California Will Turn Off Power to 800,000 People for Third World Level Electrical Service

78 thoughts on “California Will Turn Off Power to 800,000 People for Third World Level Electrical Service”

1. The Hondurans and Guatemalans have Doctorates?

2. Look at the pockets of poverty in those red states and you will find a Democrat runs them. And BTW, California is not the highest-poverty state in the country. You get the government you deserve.

3. Not exactly, from what I saw what actually happened was that they underreached, and their voters just threw up their hands and gave up in response, since voting Republican didn’t actually get you Republican policies anymore.

   Refusing to defend Prop 8, for instance.

   The gubinator turning out to to functionally be a Democrat was kind of a final blow underscoring the futility of voting for Republicans.

   Of course, once the Democrats were in power they “reformed” California’s law to make voting for Republicans more in the nature of illegal, than futile. My brother in Ventura often complains to me that when he’s looking at that general election ballot, he’s given the choice of voting for a Democrat or a Democrat.

4. Nature has cycles. What is hard to understand about that?
   Actually, the most common cause is arsonists 24%. So we are burning more than would normally be burned. And only 2% of wildfires are caused by campfires and that includes “illegals”. Idiots burning debris causes 20%, only 17% are caused by lightning. 5% kids, 4% equipment, 2% smoking, 2% railroad… If things were natural, lightning would be the cause of 99% of fires. The rest would be meteorites, vulcanism and refracted light from natural crystals. In short, there would be a lot more trees.

   People slam people for wanting to retain trees and forests…when what we need to be doing is catching the arsonists and locking them up. We need to track people in the forests at least enough to figure out who started the fire. When they realize that they will be caught, there will be a lot less people starting fires.

   And we have to identify and put out fires quickly. That means drones and large seaplanes. Maybe some satellites using infrared.

   And maybe it is less authentic but I think we need fire pits with tops that catch embers before they get in the air. Put them all over the national parks and forests. And if you don’t use that then use propane/natural gas. Forget the old campfires…at least in the forests. Deserts? Whatever.

5. Actually, Trees themselves are not “natural”. Here in the Northwest among the giant pine forests, only 12,000 years ago, we were under a mile of ice. Trees are just the latest invasive species. Unless humans with Agency manage reality, the fires will continue, whether started by illegals, campers or defective equipment.

   Rater than trying to freeze time, why don’t you consider land management and adopting modular Nuclear power (for a more distributed grid). Your environmentalist “do nothing to save yesterday” is off.

6. If I had to bet, I would bet California has more Phds and MDs than any other state. And the great thing about immigrants is that every one of them is ambitious, otherwise they would of stayed where they where.

7. Let me rephrase, more people chose California than any other state as the place to live. In fact most Blue States are low population state. I wonder why since they are such great places to live. /s

8. How callous. You think there is some natural law that makes californians too retarded to cut down the trees that threaten to fall on their power lines so you’s rather let some people die due to lack of power than fix the problem.

9. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a requirement to do a separate environmental impact study for every 100 feet of treeline trimmed.

   After all, what’s more important? Preserving the environment or keeping power going to the proles?

10. You make it sound like California is engaged in some international talent hunt.

    The vast bulk are from south of the border (40% from Mexico alone) and, even mixed in with immigrants from overseas, over a third of all immigrants to California don’t even have the equivalent of a high school degree.

11. Most? Americans in US number around 327 million. 39 million live in California.

12. Right, the US pioneered this sort of line maintenance and its been in place for at least 100 years, risk is small but it still happens, its just a matter of time until the pieces are in place, sometimes storms will blow whole trees into the lines, regardless of maintenance. I’m talking about just burying the lines, then you never need to worry about them again until you build more.

13. Sorry for the double reply. It disappeared after I replied.

14. The headline is wrong. 800,000 customers is not 800,000 people. To a utility, a customer is a meter. So 800K customers is closer to 2.5M people.

