Posted on 10/22/2019 5:54:03 AM PDT by karpov
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is getting incinerated by California politicians for shutting off power to two million residents amid heavy, dry winds. The publicly traded San Francisco-based utility has been found responsible for two dozen or so wildfires since 2016, some caused by power lines sagging from steel towers more than a century old.
The purpose of the blackouts was to avoid more damage from an aging grid that has not been adequately maintained. In January PG&E filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy to restructure tens of billions of dollars in liabilities, including for wildfire. Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, are predictably lambasting the company for prioritizing profits over safety. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo says he wants to turn it into a nonprofit.
Yet PG&E exemplifies the left’s “stakeholder” model, according to which businesses are accountable not only to their shareholders but also their workers, the environment and local communities and society at large. In practice, that means businesses exist to serve their political overlords.
Utilities are among the most heavily regulated businesses. In California, their rates and return on equity—that is, profits—are set by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Every three years PG&E must submit funding plans to the CPUC, which holds public hearings with “stakeholders,” including customers and activist groups.
The commission and the state Legislature can also dictate energy investments. State law requires utilities to obtain 60% of their power from “renewable” sources by 2030. The commission has also ordered utilities to buy energy from homeowners with solar panels, paying them a higher rate than wholesale power providers get. Last year the commission directed PG&E to install 7,500 electric-car charging stations at apartment buildings and workplaces.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Paywall No thanks.
Rule by plaintiff lawyers.
Just what we don’t need.
Online responses to a letter to the editor of my local paper calling PG&E’s PSPS a stunt:
PSPS is the acronym for “Public Safety Power Shutoff”.
New Ca law (enacted by PUC and signed by Gov Newsome) REQUIRES utilities (ALL, not just PG&E) to de-energize areas that face severe wind threat/ fire risk.
This has the Doppler effect of potentially impacting huge swaths of the State if that threat impacts a “Transmission” (500/230KV) Tower corridor(s).
When that level of shut off is enacted, you don’t just flip a switch back on. The law requires PG&E to physically/visually inspect every single piece of equipment (down voltage) of the shut down BEFORE it can be re-energized. This means every tower, line, transformer, pad apparatus, substation, pole, reclosure, etc.
This is why a 2 day event can potentially keep areas dark for several days after the threat has passed. It is a MASSIVE man hrs. labor intensive process on 24/7 overtime staffing.
PG&E loses HUGE $$ when this is enacted as thousands of meters are not spinning and the labor cost to comply is huge. They don’t want to do these. They are legally mandated to now. This is the arrangement that was brokered through the PUC to balance the conflicting liability/service reliability laws. It is all driven because of California’s “Inverse Condemnation” liability conflict with PUC’s previous fining of the Company based on outage reliability.
Prior, power shut off or outage = fine. Leave it on, and have ANY% role in a fire= 100% liability.
If a limb 1/4 mile away blew into a transmission line and brought down hot conductor starting a fire?
PG&E liable. No such thing as “Act of God” factored.
No other State in the Nation has these asinine conflicts of law.
So, to make this real. This is analogous to you knowing your daughter MAY have a bad hair dryer. Until she leaves, you shut your house main off. Now, by law, before you can flip the main switch back on, you must hire an electrician to inspect (and document) every breaker below your main, every wire in your attic, every wall switch, every outlet, etc. Then, you must one by one phase in all your breakers so you don’t shock load the system, then you have to go back and program all your digital electronics.
Multiply this by 50K square miles.
And another:
Take a drive this weekend out HWY 128 or up the Coast on 101 and look at the miles and miles of rural terrain that PG&E will have to tackle in order to carry out your suggestion. Start tallying up what the cost of each mile will be to put underground and then decide if that is what you want to pay for. We have an obviously fragile, old system that does need upgrades (no one would argue about that) but when it comes to actually doing it the effort and cost will be outrageous. We have about a month until the rains set in and our tinder dry fuel will become wet and the threat of a wildfire subsides. Until that happens I’m happy to put up with a shutoff as long as they have my best interests in mind. I’d rather be safe than sorry.
And one more:
Funny that everyone is blaming PG&E. The PUC folks are appointed to the board by your elected officials. YOU VOTE FOR THESE PEOPLE they are YOUR leaders. YOUR leaders are making laws that make PG&E power down the lines. Keep voting for one party rule it seam to be working for ya California.
The last one really has it. This is something this state votes for. Politicians point the finger everywhere but at themselves. They create the environemnt where things like mass homelessness,high crime rates, and loss of power occur and blame everything but their laws that created the circumstance.
