largest utility companies in the country.
One the other hand this is also a political statement. They are clearly signaling to the politicians that they better shield them from further liability or expect more of this behavior. Shut the power down when the wind blows, after each earthquake until the lines can be checked, etc. My money is the politicians fold. The stock rose 3% Friday.
My money is they get taken over by the state. Privatizing a utility was always a stupid move to begin with and they are finally proving it beyond any reasonable doubt. It's time we get to fixing all the damage Regan did to this country.
A number of their operations are being taken over by local public utilities in the current bankruptcy.
> Privatizing a utility was always a stupid move to begin with
PG&E isn't the result of privatizing a public utility, it's always been private.
> It's time we get to fixing all the damage Regan did to this country
If you mean Ronald Reagan, PG&E (or it's predecessors before various mergers and name changes) has been a private energy company since before he was born, so while there is lots you can blame him for, PG&E existing as a private energy firm isn't among them.
Some forms of generation; the ones that aren't tied to specific geographic circumstances or LARGE heavily regulated super-industrial sites (that I personally recommend are secured by the military due to high energy densities).
> Maybe this just a California being California issue again.
California is a high fire risk state regardless of whether the utility is publicly owned or investor (aka privately) owned. The risk is on a level that doesn't occur in many other states.
If the costs of fires are going to be socialized anyways (by immunizing utility from the liability, hence putting the burden on the ratepayers), the question of whether the utility should be publicly owned in order to reduce the obligation to shareholders is a valid one.
Either that or PGE will have to dramatically increase it's expenditures on maintenance to reduce the fire risk, which will have to come from shareholders' and ratepayers' pockets (the latter of which is not permitted under current PUC rules, IIUC).
Your "[...]" skips over the option where they have smaller immediate profits in exchange for securing the future of the company. Is that a bad option for some reason?
A company selling shares to raise capital is an alternative to other methods of raising capital, like taking out a loan. Asking why they don't just make smaller profits is like asking why they don't just pay a lower interest rate on their loans. It presumes that someone exists who is willing to lend them the money at the lower rate of return.
Companies have the option of shutting down operations and selling off their assets. PG&E presumably has a fleet of trucks and equipment, land rights etc., which were paid for with investors' money. If their profits fall below the level that could be achieved by selling off those assets and then investing the money at the market rate of return, it becomes profitable for raiders to come in and buy the company and do that with it, so the company has to stay more profitable than that in order to prevent that from happening.
> A company selling shares to raise capital is an alternative to other methods of raising capital, like taking out a loan.
Not selling shares. Having smaller dividends. That doesn't assume anyone is willing to loan them money.
> If their profits fall below the level that could be achieved by selling off those assets and then investing the money at the market rate of return, it becomes profitable for raiders to come in and buy the company and do that with it, so the company has to stay more profitable than that in order to prevent that from happening.
Ugh. I'm not sure via what mechanism, exactly, but it should not be possible for a monopoly power company to just dissolve and sell off the trucks for a tiny quick profit.
> Not selling shares. Having smaller dividends. That doesn't assume anyone is willing to loan them money.
They already sold the shares and used the money to buy trucks and stuff. The dividends are effectively the interest on that money.
Suppose (made up numbers) that they have ten billion dollars in assets, but a twelve billion dollar market cap because of the expectation that those assets will be used to make future profits. Now you say "just make smaller profits" which means their market cap falls to eight billion dollars because of the expectation of smaller dividends.
Someone on Wall St then notices that they can make two billion dollars by buying them for eight billion and selling their assets for ten.
> I'm not sure via what mechanism, exactly, but it should not be possible for a monopoly power company to just dissolve and sell off the trucks for a tiny quick profit.
The government always has the option to be the buyer itself, or find one that wants to continue operating as a power company. But then it either has to raise its own capital or bring about a regulatory environment that allows a private company to meet the market rate of return and thereby raise a sufficient amount of private capital.
For a utility, "keep being a utility" needs to be above "larger profits" on the list of core objectives, and shareholders need to accept that before buying in.
Whether that's just by writing it down, or having 30 billion in penalties if they stop delivering power, or by making dividends vest over 20 years...
Yes. The State should confiscate their assets and sell them to somebody willing to meet the obligations of a Public Utility. Lots of companies do, and make tidy, predictable profits.
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).
But we live in a free market of ideas. No reason to have one state operate it’s utilities like every other, except to satisfy social memes.
We’ve done the privatize it all experiment even given evidence that services like Medicare can be run pretty cheaply, and, well, Kansas and Oklahoma.
I’d be curious to see if California could save rate payers money. My guess is the conventional finance wisdom about big government spending is more like fear mongering to protect special interests.
Given how California’s HSR project recently exploded due to run away costs, calling the concern about the state take over more things “fear mongering” is pretty dense.
CAHSR died the death of a thousand paper cuts (e.g. SF and south bay routing, grade separation, signalling, trump). All of that created an untenable situation.
The closest equivalent with municipal power is the gobs of money PG&E has spent trying to kill local and statewide public power legislation.
It exists, and they’re building, but it’s only linking the powerhouse cities of Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield. So I’m sure it’ll be packed 7 days per week.
Routing, grade separation, and signaling are things any train system must deal with. The lesson from CAHSR is that the California government was too incompetent to be able to handle something that many governments around the world handle just fine.
As to Trump—CAHSR had already failed by the time Trump took office. He simply demanded the federal government’s money back.
The lesson from CAHSR is that the California government was too incompetent to be able to handle something that many governments around the world handle just fine.
How do you get incompetence from being sued at every turn by people trying to micromanage the CAHSR project? The trump approach of ruling by fiat doesn't work in the real world.
And within this article alone, you find specific references about how CAHSR failed to comply with the conditions of the funding:
'Ronald Batory, (the Obama Administration's) chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, the transportation agency that made the grants in 2009 and 2010, laid out a lengthy legal argument Tuesday for why the state was out of compliance with the grant agreement. Batory said in a three-page letter to California High-Speed Rail Authority Chief Executive Brian Kelly that the state “has materially failed to comply with the terms of the agreement and has failed to make reasonable progress on the project.”
Batory alleged that the state had failed to spend required matching funds, falling short by $100 million as of December. He argued that it will fail to complete the Central Valley construction by a 2022 deadline required by the grant. Batory also said the state has not submitted required financial information — such as reports on what has been delivered to date — that would allow federal regulators to oversee the grants. It also has failed to take corrective actions after regulators raised concerns in 2017 and 2018.'
Trump didn’t derail the project as originally envisioned. He tried to kill it after the governor declared that the project that had originally been pitched to the federal government had become infeasable.
Trump didn’t derail the project as originally envisioned. He tried to kill it after the governor declared that the project that had originally been pitched to the federal government had become infeasable.
So what you're saying is that trump is trying to kill CAHSR? Got it.
No. CAHSR is probably dying but due to CA's own lies and ineptitude.