15. I had considered spraying paint on them but I could not think of any that would not be flammable.
    What I have always thought was the best solution to home solar is a pole mounted array with a solar tracking system. Maybe a 16ft pole and 15-18, 300-500W panels on a frame that does not look to industrial. Something that will stay 7ft off the ground even at dawn or dusk. And not necessarily rectangular.
    In new construction you could have it on a small island in the middle of a swimming pool or it can just serve as a gazebo. In high winds, it can go level like a table. And not being on the roof, you can re-roof when ever is optimal, without the hassle of removing the system…and putting it back up.
    Won’t work in small yards, or houses with medium yards and existing swimming pools, unless you can get a deal with a neighbor allowing it near a fence.

16. I had considered that they could spray them with paint. But I couldn’t think of any paint that was not flammable when in a fine mist, but maybe there is.
    I have always thought the best way to do home solar is with a central pole and solar tracking. Then it can serve as a shaded area like a gazebo. Doing it that way would not interfere with when you need to re-roof, and the power generation would be more even and higher.
    In high winds it could just sit level like a table. That should minimize damage. If it is not on the house it should pose less of a problem to firefighters as well. The only issue is space. You have to have a back yard that would accommodate it. A lot of the new back yards are very small. And if you want a pool any your yard is only medium that can be hard. Well, maybe there could be a central island in the pool with the pole? Shade at the pool is nice to have. If you already had a pool in the middle of the yard…it just won’t work unless you can get so sort of deal with a neighbor and it can go along the fence.
    I suppose another issue is aesthetics. Some snob communities might think the pole mounted solar is ugly. I think it would look modern but not necessarily ugly. Especially if it was round or oval rather than square. And it would be better if the frame it sat on was not too industrial looking.
    I am thinking maybe a 16 foot pole and 15-18, 300-500W panels. You probably want it 7 ft off the ground even when fully tilted for dawn or dusk.

17. They’ve had a year to cut down trees near power lines. What’s the problem? Lack of emergency aid from the federal government.

18. Sorry, I didn’t mean long term, I meant did the banruptcy interfere with the contingency work on mitigating this season’s blackout plans that could have made it suck less. The suck was clearly unavoidable at this stage.

19. Which would suggest that the grid cutoff also must function as an internal main breaker with an externally operable switch, so that’s an opportunity for suitable hardware and regulation then?

    Though with power flowing from individual panels when lit, you’re left with the issue of how to shut down an active panel then remotely, since most panels are roof mounted. Remote manipulation seems troublesome, short of something like a long lever pole mechanism, but homeowners would object. Something failsafe, like a small vacuum line providing vacuum to panel mounted switches, so vacuum failure causes the panel to safe itself? Could that be done with something small, on the scale of a fish tank pump?

20. Third option: move.

21. You missed the point. Solar modules generate power on their terminals when illuminated, regardless the state of any external switches. That is what the fireman says: it is supposed to be “off”, but it is not. The answer is it cannot be “off”, unless modules are covered or their terminals shorted. But if they are shorted, that power will be dissipated inside modules, and that may start another fire. Same with batteries: switch them off all you like, but if terminals are shorted, stored energy will be released, will destroy the battery and may start a fire.

22. Controlled burns have only been in experimental trials for the last 40 000 years or so. More experimentation is needed before they are approved for use.

23. A grid power state sensing cutoff/regulator will stop the solar panels from being connected to the public power lines. They’ll still be connected from the solar panels to the cutoff point. There will still be metal wires with kW worth of potential electrical power in them mounted on the (burning, collapsing) roof.

    The only way to shut the power off completely is for the firemen to shoot the panels to bits with a shotgun before going into the building.

24. It is the consequence of decades of decisions by PG&E management, abetted by lack of effective oversight by the California Public Utilities Commission, and possibly a few other long-term contributing factors. The bankruptcy was one of the consequences, not the cause.

