2.35 Million Lose Power In California As State Faces Extreme Weather and Wildfires (mercurynews.com) 269
California's largest power utility began power shut-offs today for an estimated 2.35 million people -- expected to last two days -- after weather forecasts predicted extreme fire danger due to exceptionally dry weather and severe winds, according to the Washington Post. "Some gusts this weekend might reach 75 mph (120 kph) or higher as part of a 'historic' wind event, the National Weather Service said. The winds could lead to 'erratic fire behavior,' warned the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection..."
The San Jose Mercury News reports: PG&E won't restore power until inspections of de-energized lines are completed and any damage to the system is repaired. The utility also has requested mutual aid from 1,000 workers from other energy companies, including ATCO Energy in Alberta, Canada; Xcel Energy in Minnesota; and Florida Power & Light. Those crews are expected to be staged and in place to do repairs by Sunday, according to the company.
50,000 people living near Northern California's wine country were also ordered to evacuate, as firefighters struggled to contain an already-burning 25,955-acre wildfire nearby which is only 10% contained. And 40,000 people were ordered to evacuate homes in Southern California near Santa Clarita, where the 4,600-acre Tick Fire is now 25% contained.
The San Jose Mercury News reports: PG&E won't restore power until inspections of de-energized lines are completed and any damage to the system is repaired. The utility also has requested mutual aid from 1,000 workers from other energy companies, including ATCO Energy in Alberta, Canada; Xcel Energy in Minnesota; and Florida Power & Light. Those crews are expected to be staged and in place to do repairs by Sunday, according to the company.
50,000 people living near Northern California's wine country were also ordered to evacuate, as firefighters struggled to contain an already-burning 25,955-acre wildfire nearby which is only 10% contained. And 40,000 people were ordered to evacuate homes in Southern California near Santa Clarita, where the 4,600-acre Tick Fire is now 25% contained.
Power lines? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about burying the power lines in the fire prone areas? It is of course more expensive but so is the burning of thousands of homes.
In my country all power cables are buried except for some of the very largest high voltage cables.
Re:Power lines? (Score:5, Interesting)
The 20th century was an extremely wet period for California. All their infrastructure was built with that level of moisture in mind. Combine that with the virtual moratorium that Cali put on new power plant construction between about 1980 and 2010 and the sources of power need very long lines to get to the last mile for the increasing population in the last 15 years through dense forest. PG&E's rates are controlled by Cali so they literally did not have the funds to run that much underground wire through wilderness especially given all the lawsuits from environmentalists and the dirt mafia(Yes, California has a dirt mafia) that would have popped up had they tried.
Re:Power lines? (Score:4, Interesting)
PG&E's rates are controlled by Cali so they literally did not have the funds to run that much underground wire
They made a profit of over $5 billion in 2018, and you are saying they didn't have the finds to bury some cables?
Wikipedia suggests a figure of around $40/foot for underground cables, which works out at about $21 million per 100 miles. Seems pretty affordable. How much cable are we talking about?
Re:Power lines? (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia suggests a figure of around $40/foot for underground cables
In California? $40/ft won't even cover the legal fees and impact reports.
Seems pretty affordable. How much cable are we talking about?
California is big. On I-5, it is 1380 miles (2200 km) from the Oregon border to Mexico.
That is the distance from NYC to New Orleans. Or Paris to Minsk.
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Even if the cost was an order of magnitude more, $210 million per 100 miles, and they needed to cover 1000 miles, that would still be less than half their profit for 2018. Over a few years they could probably do all the at-risk areas.
Re:Power lines? (Score:5, Informative)
Burying cable is expensive in California, about $3M/mile according to PG&E and maintenance is at least 3x as expensive.
They would need to bury 134000 miles of cable or spend several trillions. Moreover California is a seismic activity zone, the ground is continuously shifting.
From a purely environmental perspective, nobody should live in California if you want to save earth. The conflict between humans and nature in California is the highest in the USA and in the top 10 for the world. It only became popular during the gold rush and since then people have been cutting hardwood rainforests while buildings can't even last an average of 30 years.
If you care for the environment, move out of California.
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Not without political approval in "green" CA...
