Posted on 05/12/2019 10:33:41 PM PDT by LibWhacker
When dangerously high winds arise this year, the utility says it will black out fire-prone areas that are home to 5.4 million people
PG&E Corp. can’t prevent its power lines from sparking the kinds of wildfires that have killed scores of Californians. So instead, it plans to pull the plug on a giant swath of the state’s population.
No U.S. utility has ever blacked out so many people on purpose. PG&E says it could knock out power to as much as an eighth of the state’s population for as long as five days when dangerously high winds arise. Communities likely to get shut off worry PG&E will put people in danger, especially the sick and elderly,...
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Don't you just love Democrats?
With the lawsuit boondoggle and bankruptcy due to liability from last years’s fire, This may very well be the only solution that doesn’t bankrupt them again.
What??? The engineers who designed the transmission lines didn’t put the wires far enough apart to prevent them touching in high winds?? Who could possibly have foreseen winds in outdoor transmission lines?
Sweet!.
Of course people will be building fires to cook and stay warm if the weather is cool, without electricity, so there will likely be even more fires.
And no electrical power to pump water to fight fires with.
Gotta love left wing governments and utilities....
But on the bright side, maybe the companies that make and sell generators will make a bunch of dough...
And hopefully the generators won’t overheat or short out and start any fires.
I didn’t even think to ask the question, did the designers take any and all (or as many as possible) possible adverse situations into consideration?
Agree. Action (lawsuits) <—> reaction.
All of those diesel generators, and wood cooking fires. Just think of what that is going to do for the cost of carbon credits. INVEST NOW!
If they did, would anyone be allowed to have electricity in California?
The problem is the age of some of the transmission lines and their towers. I don't know if it's been definitively determined that the collapse of a transmission tower sparked the fire that leveled the town of Paradise, but I have read that PG&E was under orders to replace towers in that area that were deemed to be structurally deficient and that the deadline to make the replacement was years behind what they were required to do. PG&E has been pedaling off assets for years. They have sold of their generating plants ( except the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant). They have had gas transmission explosions (We have a home in Carmel, CA where they blew up a house a few blocks away while “relining “ their old gas piping system). That lawsuit cost them millions, including the necessity of completely repaving the streets they tore up instead of just patching over their ditch digging. They are a dysfunctional company, much like our government.
Since PG&E bills based upon usage, cutting off users also cuts off their revenue stream. I can see many customers in rural areas installing solar and backup generators.
One step closer to North Korea.
To be fair to PG&E, they were forced to sell or turn over many assets, by the PUC and lawsuits. Some of their most lucrative power generation plants (such as the Steam Geysers plant) were forced sales. At the same time, PG&E was forced to maintain infrastructure used by power generated by other companies. Turning off the power to avoid risk of further lawsuits makes sense.
Blame Global Warming!
Trees burn rapidly, nowadays, and the wind blows windier.
Probably the electricity has gotten sparkier, too!
At my parents house in the CA foothills (been there since 1965 and I grew up there). PG&E poles have been there in the same form for 75+ years (except for adding a 3rd phase wire about 25 years ago & replacing a woodpecker damaged pole occasionally)...no wind arcing/problems whatsoever. Now PG&E is in her neighborhood spending millions of $ on wider “cross bars” and disconnects/lightning arrestors on all poles.
PG&E is in bankruptcy #2 in 20 years...their board of directors is totally “owned” by the lefties near their S.F. HQ. They were forced to sell all their non-hydro generation (except for Diablo Canyon nuclear which is being shut down costing 10’s of millions) by the AB1890 debacle just before their 1st bankruptcy...they should just give up the charade and become “state-owned”.
It’s uncommon for transmission lines to touch. For more often, it’s the trees that have grown into the transmission corridor. They are not spending enough on tree trimming.
Oh crap.
I was gonna say that.
:D
The regulatory weight upon most of the utilities in these libtard states makes it very difficult to conduct business.
I meant to protect against various scenarios.
Not cut and run like bitches.
But put a little more thought into it
Like at the end of Atlas Shrugged.
Who is John Galt?
I’ve been fully expecting this. Demonizing has a cost.
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