    The problems are so extensive that no short term solution is possible, except for shutting off the power. Even with diligent effort in the right direction by everyone involved, it will take many years to correct all the problems to the point that the grid could remain powered during the kind of conditions prevailing this week without a high risk of starting a fire. The problems are fixable. It remains to be seen whether California will force PG&E to fix them.

25. That Alaskan earthquake that affected Crescent City (the most northerly city on the California coast) was the strongest earthquake ever to hit North America. And they still debate if it was perhaps the largest earthquake as a result of plate movement of modern times. It was lucky that not many people lived there at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE2j10xyOgI
    They list it as 9.2 but I have seen it listed as high as 9.6 This thing was not typical. Something like once in 600 years. Officially, it is the second strongest earthquake ever recorded anywhere.
    The deaths in Crescent city was a very low probability thing. I think those people were killed because they were curious what happened to the ocean.
    And I did say we can get them from Alaska and Hawaii. We got one from The earthquake in Japan in 2011 but it was very wimpy by the time it got here. And that was a very big one.
    Just before tsunamis the water level drops dramatically. These people went in, and then they got caught when the wave came in. I think that is what happened. My memory can get fuzzy. I read about this in 1989 I think. I know this is a common thing that happens not sure if it happened there.
    You are supposed to head for the hill immediately if the ocean level suddenly drops.
    It will probably take another 600 years to see anything like that again.

26. California is 45.8% federal land and the federal government has been underspending on fire prevention for decades.

    That underspending has been fixed with the budget starting 2020 https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-government-is-running-out-of-money-to-fight-californias-wildfires

27. Maybe California good try some forest management and controlled burns?

28. Actually, there are only 2 good reasons not to live here: housing prices, and the cost of building a home (because of all the fees). The rest of this is stuff that can be avoided very easily or is a low probability, if you select a location wisely. Well…I am going to waffle on this a little. Traffic can be hard to avoid and still benefit from all the cool things.

29. When I google my own question the first hit was

    In 1964, 12 people were killed when a tsunami struck the coast of California after a magnitude 9.2 earthquake hit Alaska

30. If we do, they should be small. The Farallon plate is subducting under the North American plate in Washington State and Oregon. But in California the plates are moving laterally, not subducting. It is the subducting plates that make the big tsunamis. Though you can get them from large volcanic eruptions, landslides underwater and meteorite impacts as well. If California got one it would have started in Alaska or Hawaii most likely, and should cause little damage.

31. I thought California sometimes had tsunami too?

32. They are designed to fly 100 mph (at least these ones in the link). So I think as long as the wind is say 70 mph or less and you can get reasonably close for launch it should still work.
    Of course, it takes a bit of time to even realize you have a fire. Hopefully in that time the winds will diminish a little.

33. Part of the problem is that we don’t have any of the big water dumping aircraft anymore. We sold the last of them to Canada, I think.
    China is going to start selling some in 2022: AVIC AG600 Kunlong 5-8 of these would make a big difference. There is only so much you can do with little helicopters.

34. If the wind is blowing trees through the air your drones are not going to work.

35. You know, I would care if it wasn’t for the fact that Red States are usually poorer than Blue States. All the cruelty that they dish out to the Red States workers and nothing to show for it.

36. How weird that this happen after the passing of Proposition 13 that limited real estate taxes. And California originally part of Mexico always had a large Hispanic population. The other 3rd world people moving to California have Masters and PHDs.

37. Choice of people world wide. That is even better.

38. Is the total FAIL of PG&E deliberate, or a symptom of the bankruptcy proceedings blocking the PR and work that needed to be done to minimize this situation?

39. I thought you were usually required to have a grid power state sensing cutoff/regulator, so solar doesn’t electrocute linemen and emergency personel?

    Or are you referring to a general power cutoff for a building as a total shutdown mechanism to deal with a building internal fire? In the latter case, the difference is that many homes have the breaker cutoff inside the building, rather than externally accessible. There aren’t many places with residential regulations requiring an external cutoff.

