PG&E power outage in Northern California

[JoeWras]

I have no idea whether that is right or not, but if it costs that much just to clear vegetation under existing lines, then there is probably no hope of building new lines.

Danger, I'm going to cross the plasma containment lines here...

In NC, they are constantly trimming. But their BIG way to keep the corridors clear is to carpet bomb the corridor with, uh, Glyphosate on a regular basis.

Uh oh.

 

[MichaelB]

We are visiting DW’s brother this week, who lives in Sacramento. We planned a couple of days in Wine Country, which is mostly without power, so that’s no longer an option. We’re currently enjoying “Plan B” and soon will have the option to test our travel insurance.

The power shutdown is a preventive move. Very high winds and dry conditions expose Northern California to another major wildfire. The utility company may have been derelict in maintaining the infrastructure (or at least easy to blame) but today there is no better option for the population in that area. Not much different from people living in flood zones in Houston or suffering from water problems in south Florida. There’s probably no major population area in the entire US that does not face some significant infrastructure risk. The sooner we acknowledge this and accept the challenge of updating it, the better.

 

[JoeWras]

The sooner we acknowledge this and accept the challenge of updating it, the better.

+1

For hurricane relief, it involves stopping the bleeding: after all we don't want a new homeless population. Then it involves long term strategy such as new roofing standards, raising houses in flood prone areas, etc. That takes a lot of time and money.

 

[street]

PG&E and good for their decision and I back them 100%. I see no other option for them now after the last blame and lawsuits.
People that have health issues need to be responsible for a back power supply if it is life and death. Not the power companies issue and acts of God happen and it is out of the PUD control. Everyone wants to blame the PC but still cry and whine when they don't have power.

Shutter down is their only option or get sued from everyone involved. You people in CA don't have any idea what living in a remote country setting is when it comes to power outages. It is nothing to be without power for days when a storm comes through the high country. People need to be prepared and make do.

 

[EastWest Gal]

Not one of the posts here or in the news consider the huge ramifications of this. These are not rolling blackouts. These are blackouts scheduled to last as long as 4-5 days. This could cost more lives than potentially it could save.

Hospitals without power for days. They have backup generators, but not enough to power the whole hospital.
IVs now run on electric pumps. I wonder how many new nurses know how to calculate the drops per minute estimate for IVs
Operating rooms-many will be shut down
Medical records are now ALL online
Hospital pharmacy orders are now ALL online
Hospital phone systems require electricity
Medicine storage machines on all the wards are all electronically sealed. You cannot get to any of the medications without electricity
Ventilators, etc, in ICUs

Blood in blood banks will spoil.

Doctors' offices--all their vaccines will spoil. This will cost millions of dollars and could put doctors out of business. They will need to reorder vaccines. I worked in a two-person office and we had hundreds of thousands of dollars of vaccines stored in the freezer and refrigerator.

Food spoilage in stores and warehouses, not just in everyone's home.

Harvest season in California. Processing of harvested food may be affected by these blackouts

Electric pumps that operate water wells.

They say the power outages only affect 800,000 customers. But when you look at the large list of cities and towns, it seems it is a lot more.

Traffic lights. Communications systems. Airports. Train travel. Parts of BART.

The list is huge. Look at the number of towns and cities affected. That's way more than 800K people.

https://abc7news.com/society/list-areas-affected-by-pg-e-power-outage-in-ca/5603558/

 

[GravitySucks]

They ran to Oregon the day before.
Looks like they have power today. There goes $40 in gas and at least 2 day's pay a long with the best restaurant in the county closed at least a day then without it's best souschef for at least another day.

Did the city and San Jose lose power at all?

Hospitals are open and the news channels are instructing people who depend on electricity for medical devices to go to the nearest one for assistance. There are also portable charging stations in a lot of places, so depending on what kind of equipment, they may be able to recharge there.