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That does not make it any better or them looking any less incompetent and greedy. This activity should have started decades ago and been driven forward decisively. Then they would not stand out as the incompetent hacks of the power-infrastructure world as they do now.
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Why would you bury cables in a state famous for the earth moving?
Also, to bury the power lines in California would require burying an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 MILES of power lines. Possibly more.
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Why would you bury cables in a state famous for the earth moving?
Also, to bury the power lines in California would require burying an estimated 400,000 to 500,000 MILES of power lines. Possibly more.
Because it fits in with the present day need for really simple one sentence answers to problems. Ideas that also happen to be impractical and won't work anyhow.
Interestingly, in my Village, about half has buried utilities, and our portion has overhead. It makes zero difference. Lightning strikes occur in both halves in a similar rate, Lightning hits do happen to the buried utilities.
Your comment regarding the earth's movement is also spot on. You can see the fault lines at the surface in many places.
N
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Why would you bury cables in a state famous for the earth moving?
Have you ever lived in an earthquake zone? The probability that a buried structure will cross an unknown fault that becomes active is vanishingly small, and if it crosses a known fault, you can design for it. San Francisco has a subway line that crosses a tectonic plate boundary underwater. And if a buried power line did cross a fault that moved, the line would simply snap and cut off power in the area, which is exactly what is happening by design right now.
There is no engineering reason why last-mile powe
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Here's an article that gets a little closer:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/ba... [sfchronicle.com]
In a nutshell, undergrounding that level of power is way too expensive and wholly impractical over vast distances.
Here's a nice primer:
https://www.google.com/url?cli... [google.com]
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Wikipedia suggests a figure of around $40/foot for underground cables
That's a new build cost estimate. Retrospectively putting cables underground is ... and this is the technical term ... "fucking expensive". The $5bn won't get you far.
Re:Power lines? (Score:5, Informative)
It is much closer to $1million/mile for a distribution circuit, $5 million for sub-transmission, and $10-20 million for transmission. Outside of cities and undersea cables, almost all transmission line cables in the world are aerial.
PG&E, and to a lesser extent So Cal Edison, biggest issue is that most of the transmission lines are not rated for high wind conditions. Some of that is age de-rating, and some of it is that the lines were never designed for this kind of wind.
Ultimately, unless you protect everything, that one little thing that hasn’t been fixed yet can still end up starting a fire, and you are back to square one.
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I wonder how this is done in Europe then, where almost everything is buried. They must have some secret the US cannot figure out.
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Yes, it is called snow. Ok, beyond that it is that when things were re-built underground utilities were preferred. There are trade offs— repairability and expandability are the biggest ones. If a city is not changing quickly then the trade offs work in favor of underground. When you build a new town, it costs a little more, but if you value that then it is fine.
For California, the wildfire issue is what has changed. While they have always happened, the drought that ended in 2016(?) is a big part of t
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Massive urban sprawl. You also never visited rural Europe (Eastern Europe).
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You also never visited rural Europe (Eastern Europe).
Wrong. Makes you a liar, incidentally. Nice.
Sure, there are areas in Europe where little is buried, but somehow they still to not have problems with fire.
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That's called cost, it is anti-profit, what are you calling profit evil. This is the kind of logic that drives cutting back on maintenance to the point of collapse. Bonuses this quarter, somebody else's problem next quarter. Until you start to send the workers and the managers to prison for the corporations criminal negligence you will see no change in behaviour. Get used to it, it will get worse.
So because they did not keep brush clear of power lines they had to shut down power, why did they not keep brus
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You mean they didn't clear the line path because of wide spread opposition from environmentalists [sierraclub.org] and lawsuits [nbcnews.com]
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They made a profit of over $5 billion in 2018, and you are saying they didn't have the finds to bury some cables?
Need to get rich, it is the American Way! No money to spend on unimportant issues like infrastructure...
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PG&E's rates are controlled by Cali so they literally did not have the funds to run that much underground wire
They made a profit of over $5 billion in 2018, and you are saying they didn't have the finds to bury some cables?
Wikipedia suggests a figure of around $40/foot for underground cables, which works out at about $21 million per 100 miles. Seems pretty affordable. How much cable are we talking about?
