Fires and Blackouts Made in Sacramento

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 25, 2019 7:01 pm ET

[karpov]

After again shutting power to hundreds of thousands this week, California’s utility PG&E disclosed Thursday that it had discovered a broken jumper cable by the ignition site of a wildfire blazing across Sonoma County. The company has warned of more blackouts this weekend and perhaps for the next decade as it refurbishes its aging grid.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to deflect political blame. “It’s about dog-eat-dog capitalism meeting climate change. It’s about corporate greed meeting climate change. It’s about decades of mismanagement,” Mr. Newsom declared. But Democrats for years have treated PG&E as their de facto political subsidiary. The wildfires and blackouts are the direct result of their mismanagement.

The state Public Utilities Commission is in charge of enforcing state safety laws and regulations, which can carry penalties of up to $50,000 per violation per day. Yet PG&E received no safety fines related to its power-grid management over the last several years. The commission has instead focused on enforcing the Legislature’s climate mandates.

State law mandates that utilities obtain 33% of electric generation from renewables such as wind and solar by 2020 and 60% by 2030. Utilities must spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to reduce the cost of green energy for low-income households. PG&E has prioritized political obeisance over safety.

In 2018 PG&E spent $509 million on electric discounts for low-income customers in addition to $125 million for no-cost weatherization and efficiency upgrades for disadvantaged communities. Utilities also receive allowances from the state’s cap-and-trade program—$7.5 billion since 2012—to pay for other “ratepayer benefits” that reduce emissions.

For instance, the Legislature in 2015 mandated that utilities spend $100 million annually on solar systems in low-income communities. This is on top of the $2.2 billion in customer rebates for rooftop solar installations, which utilities charged to ratepayers

[moovova]

"The company has warned of more blackouts this weekend and perhaps for the next decade..."

[exDemMom]

My liberal daughter in Moraga is without power for the second time in three weeks.

Hmm, as I recall, Moraga is a rather upscale community. At least, I remember it that way from when we lived there when I was a teen. I would say that some poetic justice is going on here, but that would be mean. I do hope she is intelligent enough to recognize how liberal policies caused the situation. Most liberals have been so conditioned to leftism that stupid blame game excuses like Gavin Newsom is spewing make sense to them.

[combat_boots]

The entire state is flanked by water. Someone build desalination plants yesterday. Rail is just graft.

[Spktyr]

If that’s the case, the tech industry may be forced to leave California. Running off of generators for long periods of time is not a great idea for a lot of industries (emergency generators as installed at many facilities are not intended to be run for weeks or months at a time and will need maintenance - and by definition downtime) and I’m sure there’s probably some regulations against it in ‘green’ California.

[bert]

Well, in other places, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar with large supplies of natural gas, massive (the largest in the world) desalinization plants have been built to supply potable water.

California could easily develop the home grown gas by fracking existing oil fields. Being foolish, the people of California would rather burn than frack

[Spktyr]

They’ve built a couple of them - but industrial desal plants don’t work well without electricity.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Our econuts insist the forest be allowed to accumulate tinder and undergrowth until it all goes up in lightning induced flames hot enough to burn the mature trees to ash and kill the forest animals and burn towns and kill people too.

Sounds like a plan.

Maybe it is; maybe it's just a consequence of the foolish beliefs of city people distant from the realities of nature. Or, a bit of both.

[Texas Eagle]

This is not the result of Capitalism, it’s the result of Socialism. They tell us windmills are the answer and then when the wind blows they shut off the power.

[Calvin Locke]

Maybe they should have built them to run on tidal energy, being on the water and all...? /s

[Norski]

https://wildfiretoday.com/2019/10/26/additional-evacuations-ordered-for-kincade-fire/

Note the hotspot grid:

https://i0.wp.com/wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/KincadeFire_342amPDT_10-24.jpg?ssl=1

[Spktyr]

All sarcasm aside, tidal isn’t commercially viable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMRiKmgxrh0

[MrEdd]

If only they had just defied the government, been reviled by the mainstream press and the type of citizenry California generally (which is what brought all this about) then those people who stood up to the government would have been incarcerated (Californians would have patted themselves on the back over that) and someone who would make the same.moves as were made would have been put in charge.

California would still be today where it is today.

Your not going to ever be able to sell some cock and bull story about some rogue executives at the power company having created California’s mess.

Too many of us on this forum used to live out there.

[FamiliarFace]

Hubby says she probably views it as a badge of honor and thinks the rest of the country should live as she does.

[fatez]

Do you know her thoughts on the root cause of PGE?

[Calvin Locke]

...tidal isn’t commercially viable.

Since when is that an impediment to politicians, at any level of government?

[DUMBGRUNT]

In 2018 PG&E spent $509 million on electric discounts for low-income customers in addition to $125 million for no-cost weatherization and efficiency upgrades for disadvantaged communities. Utilities also receive allowances from the state’s cap-and-trade program—$7.5 billion since 2012—to pay for other “ratepayer benefits” that reduce emissions. For instance, the Legislature in 2015 mandated that utilities spend $100 million annually on solar systems in low-income communities. This is on top of the $2.2 billion in customer rebates for rooftop solar installations, which utilities charged to ratepayers between 2007 and 2016. Under the state’s net-metering program, solar customers also get a break on their bills.

And the list goes on and on...

Mandated $100 million annually on solar systems in low-income communities.
An easy fun target that sparks!

[Swordmaker]

Is IT in danger of going up in smoke?

If you don’t take them off the batteries correctly, in the right order, they will spark if they touch ground. . . and have the very real potential of igniting a brush fire. I’ve seen it happen.

[Thank You Rush]

“”PG&E disclosed Thursday that it had discovered a broken jumper cable by the ignition site of a wildfire blazing across Sonoma County.””

Why no mention in the article of the significance of the broken jumper cable? Someone must have figured it had a role in the fire or why mention it? Someone could have found a coke bottle nearby - would that have been mentioned?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“ Your not going to ever be able to sell some cock and bull story about some rogue executives at the power company having created California’s mess.”

Your reading comprehension is terrible. I said there were NO execs in the utilities fighting the green onslaught. There were no “rogue execs.” They all dutifully fell in line with what the regulators told them to do.

Good technical execs would have argued that the socialist cockamamie ideas would lead to disaster, but they didn’t. Too many energy execs are lawyers, not technologists who rose through the ranks.

[beef]

I think this charade is just a dress rehearsal for blackouts in the name of AGW. They want to make it like Venezuela or North Korea where the power might come on for an hour or so each day. For the proles it will probably happen while they are standing in line to get a crust of bread.