All the Trump administration did is say, "you were promised funding conditional on it being spent on X, Y, and Z. Instead, CA spent that money on the infrastructure equivalent of hookers and blow[0]. Therefore, we are simply cancelling the funding per the agreement and the law because essentially none went to X, Y, or Z."
CAHSR is free to proceed (as far as the Administration is concerned) however they want with their own funds and the promised investor funds. In other words, pay for your own hookers and blow.
[0] 'In one especially egregious case, in 2017, the CHSRA hired an external consultant to check the work of Parsons Brinckerhoff (now WSP USA), which had been paid $666 million for engineering consulting. The external consultant found that the CHSRA had not received finished work for 145 of 184 tasks that Parsons Brinckerhoff had called “complete.”'
In one scenario, CA keeps legislating more and more liabilities to PG&E until it goes bankrupt, in which case the state could take it over, but would also be saddled with those same liabilities.
Alternatively, they step back the liabilities and try to negotiate a deal with PG&E to take over, which would essentially be a buyout. However, what would the incentive be to sell a profitable company with a natural monopoly in one of the nation's largest power markets? I'd imagine the investors would price it so high that the deal would quickly become unattractive to the state.
If they went the expropriation route, that would be a hell of a court case to watch.
Use the threat of liabilities to get a sweetheart price from the hedge fund owners whos hands are tied. Offer bondolders a good deal, and refinance using state bonds to handle the liabilities.
Private companies electrified ... specific high-profit regions of the United States. They were profoundly indifferent to most rural regions, leading to the Rural Electrification Act (1936).
Thomas Edison's first power plant, the Pearl Street Power Station (1882) powered just 82 customers initially, largely commercial and industrial users.
Large-scale electrification within the US was developed through public works including the Tenessee Valley Authority, Bonneville Power Administration, Hoover Dam, and numerous others. Four federal regional power administrations, the BPA, Southeastern, Southwestern, and Western Area Power Administrations, still exist.
Many rural regions are served by electric (and telephone) cooperatives:
Samuel Insull developed the public utility model and proved it to work by extending publicly regulated utilities into 30 states prior to the advent of the New Deal.
Insull was put out of business by New York bankers who wanted to take over his business.
FDR needed enemies to blame to get his New Deal, and he had Insull hounded in the courts. Insull was found not guilty of any wrongdoing, but died penniless.
If you want to know history, you have to find better sources than wikipedia. There are plenty of books about this great man and this interesting period of history.
Wikipedia isn't my source. It is, however, a reliable reference for well-established facts. Such as the identity and general background of government utilities.
This may be a naive question, but why aren't they being bankrupted (or hurt financially) for cutting off the power voluntarily? Their nominal job is to provide power, not doing so for reasons that aren't acts of god should open them to liability and/or (severe) penalties for violation of contract.
If the appropriate legal framework doesn't currently exist I can't imagine a 'The lights stay on' bill would be all that unpopular politically.
Like all service providers in every industry, you can probably get an SLA from them if you really want one. Otherwise you're stuck with Best Effort service. If that doesnt meet your expectations, you're free to shop around and pay for better service. Choice is good.
Do they have contracts saying they will provide power 100% of the time?
Is them shutting the power off different from a tree falling on the line cutting power off? What if power went out due to some equipment failing that they didn't perform proper maintenance on?
They are a Public Utility, granted a monopoly in exchange for providing reliable power distribution. If they can't do that, they have no reason to exist at all, certainly not as a monopoly.
Remember that CA impeached the governor Gray Davis in 2000 for power outages .. I bet that PG&e is thinking of doing the same thing today to Gavin Newsom!
Furthermore, he was not recalled for the power outages. His recall was bankrolled by those he was fighting having California pay the $80Bn embezzled with the aid of Enron and Dynegy.
Arnold Schwarzneggar stole the governership, and promptly made the state pay the $80Bn. Californians paid through the nose for going along with the recall.
If Gavin gets hit with a recall, it will be more of the same. Californians will be the poorer for it. There are a lot of billionaires here, but also widespread extreme poverty. No coincidence, that.
It is very cheap to run a recall campaign in California.
Historically, aren't most earthquake fatalities due to fires? Cutting off electricity and flushing all gas lines with an inert gas seems like a prudent thing to do after a significant earthquake. Particularly in an environment like California, where it is unlikely anybody will freeze to death (keep the drinking water flowing though.)
> They are clearly signaling to the politicians that they better shield them from further liability or expect more of this behavior.
It's not exactly hard to fight back against that.
Make fires cost them enormous sums of money, and make outages also cost them enormous sums of money. Give them extremely clear monetary incentives to improve as many lines as possible and make shutdowns as small as possible.
If spending the money on infrastructure without a rate increase bankrupts them, keeping the lights on without spending the money bankrupts them and turning the lights off bankrupts them then the result is always that they go bankrupt.
It's not possible to get around "totally reliable, totally safe, inexpensive; pick two" by passing a law mandating all three.
Keeping the lights on didn't bankrupt them. Paying billion-dollar dividends while neglecting maintenance bankrupted them.
There are plenty of utility companies who manage to make a profit, deliver reliable service, and not start wildfires. If PGE can't, others would be happy to step up.
Is there no desire to take the path that bankrupts them the least?
> It's not possible to get around "totally reliable, totally safe, inexpensive; pick two" by passing a law mandating all three.
Oh I'm not asking for that at all. They used to be pretty reliable, pretty safe, kind of expensive. After neglecting lines they got to pretty reliable, not very safe, kind of expensive. With the shutdowns they shift to not very reliable, pretty safe, kind of expensive. They need to go back to where they started.
> Is there no desire to take the path that bankrupts them the least?
They would presumably take whichever option bankrupts them the slowest, but if all the roads lead to the same destination, eventually you end up there.
> They used to be pretty reliable, pretty safe, kind of expensive. After neglecting lines they got to pretty reliable, not very safe, kind of expensive. With the shutdowns they shift to not very reliable, pretty safe, kind of expensive. They need to go back to where they started.
I don't think that's even really what happened. It's not as if the occasional power line never caught fire thirty years ago.
The reason the Camp Fire was so destructive has more to do with climate change than PG&E maintenance. It could as easily have been a cigarette or a lightning strike and it would have been the same result.
But that's likely to continue to be the case. Fires in California are going to be more severe than they used to be.
Which may justify them being more conservative or spending more on maintenance than they ever did historically. But that isn't going to be free.
For residential customers that can afford it - battery backed solar installs will be on the rise.
For industry, they will likely install their own generators, either diesel or natural gas. Which raises environmental concerns - it's no good having clean hydro or wind power, if you can't get it to where it's needed.
Judge William Alsup (remember him?) who is overseeing the PG&E case in San Francisco said about shutoffs;
“The prudent thing to do when you’re uncertain is to turn the power off,” he said. “When the public complains that everything in the refrigerator is bad and the ice cream melted, then you could blame the judge. I’m willing to take the heat.”