California is a really big state. And burying cables isn't all that great of a solution. The typical cause of a line coming down is a lightning strike, and I have evidence in my office that underground wire can be hit (looks pretty cool, like an eagle claw)
Burying the highest tension wires isn't an economical proposition for any state or country outside of very short runs. Cali also has a lot of mountains and canyons.
There are efforts being made to produce devices that will sense a disconnect and shut o
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Wikipedia suggests a figure of around $40/foot for underground cables, which works out at about $21 million per 100 miles. Seems pretty affordable. How much cable are we talking about?
In the Peoples' Republic of California, you have to add another $100 per foot for permits.
Re:Power lines? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fictional numbers. PG&E had a gross revenue of $2.3 billion [marketwatch.com] in 2018, which after $12 billion in "unusual expenses" (fire damage liability) leaves a very large and negative number. Prior years' average net income was about $1.5 billion.
Citing Wikipedia numbers for burying low voltage distribution lines is equally wrong. Burying transmission lines costs about $3 million per mile [desertsun.com]. Path 15 [wikipedia.org] alone includes 3 500 kV lines and 4 230kV lines. Burying those lines alone would cost more than PG&E's average annual income.
This has all been exhaustively reported [desertsun.com] in Californian press outlets. As I explained to you earlier, California sets the profits of utilities like PG&E by regulatory proceedings under the law [ca.gov], and also regulates rates and capital projects. You cannot simply raid PG&E's profits using unrealistic cost projections to bury California's power lines.
Do you want to personally pay $15000 to bury California's power lines? Californians in general do not.
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I think this has more to do with the fact that in the U.S. everything is done as cheaply as possible to maximize profits.
Regulations that would force corporations to actually do things in a durable, reliable and sustainable way are perceived as socialist evils.
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Okay then. Too expensive and problematic to put the cables underground, not reliable when putting the cables on the ground... let's put the damn cables in space.
Problem solved, once and for all.
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So basically, this is lack of strategic planning and not consulting climate experts, i.e. gross incompetence? Figures.
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Europe
California
Look at a (scale) map sometime.
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This is an example of the kind of post that California fires should filter out.
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What about burying the power lines in the fire prone areas? It is of course more expensive but so is the burning of thousands of homes.
This is a problem that is a recent development, when the lines were put in the area was not nearly as dry and windy, last few years weren't as dry and it's likely next year won't be either. This is not only recent but seasonal, it's going to get cold and wet soon and so these power outages will no longer be necessary.
In my country all power cables are buried except for some of the very largest high voltage cables.
That's funny, it's the same way here in the USA too.
Let me tell you something, if you think you have this all figured out then go write the California public utility commission, PG&E, and
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Let me tell you something, if you think you have this all figured out then go write the California public utility commission, PG&E, and the governor on your solution. I'm sure that they will find it very interesting and act on it immediately.
Yes, please do. If enough people from outside the country write in continuously, maybe the state politicians will start realizing the level of global embarrassment their state infrastructure is becoming, and get some good press coverage out of redirecting funds towards fixing those things.
Re:Power lines? (Score:5, Insightful)
Californians still, to this day, dont think their State regulators are the reason for the 2000-2001 California Energy Crisis. They blame the evil corporation, not the politicians that rigged the game by by deregulating the electricity providers while simultaneously mandating by law that the carriers must buy electricity at any price but also must sell electricity to consumers at a fixed lowball price cap.
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That's funny, it's the same way here in the USA too.
Let me tell you something, if you think you have this all figured out then go write the California public utility commission, PG&E, and the governor on your solution. I'm sure that they will find it very interesting and act on it immediately.
Please don't act as though our political and business leaders in CA have an ounce of common sense between them. They're greedy and stupid, a very dangerous combination that leads to catastrophes like the paradise fire.
Surely most of us could have seen that coming and recommended better courses of action than what PG&E chose to do instead. So drop the condescending nonsense; our state and PG&G deserve it.
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No, I won’t write PG&E. Why should I? If you want an unstable power supply that is your choice. I am just curious why it is so.
But yes, my country Denmark pretty much has this figured out. We have less than 20 minutes of blackouts per year (frankly I cannot remember the last time we had one) and the lowest in Europe (don’t know about the rest of the World).
So I am just curious why a rich country such as the USA does not have a more power system.