40. If Sci-fi, not too out there: https://www.wired.com/story/bell-apt-70-cargo-drone-test-flight/
    I said 1,000 of them. That is a lot of water on target
    Starting with these does not seem that absurd. 70 lb of water can help. They should be able to hit their targets precisely and act like a big bucket brigade. I don’t know what Bell wants for these. I doubt there is any obstacle to making drones very similar to this…without the fat contractor markup.
    I’d like to see 300 gallons from each. I think we can build a bit bigger. I think you want to be able to pack 50 on a non-oversized semi. I think that sized package is doable.
    I think they can be built for $30,000 each. A thousand of them would be just $30 million. Add some profit…$45 million. All the support…trucks, extra batteries, loading and unloading equipment, charging generators…maybe another $20 million.

41. And now your state is devolving to third world status thanks to your Democratic overlords. You sure showed those Republicans!

42. AI drones of absurd capacities and ranges are nowhere to be found already by fire crews, so…citation needed before venturing off into sci fi land. Id also reckon that if 5 gallons of water was effective for dumping it would have been tried already.

    I’m against towers running through forests, I’m not sure who you’re trying to argue with here but that is not my advocacy at all. if you’d bury the lines, you wouldn’t need super AI swarms that would cost more than the helicopters and aircraft do now though, such was my point.

    at any rate, tens of thousands of very high performance drones would cost hundreds of millions, so again, we’re into my point about there not really being good alternatives.

43. This argument is just put out by loggers or on the behalf of loggers and parroted by people who don’t know any better. Logging is not natural and removes nutrients from the soil.
    The Natives were not saints either. They altered the environment in ways that advantaged them. But the burn areas were small right arround the community. Mostly, it was to make it easier to shoot animals with bow and arrow and to see some other invading tribe. It wasen’t to clear large areas to prevent forest fires.

44. Show me the State that has buried all its very high voltage lines underground.
    I don’t think you can bury the very high voltage stuff…too easy to jump to ground. And if you reduce the voltage, you get a lot of energy loss and fat expensive wires. The terrain also can be very rough with lots of stone and such.
    And unless you remove 70% of the trees, when they get dry they are very combustible and will spread fire. With 70% of the trees gone, it is no longer the same place. Baby tossed out with the bathwater.
    And neither of those things can this power company do in a couple days.
    So brilliant governor you are not.
    The people talking about thinning just want the wood for free or even paid so they get money from selling the wood. For every political stink you hear, there is someone who stands to make a bunch of money.
    I’m sorry, it is not natural to saw and haul away trees.

45. AI drones capable of taking 55 gallons of water 50 miles dumping it and coming back. Change the battery and go again. A thousand of those guys should get it done.
    Much less cost, I suspect, than doubling wire thickness, tower strength and such. More effective too. High winds can throw trees. It would be prohibitive to build wires and towers that can withstand 100 mph trees flying through the air.
    Fire volunteers all over? Never work. People are too spread out. Owners are often elderly. And it can be rugged and rocky…producing a lot of injuries. Also unless you have a fire truck and/or a water truck good luck getting water to put out the fires. With little stuff you can start back fires and such but if it is just big dry trees, that is very easy to get out of control.
    With drones everyone is happy. No one’s favorite tree has to be removed, and the fires stop.

46. No, California was a swing state that usually voted for whoever won the popular vote. It was 100% population change that turned California blue. Massive scale 3rd World immigration and conservative types leaving for red States for lower taxes.

47. Cali actually has net-negative internal migration. Only have population growth due to foreign immigration.

48. Strange that California was once a Republican State. I wonder how that change. I vaguely remembered the Republicans overreached and there was a backlash.

49. Weird how most Americans make California their choice for where to live.

50. Here’s my idea: if your state is prone to catching fire, you should embrace basic land management techniques and/or bury your power lines so you don’t have this situation in the first place.