Alsup is my favorite jurist. He's 74; may he preside forever.
The above quote benefits from a little more context. Alsup's point is that PG&E paid dividends while slashing the maintenance budget — and as a judge, he's willing to step in and say "that's not right".
But his point here is that if we’re willing to assign liability to PG&E for damages from a brushfire sparked tomorrow... if in your mind PG&E is truly responsible for any resulting death or destruction if a tree falls on their transmission lines during a time of critical fire risk and sparks a blaze.... then it is not only prudent, but it would be morally and economically imperative to shut down the lines during those critical risk periods.
There are several competing theories of liability and responsibility. Under strict liability, a fire happens, the root cause was an electrical spark, the utility is liable. You can’t operate a grid across all of California during 55mph winds at the end of the hot dry summer under those terms, and not go bankrupt.
From PG&E;
“California is one of the only states in the country in which courts have applied inverse condemnation to events caused by utility equipment. This means that if a utility’s equipment is found to have been a substantial cause of the damage in an event such as a wildfire – even if the utility has followed established inspection and safety rules – the utility may still be liable for property damages and attorneys’ fees associated with that event.”
There are a lot of variables in how damaging a wildfire may be. What sparked the fire is only one small variable in the chain of events. Forest management, building zones encroaching on forested areas, presence of fire brakes, disaster preparedness and response, emergency alerts all play a significant role, and those are just the factors CA can directly control. The weather, the climate is another matter.
“But for the spark” is a reductionist way to lay the blame for a multi-billion dollar fire. CA wildfires will burn every single year. The sparks are inevitable. The amount of preventative maintenance that theoretically can be done amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars.
It doesn’t serve CA’s common interest for electricity to cost $1/kWh. Risk mitigation is a statistical analysis, not an absolute. At some point you’ve invested enough that the risk is “mitigated” even if it isn’t “eliminated” and we accept this type of risk mitigation everywhere in modern life, the electrical grid should be no different.
How many people die driving on CA’s highways every year? How many could be saved with $100 billion of safety improvements? Do you shut them down until you can be certain no one else will die due to a deficient design or, perhaps, due to a gore point impact attenuator that hasn’t been reset?
A cursory look at PG&E financials shows that on ~$17b in revenue they spend ~$5b on supply and ~$7b on maintenance. They had been running $1-$1.5b surpluses the last few years. I wonder looking at other utilities how those ratios would stack up.
Would $1b more maintenance have prevented the Camp Fire? Entirely impossible to say. We do know that the full maintenance list runs into the $10s if not $100s of billions.
While I think everyone agrees that PG&E has been somewhat negligent in maintaining its network - as someone who works with utilities, I agree with you - I think its absurd to try to bill all the costs of every fire to the utility that may have sparked it - it's exceedingly irrational to do so.
PG&E has 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.
Is this true though? PG&E has to seek approval on rate increases. From all reports it is expensive to bury power lines, and PG&E would need to raise a significant amount of money to bury even a small percentage of their lines.
(Fwiw this is just a gut feeling, I don't have actual numbers to back anything up)
It is theoretically possible to bury every transmission line through remote country brush, only as long as there’s anyone left in CA willing to pay to draw electricity from the grid by the time they’re done doing it.
Remember state-wide we’re talking about ~$5b of energy (generation cost) per year. How much do you want to pay to transmit that $5b of energy?
> I think its absurd to try to bill all the costs of every fire to the utility that may have sparked it ... PG&E has 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.
There are two reasons why you're wrong.
First, PG&E can't control the weather but did have control over its operations, e.g., how it maintained its equipment, how much it prepared for problems, how it managed risk. It may be tricky to determine if it's truly at fault, but it's equally tricky to determine that it's in the clear.
Second, a large utility is not like a private company. We cannot let a large utility fail, and therefore they are more like a government organization than a private company. When they mess up and hurt people, everyone needs to pitch in and help, not just those that are affected, as everyone shares the benefits and responsibilities of keeping them afloat.
> It may be tricky to determine if it's truly at fault, but it's equally tricky to determine that it's in the clear.
A literalist interpretation of this quote is 'when there is a fire, hold the utility responsible unless it can be proven otherwise'.
If that is to be the standard then a utility can't afford to run when there is a fire risk. Realistically that law is unenforceable due to being too expensive, but proving that in practice will involve a lot of pain for either shareholders or ratepayers.
Innocent unless proven otherwise is the usual standard for a good reason - it is a mistake to punish without substantial evidence that has been closely reviewed by a number of legal and technical experts.
> Second, a large utility is not like a private company. We cannot let a large utility fail
Figure out a way to let it fail. Maybe the lines are state owned but companies can partake in an auction for a 12-month exclusive right to maintain the line and charge people for using it. Too-big-to-fail is a problem that can be fixed.
> The law is strict liability, meaning it doesn't matter whether there was a good-faith effort to prevent the problem or not.
I'm not advocating strict liability here. I'm arguing that when a large company has a history of negligence that gave rise to similar incidents, the burden should shift to them to prove they were not the cause of the accident.
> a large utility is not like a private company. We cannot let a large utility fail, and therefore they are more like a government organization than a private company.
I see no way utilities provided by a for-profit company make sense. They are monopolies for services across entire swaths of the population. I can’t select which company I receive power from. In this model paying dividends to shareholders simply means that there was either some service/maintenance cut, or they set their rates too high for their customers.
At best, utilities should be government ran. Their “shareholders” should be those that foot the bill at the end of the day. At worst, at least make them nonprofit entities so that they’ll focus their efforts on bettering the product rather than doing what they can to improve shareholder dividends.
Funny, in my state I actually get junk mail and door to door solicitors about switching energy suppliers. They even tout their renewable percentages in their marketing. Markets work if you let them.
The accepted spelling is break btw. I was prompted to check though as this spelling if anything fits the usage at least as well as the 'proper' spelling.
"A firebreak is a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to slow or stop the progress of a bushfire"
One person floods a basement with gasoline. Another comes in and throws a lit match on the floor. Who’s responsible for the fire? It’s an interesting question.
At the same time, while it’s statisticslly likely that fires would happen with our without PG&E, we can’t escape the fact that they’ve been responsible for quite a few of them.
Paradise, California, was built very close to the wildlife-urban interface. And our federal forest management practices should be questioned. But, PG&E knew about the specific faulty equipment that ended up sparking the Camp fire.
Why didn’t they prioritize fixing equipment in a dry forest adjacent to a populated area? Why did they pay dividends if so much infrastructure was failing?
They’d have a much easier case to make if they could at least show an attempt to prioritize maintenance, especially in high risk areas. Then we could all say, “accidents happen.” But there’s a pattern with PG&E.
