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So it sounds like because they've been held liable for presumably setting up their power lines in an unsafe manner, they're turning off the lines rather than, y

• CydeWeys 7y ago
  The dark side of this is, what if it's not economical at all to service these outlying customers? What if the cost of retrofitting those lines is greater than the total future amortized profit from servicing those customers during wildfire conditions? I don't think there's a law on the books requiring that everyone have access to electrical service (like there is for, say, USPS service). Maybe beefy solar setups with battery banks and ability to run off-grid will start becoming the norm there. It is California, after all; it's a great place for solar. Heck, it might easily be cheaper for PG&E to subsidize the installation of these systems vs committing to maintaining all those lines properly in perpetuity.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • chroem- 7y ago
    >I don't think there's a law on the books requiring that everyone have access to electrical service As far as I'm aware, that's the main point of having a regulated power utility. They have to deliver universal service.
    • CydeWeys 7y ago
      Do they though? If I build a new house in the middle of nowhere, is the utility required to spend tens of millions of dollars to build out new infrastructure to serve just me? My understanding is they aren't.
      • rayiner 7y ago
        Without looking up the specific California laws, a typical way such obligations were implemented was to require regulatory approval for discontinuing existing lines. So it’s not symmetric for new versus existing lines.
        • azernik 7y ago
          Assuming one were interested in looking up such laws, how would one go about it? I've been poking away at the Google machine with no luck.
      • dillonmckay 7y ago
        We are talking about incorporated townships, though. So, more like an organized group of users in the middle of nowhere, but do have rights as a recognized municipality of the state.
      • ghouse 7y ago
        If you want electricity, you may be required to pay them to extend the infrastructure to your house in the middle of nowhere (at your cost) and then they are required to provide you power and maintain the infrastructure (and assume the liability). If other people begin using the infrastructure within a set period of time, you will receive partial refund for the upfront expense.
  • lacker 7y ago
    What if it's not economical at all to service these outlying customers? This is almost definitely the case. Consider that PG+E just went bankrupt from fire costs. If you split PG+E into two parts, the "safe utility" that served urban areas, and the "risky utility" that served rural areas, the fire costs would almost all go to the "risky utility". If they were allowed to, PG+E would be better off simply dropping every customer more than 60 miles away from San Francisco. But it just doesn't work that way. PG+E is technically a public company, but the customers they are required to serve and the prices they are allowed to charge are so heavily regulated, it often seems more like it's a complicated extension of the California government.
    • njarboe 7y ago
      Pretty much all of California urban areas have fire danger so no area is really "safe". The Santa Rosa and Oakland fires come to mind, along with all of the LA hill blazes that threaten the city most years.
  • dragonwriter 7y ago
    > The dark side of this is, what if it's not economical at all to service these outlying customers? PG&E is a regulated regional monopoly with a universal service mandate within it's service area that has huge piles of money to throw at political fights to stop having public power retailers take over some of it's service areas, so it can just suck up the cost of dealing with uneconomical rural customers as the cost of the privilege of being allowed to own profitable urban and suburban customers it is willing to fight for.
    • chewbacha 7y ago
      > has huge piles of money Do you have evidence for this? I assumed going bankrupt is a pretty large piece of evidence against this argument.
      • dragonwriter 7y ago
        The piles of money they've pulled out for exactly that purpose whenever it has come up, before and between the two bankruptcies.
  • pixl97 7y ago
    Maybe this is just another sign that people should stop building in the wildland urban interface. Not that they will. We as a country feel quite entitled to build in unsafe places.
  • dehrmann 7y ago
    > it might easily be cheaper for PG&E to subsidize the installation of these systems vs committing to maintaining all those lines properly in perpetuity. With how liability works in California, I'd be really curious to see.
  • tibyat 7y ago
    this was mentioned in the article. they are required to service those areas.
• stakhanov 7y ago
  The thing about generators was the first thing on my mind as well.
• AFascistWorld 7y ago
  Is there a way to fix it? Underground lines would be prohibitively expensive.