51. Obviously, the author has never lived in a Third World country. There they schedule when you will get power. Most of the time it’s off. Author might be thinking of a Developing country.

52. You mean burn down half of it, and shut down half of it?

53. It will not likely be 5 days. Smart people will freeze water in the freezer and/or buy ice and when the power goes put the ice or frozen jugs in the fridge. Perhaps buy some insulating foam and tape that around the fridge after the power goes off.
    The only way it would be 5 days is if the winds were so severe that it would have been 5 days without power anyway because of all the downed power lines.

54. The vast majority of northern Californians would gladly go two days without electricity to save a forest…even if lives and property were not at stake.

    I’d gladly go without for a month if it meant a cool forest around here. Sadly, I live in dry San Diego. Our view is brown shrubs and big weeds most of the year.

55. If you are going to jeer you have to come up with a better way to deal with the problem. Otherwise your place in the realm of reasonable humans is hereby suspended.

56. There is a simple answer: A cutoff like we have for gas or water. The only complication I see is if you need that power to power a water pump, or a security system. You have a switch that turns off everything but security systems and water pumps. Obviously it should either be on the exterior of the building or located away from the building.
    Should have a special color/shape outlet for the security system/water pump…so firemen can see which outlet to avoid when it is not obvious.

57. And I’m telling you, that’s exactly what we do to thousands of miles of forest, grassland, farmland, semi-arid, and sundry other biomes, up hills and down cliffs, for thousands of miles. It’s called preventive maintenance. It’s supposed to be factored into the cost of the electricity the State of California allows PG&E to draw.

    If this were Brazil, they’d be slapped with fines to the tune of three to five times the price of the transmission potential they’re deliberately turning off, no questions asked, no realistic chance of having the fine overturned administatively or judicially. Frankly, it beggars belief.

58. there are other options but its pretty obvious which two were most viable for PG&E. They have 2 imperatives now, whereas they used to have only 1 priority;

    maximize up time

    (newly elevated) minimize fire risk

    there are many other choices, (like, pay for residentscommunites to have stand-alone systems and or build the infrastructure in such a way as to not run the risk of causing a forest fire. which is already about as good as it gets above ground on the grid we all inherit.

    so the better question would be…how obtuse do you need to be to believe the third option won’t cost hundreds of millions of dollars (on the utility/state’s dime) to save what amounts to maybe a week once in a while of inconvenience.

    This is california after all so who knows what the true answer/priority will end up being, I know that napa folks will probably be absolutely livid that their temp/humidity controlled wine vaults suffered even a degree of fluctuation.

59. How obtuse do you need to be to think that the only two options available to PG&E are:

    1. Burn everything down
    2. Shut everything down

    If only we had some third option.

60. I don’t know who to blame, the electric company for not demanding the right to maintain its lines or the weather.

61. I imagine a few months of messing with crappy portable alternators will make battery backups very popular. Especially since the cost of ownership compared to engine-alternator sets that are used often is less.

62. That’s one advantage of ground mount. It’s easy to figure out how to isolate it from a building. There should be a switch mounted on the racking.
    Solar edge inverters can be mounted outside, and usually integrate a switch on the inverter housing.

63. its expensive long term, some lines have no access by road, others, the trees are so tall you have to fly in by helicopter to trim them, entire teams need to go out at regular intervals and prune thousands of miles of forest.

    and when the (admittedly low) likelyhood of a spark does happen, its underground and can only burn what flammable materials you put down there with no access to air.

    I don’t think PG&E had difficient infrastructure per say, but keeping up with it will become unsustainable in the long term if it needs constant intervention due to natural phenomena that really should have been managed better beforehand.

64. Alternatively, cut down the vegetation within thirty feet of the path of the power lines so they don’t catch fire. I used to work for a Brazilian power company, who has thousands of kilometres of power lines through rainforests (some of it in the Amazon). We had started *zero* fires in sixty years, managing 20,000 km of power lines between 138 and 600 kV. And this is the Third World!