When people die on a highway because of human error, or an “act of god”, it’s one thing. Just as we should except that a massive utility will never have a 0% failure rate. But when a bridge collapses, and people knew the bridge was at risk of collapse, and dividends were paid instead of spending every available dollar on upgrades...
> Why didn’t they prioritize fixing equipment in a dry forest adjacent to a populated area?
They spend billions of dollars on maintenance each year, so obviously they prioritized fixing whatever all the equipment that they did actually fix that year.
PG&E knows about tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure which is past its useful life. Towers built in 1910s and 1920s which are so old it’s hard to even get up on them to patch them. Towers they don’t even know what year they were even built.
Rates are set in a political environment and those rates pay for supply, maintenance, clean energy enhancements, and dividends.
Why weren’t rates set higher? What percent of rate revenue was spent on shifts to renewables? Why not go after that spending as well as dividends? Dividends were 1/15th of the revenue, to put it in perspective.
As to your bridge analogy;
> The U.S. has been underfunding its highway system for years, resulting in a $836 billion backlog of highway and bridge capital needs. The bulk of the backlog ($420 billion) is in repairing existing highways, while $123 billion is needed for bridge repair, $167 billion for system expansion, and $126 for system enhancement (which includes safety enhancements, operational improvements, and environmental projects).
I heard a working-class lady on the radio discussing the $150 of groceries in her refrigerator that were going to waste and how that's a lot of money for her family. I'd rather have that $150 than a silly opportunity to blame some old out-of-touch judge.
It sounds like you're saying she shouldn't have bought those groceries, but PG&E only promises 2 days warning, and $150 is maybe a week's groceries for a family. Should people to go to the grocery store every 2 days to avoid food spoiling during blackouts?
There is also a man who was on oxygen who died. He was not able to get to his unpowered backup. The cause of death was listed as heart failure, though it is very likely the heart appeared stressed due to the hypoxia.
I hate to sound callous - every death is a tragedy to friends and family - but this seems like the least sympathetic victim in the whole affair. If your life depends on oxygen, then it is your responsibility to ensure its continued supply whether or not the wall socket works.
The fact that there were generous warnings only compounds the self-neglect. Oxygen-dependent COPD is no joke. PG&E is not your healthcare provider.
Do not overestimate people's ability to stay informed. The elderly and infirm may have issues receiving those alerts. The given times may not actually reflect when the blackout will occur. Most utilities handle this by keeping a list of people with life-critical medical devices. In case of an outage they send emergency services.
It appears he did have a backup, but was not able to get to it in time.
People get hit criminally and civilly for things far lamer than this. Are some of those wrong? Yes. But interrupting what is supposed to be a continuous service is not acceptable, especially as the lack of maintenance was self-inflicted.
I don't know about you, but I have never lived anywhere that there were not occasional power outages. Continuous over Short periods of time, yes. Over long Periods, no.
Where I live, the power goes out maybe twice a year (typically for between half an hour and maybe five or six hours, depending on the fault). Where my mother lives, in the country, it could go out for two days when it goes. Luckily its not that often, but when it does, there's never an advance warning. If your life depends on continuous power, planning for an occasional no-warning outage seems like the prudent thing to do.
Not everybody can do everything they need to be safe against collapse of society. Many thousands die every year for lack of the dollars safety would cost. Medical costs regularly bankrupt families. A backup generator, vs. food on the table? Clearly, the generator has to wait.
It is clear that power was cut over hundreds of square miles that were under no fire threat. People died just to give PGE leverage to force the state to indemnify them against their own negligence.
PGE provided a tent at the El Dorado County fairground, with outlets. For 100 people, for the entire county. All were taken by people's medical equipment, and many, many more turned away.
Incredibly callous. You should be ashamed. A 2 day notification is nothing especially as the entire state scrambles for backup power. What right does pg and e have to decide who lives and dies?
It's unfortunate, living out here, that people are flipping their collective shit over the power outages, at least on the internet. Not a single real person I know is angry about this, although I can understand anger if you were actually negatively impacted.
We have no way of knowing what would have happened without the power outages. PG&E's actions may have prevented a fire in this otherwise difficult situation, as they cannot magically fix the infrastructure with the snap of a finger. Sounds like I should thank the judge though!
Yes, I saw the story that someone who was on oxygen died during the outage.
People with life essential medical equipment which runs on electrical power absolutely must ensure they have a backup power supply, be ready to activate it, and have a plan should an outage continue beyond their backup capacity.
Power goes out, whether it’s a blackout, brownout, planned maintenance, or otherwise. Everyone should have plans for managing during an outage.
You should have enough to shelter in place for a reasonable outage, plus enough that when that clock runs out, to decide you need to head to the hospital, and enough time to actually get there.
People who aren’t capable of planning this out for themselves should have a social worker doing it for them, and obviously people need to be capable of operating their life essential equipment at home, or they need someone on hand to operate it for them.
I mean - how can “you die if the power goes out” be an acceptable risk to send someone home to? I assume that would be medical malpractice.
In reality, and in this case, a backup was on hand. Something else happened/failed in the intervening moments which contributed to this person’s death.
IMO the story is being weaponized irresponsibly against PG&E because they make a good target which sells a lot of clicks.
The irresponsibility is clearly on PGE's side. There was no noticeable wind in most of the areas cut, and none predicted. The cut amounted to simple extortion: indemnify us against consequences of our own deliberate negligence, or we will cut again!
Trees did not just start growing near power lines last year. PGE have decades of data, and know in excruciating detail what consequences to expect from sending out billion-dollar dividends instead of performing maintenance.
Some places. But the local PGE offices in places that were cut off had power delivered.
Extortionate behavior should be addressed by law enforcement. There should be a murder investigation for everybody killed by this action, and the executives responsible charged personally.
Because no utility can guarantee continuous service, nor should they economically be on the hook to provide batteries to everyone who needs 100% continuous service.
Medicaid has no control over power distribution system maintenance but can absolutely foresee occasional unscheduled electrical outages occurring.
Just like many essential buildings, like hospitals, provision their own electrical backup systems, so too must individuals who medically rely on power.
Here’s a site talking about emergency preparedness for households with children which require medical monitoring including equipment which requires AC power;
Keeping someone alive is sometimes tough work. There is a high level of individual responsibility here for someone who is not in an assisted living facility.
Being granted a monopoly in exchange for operating a public utility creates a serious -- some would say sacred -- obligation.
How essential services are provisioned is a social choice. Formulaire notions like "Medicaid should do it" are not useful. Medicaid is staffed by people who understand medical services. Power distribution networks are staffed by people who understand power. It is far from clear that the former are the right people to be making choices about the latter.
It happens that my mother is in a semi-assisted facility. They had no power for three days, no backup power, and residents are not allowed generators. The phones there didn't work without power.
blackout happens, while a utility has to inform for planner maintenance unplanned events are _always_ possible and people depending on electricity for their lives need to make sure they're prepared on a very short notice as a circuit breaker can trip anytime.
not discounting the responsibility on the utility in any way, but a faulty kettle would have been as deadly.
