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To be fair, this particular power outage in California isn't to save money. It's to prevent forest fires. Also, how important can these experiments be (in CA) i

To be fair, this particular power outage in California isn't to save money. It's to prevent forest fires. Also, how important can these experiments be (in CA) if they don't have sufficient backup power at a university?? Edit: If a Uni has a multi-million dollar laser, it should have a few thousand dollar backup generator!

ryanmercer 7y ago
> if they don't have sufficient backup power at a university?? This. If you've got a multi-million dollar experiment, gee I dunno make sure you're in a building with a generator? "hey Mr. Government, I know you gave us that multi-million dollar DARPA reserach grant, but uh, someone hit a telephone pole drink driving on the weekend and, uh, power was out for several hours and uh yeah, that 2 years of research, uh, we gotta start all over can we have some more funds please?"
maxerickson 7y ago
The lack of maintenance and system improvement that makes the shutdown a necessary step to mitigate fire risk is about saving money.
- 24gttghh 7y ago
  I mean..it's a bit of A and B. From the outside (i.e. from a non-CA resident), PG&E appears pretty incompetent and/or insolvent and can't properly manage it's infrastructure. Is their main driver still really about saving money?
dreamcompiler 7y ago
I think it's to prevent liability from forest fires. The difference is subtle but important.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  No, it's to prevent forest fires, which is why the policy was blessed by the federal judge overseeing their felony sentence and probation for the crimes they were convicted of in the 2010 San Bruno gas explosion (who is involved in the fire safety issue because PG&E’s role in last year's fires was charged as a parole violation), even though he noted that the reason it was necessary is because PG&E underfunded safety maintenance while issuing massive dividends.
  - salawat 7y ago
    May be off-topic, but... What exactly is the usefulness of a felony as applied to a corporation? As applied to an individual, it is capable of ruining your life through privation of constitutional rights (firearm ownership, right to vote, permanent mark on background checks make it increasingly unlikely you'll ever hold any sensitive position, etc...) What does it mean for a corporation to be a felon? It sure seems like the concept is discontinuous in terms of scale. Obviously, there's an extra layer of court oversight that's been mandated, so some autonomy is lost. Still doesn't seem though like the the punishment for a corporation is concommittant with the general treatment of an individual having committed the same relative severity of infraction. In fact, I'm surprised that anyone even wants to do business with anyone involved with the company during the period the felony was handed dowm. The more I think about it, it seems like all the "felon" label does is act as a signpost for discrimination being okay. Anyway. Brain dropping. My apologies for the tangent.
pgeorgi 7y ago
> It's to prevent forest fires. > Also, how important can these experiments be (in CA) if they don't have sufficient backup power at a university?? How important can freedom from fires be if they don't dig trenches for power lines in critical areas?
droithomme 7y ago
> if they don't have sufficient backup power They have backup power which can get them through any expected power outage. They don't have unlimited backup power that would be able to get them through a "apocalypse" or major terrorism scenario where the world is ending and power will be out for more than a week. Preparing to survive an apocalypse or major terrorism incident is possible. Build all facilities a mile underground with a self enclosed ecosystem. Might cost trillions, but can be done. PG&E has intentionally deployed, at short and inadequate notice, what is equivalent to a terrorist attack on west coast infrastructure. No one prepared for or expected that scenario. Past events have shown that PG&E management are sociopaths who intentionally engaged in mass criminal negligence which resulted in dozens of deaths and billions of dollars of property damage. Even under the oversight of a captured court, they continue with their games. If there is any sanity left in California, the USDOJ would bring the executives who deployed this plan and the judge who signed off on it under terrorism charges. If any deaths occur as a result of these antics, it should be capital charges.
- 24gttghh 7y ago
  You almost lost me at the apocalypse metaphor but I catch your drift. Weeks at a time of no power aren't easy to be prepared for, but I feel like this event should be one more reason we need more distributed power generation in the US. Less single points of failure.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    Yeah sorry I didn't mean to suggest a religious apocalypse, but any civilization-ending event which apocalypse also means: whether cooling and global glaciation, warming and ocean inundation, all-out global nuclear exchange between superpowers, the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, large meteor impact, "inevitable" Carrington event, 1 in 1000 year worldwide tsunami, etc. But it can be local too and without outside support is the same as world ending if you can't get out. If you have power loss for weeks in an area that is totally power dependent you start to see civilization meltdown. The situation in Puerto Rico recently was an example, another is the Haiti earthquake before that. Neither has recovered years later. You make a good point about distributed distribution. Would have to be very local to avoid this wildfire problem as PG&E is doing (shut off power instead of deal with actual issue). The wildfire problem is one that is decades in the making and coupled with poor open areas management by government policy in general and not just the power company, in particular not allowing periodic fires to burn out underbrush. I had this huge pile of brush in my backyard. When it burned it was very dangerous. Now I make sure to do more regular smaller burns as giant burns are not easily manageable. I like the solution of small Hitachi style safe nuclear reactors that service neighborhoods of around 2000-10000 people, can't meltdown or breech, are useless to terrorists, and require no maintenance. Doubt we'll go that way though.
dekhn 7y ago
note: it's not as simple as that (part of the fire problem is due to deferred maintainence; AKA we could have spent money 10 years ago to address this). However when you have a laser system it's not as simple as having a backup generator. When the entire building power is affected, the AC system stops working, and all your nicely aligned optics become unaligned. If you fix them at that time, then when the AC restores, you have to realign them. There are hundreds of externalities that affect productive state of the art research.

ryanmercer 7y ago

> if they don't have sufficient backup power at a university?? This. If you've got a multi-million dollar experiment, gee I dunno make sure you're in a building with a generator? "hey Mr. Government, I know you gave us that multi-million dollar DARPA reserach grant, but uh, someone hit a telephone pole drink driving on the weekend and, uh, power was out for several hours and uh yeah, that 2 years of research, uh, we gotta start all over can we have some more funds please?"

maxerickson 7y ago

The lack of maintenance and system improvement that makes the shutdown a necessary step to mitigate fire risk is about saving money.