65. To be fair, I’ve been to at least one third world country, and the only notice you got of power outages was, “You’re in the Philippines.” So they’ve got a bit of a ways to go to third world status, though they’re working on it.

66. California is such a basket case. They had severe problems keeping the power on back in the early 2000s too and it brought down Grey Davis IIRC. Maybe the current nutjob governor will face consequences for once? Probably not as this is California after all. They love their lefties.

67. And why would that be? Because the crazy environmentalists running California’s Bureau of Land Management refuse to manage the land! Any Native American will tell you that for thousands of years the Natives did “Controlled Burns” to clean up the forests near their villages. This is just common sense. State and local fire departments did controlled burns up to the time the Left took over California and stopped true Land Management. The Environmentalists say they do not want to change anything in the forest for fear of interfering with natural processes, but that is madness, and that madness just got hundreds of people killed and thousands of homes burned to the ground! Now they’re doing to completely retarded Power Outage scam… The simple fact is that when people lived in or near forested areas – those lands must be managed to protect them! The Environmentalists need to be told: PEOPLE TAKE PRECEDENCE AND THEIR SAFETY IS PARAMOUNT! Californians need to seriously reconsider who they’ve put in charge of their state.

68. still better than having your house burn down in a fire caused by a power-line running through a forest. Long term best strategy is and always will be to bury the lines or get grid independent.

69. Gee, if it weren’t for the “leadership”, the taxes, the homeless, the gangs, the flooding, the mud slides, the earthquakes, the water rationing, the prices, the traffic, the wild fires, and now the power shutdowns, California would be such a fantastic place to live.

    Technically, they have a minor chance of volcanoes and hurricanes, too, but let’s not be negative.

70. Power outage or Power outRage?

71. I welcome this situation. A few months of this, and you’ll see massive adoption of batteries. At first installations will average a few kWh. As batteries get cheaper to buy, and the price of ownership drops due to longer battery life, a few days storage would allow a service to derive almost all energy from PV. The grid would be for emergency usage! Sort of serves PGE right.

72. Tell that to the people who will have food spoil because their refrigerator was powered off for five days…

73. Don’t you have a similar problem with home generators?

    Really, most of the real progress in fighting fires has come through building codes. As a fire fighter you doubtless know that.

    We should continue concentrating on that end. Fire men don’t have to risk their lives running into burning buildings if they don’t catch fire in the first place.

74. Or “discourage” fire fighters (or anyone else) from tempering with tech, and use fire suppression systems – something that has been the norm for a long time in fire-sensitive places such as expensive ships with lots of combustible, explosive and living things packed inside them, or a trivial data center that cannot be simply hosed down under any circumstances. A big tank with compressed nitrogen (or argon, or halon), lots of different sensors, and a clever distributed control system – and instantly no chance of fire, and power supply is managed automatically with millisecond delay, doors opened or closed where and when necessary, etc. There is absolutely no reason not to do that, same as absolutely no reason to have roof solar that goes down with the grid.

    On the point of power being on, solar panels (the modules, not systems) cannot be “off” – if illuminated, they generate power on terminals. If a module is a stack (serially connected circuit) of tens or hundreds of cells, hundreds of volts with a lot of amps will be on its terminals even if everything is off. The only way to make them “off” is to short the terminals, with ensuing fireworks and more fires. 🙂

75. I am a fire fighter. We have a serious problem with roof mounted
    solar panels. The power can be on when the power is supposed to
    be off. People die when installing or touching these things, and fire
    men get electrocuted.
    By the logical of GM food and nuclear power – shouldn’t we ban
    roof top solar panels too?

76. How callous, fires destroy property and cost lives — a power outage sucks, but PG&E is taking the responsible route here.

77. I remember the power cut offs back in a communist Est European country where I grew up. Ironic, isn’t it? Trouble in paradise

78. Well-well, now is the judgement day for the roof solar.

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