The problem in CA is terrain and climate. They have an enormous amount of service territory, so lots of distribution and transmission line exposure. And a lot of it is over very difficult to access routes, so the maintenance (tree trimming issue, etc.) is massive. The climate gives them an extended dry season that makes it perfect for wildfires. It would be impossible to eliminate that risk and offer rates that could be afforded. I suspect that the popular overreaction to this interruption issue will be to insist on maintenance to eliminate outages, and PG&E will make another trip through Chapter 11. Just glad I do not live there.
“The problem in CA is terrain and climate.”
Excellent observation..but there’s more.
Wild fires have been the natural “culling” of forests in California since long before mad entered the state. So lightening strikes and the burning of live or dead brush and trees has been around for a few thousand years.
In mid 2017, moon beam told the world that the seven year drought was officially over. But that doesn’t clear the dead brush from the forest floors that covers around 33 million acres of California. Tack that on to the weather conditions with the winds coming in from the east side of the Sierras at great speeds and stopping a small fire is almost impossible. They have had wind speeds as high as 165 MPH at Mammoth Mountain over the last few months.
I was just down there last week on the coast and the whole place is ripe for a fire. The 2019 wildfire season is the current-running fire season in California and so far, over 5,136 fires have been recorded according to Cal Fire and the US Forest Service, totaling an estimated of 151,681 acres acres of burned land as of September 15. We are now in late October and they are evacuating in the north mainly because they can’t do much to stop them.
So the high winds are assisting Mother Nature in the burning out of the excess waste just like it was at the time of Christ. The state has also aided it by creating laws that stopped the vegetation trimming and forest floor culling and now they are paying for it.
rwood