This is our future in California
Pacific Gas & Electric power outage in Northern CA affecting your reef tank?
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RandyC
Well-Known Member
yeah.....but, but we Californians are creating jobs! Think of the power generators that will be sold!
Just wanted to provide some info here;
The power is shut down in the event of a "high risk" scenario - usually winds. The threshold for how much wind is "too much" depends upon the specifics for an area. Above-ground lines have been known to be knocked out by branches from trees 1/4 mile away, so they are pretty conservative in their estimations.
Once the power is off - even if only for a few minutes - they are required to follow certain procedures before they can turn it back on. Those procedures include visually inspecting every inch of line that was de-energized to ensure it's not been damaged. Sometimes this can be done quickly using airplanes and/or drones. But some sections of lines require people to hike up along the lines and visually inspect them. That's where the "5-7 days" (or whatever unreasonably long sounding estimate) generally comes from - it's not the storm itself; it's the need to look for any damage the storm may have caused. While they pad the numbers a little bit, if any significant damage is found, the outage will generally last longer than expected for the impacted section. This inspection process is also a reason why some areas are turned on sooner than others.
For myself; I've got a 3kw solar system and a Powerwall. It's not enough to keep the house running (that would require about 12kw solar and 3 more Powerwalls), but it's enough to keep the critical stuff running.
As a reminder as we all get through this;
PG&E as a company might be driving us crazy (and rightly so), but the men and women out there working the lines are not part of the problem - they are doing their jobs as best they can and have no say in the policies that created this mess. Let's all remember in our frustration not to take it out on them.
I wouldnt say we're fine with it lol. Just not much the average person can really do. Would probably cost an inordinate amount of money to bury the lines too. Has this even been done before in an already developed area? I assume most cities with underground power distribution started out like that. Just a guess though.
Brew12
Electrical Gru
I'd like to add a bit to this discussion because I think there is a misconception on how utilities like PG&E work.
Every 3 years PG&E submits a request to CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) their request for rate increases. Part of this submission includes all of their financials for the previous 3 years along with plans on how they plan on using the rate increase, if approved.
It would take pages to explain everything, because it gets complex. For instance, the portion of the rate increase requested in 2013 for clearing dead brush and trees wasn't approved, but an alternative source of funding was basically approved through the use of tax incentives.
Utilities almost never get everything they ask for because government wants to keep rates low to make voters happy. It also isn't unusual for utilities to be required to spend rate increases on items they may not want. For instance, CPUC gave PG&E over twice what they requested in increases for developing renewable energy power plants.
One universal truth is that power companies never get what they request for maintenance of the lines and distribution equipment. It's one of the easiest places for the government to cut to keep rates low and one of the few places a utility can cut to reduce costs.
Most states do not sue electric companies for fires related to downed power lines unless gross negligence is proven. More often then not, in cases of high winds and drought such as California is experiencing, lawyers for the utilities argue Force Majeure and aren't held liable. I haven't followed the legal proceedings on this, but I'm not sure why it wasn't allowed in California recently.
This creates a situation where utilities aren't funded adequately to maintain and upgrade their lines, and they are subject to massive liabilities if they keep them energized. Until this point, utilities were expected to keep lines energized until protective trips wouldn't allow the lines to remain energized. That no longer makes sense in California, which is why all of the utilities in California are allowed to take preventative power outages.
This has nothing to do with "greedy power companies" or deregulation. It's a choice by the state (or a court in the state) to hold utilities financially accountable for weather related damage caused by their power lines.
Every 3 years PG&E submits a request to CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) their request for rate increases. Part of this submission includes all of their financials for the previous 3 years along with plans on how they plan on using the rate increase, if approved.
It would take pages to explain everything, because it gets complex. For instance, the portion of the rate increase requested in 2013 for clearing dead brush and trees wasn't approved, but an alternative source of funding was basically approved through the use of tax incentives.
Utilities almost never get everything they ask for because government wants to keep rates low to make voters happy. It also isn't unusual for utilities to be required to spend rate increases on items they may not want. For instance, CPUC gave PG&E over twice what they requested in increases for developing renewable energy power plants.