24gttghh 7y ago
I mean..it's a bit of A and B. From the outside (i.e. from a non-CA resident), PG&E appears pretty incompetent and/or insolvent and can't properly manage it's infrastructure. Is their main driver still really about saving money?

dreamcompiler 7y ago

I think it's to prevent liability from forest fires. The difference is subtle but important.

dragonwriter 7y ago
No, it's to prevent forest fires, which is why the policy was blessed by the federal judge overseeing their felony sentence and probation for the crimes they were convicted of in the 2010 San Bruno gas explosion (who is involved in the fire safety issue because PG&E’s role in last year's fires was charged as a parole violation), even though he noted that the reason it was necessary is because PG&E underfunded safety maintenance while issuing massive dividends.
- salawat 7y ago
  May be off-topic, but... What exactly is the usefulness of a felony as applied to a corporation? As applied to an individual, it is capable of ruining your life through privation of constitutional rights (firearm ownership, right to vote, permanent mark on background checks make it increasingly unlikely you'll ever hold any sensitive position, etc...) What does it mean for a corporation to be a felon? It sure seems like the concept is discontinuous in terms of scale. Obviously, there's an extra layer of court oversight that's been mandated, so some autonomy is lost. Still doesn't seem though like the the punishment for a corporation is concommittant with the general treatment of an individual having committed the same relative severity of infraction. In fact, I'm surprised that anyone even wants to do business with anyone involved with the company during the period the felony was handed dowm. The more I think about it, it seems like all the "felon" label does is act as a signpost for discrimination being okay. Anyway. Brain dropping. My apologies for the tangent.

pgeorgi 7y ago

> It's to prevent forest fires. > Also, how important can these experiments be (in CA) if they don't have sufficient backup power at a university?? How important can freedom from fires be if they don't dig trenches for power lines in critical areas?

droithomme 7y ago

> if they don't have sufficient backup power They have backup power which can get them through any expected power outage. They don't have unlimited backup power that would be able to get them through a "apocalypse" or major terrorism scenario where the world is ending and power will be out for more than a week. Preparing to survive an apocalypse or major terrorism incident is possible. Build all facilities a mile underground with a self enclosed ecosystem. Might cost trillions, but can be done. PG&E has intentionally deployed, at short and inadequate notice, what is equivalent to a terrorist attack on west coast infrastructure. No one prepared for or expected that scenario. Past events have shown that PG&E management are sociopaths who intentionally engaged in mass criminal negligence which resulted in dozens of deaths and billions of dollars of property damage. Even under the oversight of a captured court, they continue with their games. If there is any sanity left in California, the USDOJ would bring the executives who deployed this plan and the judge who signed off on it under terrorism charges. If any deaths occur as a result of these antics, it should be capital charges.

24gttghh 7y ago
You almost lost me at the apocalypse metaphor but I catch your drift. Weeks at a time of no power aren't easy to be prepared for, but I feel like this event should be one more reason we need more distributed power generation in the US. Less single points of failure.
- droithomme 7y ago
  Yeah sorry I didn't mean to suggest a religious apocalypse, but any civilization-ending event which apocalypse also means: whether cooling and global glaciation, warming and ocean inundation, all-out global nuclear exchange between superpowers, the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, large meteor impact, "inevitable" Carrington event, 1 in 1000 year worldwide tsunami, etc. But it can be local too and without outside support is the same as world ending if you can't get out. If you have power loss for weeks in an area that is totally power dependent you start to see civilization meltdown. The situation in Puerto Rico recently was an example, another is the Haiti earthquake before that. Neither has recovered years later. You make a good point about distributed distribution. Would have to be very local to avoid this wildfire problem as PG&E is doing (shut off power instead of deal with actual issue). The wildfire problem is one that is decades in the making and coupled with poor open areas management by government policy in general and not just the power company, in particular not allowing periodic fires to burn out underbrush. I had this huge pile of brush in my backyard. When it burned it was very dangerous. Now I make sure to do more regular smaller burns as giant burns are not easily manageable. I like the solution of small Hitachi style safe nuclear reactors that service neighborhoods of around 2000-10000 people, can't meltdown or breech, are useless to terrorists, and require no maintenance. Doubt we'll go that way though.

dekhn 7y ago

note: it's not as simple as that (part of the fire problem is due to deferred maintainence; AKA we could have spent money 10 years ago to address this). However when you have a laser system it's not as simple as having a backup generator. When the entire building power is affected, the AC system stops working, and all your nicely aligned optics become unaligned. If you fix them at that time, then when the AC restores, you have to realign them. There are hundreds of externalities that affect productive state of the art research.