A plan by California’s biggest utility to cut power on high-wind days during the onrushing wildfire season could plunge millions of residents into darkness. And the vast majority isn’t ready for it.
The plan by PG&E Corp. comes after the bankrupt utility said a transmission line that snapped in windy weather probably started last year’s Camp Fire, the deadliest in state history. While the plan may end one problem, it creates another as Californians seek ways to deal with what some fear could be days and days of blackouts.
Because for the left, the best way to encourage people to forget about a problem is to bury it under a bigger one.
Good God, will someone please put these people out of our misery. They have surpassed any ability to measure their level of stupid.
“Because for the left, the best way to encourage people to forget about a problem is to bury it under a bigger one.”
How is a rabid corporation part of “the left”?
Try to be a bit more discerning. I understand your specific narrative has a very kneejerk audience, but this is simply foolishness.
Corporations are hated by BOTH the Left and the Right because they are vampires sucking the state and individual dry. Because the state is composed of taxpaying individuals, yes even those damned poor welfare recipients pay state taxes of various sorts, corporations are the worst parasites existing. They literally bleed their hosts to death.
PG&E has been running CONTINUOUS public service messages on radio and TV … WARNING!! the public that our power may be cut off suddenly, and without warning anytime the Utility and State deem it necessary. In the interest of our safety, of course.
So, now … despite my home being attached to the grid since 1947 … I am now unceremoniously being booted OFF the grid against my will … anytime … the State, or my Utility deems it “necessary”.
So … now that the State has declared CA in a permanent “WORST DROUGHT IN THE HISTORY OF CA” … therefore PERMANENTLY jacking up water rates into multi-tier PUNISHING categories to FORCE water conservation on poor customers … they are doing the same with our Power. PG&E’s horrific mismanagement under a “Latina ovvvvv culller” who spent our ratepayer dollars on costly “green” energy, and useless virtue-signaling advertising about how many “minorities” were hired by PG&E … instead of on basic maintenance of equipment … has come home to roost. The Utility that MY responsible parents built into an efficient, reliable, system has been torn-to-pieces by succeeding generations of leftist virtue-signaling know-nothing’s.
As I’ve said before … it will be a photo-finish between me fully retiring and abandoning this sinking State … before leftist policies crash my real estate value to nada. Thankfully, leftist NIMBYism and the outrageously expensive and difficult building regulations has suppressed the supply of housing to the point of making my home value ridiculously inflated.
Leftist policies DESTROY.
The absurdity of declaring a permanent drought at this point in time defies any attempt to posit rational motives on the part of the state.
The reservoirs are overflowing. Or literally would if the state did not run off some of the stored water. The snow pack in the High Sierra, which provides the majority of the state water reserve (this is for our Canadian friends), is 200% normal and has very wet content besides. And this is the middle of May, and we still have showers in southern California, whereas even showers in April would be highly unusual.
All power companies in California suffer by spending tons of money for “green” energy, which of course ain’t green. That’s money that should have been spent in maintaining and improving the infrastructure. Why have high winds not causes power lines to snap and start forest fires for the last hundred years? Maybe the power lines are old and need to be replaced and fortified, and maybe the forests need to be clear cut around power lines. Both of which have not been done, the latter as a matter of policy. And the only thing proposed is for PG&E to stop doing its raison d’etre, that is providing power, any time it chooses?
Exactly! And SHUTTING DOWN our power is philosophically consistent with the new “morality” of the leftists who are running government and utilities in CA … the “morality” which claims we Americans use TOO many RESOURCES. Resources that we are STEALING from the world’s poor, and future generations. This sort of college sophomoric psycho-babble has become mainstream. It has now shut off our taps and our “smart meters”.
Enjoy our decline.
If I ran PG&E that is exactly ehat I would do. They are being held responsible for something buy the state that the state wouldn’t let them fix. Now the state can deal with it.
Exactly. The state already wiped out PG&E’s investors, once.
Wrong. PG&E was mismanaged by a “Latina ovvvv culller” to divert funding of BASIC MAINTENANCE … esp. in the RED County hinterlands of CA … into multiple programs of “green energy” and “affirmative action virtue signaling”. And worst of all into a massive public relations campaign to “change consumer sentiment” after PG&E’s San Bruno incineration of customers. Ironically, it is the diversion of basic maintenance funding into so many USELESS nonsensical expenditures of MY utility ratepayer dollar that CAUSED the Paradise conflagration.
And to make matters worse … the STATE PUC was a willing participant in PG&E’s mismanagement. The State Agency tasked to PROTECT Consumers … participated in their incineration.
Our government, and our BIG Utilities are being run by incompetents … incompetently.