One universal truth is that power companies never get what they request for maintenance of the lines and distribution equipment. It's one of the easiest places for the government to cut to keep rates low and one of the few places a utility can cut to reduce costs.
Most states do not sue electric companies for fires related to downed power lines unless gross negligence is proven. More often then not, in cases of high winds and drought such as California is experiencing, lawyers for the utilities argue Force Majeure and aren't held liable. I haven't followed the legal proceedings on this, but I'm not sure why it wasn't allowed in California recently.
This creates a situation where utilities aren't funded adequately to maintain and upgrade their lines, and they are subject to massive liabilities if they keep them energized. Until this point, utilities were expected to keep lines energized until protective trips wouldn't allow the lines to remain energized. That no longer makes sense in California, which is why all of the utilities in California are allowed to take preventative power outages.
This has nothing to do with "greedy power companies" or deregulation. It's a choice by the state (or a court in the state) to hold utilities financially accountable for weather related damage caused by their power lines.
Brew12
Electrical Gru
Buried power lines are both a cost and technical challenge outside of cities. Even a city like NY is small compared to the PG&E service area. PG&E has over 18,000 miles of transmission lines in their system. The cost of an insulated transmission cable that can be buried as opposed to an non insulated transmission line above ground is massive. It can be over $100/ft more expensive for the higher transmission voltages. The cost of installation is almost the same since it requires deep excavations encased in rebar reinforced concrete.
PG&E also has over 100,000 miles of distribution lines. These are typically 13.8kV or lower making burial cheaper. Much of their distribution in dense residential areas is buried because the costs can justify it. The costs no longer work when houses are a 1/2 mile apart or more which is why those are almost all overhead.
It was tried; PG&E was found guilty of gross negligence (or something like that; not sure of the actual legal definition, but it was an "at fault" angle) in 17 of the 21 major fires of 2017. That led them to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which has resulted in a whole bunch of unusual circumstances and rulings.
There's been a few stories about how the shut downs are intentionally being made more egregious than they need to be in order to coerce the state to allow PG&E to be exempt from damages from fires caused by their equipment failures. Sort of a, "Well, if you don't like the shut downs, don't hold us liable and the shut downs will stop." I don't know that this is what's been going on and I doubt that it could ever be proven as a thing, but having grown up as a PG&E consumer, it would not surprise me. I can recall even as a kid my parents complaining about PG&E - and that was decades ago!
One thing I can caveat is that some of the fault for this comes from the effects of climate change. Temperatures have become more extreme in the last decade or so and as a result, so have the winds. These higher/more persistent winds (along with some areas where winds are coming from new directions) has contributed to the problem since a lot of the equipment was running with only a thin margin of safety.
Brew12
Electrical Gru
I'm not sure I buy that angle since the utilities have to get approval from CPUC before they can drop power. It's more likely that they are requesting the outages more than may be necessary so that if CPUC denies them they can use that as a defense if another fire occurs. And of course, CPUC doesn't want to risk the fallout of denying an outage only to have a fire start. This makes it unlikely for them to say no.
And for those who don't know, PG&E isn't the only utility in California to have taken proactive power outages.
We have TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) for our utility here which is a pseudo government agency. They aren't legally allowed to make a profit and people here still complain about them. I think its just the way it works. People want reliable power, gas, water, and sewer but don't like paying for it. Since you can't shop around, utilities make for an easy target.
I don't want to get into a climate change debate but no doubt the recent drought has made this much worse. It also hasn't helped that California stopped doing controlled burns to clear dead underbrush. It takes much less to start a fire than it has in decades past and they spread much faster now because the additional fuel is no longer being regularly removed.
And this isn't a problem that is going to get better any time soon. California has a huge power generation issue because of solar power. For those wanting to learn more you can search the "duck curve". Basically, all of the solar power in California reaches peak generation between 12pm and 3pm. Unfortunately, peak load doesn't occur until after 5pm. Utilities need to shut down generating assets in late morning to keep from overloading the system but quickly ramp them up starting around 3pm as solar goes offline and load starts picking up. To help with this, utilities have built a large number of natural gas turbines. Unfortunately, the grid wasn't designed to be powered from a large number of disbursed generators so portions of the grid run overloaded which means they run HOT.