IMHO finding problems with how PG&E handled this will be much like looking through your graphs and logs after an outage. When you go looking for trouble, you find it, but most of what you see, despite being true and bad, is just red-herrings and statistical noise. The real causal factors are systemic and so deeply baked in that its very important we find scape goats lest we have to come to grips with what a 2C future means to electrical distribution across a vast sprawl spread through rapidly drying forest.
Completely agree. It is very unlikely that a utility will step in to fill PG&E’s shoes. Infrastructure, generally speaking, is more expensive to maintain than we realize.
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 government subsidies, there'd be little to no action to "be green" Even though Nuclear is the greenest (taken every factor in and equalizing the playing field). But I digress.
PG&E isn't the only problem. Atlanta had a blackout recently. NY had one. This issue isn't isolated. It's central planning at it's worst.
Competition in utility functions doesn't help. Australia's power network is competitive and massively undercapitalised and operates a very distorted market with a weak regulator.
What blackout are you talking about in Atlanta? I'm from Atlanta and the only one that comes to mind is in 2017 the airport lost power due to an underground fire. But that was specifically the wiring of the airport and not due to utility negligence
When I lived downtown, we regularly had power outages despite being able to see both Georgia Power hq and Southern Company hq from our roof. It wasn't just us. The World of Coca-Cola, the Center for Civil Rights, and the surrounding buildings frequently lost power. Only the Georgia Aquarium and the Inforum/ACA were spared due to their highly redundant backup power generators. I had less power outages in rural Alabama than I did in downtown Atlanta. For whatever reason the power grid was very fragile in that part of town. I've been told it's because Georgia Power didn't actually build a grid but used a cheaper hub and spoke trunk system. No idea if that's correct but it was shameful how poor their service was in the shadow of their headquarters (and the shadow of their parent company).
Are electric utilities really that bad? For a relatively tiny amount of money, you get the equivalent energy of dozens of slaves on bicycles that react instantly to your needs for 99.9% of your life.
PG&E didn't invent electrical power. They fulfill a role identical to thousands of similar organizations around the world. Apparently, they do a very poor job of it.
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 baseline consumption.
The CA-Enron fiasco was not “deregulation”, it was “reregulation”. CA said that utilities could not purchase power on the futures market, but had to buy it on the spot market. Enron, by some strange coincidence, always had to take plants off line during peak hours, leading to high spot prices.
There’s nothing deregulated about forbidding futures contracts.
> The more people install solar panels and batteries, the less profitable electricity is going to be.
There are really two alternatives here. One is that solar+storage never manages to provide cheaper electricity than existing nighttime baseload generation methods. Then the big change is that time of day metering becomes cheaper during the day (when solar generates) and more expensive at night (when baseload generators justify their existence). But that isn't going to destroy the power grid, it's not a fundamental change, it just changes the pricing.
The other alternative is that solar+storage does become cheaper than baseload generation methods even at night. In that case the power grid is destroyed because most people simply stop needing it. It becomes cheaper to over-spec the solar panels on your roof and the batteries (or whatever) in your basement to handle unusual conditions, or suffer not being able to run your air conditioner one or two days out of the year, than to pay the full cost of operating the power grid just to handle those one or two days a year. But in that case there is nothing to privatize/nationalize/whatever because the residential power grid simply ceases to exist.
It pretty much is...the marketing folks can't talk with the distribution/transmission folks without SEC liaison...the whole industry is governed by NERC, split up into regional authorities...WEC, ERCOT, MISO, etc...I'm not sure what you mean by "when you try deregulating it..."...Who is deregulating it and where?
If you are trying to cut California's wildfire risk, increasing legal liability of its electric utility is about the dumbest place to put your leverage that anyone could imagine. California could turn its power grid off entirely and only make a small dent in overall fire risk over time. All that dry brush has to go away somehow, and nature has historically done it with fires (no PG&E necessary).
Despite massive wealth, the California government's slide into 3rd-world standards has been pretty fast.
No, I'm afraid that you can't materially reduce the fires by preventing some (small) number of ignitions. The problem is the dry brush buildup. Something will spark it eventually.
Having someone to blame is fun politics, but it's not going to get California out of the mess. It's not even a fire management problem. California covers a region of the world that has been having decades or centuries-long drought phases for millennia. The last few decades were built up during the good times. It's getting dryer now, and there will be more fires throughout this dry phase, however many years or decades it lasts.
I didn't say you could materially reduce fires, only the ones caused by PG&Es negligence. There will still be fires, but maybe they won't be caused-in-fact by lack of reasonable maintenance of power lines.
Just to provide some context, there was a pretty big fire in Southern California[1] the same week as the PG&E blackouts. The humidity across CA was really low, which is just as much as a factor as the wind. On one hand, the blackouts were probably excessive, and possibly politically motivated. On the other, no major wildfires occurred in PG&E territory, but a fairly large one happened in LADWP territory[1]. PG&E is in tough spot, no one will know for certain if the blackouts actually accomplished anything, but if a wildfire occurs and they don't cut the power, then they hold the liability.
> nursing homes and other critical services scrambled to find backup power and even government agencies calling the company were put on hold for hours
I would say they accomplished a whole damn lot. People are going to be a million times more prepared for the next one.
Nursing homes being without a power backup is an unnaceptable state of affairs.
The amount of people that seemed utterly lost about what to do without power is disturbing. People should be more prepared. Especially given last year's events.
It's rediculous people are blaming PG&E for this. I think they're an awful company but they made the right call here and seem to be acting amicably.
A short notice and smooth event was basically impossible given that even government agencies don't know the right numbers to call.
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.
Many aspects of PG&E should bring to mind developing countries: corruption, graft, incompetent management, etc. It's an embarrassing situation to be in, and both PG&E and the state government are culpable.
Important context here is that there never was any storm.
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.
We had 40+mph winds at our home all night. Based on previous experience the power would have gone out anyhow.
In the spring we had a tree take down the power line in front of the house and continue arcing. Thank goodness it was a day after rain and calm wind. On a night like this recent night, the mountain would have been ash.
For those that live in rural, fire-prone areas power outages are often fairly normal and the big danger is burning. If someone hears 4th of July fireworks being set off where I live there's a real risk of a vigilante mob. The tradeoff of power cuts seems reasonable.
There has been reporting that preventive power cuts are generally a good idea, but highly unpopular unless they are really targeted. This is what San Diego Gas & Electric learned: put in equipment to enable more targeted cuts and monitoring. I expect this is where PG&E will need to invest next.
Honest question here: I'm from Italy and here we have problems with fires as well. However, here power lines and district transformers are placed underground except high voltage and ultra high voltage ones, but those are above tree height and rely on much sturdier metal structures.
My understanding is that burying power lines is cheaper in the long run and less prone to failures (trees falling, cars smashing the utility poles, ...). Therefore, why can't this be done in the US and especially California? Or is it already done for new developments? If no, is it because of regulations?