It’s my understanding that they are being blamed for forest fires that happened as a result of them not being allowed to cut trees to keep the lines clear.
Nope. The State is being blamed for the fuel load OUTSIDE the PG&E ROW’s. For that fuel load to build up and cause the intensity and rapid spread of the fire.
I’m talking about the deregulation during the great Davis era. Maintaining the long-term sustainable profitability of the utility by rate of return legislation -which has been the traditional cornerstone of utility regulation -was bulldozed by California at that time.
It won’t even end the problem of wildfires.
Only ridding California of the eco-terrorists who are setting the fires near white towns and villages with the tacit support of Sacramento will do that.
That won’t happen while globalists remain in charge in Sacramento and their backers in Hollywood and Silicon Valley still need space cleared for pharaonic mansions—because they’re not going to bulldoze the crime-ridden barrios and ghettos that thrust Democrats into office and force the thugs and illegals to move on.
I know it’s more expensive than overhead wires but why can’t the utility bury the wires in fire prone areas? Too rocky, for instance? If there’s not a physical barrier, but an economic one, then you’d think burying lines would be less expensive than lawsuits, lost revenue from outages and the human cost of lost lives due to fires. Or how about encased in a non-conductive above ground pipe?
You gotta have a very large diameter of wire or a cooling system underground. Would have to have large diameter rods of copper to do that. Does California have the cash?
The transmission generates a lot of heat, larger diameter, less heat.
The politicians don’t worry about lack of power, they just plug their whatever in the wall receptacle and that’s that. It comes from the wall.
It would seem that California is in the situation it is, because they think they can help the nature. Yeah, right.
Apparently the idiot that leads the federal socialists in Canada thinks that the oil is a nogo. Wants to kill the oil business in Alberta, not that the airhead in Ottawa is not doing his damned best to do precisely that.
Now, I ask, what kind of idiotic government is it that its aim is to destroy the energy of Canada and in the process impoverish the population.
Transmission and distribution was not my area but both Europe and even parts of Saskatchewan have buried cable and to my knowledge there’s isn’t a cooling system. Dirt is a good insulator. A lineman told me that buried wire is a pain when the ground is frozen in winter but cali wouldn’t have that problem. Germany is having to bury its wires connecting to green power due to community concerns/complaints.
Anyway, you’d think there would be a technological solution.
Should have said that it was the high voltage transmission. Maybe over 600V or so.
Most of the high voltage transmission lines are in the 120+ kilo volt range. It is possible to bury them, but I’m sure the greenies would find some smelt or frog or owl that would be endangered by burying those lines.
The MAIN transmission lines are run through clear-cut ROW’s free of any vegetation. These very same lines have co-existed with high winds and drought conditions for generations. Why? Because the ROW’s were correctly designed for swaying and falling wires. The issue isn’t with burying lines … but with SPENDING $$$ on MAINTENANCE!!!
The trouble is … NOBODY wants to spend $$$ on maintenance. Spending money on basic maintenance isn’t “sexy” … and won’t get a “Latina ovvvv cullller’s” name in the news. But spending ratepayer dollars on “green energy initiatives” will.
Take the Oakland, CA “pothole problem”. Trust me … I just drove the Oakland streets back from the Oakland airport to avoid a freeway traffic jam, and just about tore the bottom of my fine Bavarian sedan to pieces on multiple potholes. Oakland’s streets are like that of a third world country. Why? Because Oakland simply doesn’t budget for basic maintenance. Why not?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/In-Oakland-money-intended-to-be-used-for-this-13827090.php
Because Oakland is spending SO MUCH $$$ on bloated public worker pensions and a host of Social Welfare programs … that they can’t “afford” to spend on basic maintenance and repair. Trust me … the Communists in charge of CA government and utilities are both wittingly and unwittingly CRASHING THE SYSTEM.
The same thing is taking place (took place) at PG&E … irresponsible, short-sighted, self-aggrandizing leadership essentially KILLED the Utility … well … bankrupted it. And who will PAY for the incompetence of the affirmative-action hiring practices? Yep. We the ratepayers.
Thanks Kenji, you’ve answered the most obvious questions, which (at least for me) are “Why wasn’t this happening in the past? What’s different now? And didn’t they just have a lot of rain and snow down there?”
This last monsoon year came … literally … DAYS after the horrific fires. If PG&E were responsible, and did just a LITTLE maintenance … it all could have been avoided. And it’s not like we don’t already KNOW … WHEN … the most dangerous fire conditions occur (every single October) when the forests are at their seasonal DRIEST … and the Fall winds start to blow at gale forces.
