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Fun fact: Two days before to the camp fire PG&E sent notices to customers that they may turn off power due to a forecast of high winds and low humidity as indic

by nullc 7y ago

Fun fact: Two days before to the camp fire PG&E sent notices to customers that they may turn off power due to a forecast of high winds and low humidity as indicated by a NWS red flag warning. PG&E decided not to do so. The weather came, as predicted, and contributed to the fire. Shutting down the power like it was announced would likely have prevented it. I'm not sure if public outcry was a factor in their decision to not follow through with the shutdown before, but you can bet that it isn't going to be a factor now. The current outages are being triggered by similar weather conditions, https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/fire_wx/fwdy1.html https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/fire_wx/fwdy1.html

quotemstr 7y ago
Sure. I accept that there's a hugely elevated risk of fire right now. Maybe turning off the grid was a prudent move. But the reason that fire risk is high right now is that for one reason or another, the grid hasn't been properly maintained, and that's not because we forgot how to build chainsaws. A society is a complex machine. There are thousands of interacting incentive structures, contractual obligations, and soft expectations that combine to allow us to accomplish more than we can do alone. For a long time, this machine operated smoothly enough to provide the power grid with the maintenance it needed to operate safely in 10MPH winds. The social machine broke down, so the maintenance stopped, and because the maintenance stopped, the grid became unsafe to operate. Why did the social machine break down? Why did nobody fix it? Why are we having so much trouble operating this machine smoothly when our ancestors were able to keep it going for over a century?
- nullc 7y ago
  It's not clear to me that these outages are due to maintenance issues rather than due to an extremely conservative risk posture because it looks like PG&E will be held accountable for grid-started fires even where maintenance wasn't an issue. E.g. PG&E's current filing for bankruptcy protection was triggered by the Tubb's fire, which Cal Fire's investigation concluded wasn't even caused by PG&E. If anything the social machine that appears to be broken is how we're apportioning liability. Electrical grids, even well maintained ones, sometimes throw a bit of sparks or start small fires. No amount of tree trimming is going to prevent fires if strong winds blow dry flammable brush across high tension lines. You can find zillions of videos on the internet of power lines going down and sparking small fires... but in California if a line goes down in the wrong place and in the wrong weather it causes tens of billions of dollars in damages. It's not clear to me that its economically possible operate an electrical utility under the risk that the smallest spark could result in being responsible for billions in damages.

by nullc 7y ago

quotemstr 7y ago

Sure. I accept that there's a hugely elevated risk of fire right now. Maybe turning off the grid was a prudent move. But the reason that fire risk is high right now is that for one reason or another, the grid hasn't been properly maintained, and that's not because we forgot how to build chainsaws. A society is a complex machine. There are thousands of interacting incentive structures, contractual obligations, and soft expectations that combine to allow us to accomplish more than we can do alone. For a long time, this machine operated smoothly enough to provide the power grid with the maintenance it needed to operate safely in 10MPH winds. The social machine broke down, so the maintenance stopped, and because the maintenance stopped, the grid became unsafe to operate. Why did the social machine break down? Why did nobody fix it? Why are we having so much trouble operating this machine smoothly when our ancestors were able to keep it going for over a century?

nullc 7y ago
It's not clear to me that these outages are due to maintenance issues rather than due to an extremely conservative risk posture because it looks like PG&E will be held accountable for grid-started fires even where maintenance wasn't an issue. E.g. PG&E's current filing for bankruptcy protection was triggered by the Tubb's fire, which Cal Fire's investigation concluded wasn't even caused by PG&E. If anything the social machine that appears to be broken is how we're apportioning liability. Electrical grids, even well maintained ones, sometimes throw a bit of sparks or start small fires. No amount of tree trimming is going to prevent fires if strong winds blow dry flammable brush across high tension lines. You can find zillions of videos on the internet of power lines going down and sparking small fires... but in California if a line goes down in the wrong place and in the wrong weather it causes tens of billions of dollars in damages. It's not clear to me that its economically possible operate an electrical utility under the risk that the smallest spark could result in being responsible for billions in damages.