Its going to be interesting to watch California descend into chaos as its ability to produce power diminishes and vanishes. Its what happens in a socialist state.
California, in short order, is becoming Venezuela.
Yellow fever, the plague and other communicable diseases will soon migrate from the urban Homeless populace into the hinterlands of this doomed state.
Atta GO Governor Gruesome!
Who is John Galt?
As one of many relocated natives it will also be a very sad event; a theoretically impossible, but under the circumstances inevitable event.
The political reality will come into focus when federal taxpayers across the nation are asked to provide an economic bailout.
How about “incinerating” the Sierra Club for blocking the clearing of dead trees and brush.....FOR DECADES!?!?!?!?!
Aerial application of Roundup or Agent orange on the right-of-way would eliminate most of the danger.
"Funny that everyone is blaming PG&E."
Yet PG&E exemplifies the left’s “stakeholder” model, according to which businesses are accountable not only to their shareholders but also their workers, the environment and local communities and society at large. In practice, that means businesses exist to serve their political overlords.
Every three years PG&E must submit funding plans to the CPUC, which holds public hearings with “stakeholders,” including customers and activist groups.
The commission and the state Legislature can also dictate energy investments. State law requires utilities to obtain 60% of their power from “renewable” sources by 2030. The commission has also ordered utilities to buy energy from homeowners with solar panels, paying them a higher rate than wholesale power providers get. Last year the commission directed PG&E to install 7,500 electric-car charging stations at apartment buildings and workplaces.
If shareholders want to earn a decent profit, they have to indulge their political masters’ fashionable views on matters such as climate, identity politics and corporate governance. Thus PG&E’s website defines “environmental justice” as “making better business decisions by understanding and considering the potential impacts of our activities and investments on low-income communities and communities of color.”
...PG&E hasn’t kept detailed records on the age or condition of its transmission towers and wires, but it knows that 1.2% of its workforce is American Indian and 0.6% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. All told, 43.9% employees belong to ethnic minorities. The utility also reports the precise demographics of its board and contractors. Five of its 14 directors are female, one is black, and two are Hispanic. “Diverse” suppliers constituted 41.43% of PG&E’s procurement spending last year, which includes contractors owned by “LGBTQ individuals” ($2.5 million) and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses ($322 million).
The Human Rights Campaign gave the utility a 100% rating on its “corporate equality index” from 2003-18. PG&E boasts that it was the first major company in California to oppose Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative against same-sex marriage, and it donates hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to liberal advocacy groups such as Black Women Organized for Political Action, the LGBTQ Victory Fund and the labor-affiliated Building and Protecting a Strong California. In 2018, it contributed $208,000 to Gov. Newsom’s campaign.
“San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo says he wants to turn it into a nonprofit.”
Seems like they already are...
The things PGE have been forced to do and not to do by “stakeholders “ is fascism or socialism as a scientific experiment, which Kamalafornia is paying the price for.
ping
re: “Start tallying up what the cost of each mile will be to put underground “
HERE’S the d*mn problem with know-nothing LAYMAN proposing solutions - THESE PPL ARE IN THE SAME CATEGORY OF NITWITS COMMANDING 60% OF POWER COME FROM RENEWABLES!!!!!
See, LAYMAN know NOTHING about the losses buried HV lines SUFFER from dielectric losses - HUGE CURRENTS flow in such lines DUE TO the HIGH capacitance and the high CHARGING VOLTAGES used on HV transmission circuits.
Good name! What happens when a plant dies, whether from environmental conditions or chemical dosing?
It dries out. Dry plant material burns very well.
What is the risk to Southern California’s power grid? Dried plant material in the transmission corridors.
Your proposal would appear to increase the fuel loading in these same places.
Not the best situation...
Additionally, they have to submit their budget to the CPUC for approval. They are allowed a fixed percentage return.
But most importantly, the CPUC controls their maintenance budget. And capital investments.
Multiple times over the last 30 or 40 years PGE has proposed an increase in their maintenance budget and had it declined or reduced by the CPUC.
And this is because maintenance is the single largest budget item.
And CPUC was focused on keep rates low to the consumer, while squeezing every last penny out of a dying grid.
This is criminal negligence on the part of the CPUC, not PGE.
Not the best situation...
I can’t think of everything.
And those that attempt to cover everything, never do anything at all.
I guess PG&E hasn’t read my tagline....
Had the Cali gov’t and radical environMENTALists just allowed PG&E to perform regular right-of-way maintenance in the first place, none of this would be happening.
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