Many new developments in the US do use buried wires. But a lot also still use poles. It's hit and miss.
From what I remember, PG&E is notorious for "procrastinating" on maintenance of its wires, as well. Wires need to be regularly checked and have nearby foliage trimmed to a safe distance. Keeping up on this maintenance would reduce the risk of fires, but California is big and the utility has decided it doesn't want to do that. So the poles are more dangerous than they should be.
Public utilities should not be for profit companies, especially public listed companies. They shouldn’t aim to maximize profits. If they were to instead maximize utility, they may re-invest in infrastructure more heavily and put power lines under ground. Maybe I am missing something and someone can offer a counter argument.
My general metric for whether something should be a function of government (or so heavily regulated by government that the distinction is moot) is "Does this business function best as a monopoly?" By default, I assume everything that does should be a government function, and everything that shouldn't should be regulated to avoid becoming a monopoly.
So by default, I would assume that electricity distribution should be a government function, but electric generation could probably work fine as a set of non-monopolies competing to feed energy into the publicly-run grid at the lowest prices.
I agree that distribution should be gov regulated, and it is. I also agree that generation should be open market (it is, and those companies are still regulated by NERC, etc). That said, the distribution companies in CA are publicly traded... and that is a problem IMO.
They're regulated in such a way that they basically print money, in certain circumstances. I do agree though, power companies should not be publicly operated at this point in time. It might have made sense when electricity being delivered to homes and businesses was a new and somewhat optional concept, but we've reached a point where it's exceedingly rare to _not_ have electricity available at all times. I believe PG&E is essentially telling the state of California, "So, you're going to sue us for billions of dollars because of wildfires you think our transformers caused? I guess we'll have to retalia...er, shut off the power sometimes in order to prevent fires."
They should be what they used to be, pre-regulation. Boring companies that generate a near fixed return in assets, enforced by a heavy regulatory hand.
I don’t know about PG&E specifically, but in my region deregulation led to an attritted workforce and suspension of capital improvements. Shockingly, the infrastructure is a dumpster fire 20 years later.
Putting power lines underground is very expensive - meaning, very nearly prohibitively so. Or actually prohibitively so when you consider that PG&E has to serve vast areas of wilderness in California.
Paradise (Camp fire) was sufficiently west that I think its own power lines did not travel through Natl Forest however if I'm not mistaken it was hit by fire from the east (pushed by a wind out of the east), further up into the Sierra, and almost certainly there power lines were in the wilderness.
Unlikely to happen (at least now) in a place that's, uh, culturally like the US.
We're in California and are in a community that was affected by PG&E's power shut off.
I think one problem in California is that since I first arrived in the 1980s, the population has grown from 22 to close to 40 mln. And given, again, US cultural proclivities, there's a significant number of people who'd love to move out into at least near-wilderness - but they still expect to be provided with their utilities. Some may be fine living off-grid - but not others. And there's no way, in the US, you can tell them that they can't have their cake and eat it too. Especially if they're rich and some portion of those people moving out into their dream home in or near wilderness are rich and figure that entitles them to having it all.
They are welcome to pay for it, especially if they are rich and want it bad.
Why shouldn't PG&E pay for it? They blew their safety budget on executive bonuses. Hell, look at how many hundreds of millions PG&E spends annually on stock buybacks to appease the shareholders.
The other poster is talking about people moving into the near wilderness.
Define wilderness, there are plenty of people not in dense urban cities in California.
I doubt you do either.
When you assume you make an ass out of "u" and "me". I think rural electrification is important. More important than stock buybacks, executive compensation, and astronomically expensive lobbyists like Willie Brown. Rural service and higher rates don't necessarily go hand in hand.
That said I'd be more okay with paying increased rates for more comprehensive service than I am with paying increased rates to fund PG&E negligence.
No, what just happened is PG&E was forced to cut power because it has for years prioritized dividends over it's safety obligations, not because there are places to which power cannot be safely delivered.
This isn't a can't be done safely problem, it's a private firm gambling to squeeze out more short-term profits and hoping it doesn't blow up in their face problem.
I assume the denser the population, the more it makes economic sense to put power lines underground.
The particular problem though is wildfires and they're more slowly caught, and can become larger and more destructive, the further away they are from population.
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?
As far as I can find, SDGE is only burying their distribution lines. Their 1900 miles of transmission lines (which often cut through flammable wilderness areas) will remain above ground.
I think one glaring hole is that it’s very hard to incentivize people to maximize someone else’s utility. You don’t just say the words “maximize utility” and it just gets done.
This is a good point. What is utility here? I think the primary utility is highly available electricity. How is that maximized? I don't know how to do that tactically, so I should stop talking... but strategically it's about minimizing risk. I suppose that involves having a highly connected grid to many power sources (solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric, etc) to mitigate a SPOF. It should also involve low risk transmission (underground where possible, multipath, etc). This all comes at a great cost... but if profit is important (or required for the CEO to keep his job), not all money goes to improving the system, but to lining pockets of investors. So yeah, there needs to be a plan, but the current plan is keep things working and yield dividends to shareholders.
I keep coming back to; simpleton economic incentives can't fix a lack of good faith. I first noted that when reading Samuel Pepys diary entry where he crows both about the fat kick back he got on an order timber for ships masts. And the really good price he got as well.
You'll say that until the company is full of public service workers who dont care and electricity costs 3x as much. Pretty much every developed country has privatized electricity generation to keep prices down.
This isn't accurate. In the Bay Area some cities have decided to run their own public utilities instead of relying on PG&E.
For example, Santa Clara runs their own public utility[2]. The average resident pays about 10.4 cents per KWh. That's about 30 percent less than rates PG&E charges.
Also, their energy is greener and their infrastructure is better maintained.
The problem with for profit utilities is that they are incentivized to keep things as lean as possible. They neglect maintenance of their infrastructure and use that money for bonuses and dividends. You can see that played out here [1].
Arguably this is Santa Clara skimming from the system. Carve out a high density environment and let them pay just for themselves and you’re definitely going to come out ahead of trying to electrify rural California.
> The problem with for profit utilities is that they are incentivized to keep things as lean as possible. They neglect maintenance of their infrastructure and use that money for bonuses and dividends.
They aren't incentivised to be excessively lean. The incentive structure for someone who has spent a fortune on expensive capital investment is to maintain it.
There is no point incentive to build a vast system of poles and wires then letting it degrade over time.
Anyway, it won't be capitalist incentives at work; it will be something in the details of the regulations. In Australia, due to poor market regulations, we have the opposite problem where our utilities spend far too much on grid maintenance.
That isn't an incentive, that is just greed. And not actual "make the most money" greed, but stupid greed where that is the choice that they would make if they don't think at all and nobody points out the obvious to them.