EmdeReef
2500 Club Member
There was a good article in the WSJ about the last time PG&E did any upgrades to the system. In effect it sounds like they’ve had a pattern of letting the system become unstable in order to push for taxpayer subsidies. At least based on that report it seems the original grid was built with some of these conditions in mind and they they’ve just let it fall apart.
PG&E filed for chapter 11 and then a few weeks later asked for an approval to pay dividends as well as salary hikes for execs.
If this continues, lost productivity, wages, forests, homes etc will dwarf costs of upgrades.
As far as I know; they do not. The state/CPUC put out guidelines that dictated how and when de-energization should be considered - and how such should be communicated - but the final choice to actually cut power rests entirely in the hands of the utility;
"The State's investor-owned utilities have general authority to shut off electric power to protect public safety under California law." (link)
The rest of the stuff; yeah. It's not an easy problem to solve. We can play the "who's to blame" game round and round, but in the end, we are where we are and must deal with things as they are. As difficult (and dangerous) as they are, I'm not opposed to the outages in general - they are the lesser evil that gets us through the day. I don't absolve PG&E's management of their responsibility in causing the problem, however. I also don't expect PG&E to solve this problem long-term (e.g.; decades). While solar (and other "micro grid" solutions) is not yet ready to prop up the entire system, its not impossible to see how a series of smaller grids could be created and executed to more effect. Not tomorrow or the next few years; but eventually.
Brew12
Electrical Gru
I'm not familiar with that article. I do know they asked to pay executive bonuses and it was denied. I think there may have been confusion on the dividends. The judge overseeing their bankruptcy initially said they couldn't start repaying dividends until they completed a list of requirements. That list had an estimated bill of over $150B. The utility objected to that as unreasonable. To the best of my knowledge, PG&E never requested to pay dividends which would be unheard of during a bankruptcy.
The entire situation is a mess. Just like the rest of the infrastructure in the country, the electrical grid isn't properly maintained. In 2016 PG&E spent over $550M clearing trees and vegetation and another $1.8B on electrical line maintenance. That was on $13.6B revenue for electricity. So, it's not like they weren't spending anything, but it obviously wasn't enough.
Brew12
Electrical Gru
Good call, I missed that. It looks like on June 1st CPUC gave authority to utilities to drop power proactively without permission in the case of high winds.
EmdeReef
2500 Club Member
I’m on my phone but I think this is the article with links of their 25yrs of shenanigans. https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-cat-...un-ins-with-regulators-and-courts-11567707731
They ran another report on their upgrade fraud, falsifying etc which may be linked in the above story.
Agree it’s unheard of not halting dividends as a part of Chapter 11 but it was a federal judge who ordered them to halt dividends in April as their original filing included it...must be good to be PG&E.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pg-e-us-probation-idUSKCN1RE2AL
The latest news is they’ll be shutting off the Bay Area cities noted on their map as soon as 5pm Sat. They also mentioned that PG&E hasn’t made the final decision on whether they will be shutting off the power, but I’m not wishful thinking. I picked up a generator.
Figures that I just took delivery of $700 in frags today...
Figures that I just took delivery of $700 in frags today...
RandyC
Well-Known Member
if you need extension cords for your generator, Costco has a great deal on extension cords. Two 15amp 50 foot cords for something like $45.
Injoynit
Active Member
Well, looks like we are under mandatory evacuations here in Windsor. Generator does no good if you have to leave. Hope my fish and coral survive. It could be 2 days. ;Dead Starting over sucks since my 11 fish and 6 corals (Final got a Disney to grow dangit!) are doing so well, luckily its a 200 gal tank so I might get lucky. ;Inpain
;Dead Starting over sucks since my 11 fish and 6 corals (Final got a Disney to grow dangit!) are doing so well, luckily its a 200 gal tank so I might get lucky. ;InpainSimilar threads
