Ongoing PG&E power outages

brianlux said:

FiveBelow said:

brianlux said:

You know what's funny?  The last 72 posts in this thread are about Texas and PG&E doesn't even serve Texas.

Look on the bright side, all of this has to make you feel a little better about PG&E!

LOL

I will say, PG&E has been working to upgrade some of their infrastructure and trim trees around power poles.   We'll find out in 7 or 8 months how well their efforts will have paid off.  I'm glad fall is still a long ways away!

mace1229 said:

tbergs said:

Odd to see anyone defending Ted fucking Cruz. Who even does that, especially based on his track record as a shitty hypocritical jackass who helped promote an insurrection. Fuck him all the way to hell.

I'm sure he's the next GOP presidential nominee though because he is a valueless pile of trash whose words ring hollow on every topic.

I just don't get the coverage of it I guess. I think I heard more about Cruz than the Mars landing on the morning news. A short story calling him a hypocrite and pointing our his criticism of others and moving on seems fitting. Headline news for a day considering what else is going on seems obsessive and fixated. If it wasn't the focus of the morning news this morning I wouldn't have bothered to comment on it. Yes, it looks bad. It doesn't deserve the media coverage it has gotten though. Bigger things to worry about that than where Ted took his 2 daughters. 

static111 said:

Powers back. Heats on.  No water. If water comes back it has to be boiled for the foreseeable future. I’m shocked that the usual suspect is defending Cruz 🙄

brianlux said:

Lerxst1992 said:

brianlux said:

FiveBelow said:

brianlux said:

You know what's funny?  The last 72 posts in this thread are about Texas and PG&E doesn't even serve Texas.

Look on the bright side, all of this has to make you feel a little better about PG&E!

LOL

I will say, PG&E has been working to upgrade some of their infrastructure and trim trees around power poles.   We'll find out in 7 or 8 months how well their efforts will have paid off.  I'm glad fall is still a long ways away!

I would expect utility infrastructure to have a rather high fail rate in a fire.  Winter weather on the other hand, I’d expect the equipment to withstand the elements, as it does in most cold climates. Texas decided to play the “it never gets freezing here” game and lost, despite being warned in 2011. 

I would expect utility infrastructure to have a rather high fail rate in a fire.

That makes sense, Lerxst.  What doesn't make sense is letting the infrastructure get so frail that it would cause fires like it did in Santa Rose that killed 22 people and another one in Paradise that killed 86 people.  That's inexcusable.

FERC, which controls the long-distance and most dangerous lines, has not been skimpy about approving transmission investment. PG&E’s FERC approved transmission investments increased from about $600 million in 2010 to about $1.6 billion in 2018. Meanwhile, CPUC has also expanded distribution investment substantially. State utilities’ CPUC approved distribution investments increased from $8 billion in 2010 to almost $11 billion in 2018, with PG&E’s being the largest component.⁷ In other words, PG&E and other state utilities pay billions of dollars more a year for power lines than just a few years ago, and somehow their customers get less for it.⁸

These large and increasing investments are reflected in PG&E’s rates to final customers. While nationally electricity costs about 13 cents a kilowatt hour, California and PG&Es ratepayers pay about 20 cents, the highest in the continental US, or over 50% more than average, for power that is also more likely to fail.⁹

The bigger question is, where has all this investment gone if not into safe electric transmission? California’s own electricity investment report argues that much of it has gone to mandated connections to new renewable sources, which tend to be located at great distance from traditional generators and power lines.¹⁰ There is nothing inherently wrong with such mandates, but the costs must be acknowledged.

Often, however, regulators disapproved simple maintenance spending and then blamed PG&E for failing to do more. When PG&E suggested inspecting 300,000 poles a year to ensure safety in 2012, CPUC cut the total to 235,000.¹¹ In 2011 and 2012, when PG&E spent almost $100 million more on replacing poles than allowed by CPUC, the regulator took that as a reason to deny future claims for pole replacement spending. It said “PG&E demonstrated the capacity and willingness to spend more than previously authorized…to meet service obligations,” thus they would not include extra required pole replacements in the “rate base.” These sorts of decisions created exactly the wrong incentives, penalizing PG&E for doing more than was required.¹²