Re:Power lines? (Score:4, Insightful)
Population of the United States: around 300,000,000
Area of Denmark: 857,510 sq mi
Area of the United States: 3,796,742 sq mi
Denmark GDP: 2018 estimate $299 billion
United States GDP: 2018 estimate $20.580 trillion
That enough reasons for you? The United States could probably buy Denmark outright, if it were for sale. You live in a tiny country comparatively speaking.
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In this context, it would make more sense to compare California to Germany.
Re: Power lines? (Score:2)
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Re: Power lines? (Score:2)
Strange, I thought Spanish was the main language of California today.
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Re:Power lines? (Score:4, Interesting)
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First, the European synchronous continental grid serves a population even larger than the US, or even any of the US grids. And somehow it magically works, yes. Pretty good for a conglomeration of itty-bitty European states in my book.
Second, if you don't like Denmark, Germany has similar quality of grid services (even better than Denmark, [wordpress.com] and in fact second only to Switzerland), and it is a nation of population twice that of California, which is the region in question, not the whole of the US.
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Trump already tried to buy 95% of Denmark.
He wasn't the first US President to make that offer.
Greenland might have a land area on the scale of Alaska but a population on the scale of some "blink and you'll miss it" towns along the interstate out here in the US Midwest. It costs the kingdom of Denmark a lot of money to administer, at least for a nation of it's size. I'm sure a lot of people, in the USA and in Greenland, would believe the USA would be doing Denmark a favor by buying it.
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I'm sure a lot of people, in the USA and in Greenland, would believe the USA would be doing Denmark a favor by buying it.
"Oh please God no!" [independent.co.uk] spoke for itself, I think.
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Denmark: 43,000 km^2
California: 423,000 km^2
USA: 9,800,000 km^2 (Continental 8,000,000 km^2)
Califrnia is 10 times the area of Denmark.
Continental US is *200* times the size.
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Denmark still has overhead transmission lines. Usually underground makes sense for distribution circuits when you have a lot of snow and ice, but it also works pretty well when your energy density (not customer density) is low. A Scandinavian home has better insulation, less air conditioning, more efficient heating (often supplemented by a wood burning stove), and ultimately lower demand than a US home.
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Why does California have such problems? Democrats.
Yep, it’s always the other party’s fault. /s
Most of us end up eventually realizing that the system itself is prone to corruption, regardless of which party is in control. Visit multi-decades-of-Republican-control Florida sometime, if you’re in doubt.
If we had elected a Democrat in Florida in 2018, he would’ve fixed some problems and created some all new ones. You just can’t win.
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Yep, itâ(TM)s always the other partyâ(TM)s fault. /s
I'm not a fan of any political party. I find the system of declaring a political party detrimental to a well functioning government. I'm especially critical of the Democrats because lately they have shifted so far out of the mainstream that they are reaching insanity.
Here's one example, they want to impeach Trump. Okay, so impeach him. They keep talking about it, keep saying how important it is to do but yet they keep delaying the vote.
Another example, and closer to the topic at hand, their decision to
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It costs money. You get what you pay for.
BTW: This is one reason the electricity price is Germany is high, there is a relatively high grid fee. People often claim that the high price only comes from renewable surcharge, but this is only some part of it. I lived in both Germany and California, and while in California there were power outages all the time (even without wild fires), I can't even remember when I last experienced one in Germany. (The other thing which is usually overlooked is that households i
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> It is of course more expensive
That's sort of the crux of most things, isn't it? And in this case PG&E has nowhere near the money to do something like that on the scale required. So what should they do? Raise rates astronomically? Raise rates astronomically x3 but only in areas served by these vulnerable lines as some sort of "risk" tax? And even if they wanted to, I doubt the utility regulator would let rates go up like that.
So now they're left with the option of damage mitigation, especially
Re: Power lines? (Score:2)
One other possible approach (dunno if itâ(TM)s feasible or not) might be to add energy storage or temporary generators at strategically located sites. With those, theyâ(TM)d still need to deactivate parts of the grid during windstorms, but they could then use these facilities to provide temporary power during that time.
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"What about burying the power lines in the fire prone areas?"
You mean like all the other civilized countries?
Are you crazy?