Making a long-term investment to squeeze it for unsustainable short term profits is genuinely stupid. There is no incentive to do that. They would make more money milking the grid for long-term profits.
Making a long-term investment to squeeze it for unsustainable short term profits is genuinely stupid.
If you've got a better name for it I'm all ears. But PG&E has been neglecting their infrastructure at least since the early 90s when their lackadaisical approach to clearing brush led to the Sierra Fire in '94.
Keep in mind that PG&E's record keeping was so lax that they blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno after increasing the pressure on a gas pipeline without knowing if the line could support such pressure. Apparently PG&E also got sued a couple years ago by shareholders alleging gross mismanagement and demanding safety reforms. I'd say there's plenty of stupid and greed at PG&E to go around.
> If you've got a better name for it I'm all ears.
'Incompetence' would be the normal choice. And standard run-of-the mill incompetence has nothing to do with profit motives or incentives.
You can get incompetence with any governance structure; it isn't related to profit motives. If they are being sued by their own shareholders that is quite solid evidence that it isn't capitalist incentives that are the problem.
There are numerous public utilities in California, and elsewhere.
Generally the costs are lower and service levels higher than privately-held corporations.
Granted, most munis don't have to deal with long-distance distribution, though there are four federal power administrations which do, the Bonneville, Southeastern, Southwestern, and Western Area Power Administrations. Also the Tennessee Valley Authority.
> Granted, most munis don't have to deal with long-distance distribution
That really seems to be the only thing that matters here, given that the issue is about the liabilities fires due to lack of line maintenance in forested areas.
Why do we have to assume a publicly owned utility wouldn’t be able to focus on safety and efficiency at the same time? I mean, there’s data on Medicare being more efficient than private insurance[0]. Why is this different? I’m not sure I’m convinced that the profit incentive needs to exist for them to worry about costs.
The key is regulation, we have privatised utilities in the UK and although they aren’t perfect they appear to be much better than what Californians are putting up with. Before they were privatised they suffered from terrible under investment as every right wing government would squeeze their finances.
It is not so much about being "public utility", it is about competition, if you can't have competition there is no point giving the rights to some private company which acts like a monopoly. Transportation is also public utility and yet it makes sense to have different taxi companies or airlines.
The interesting question is when you got something that you can't compete with directly like a train line but can compete using other methods like buses or airlines. In that case there might be more incentive to a train line operator to give a good service because of the competition.
I'm genuinely confused over just how heavily regulated PG&E really is. Some people are saying it's basically an unregulated monopoly that does whatever it wants. That in the course of trying to make lots of money they screwed over the state.
Other people are saying it's a heavily regulated utility. The state of California is saying how much it can make and what it can do with the money it makes. They point to how much it's invested in solar power. They'd also claim the state didn't mandate work on power infrastructure maintenance - indeed it made it harder to cut back trees. It made it harder for residence to clear trees but still allowed them to build amidst a large amount of fuel. That the state basically used PG&E as a cut out for it's own ends - i.e. we're not raising taxes we're just allowing PG&E to raise rates and then mandating what PG&E has to build out.
One of those two stories has to be wrong, correct?
If PG&E were not heavily regulated, why wouldn't they have even just one private competitor? I mean, how hard of a sell is it: knock on door and say, "We're not PG&E." I'm pretty sure 60% of prospects would sign up right away. I've lived 30+ years in California and everybody hates PG&E. I've never talked to someone who had a different opinion.
If PG&E were not heavily regulated, why wouldn't they have even just one private competitor? I mean, how hard of a sell is it: knock on door and say, "We're not PG&E." I'm pretty sure 60% of prospects would sign up right away. I've lived 30+ years in California and everybody hates PG&E. I've never talked to someone who had a different opinion.
Why? Because PG&E has fought long and hard to keep their monopoly. They've gone so far as to keep the Ayatollah of the Assembly on their payroll. Marin got a very neutered version of Marin Clean Energy as a result of PG&E and San Francisco still hasn't been able to sneak public power legislation past PG&E.
It seems you may be misreading my comment or I am misreading yours. It is the regulation that PG&E is paying for. That is how they keep the competition out.
Wildfires were prevented in the North of California where this occurred. The South of California was not spared and the Saddleridge wildfire still rages. I think yes more backup power and staffers are needed at community centers but these black outs are an important way to save lives.
Cal Fire investigators said they spoke with two different witnesses who said they saw someone who may have started one of the fires. The other fire near Redlands was started from a garbage truck dumping its load in an emergency to put out a fire inside of its haul. Which fire are you referring to that started from SoCal Edison?
Eventually a wildfire is going to occur. Whether caused by man negligently, man accidentally, or nature. And the longer it takes to occur the more there is to burn.
With this in mind does it really make sense to pause society and hope one never happens again? Doesn't it make more sense to mitigate the risk directly, more controlled burns, more brush clearing. Surely the cost of these things is less than the cost of e.g. turning off power for days and would carry less risk overall.
Electric cars have the potential to act as a backup power supply for your home to help mitigate power outages like these. The CCS and CHAdeMO standards are working on vehicle-to-home (and vehicle-to-grid) protocols:
My EV (a leaf) has a built in DC-DC converter to power the 12 volt system and charge the 12 volt battery - it will supply a kilowatt when the car is turned on.
In previous blackouts I have connected a kilowatt inverter to the car and used it to power stuff. It worked great and it was very useful.
This was a haphazard, poorly planned outage. Similarly to planning for an outage on a website used by millions of people and businesses, communication, status updates and minimizing disruptions are key. I'm surprised no one at PGE thought about making sure their site could handle the extra traffic. Not staffing community resource centers is akin to telling people to check Twitter for information but not bringing in anyone to field DMs from customers.
California pays a much higher $ per kwh of electricity compared to many other states in the US, and I'm guessing 'you get what you pay for' doesn't apply when in this case.
At some point - and I suspect PG&E has reached this point but I'm not sure - a regulated monopoly is the same thing as a public utility.
If you tell someone what they have to do, what they can charge and how much they can make then what's the distinction but that entity and part of the government?
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.
The same... I'm looking forward to some solar now. I just yesterday bought the Harbor Freight 100W solar panel set for starters, as it's on sale right now. I had purchased a generator for the PSPS but we were informed about 6h prior to event that we were in a small area that would be spared.
Sure but most people aren't you. When they think "Hey, my power isn't reliable." they go buy a diesel generator. Maybe a gas one. Arguably that's not even a bad choice.
I suspect that you're right -- that there is a technical solution -- and that PG&E isn't technically competent enough to find it. They couldn't even keep their website running!
Their business model has been mostly static for many years. In that time, the whole business can ossify, and only now -- when the environment has changed -- do they need to adapt. And they aren't prepared to do it.
So I did a bunch of research and the best generators of these types are the Winco and Cummins ones. The ones they sell at Home Depot are not meant to run more than a couple hours at a time.
If you want a generator that will run for weeks on its own you need to look for "off grid".