  • Svip 7y ago
    I am genuinely curious why in a rich country like the USA, wires aren't dug down. I realise using my own country - Denmark - is an unfair comparison, since it's much smaller, but all wires leading to houses are dug down here. Even out in the rural countryside. However, even a small state like Rhode Island has plenty of overhead wires, despite being a tenth the size of Denmark. But surely a rich state like California could dig down wires in areas where it would significant benefits. The benefits are everywhere, obviously, but some areas would gain more benefits than others. Can a state/country really be considered rich, if it cannot afford to dig down electric wires?
    • AFascistWorld 7y ago
      Unfortunately, there are too many places demanding money in CA, the Bullet Train, congested roads, teachers, homeless people, housing shortage, solutions to protect houses from wild fires.
    • owenmarshall 7y ago
      Because doing infrastructure well - as opposed to holding it together with bubblegum and bailing wire - means spending money. And every dime spent is one dime less for shareholders. As the saying goes: this suboptimal outcome is a feature, not a bug.
      • lacker 7y ago
        And every dime spent is one dime less for shareholders. Well, PG+E just went bankrupt, so there aren't any dimes left for shareholders anyway. It's not like they're making a huge margin of profit.
      • nostromo95 7y ago
        No that’s not how utilities work. Utilities are compensated for the approved capital they invest in infrastructure in the form of higher customer rates. The upshot of this is that every utility in the country would love nothing more than to underground every overhead line in their service area. The reason this doesn’t happen is because public service commissions, who approve capital plans, aren’t willing to saddle customers with the astronomical costs of undergrounding lines (which runs $2-$3M per mile on distribution, depending on rock content of soil).
• rdlecler1 7y ago
  The challenge is that they need to run on a budget and so buried cables in a earthquake prone area may have been prohibitively expensive. Not a great situation to be in.
  • lacker 7y ago
    The rural area around Paradise isn't very earthquake-prone. It's just pretty large and sprawling, which is what makes burying all those cables so expensive.
    • Trav5 7y ago
      There is also a lot of bedrock.
• behringer 7y ago
  No doubt the government will take over the operation if they fail to deliver.
• lacker 7y ago
  There is an important point here. They aren't being held liable for setting up their power lines in an unsafe manner. The way California fire liability works, even if you set up your power lines according to best practices, if your equipment happens to have caused the initial spark that causes a $25 billion fire, then you are liable for that entire amount. For more detail see articles like: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-s-strict-wildfire-liability-rule-13604239.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-s-st... It isn't clear that PG+E did anything wrong in maintaining power lines. That just isn't how liability works here. There is always some chance that power lines cause a small fire, and recently the costs of a small fire have grown massively, as it has become more common that a small fire expands into a large fire. PG+E is facing rising costs, and they don't really have many ways to lower fire risk that they haven't already taken. They are not legally allowed to stop serving this area. So they are forced into measures like these. (They also just went bankrupt, so it's not like PG+E investors are making a killing while underserving their customers.)
  • amluto 7y ago
    With all due respect to PG&E and the CPUC, no, they did not. The best practice is to install substation equipment that prevents enormous current from flowing through a phase-to-ground fault. Petersen coils and similar devices do this, and they appear to be reasonably widespread in Europe. Heck, suppose PG&E turns off power during high wind events. Do they even have the required equipment to avoid starting a fire if a line fell and is still on the ground after the wind stops when they turn power back on? This type of equipment exists.
    • pixl97 7y ago
      At the same time I've seen non-fallen lines drop sparks to ground level because of a hot spot in the line.
      • amluto 7y ago
        As far as I know, none of the recent fires were started by events like that. The ones a looked up were single phase faults where a line hit something other than a different phase conductor due to wind or mechanical failure. A 90% solution would be an excellent start here.
• onetimemanytime 7y ago
  Devil's advocate: Utilities are for profit orgs but rates and (kinda) by extension profits are all heavily regulated. You say that they should bury lines or spend a gazillion improving them, but what if the state balks at letting them increase rates to cover expenses? Where should they get the money for that? I guess that building in th middle of nowhere and expecting power at $0.xx kwh and safe power lines in all terrain and weather might be a dream.
• cbhl 7y ago
  From what I can tell of the notice PG&E sent me in the mail, they're not turning off the lines permanently. They're temporarily turning off the lines for a few days so they can fix the problem (trimming trees near power lines, performing maintenance on substations). By my read, after two consecutive years' of fire lawsuits being judged against PG&E and going bankrupt, someone decided to listen to the engineers and technicians on the ground.