Re: Power lines? (Score:2)
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Strange then, that this extreme problem with fires seems to only be happening in California, don't you think? Burying is just one option.
No, sorry. This whole problem is the result from some massive screw-up, no other explanation.
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The problem with burying the power lines is that the whole area sits smack bang on top of a major set of fault lines. Scientists may have invented many things like a vehicle that can drive using nothing but batteries, a giant searchable database containing more information than all the libraries in the world put together and a wristwatch computer many times more powerful than the computers that took man to the moon but science still hasn't invented a way to bury power lines underground that can survive the
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Environment impact studies for hundreds of thousands of miles worth of power lines?
You might disturb a brand new variety of worms, sorry, can't do that.
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What about burying the power lines in the fire prone areas?
Retrospectively burying power cables is insanely expensive, and I guarantee there are places in "your country" whichever country on the planet that is which also has areas with lots of overhead power lines.
Incidentally it's the high voltage cables which are precisely the problem in California.
Skip burying. Buy distributed storage instead (Score:2)
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What, invest money in infrastructure when you can make nice profits and pay large bonuses? That is not the American way!
Incidentally, I remember one instance in Europe, where a power line touched a tree because of overload and caused an outage. Did not start a fire though. They also make the masts taller here (where they do not bury the cables), exactly to prevent that issue.
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What about burying the power lines in the fire prone areas? It is of course more expensive but so is the burning of thousands of homes.
In my country all power cables are buried except for some of the very largest high voltage cables.
Underground cables are still susceptible to lightning strikes. You are correct about the extreme high voltage cables. While it is possible to put those underground, the expense wouldn't be tolerable.
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Florida? (Score:2)
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But doesn't everybody want to be saved by Florida Man?
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Florida does have a lot of buried power lines. The power to my own house is buried. But there are also a lot of above ground lines, too. It's a mix. Burying lines isn't a perfect solution, either. Problems with buried lines are much harder to find and fix. And in many places in FL, especially those that are affected most by hurricanes, the water table is very close to the surface. It's why there are not very many houses with basements, in least in my area of FL. That high water table can get in and
Reason for fires: Environmentalists (Score:2, Troll)
They've constantly sued to prevent the power company from cutting trees along the powerlines [blogspot.com].
The fires are an entirely foreseeable result of California being a one-party Democratic state.
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The shit that was predicted to happen due to their policies, happened, in spite of the claims that the predictions were just a "partisan" attempt to obstruct. The California Democrat voters do not hold the California Democrat politicians accountable even after decades of a cycle of predictions claimed to be partisan followed by predictions coming true followed by outrage and blaming the evil super-regulated business.
Electric Cars (Score:2)
So how is the electric car working for you?
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About as well as the gas ones, when the gas station pumps are without power and all the traffic signals are down.
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Few gas stations have any form of backup. There's no signs that this will change any time soon. Meanwhile, Tesla has applied for permits to put battery backups on all of its chargers in California, and plans to install solar awnings over them as soon as possible - not full backup/generation, but a meaningful amount, given that people on road trips (the main use for DC chargers) will route around any station with power restrictions.
Also, as a side note, if your concern is about wildfires, the last thing you
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Got solar on the roof and some battery system to make the electric car work while the grid is not working?
Some gas system to make energy for the EV?
ie the power is off but the electric car can still get the energy it needs every day...
Fast charge each day when the sun is out. Gas to make electrical power all night?
That adds up to an electric car to drive for how many hours after how many hours of power?
In CA the cost of the electric car needs a new power sys
California (Score:2)
Re:California (Score:4, Insightful)
The Federal government should give zero fucks about Californias problems.
It's 2019 and USA is meant to be a civilised place (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife is there now (I'm home in Aus) and in the middle of a whatsapp voice conversation it went dead. /seems/ as though they don't even have a cell signal in her region (she's at least 90 minutes away from any fires)
It
I mean I get power outages happen but cell? She had 70% battery on her. That's extremely legit dark ages dangerous stuff. No power, no phone? It's perfect for particularly oppourtune criminals to be honest, no one can even report them.
People have hundreds of dollars of groceries in their refridgerators and thousands of people at that, like this is madness. Anywhere from 1 to 4 days without power I hear.
