West Coast power cuts

Altissimus

TreeHouser
Joined
Jul 1, 2008
Messages
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Location
southern Vermont
... has to be damn inconvenient , but accidentally burning a whole valley and killing eighty five people isn't very cool either. What's a Power Company to do ? Seems alot of customers are down and it can't be easy. I call my generator "Baghdad Electric" , if I have fuel I can run my whole house no problem even if the "neighbors" hate the noise. What can you do in , say downtown Oakland ?
 
Rent a bunch of generators to others? Tell neighbors to bring food to your fridge? Party like it's 1999?
 
Good luck even buying a gennie in .CA right now..... :lol:
Anyway. Several laws have been signed by our Gov. holding utility company's to a new enforceable standard since they can't be held fully liable for a fire financially. PG&E is basically bankrupt at this point and only has 30% of its obligation of clearing, checking and maintaining the power infrastructure they are responsible for in 2019 schedule alone.. Pretty damn large portion of .CA.
Here is one of them in readers digest condensed form. Been many meeting in communities over all this.

Copied and edited from a post in Greeley Hill Community page...

PSPS is the acronym for “Public Safety Power Shutoff”.
New Ca law (enacted by PUC and signed by Gov Newsome) REQUIRES utilities (ALL, not just PG&E) to de-energize areas that face severe wind threat/ fire risk.
This has the Doppler effect of potentially impacting huge swaths of the State if that threat impacts a “Transmission” (500/230KV) Tower corridor(s).
When that level of shut off is enacted, you don’t just flip a switch back on. The law requires PG&E to physically/visually inspect every single piece of equipment (down voltage) of the shut down BEFORE it can be re-energized. This means every tower, line, transformer, pad apparatus, substation, pole, reclosure, etc.
This is why a 2 day event can potentially keep areas dark for several days after the threat has passed. It is a MASSIVE man hrs. labor intensive process on 24/7 overtime staffing.
PG&E loses HUGE $$ when this is enacted as thousands of meters are not spinning and the labor cost to comply is huge. They don’t want to do these. They are legally mandated to now. This is the arrangement that was brokered through the PUC to balance the conflicting liability/service reliability laws. It is all driven because of California’s “Inverse Condemnation” liability conflict with PUC’s previous fining of the Company based on outage reliability.
Prior, power shut off or outage = fine. Leave it on, and have ANY% role in a fire= 100% liability.
 
Cleaning up the undergrowth and dead chit would be a start. I didn’t get the 50 cent tour last time I was there so I can’t say how bad it is, just going off what I read. I realize not all fire can be prevented what with all the invasive bugs killing trees faster than they can grow but damn, clean up. Cut the trees back from the power line right of ways, bury the lines in the high wind prone areas. Put the slackers to work instead of asking the taxpayers to feed and house them then ask for more money after a fire because “it’s a national disaster”. Lazy is a trait hard to break, I know, I did it. Anybody can.
 
How about devoting some resources to maintaining the infrastructure instead of banning plastic straws and shampoo bottles.
 
That isn't liberalism, that's failed capitalism. A utility company makes a frig ton, and i can only assume that in California it's a frig ton plus a frig ton. Despite this, they failed to maintain their row, to the point of causing fires and killing people. It was so bad the populace demanded action, and so this is what happens when lawmakers who have no technical understanding of the power industry make rules. I feel little to no sympathy for pgne, I'm not even sure how they are still in business. According to capitalism, they are allowed to fail, and their shit gets auctioned off to attempt to cover their losses. The company would be split up into smaller companies, and they would have to use profits to clean up the row like pgne should have done, rather than bonuses and stock buyback shit. Corporate welfare at it's worse.
 
From what I understand Kyle the “state” (and we all know who that is) won’t let’em clear the trees back back from the ROW. I’m probably wrong but maybe someone from out there can clarify.
 
I could see where trees are tall enough to strike lines even out of the row, but then wouldn't the procedure be to bury the lines? This is basic stuff here, protect the line from damage. That or put them higher
 
They probably can’t bury’em. Might disturb an endangered worm or microorganism or something. You know, progress. California values.
 
Lol true. They haven't done too well on the gas side either from what I've heard, which is starting to not surprise me as i spend more time in the industry.
 
APEX is doing a pipeline just south of here. They have to spend hella bucks to relocate all the timber rattlers they can find. Seen some pictures of some monsters from down there.
 
From what I understand Kyle the “state” (and we all know who that is) won’t let’em clear the trees back back from the ROW. I’m probably wrong but maybe someone from out there can clarify.

Bob,

As I posted in the "How's it going today" thread:

Quote Originally Posted by cory View Post
Sounds like a bs story to me.
Cory, as Steve indicates, no BS. To further it, when I took my Fire Fighter training, numerous instructors mentioned that California forest/wildfire fighting was the worst/most dangerous in the world due to the the government agencies and laws out there making forest management the biggest cluster f'd mess known to man.

Steve, hope all turns out for the best or you and the rest of the Cali Treehousers.

- Brian
 
I have no idea what" liberalism " has to do with anything ,just a talking point with no point . California has it's own problems .Raking the freaking leaves in Cal. is not like Central Park in NYC .
Line clearance however and replacement of old and out dated equipment probably has more to do with the problem at hand than anything else .Not to worry if in the event the distribution system is mandated for up grade the customers will pay for it ,as usual .The power company just like banks never "loose " money .
 
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Can't catch a break there it seems ... cut KW to distibrutor lines , inconvenient to thousands and then the main transmission line starts a big fire
 
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