 

[street]

PG&E and other PUD across the country can't be continuously being sued. Their pocket books are no different then any other business in this country. Acts of God events happen but they get sued and is very hard to argue their cases in court because everyone wants to sue them.

 

[Chuckanut]

Retired power company employees said the company is not doing it’s job trimming trees. Legally they trim trees on private or public property within 50 ft of the line. The company is saving money by doing nothing.

In my area we have power lines coming through mountains, over fields and even through subdivisions. In variably the land under the lines is cleared of trees and most shrubbery. There are weeds and some grass growing there, but not very much.

I would love to hear from Californians in general and those and those whose power has been cut off in particular. From my vantage point all I can do is assume and guess - not a great way to find the facts.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

BTW, we travel a lot by car and in the east and midwest I see a surprising number of high transmission line replacement.

One that stuck out to me was last summer in Minnesota. There was what looked to me to be a perfectly good line being replaced, and not just supplemented, by a whole new set of towers that were much, much higher. DW was driving and I was watching the operation wondering why. Well, this was through a heavily forested area. Makes me think they were doing the right thing to avoid exactly the problem PG&E has.

I haven't seen too many replacements, but I have seen a mess load of new high tension lines being strung up. Most I have seen are coming from the wind farms that are seemingly popping up all over SW Oklahoma and all over Texas.

 

[pb4uski]

PG&E and good for their decision and I back them 100%. I see no other option for them now after the last blame and lawsuits.
People that have health issues need to be responsible for a back power supply if it is life and death. Not the power companies issue and acts of God happen and it is out of the PUD control. Everyone wants to blame the PC but still cry and whine when they don't have power.

Shutter down is their only option or get sued from everyone involved. You people in CA don't have any idea what living in a remote country setting is when it comes to power outages. It is nothing to be without power for days when a storm comes through the high country. People need to be prepared and make do.

Fair enough... but did PG&E give people fair warning so they could prepare? They must have know many months ago that these shutdowns were possible to reduce the risk of wild fires.... did they let residents know so the residents could prepare? The first I heard of it was a couple days ago.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

And to the other posts about 'empathy':

While I would never make fun of people in this position, let me just say that as a lifetime Midwesterner, I've put up with a lifetime of comments from people from warmer areas. Such "clever" comments in mid-winter as "Oh, we aren't getting any snow here!", or "Cold enough for you?", "Oh, poor babies, we're going to the beach today", "What's a 'snow-plow'?", "Every day is like paradise here". And yes, these comments have come in even during weather emergencies, when people were dying in weather related events.

And then the especially condescending: "Why would anyone live where you do?". As if we are a bunch of dumb hicks who never had a geography lesson, and don't know there are areas of the country that don't have cold winters. Gimme a break.

So while I maintain empathy for these people, excuse me if the edges have been worn down a bit by a lifetime of ignorant comments from some (quite a few actually, maybe even a majority of) people from these areas. And they expect that to all be forgotten when their little slice of heaven experiences some problems, and now it's all about them. We all make choices, we all need to live with the consequences, good and bad. Sorry.

(Now get off my lawn!)

-ERD50

Excellent post, ERD. After returning home to Atlanta in 2012 (after 20 years "away" doing Air Force stuff) I was happy to leave last year...there are simply too many people there. We now live in a fairly rural area yet close to amenities that we think are important. Our biggest natural disaster threat is tornadoes....and I am OK with that. Many folks ask, "WHY WOULD YOU LIVE THERE?!?!" which I happy to tell them that it indeed is a hell hole. If that's what it takes to keep the population from ballooning like Atlanta, then they can continue to believe that living here must be like living in hell.

 

[GravitySucks]

"You people in CA don't have any idea what living in a remote country setting is when it comes to power outages."

You must have never visited Sisikyou, Trinity, or most of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Del Norte counties. These places are as rural as can be. Mountain and Forest. BigFoot country. Even Sonomo is fairly rural. Areawise, it's mostly rural places being affected.

