Posted on 10/12/2019 9:11:09 AM PDT by simpson96
All was quiet at dawn in the north Berkeley Hills. A few people were out in the early morning darkness, walking dogs, jogging, waiting for the bus. The contrast was stark looking down to the flats where power had not been lost and the lights were still on.
A longtime resident on Creston Road, who said he was retired from the tech industry and didn’t want to give his name, was out with a flashlight in case people needed help. “We have elderly people up here,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure no one was panicking.”
Like several others interviewed Thursday morning, he said he was frustrated at PG&E, and especially the lack of consistent and coordinated communication among agencies, including the city. The predicted time of the outage kept changing Wednesday and then “from 2:30 p.m. there was nothing; nothing,” he said.
Power started to go out around Berkeley around 11 p.m. PG&E’s outage map shows about 3,500 homes and businesses without power, which means many thousand more than that don’t have working electricity.
PG&E cut the power off to millions in the state as a preventative measure, known as a Public Safety Power Shutoff. High winds were forecast for the East Bay hills and in parts of Northern California and the utility wanted to prevent trees and branches from falling on power lines and sparking fires. PG&E has admitted its equipment caused many of the state’s recent fires, including the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people.
But in Berkeley and the inner East Bay at least, the high winds never materialized. (snip)
“It’s not windy at all here,” said David Austern, who lives in the Berkeley hills.
(Excerpt) Read more at berkeleyside.com ...
The really funny irony here is the disconnect between promises and reality with all these solar installations.
The original off the grid solar panel array would give you power during a blackout. The majority of California solar panel installations are with the new scheme to take advantage of renewable energy mandates and rebates. These systems deliver solar power to the grid, and the house draws power from the grid. When the power gird is down, you have no power though you have solar panels on your roof.
SunRun said they have hundreds of thousands of customers but “hundreds” paid thousands for the extra batteries and wiring to actually have power from the sun when the grid is down.
You can set up a generator that will work with your solar system.
Do? Install a switch to connect house power directly to solar.
Berkeley Going GREEN!!
My leftist neighbors have solar powered accent lights outside.
Just lift off a light and you have the equivalent of a candle.
“You can set up a generator that will work with your solar system.”
About how much is a Sol/Alpha-Centauri adapter?
“When the power gird is down, you have no power though you have solar panels on your roof.”
Can’t just turning off the main breaker give enough power for the lights and a computer during the daytime?
I believe that you can create a solar system for your house that is not tied to the grid at all. I also believe you can create a solar system that is tied to the grid but can be disconnected. Moral of the story, never create a system that is permanently tied to the grid.
“PG&E cut the power off to millions in the state as a preventative measure”
Some people believe that PG&E cut the power off to millions in the state as a punitive measure.
Don’t know. Hubby is an electrical/electronic genius type so he creates his own systems.
He had a generator backup system that switched over with a flip of a switch before we had solar. Once we got solar he was working on a new system to include the solar, but never got that far because we decided to relocate from the state of Confusion. (We are so happy we did).
Our next house will have solar, a generator and connected to the grid.
An electric one? Uh, oh.
A lot of them have safety systems to prevent someone being electrocuted by routing the power back through the house. After all, they don’t have DC to AC converters or other hardware to connect their home equipment to run off the solar panels.
“The Berkeley hills go dark and residents step up to help one another”
Excuse me, do you have any Grey Poupon to share?
I was living in San Jose during that fire.
It really shook up the Bay Area and only 2 years after the ‘89 earthquake
I like that!
“State of Confusion”
A noxious byproduct of this arrangement, of course, is that it conceals the real cost of solar from homeowners, vastly increasing the number of people who fall for the fantasy land financial numbers touted by the renewable energy crowd. The costs, however, haven't gone away; they're just buried in the rate base.
Iow, this is just cost shifting through which utilities meet artificial regulatory requirements. For this to work, everything has to run through the grid so that utilities can monitor solar output and shift the dollars appropriately. A generation ago, the solar crowd was talking about cutting free from the grid. Today, in order to maximize hidden subsidies, the strategy is to turn homeowners into vendors to their local utility.
When the homeowner’s roof has to be replaced, does the utility company remove the solar panels and reinstall them at no cost to the homeowner?
Where did you relocate to, if you don’t mind saying.
We see a LOT of CA plates, lately, in TX.
Glad you escaped :-)
Yes. The panels also offer some protection and shading to the roof.
This is what socialism does.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.