I hate to bring SOCIALISM or whatever to the table guys, but over here in Aus, some aspects of power delivery are privatised ,but if I recall the actual transmission lines are not, there's safety and standards to keep up.
Cutting the power to that many people, for that long that even UPS in cell towers goes flat is bananas to me, it's verging on 3'rd world stuff.
Dangerous and crazy, between that and the housing prices (one of the few places in the world worse then Australia) the medical system, I dunno, the place is going to go full mad max within 30 years I think
My condolences to the sysadmin types, trying to maintain a business network too.
Re:It's 2019 and USA is meant to be a civilised pl (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to bring SOCIALISM or whatever to the table guys
Australia does not have socialism. It has regulation. There's a difference. When the government mandates the service level requirements under risk of penalty as well as puts in place a mandatory compensation scheme which exists in Australia then there is a lot of effort put into keeping the lights on.
Incidentally that is also largely to blame for the skyrocketing cost in electricity over the past 2 decades. Australia has well and truly gold plated a large portion of the transmission system.
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When that battery/generator energy fails the network has to wait until
The grid power comes back on
The generator is ready again... as the grid works again.
Re 'No power, no phone?"
It works with battery and generator power as it should. The part CA is missing is the grid power has to actually work again after a while...
Or the telco past for a fleet of trucks to transport what makes the "generator" work to most of the cellular towers
New headline (Score:5, Insightful)
2.35 Million Lose Power In California As State Faces Extreme Weather and Wildfires
This is gonna hurt but you need to face reality. Here's the real headline:
2.35 Million Lose Power As California Power Companies Strike Back For All The Regulations Punching Them In The Balls The Last 10 Years Making Building Costly And Having Rates Mandated At A Loss Because Politicians Want To Preen For Voters
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Uh, maybe if your home runs off 12VDC cigarette lighter outlets and draws less than 12A continuous.
Or maybe you're planning to use the Climate setting to set the car at 40 degrees and hang beef carcasses inside the car?
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Re:Don't forget to charge your Tesla! (Score:5, Insightful)
Trivia question: What powers the pumps down at the gas station?
Hint: You'd better top off your petrol tank right now as well.
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But I can drive to an open station with working pumps and fill a lot of gas cans (Heck 6 55 gallon barrels fit in the back of my truck). How are you going to charge a lot of batteries?
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No you won't. Because they will be out of fuel due to everyone else having done the same thing.
In the meantime those horrible EV owners will casually coast past you on account of having had a full "tank of gas" when the power went out.
You clearly learnt nothing from the last few major disasters in the USA. EV owners fared far better than their previous century counterparts.
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Given that there is some advance notice, I wonder how much time and money it would take to retrofit a gas station with a transfer switch and a portable generator for use in loss-of-power situations.
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Re "Tech advanced"... most nations can keep the power on in summer.
Look after the forests. Look after the grid. The power stays on for decades...
Just like most other US states can do
CA is not the only US state with power grids, forests, summer time and advanced
....it's still state government incompetence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your curses and insults don't change the fact that the state government of California is responsible for rational, reasonable oversight of the regulated utility.
Your screed about Trump might make the slightest sense if there was some prohibition about maintaining power lines on Federal lands. The article you linked contained no such statement.
Even if that was part of the problem, a competent state government would pick up the phone and call the feds responsible for such things. Or they would make sure PG&E did so. They would work it out, because that's what competent adults do.
Bottom line is that the California Public Utility Commission (or equivalent) needs to ensure that PG&E runs a reliable electric grid, and part of that task is to not landen them with contradictory edicts. If other Government agencies - federal, state or local- interfere with this, then they need to make sure everyone plays nice. 49 other states manage these relationships just fine.
California alone doesn't. Your can screech about PG&E next if you like, but again, other states work with utilities with the same corporate structure, hiring the same sort of people, and they make it work out fine.
Are you on the PUC? Is that why you're cursing and lashing out, trying to shift the blame somewhere else besides on your own shoulders?
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The rest of the USA and most the advance world seems to be able to keep the power on in summer, winter.
With the heat and cold for decades... and with their own budget limitations to consider...
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So essentially, it is not the broken infrastructure that is at fault, but the broken legal system? Makes sense, for things to get this bad, several things have to be messed up badly.