For years and years and years, there was a scrappy little newspaper in San Francisco that warned (very much obnoxiously at times) about PG&E’s continuing private control of energy and power in the Bay Area and Northern California.
That newspaper no longer exists. During my three years as a reporter there, I carefully avoided ever having to write PG&E stories, which were a near-fetish for the publisher, Bruce Brugmann.
But maybe he was right about giving public ownership a real shot in the Bay Area, even if he was annoying as shit about it at times. (It should also be noted that he was from a heartland state where public power is common.)
> The company, which is facing $30 billion in liabilities from recent wildfires started by its equipment
Conspiracy theory (which is shared by everyone I've talked to): PG&E turned off the power to make a political statement that they shouldn't be liable for wildfires.
Edit: by "not be liable", I mean passing legislation to achieve this.
That is pointlessly over-dramatizing a clear and obvious fact. They went from risk tolerant to risk averse because the liability math changed. There's no conspiracy, its the simple difference between "not my problem" and "cover your ass".
the math changed because they were sued for something that should've been acceptable risk. So now it's unacceptable risk. What goes around, comes around.
They didn't wind-up liable because arcing electricity just happens to sometimes 'cause fire.
They wound-up liable because they gutted their tree-trimming operations and paid the difference in dividends. That is something that definitely makes you liable regardless of whether the original thing is an acceptable risk.
Now, it's hard to if this is indeed a "bail us out or we'll shut down at every strong breeze" statement or whether they are legitimately worried the lines they neglected actually now ignite at every strong breeze.
Either way, I think the average Californian justifiably hates this company. But it seems unlikely things will change.
The Camp Fire, which is the one that looks likely to bankrupt them, probably wasn't even caused by inadequate tree trimming. Apparently one of their power lines had a weak, defective fixing which failed due to the same high winds that caused the fire to spread so rapidly and uncontrollably.
Uh, it seems obvious that the question is not tree trimming in particular but maintenance generally. The gas explosion the killed thirty people might hypothetically have been just an accident but logic, rules-of-thumb and actual evidence available all pointed to it being a problem of inadequate PG&E maintenance. Assuming the cause was a defective power line, maybe it was totally an accident but it seems unlikely in the scheme of things - most likely it was part of their pattern of negligence.
Edit: Note, the Camp Fire has bankrupted them. They are bankrupt, in bankruptcy proceedings. They are also on criminal (not civil) probation. None of this stopped their stock from rising after the recent events - where a more naive me might expect their stock holders' money would be forfeit once they reached the level of bankruptcy (unsecured debtors and all).
It's a well known business strategy, run something important into the ground, get bailed out, rinse and repeat. Many companies are run badly on purpose.
Risk of transmission and distribution lines snapping or having trees fall into them starts at wind speeds of 55mph. Area had 77MPH gusts which would have brought down some lines which could have started a fire. Combine that with abnormal amount of rain during spring which increased fuel levels and extremely dry weather(Single digit humidity levels), it was probably the right thing to do.
"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.
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 a kilowatt hour) despite having lots of of green power generators who get half that rate based on a crooked "wholesale" reimbursement scheme! California could do better with any 3rd world power company, PG&E is always horribly run ..
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¢.
Oof, that's awful. I just got a bill recently here in seattle and got a $10.67 base charge and an additional $0.0902 charge per KWH for a total price of $48.50 dollars for 415 KWHs used in a 68 day period.
PG&E doesn't serve all of California. While we're being pedantic, PG&E's (non-low-income) rates are generally closer to $0.20-$0.30 per kWh. Their rates are a bit too complex to easily summarize but during peak hours you are pretty much guaranteed to be paying more than $0.20/kWh (and in many cases above $0.25/kWh). Off-peak rates are all above $0.12/kWh, generally more than $0.16/kWh.
In addition to the forty-odd folks killed in 2017, PG&E started the the Camp Fire (2018) where 85 people died, one is still missing, and 17 were injured. Who knows how many will get sick from the chemicals leeching out of the plastic water infrastructure and into the water itself.
In 2015, PG&E only killed two people (Butte Fire).
PG&E also poisoned a few hundred in Hinkley (the town Erin Brockovich made famous). PG&E killed another 8 in San Bruno (and injured 58.
Oh gosh, let's not forget the Sierra Fire of 1994.
The Tubbs Fire was probably not caused by PG&E equipment.
You're right, and if you take a look at what I wrote I did not mention the Tubbs Fire. Plenty of folks have died at the hands of PG&E, and I mistakenly added a link to it however.
Who are the 2nd and 3rd worst power companies in the western hemisphere? Whenever someone says something is "the worst" or "the best" I wonder how much due diligence they've actually performed to compare it to the alternatives. If you're going to claim something is the worst, surely you should know several others and be able to say why PG&E is worse than them.
I mean, just off the top of my head, I'd put Venezuela's power company as worse than PG&E. More people have died from their power problems than from PG&E's. Just in March of 2019, the entire country was without power for 10 days.
I'm not sure that's down to Venezuela's power companies. That's right about when the US was trying to coup their government, right? Stuxnet's origin story can tell us a bit about what kinds of sabotage they pull.
Not the worst. I was recently in Juticalpa, Honduras, and we did not have light for three days more or less. It's a capital of a state. Same thing in Rio Dulce, Guatemala: I was looking for candles since many shops ran out of batteries.
ERCOT prices in August were $9/kWH for several hours of the month, and the average rate for my load zone was well over $1/kWH. Are you sure $0.22/kWH is the “highest prices”?
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.)
This PDF from Wisconsin puts the cost at $280k-390k/mi depending on the voltage of the line. They put the cost of underground transmission lines at $1.5M-2M/mi for the same voltages.
Controversial, I realize, but perhaps we should talk seriously about nationalizing the grid. Hold a competition between the best engineering schools. Design a grid that can distribute zero carbon energy, and intelligently cut power in emergency situations.
> [In Paradise, California] There were 12,981 housing units at an average density of 708.5 per square mile (273.5/km²)
That doesn't seem so unusually dense to me. And the pictures I saw online of the burned houses all have the foundations reasonably far away from each other. These were houses with yards around them, not row homes put right up next to each other.
Houses close together in an urban environment reduces risk rather than increasing it. For example, Redding Electric Utility (REU) and Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) did not shut off power to the cities they service while PG&E, which services areas outside each of those cities, did. SMUD talks about urban areas being low risk at https://www.smud.org/en/In-Our-Community/Safety-Tips/Wildfir....
I'm not an expert but from the pictures I've seen the problem didn't look to be building next to houses but middle directly next to trees Why didn't people cut back the trees more?
One the other hand this is also a political statement. They are clearly signaling to the politicians that they better shield them from further liability or expect more of this behavior. Shut the power down when the wind blows, after each earthquake until the lines can be checked, etc. My money is the politicians fold. The stock rose 3% Friday.