 

[ncbill]

Think of all the people just using CPAP machines for their sleep apnea...those require a pretty hefty capacity battery to get through the night.

I bet most of the above don't have a stand-alone backup...so they'll either have to sleep in their vehicles (left running to keep the battery charged) or head to a shelter/somewhere else with power.

 

[Souschef]

We live in an area that was devastated by the Thomas Fire in Southern California. We were just notified that we may have power cut during high winds.
Under the Blow the Dough concept, we are looking into buying a whole house generator and transfer switch.
We feel it is only going to get worse.

 

[Chris7]

My power is not off, but town over is and our kids school had to shutdown. Given the conditions, I believe this is what PG&E needed to do, but they need to be required to deal with the maintenance that needs to be done. How much has been given as bonuses over the years that should have been going to maintenance?



Some stop gap funds probably need to be given, but then profits need to pay it back, not higher rates to the customers. Executive salaries may need to be lowered as well. It has been their duty to deal with this and they haven't. I have to pay to maintain my house, they need to to do the same.



cd :O)

 

[GrayHare]

As someone who designed systems for utilities around the country, I witnessed the internal operation and procedures of utilities at many different places. I learned California has two particular attributes not found to the same extent elsewhere: 1) air quality is more critical due to geography, and 2) the list of regulations is much longer. Consequently, procedures routine at other utilities were cost prohibited in California. Electricity pricing oversight by the California Public Utilities Commission did not leave sufficient room for utilities to work within the state's special attributes. The combination of these factors meant for a utility company California presented the most difficult operating environment I saw in the US.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

Fair enough... but did PG&E give people fair warning so they could prepare? They must have know many months ago that these shutdowns were possible to reduce the risk of wild fires.... did they let residents know so the residents could prepare? The first I heard of it was a couple days ago.

They have had mailers, web site announcements, TV ads and social media ads for months about possible outages and emergency preparation. PG&E hasn't been the best run company but then again there is no playbook to go by for global warming causing wild fires to the degree they've occurred these past few years, not just in California but throughout the world.

 

[Music Lover]

The threat of fires is due to a well known and identified lack of maintenance, not "climate".

 

[street]

^That I can't answer but I'm sure they can't tell what the weather is going to be 4 days from now. Their only option is to have an emergency shut down (outage) till this weather passes. The PC are wrong if they do or they don't.
I have worn that hat for many years and know the industry up and down and had to make life and death decisions with crews being dispatched to making the calls on situations like this.

It is very easy to blame and point the finger at a PC. If anything goes to a jury it is a no win for them because they will show negligence even if the records show all proper criteria with state, fed, constriction specs, proper documentation there will be one little thing or the hate for PC that they will cause to be sued. It is a no win for them.

I'm not here to argue and will not comment any more on this topic for this same reason there is a no win for the PC even in a discussion like this.

The choice is you want your house burned down or do you want to be with out power for 5 days?

Either way the PC gets sued but the power outage is the best of the two evils.

Thanks

 

[TrvlBug]

Fair enough... but did PG&E give people fair warning so they could prepare? They must have know many months ago that these shutdowns were possible to reduce the risk of wild fires.... did they let residents know so the residents could prepare? The first I heard of it was a couple days ago.

Yes. We've known for quite some time that this was going to happen. While we're in an area adjacent to the Phase 2 shutdown, there was a good possibility we would also be affected. Once they determined this 'wind event' was going to happen and about when, additional warnings were posted. For the Phase 2 shutdown, the actual shutdown time kept being pushed back as the winds weren't strong enough. From noon to about 10pm when the winds in our and other P2 areas started picking up. I couldn't believe some of the postings on ND...many believe PG&E is doing this simply to get back at people for the lawsuits. One poster likened it to the JULL marketing ploy to hook teenagers .