Did anyone ever think to employ wire cams? and spotters? and provide FAST RESPONSE teams to suppress the fires before they blew up to a monstrous size? Nahhhh … that’d cost too much $$. Better to just shut-down the power. And doing so would make the public “believe” that PG&E is actually “doing something” about wildfires. I’m gonna be sick.
When fires are ready to go and no-one is doing anything to mitigate them, blaming one source of ignition or another is stupid. Something is going to ignite them.
GOOD.
The people who keep voting for the greenstapo, need to feel the pain personally. They need to get to the grocery store, and see empty shelves because everything is planted, cared for, harvested, and delivered by diesel power, and California emissions standards have made diesel illegal.
They need to turn the tap, and nothing happens, because the delta smelt gets their water instead.
They need to see glowing mansions surrounded by lush greenery while they sit in the dark in a desert wasteland.
They need to be Rodney Kinged by armies of fat bureaucrats in suits, who jump out of a convoy of Humvees that are smoking coal as soon as it is discovered that a deplorable citizen is in possession of any amount of any fossil fuel. The fossil fuels are for them, NOT FOR YOU.
As a lone conservative sheep in a Bay Area filled with leftist wolves … all I can do is agree with you. My plaintive bleats go unheard, so bring on the famine. Bring on the catastrophic results. The shortages. The outages. Bring it all down, maaaaaan!
As my leftist neighbors would say, out of their own self-loathing “white guilt” … “Why should we have so much more than 80% of the world’s population?”
anybody, ANYBODY thinks this kind of vision can never and will never happen in CA, well, it ALREADY HAS
elsewhere in another time.
and speaking of time, given enough of it, pretty much ANYTHING can come about.
let’s look at geology: how is it possible to move continents around like puzzle pieces? time.
oh lookie lookie deutchland 1938 top of the hill, king of the castle.
enter time.
oopise !!
how is it possible for the ‘unlikeliest presidential candidate’ become POTUS? time.
time.
time time time time time.
aaaaaaand sometimes, not a lot of it, like stock mkt crashes that ripple at the speed of electricity.
p.s if it aint obvious I agree wholeheartedly with the Kevin solution.
make that *kelvin* solution if ya know what I mean.
oh those mansions will glow alright. and the cloud of smoke rising from them will glow that recognizable orange shade.
So ..er … what’s going to happen to the Teslas?
Diesel generators?
We’ll see soon enough how many violent criminals are among the illegals in SoCal when the lights go out for days on end.
And how many gun grabber preachers suddenly wish they weren’t a target in the night.
Windfarms are run within a minimum and maximum wind already, if the wind gets to high, they feather the blades and stop producing.
well, I just watched a thingy on Shaw Satellite about the CA fires and Paradise in particular. a brief history of forest mgmt and the changes in strategies and emphasis, including scientific analysis of sapling growth in burned out areas and what happens when another big one sweeps thru before the saplings are mature enough to weather it.
what a gawdawful thing we humahns create when ideology and agenda trumps any sort of science, common sense, proven solutions, need to acknowledge and fund very basic stuff like monitoring and maintenance, etc.
folks, the real issue is far far bigger than wildfires in californicate. it gets down to the very heart of humahn stooooopidity and ego etc.
and THAT aint gonna change. because certain demographics believe themselves omniscient and immune to consequences.
Sorry Kenji, harder faster.
This is a brilliant PR move by the utility and government.
Own goals are us.
I’m listening to the Fox Talking Heads on Tarrifs…
Why do none of those idiots understand that we can buy cheap goods from sources other than China?
India and Southeast Asia have 2 billion slaves total compared to China’s billion. Easy to start buying more cheap plastic shit that falls apart from them. Most of the people there live in democracies. Why shouldn’t we support democracies?
ALL of my NIKE ‘PPK’ (purchased prior to Kaepernick) gear … is made in Malaysia. OK … so I helped export US dollars to fund Southeast Asian MUSLIMS. Ugggh. Can’t we sew shit using all the illegal Chinese coolies working off the books and collecting welfare in San Francisco?
Boycott Nike. For Kaepernick, and for the crap gear they manufacture, and their stupid ass slogans.
people dump me for pointing out the level of stupid I encounter here and on a daily basis. Jeez, I hate being right all the time.
PG&E warns of random blackouts, and maps who might be affected … hint: no one in Silicon Valley will have their power shut off …
https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/community-wildfire-safety.page
PG&E also ADMITS it has NOT been properly maintaining their infrastructure, by touting all their NEW maintenance routines.
Meanwhile … millions of Californians will lose their entire refrigerator full of food and medications. Millions of Californians will lose power to pumps that provide their drinking water. But not to worry … they can all install solar panels, and Tesla battery walls. And the State will even help subsidize your required $30k solar system. Thanks Gavin Newsome!