While I do fault PG&E for lack of maintenance, I believe this is the only way to avoid another Paradise. The cruelty of the timing is that this happened 2 years to the day of the Santa Rosa Coffey Park fires. PG&E has been quite dilligent in trimming trees and trying to assess line problems. We've had contractors out in our area for months. Additionally helicopters have been out trying to assess the health of inaccessible lines.

As we live in EQ country, DH and I are always prepared for a catastrophic event. We are not survivalists, but have several cases of water in the garage and non perishable food we can survive on as well as a charcoal grill. What I just discovered is that when the power goes out, so does ALL of our communications. We recently switched to fiber internet but it apparently also affects LTE communications or maybe it's because AT&T doesn't have battery backup at our local tower. Need to do some more research and buy whatever we need to have reliable communications. We also gas up the cars when they get to 1/2 tank. If we had medical needs we would buy a generator.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

DH and I are always prepared for a catastrophic event. We are not survivalists, but have several cases of water in the garage and non perishable food we can survive on as well as a charcoal grill. What I just discovered is that when the power goes out, so does ALL of our communications. We recently switched to fiber internet but it apparently also affects LTE communications or maybe it's because AT&T doesn't have battery backup at our local tower. Need to do some more research and buy whatever we need to have reliable communications. We also gas up the cars when they get to 1/2 tank. If we had medical needs we would buy a generator.

People should do this, anyway. A disaster can strike at any time and while we have come a very long way in predicting for many of them, some may not be predictable at all. Every now and then there are rumblings of EMP attacks . Will this ever happen? Maybe...who really knows? The point is that folks *really* should be prepared and much like financial planning...I am afraid that a majority of folks just aren't prepared.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

The threat of fires is due to a well known and identified lack of maintenance, not "climate".

You don't have to put climate in quotes, since climate change is a science based fact, not a personal opinion or political view. Per National Geographic and other science based articles, climate change is making California (and other parts of the world) hotter and drier than it used to be and that is driving larger fires.

 

[Teacher Terry]

I have lived all over the country in big cities and rural areas. Every place has their issues/dangers. Big disasters make the news but in states with bad winter how many people die in car accidents from snowy/icy roads. The problem I see with this company is that they have not been maintaining the lines so this is negligence.

 

[NW-Bound]

Not one of the posts here or in the news consider the huge ramifications of this. These are not rolling blackouts. These are blackouts scheduled to last as long as 4-5 days. This could cost more lives than potentially it could save...

I knew this was going to be bad, when I first read the news.

We do not watch TV, but I saw the news on the Web in the early morning of 10/9 and they said some places had power turned off at midnight. Indeed, some Californians woke up to find they had no power.

And the news said power would be out for as long as a week in some areas. San Jose was potentially one of the places with long power outage.

This is a rude awakening to everybody, particularly people who live in the cities. We take modern amenities for granted. Flip the switch, and expect the light to be on. Turn the faucet handle, and expect potable water to come out. It takes work and money for these things.

Apparently, PG&E did not do enough for the infrastructure, but as mentioned earlier they said they needed a whole lot more money (in the 100 billion), and more than 1/2 million workers just to clear the lines. Electricity in California is already expensive. How more expensive will it get? Can PG&E be allowed to go bankrupt, so that another company will step up? Can the state take over (but remember Venezuela)?

One thing that concerns me greatly is the tinderbox condition of much of California. The devastating Camp Fire (Paradise) was caused by an electric fault, but I imagine that it could have easily been triggered by a careless smoker, or a negligent act, or by vandalism. For example, there have been brush fires caused by a vehicle dragging a tow chain on the road and causing sparks to fly.

It's awful and scary, no matter who you blame for past fires and the current power outage.

 

[pb4uski]

You don't have to put climate in quotes, since climate changes is a science based fact, not a personal opinion or political view. Per National Geographic and other science based articles, climate change is making California (and other parts of the world) hotter and drier than it used to be and that is driving larger fires.

I agree... global warming is irrefutable and just fact.... and while the causes of global warming are debatable, there is a general consensus on the causes as well but not unanimity.