15 ms·

California Can Expect Blackouts for a Decade, Says PG&E CEO

97 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

Agustus 7y ago
Context from the official statement is that PG&E does expect to require blackouts, but it will not be the same magnitude of black outs as seen a few weeks ago.
- jjulius 7y ago
  Where did you infer that? Literally the first sentence is... >The CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. told California energy regulators that the state will likely see blackouts for another 10 years like the one imposed last week that left as many as 800,000 customers without power. Not only that, but it's impossible to claim that future blackouts won't be of the same magnitude. The blackouts are determined by weather patterns, none of which can be predicted this far out. It's entirely possible we get another weather forecast in a year that calls for the same region-wide high winds and dryness.
_red 7y ago
I've lived in two developing countries in my life, and its interesting how CA is morphing back into that. Small enclaves of super-rich, very high price communities where everything works, surrounded by large swaths of shanty towns where nothing works.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  After living in LA for a few years, it certainly does feel exactly the way you describe within the city. But those juxtapositions are literal blocks apart from each other. The Google campus is next door to a shanty town in Venice, and their security sic the police on them for any minor infractions (or just made up ones). Very similar situation with the redevelopment downtown. It really does give you a bleak portrait of the tolerance for inhumanity within the context liberal Capitalism. California is ostensibly as “wacky leftist” as the US gets and it’s a bleak, cruel place in many regards.
  - maxaf 7y ago
    American liberals are always yelling for more “humanity”, but they keep quiet about the requirement that humanity must come at someone else’s expense. Yes, we need cheaper housing - but not here. Yes, guvment must build better jails - but not here. Yes, please run more buses - but not down my street. Yes, we must accept more refugees - but put them somewhere far away, certainly not anywhere near my child’s route to school. Liberalism and NIMBYism are joined at the hip. Liberalism is loud and ostentatious, while NIMBYism is prosecuted quietly via the court system, lobbying, and political donations. There’s a certain poetic beauty to how both seem to coexist in the same group of people.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - fallingfrog 7y ago
      Humanity must come at someone else’s expense? Just meditate on that thought for a minute. Think about it carefully. In your mind, on whose backs do you suppose that wealth was built?
      - maxaf 7y ago
        Yes, that's what the liberals are saying. They're yelling for more humanity, but they want it to come at someone else's expense. This isn't my principle; it's the liberals'. I'm not the one who should be meditating on anything, as I'm also not the one preventing affordable housing from being built.
        fallingfrog 7y ago
        Wrong answer. The wealth of those you want to protect from taxes is and has always been built on the backs of the poor who you want to deprive of public services. They built your homes, they tend your gardens, they raise your children, they guard you while you sleep. Yet you whine and complain when they want buses that run on time and a place to sleep.
- cobweb1 7y ago
  California has one of the lowest average IQs of any state. If you remove the tech workers and the old-time republicans, there's not many big brains left to go around.
  - maltalex 7y ago
    [Citation Needed]
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      This was the first google result. California is 48th. And that of course includes all the smarties in silicon valley who I assume bring up the average. https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/we-compared-average-iq-score-in-all-50-states-results-are-eye-opening.html https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/we-compared-average-iq-sc...
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - shantly 7y ago
        Wonder what the ranked order looks like for "% of population attending or employed by a university".
      - bluthru 7y ago
        And the Asian immigrants. People from south of the border are bringing the average down hard.
    - devtul 7y ago
      Nothing personal, but this kind of comment really grind my gears. When I read a claim like the one made in that comment, I take that as a lead and am grateful that someone brought light to that POV so I can explore more, e.g. freaking google it. The [Citation Needed] approach would make all comments boringly long and harder to write, all conversations white-paper like, which isn't bad of course, but has its place. How many times I felt lazy and just dropped my comment because I knew that the [Citation Needed] comments were bound to come, and while I have a good insight about the subject, I had no will to spend more energy on that nor any inclination for taking flak from lazier unconstructive commenters.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > Small enclaves of super-rich Indeed, and these same people often constantly prattling on about progressive politics.
- mtbcoder 7y ago
  > high price communities where everything works, surrounded by large swaths of shanty towns where nothing works. This isn't something that's only attributable to CA. Economically depressed towns relatively close to highly concentrated areas of wealth are all over America. Also, the scale of poverty in places like the south, Appalachia, the rust belt, rural America often meets or exceeds that of third-world countries.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    Oh there's other poor places, it's okay guys. Let them keep shooting up and shitting in the street. When you dismiss it like that, you're giving up on a solution and letting it fester.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- grawprog 7y ago
  This never goes over well when I say it but, on my most recent trip through America driving across 5 States, much of what we drove through did not look like what I would consider developed. For hundreds of miles the only towns we'd come across had nothing but fast food places a gas station and usually multiple churches and then just houses, no schools, no grocery stores, no hospitals or doctors, though usually a pharmacy, and not much else for at least a hundred miles in any direction from these places. Between these would just be highways dotted with billboards telling you not to kill yourself or smoke meth. You could always see the 'towns' coming about 50 miles away though, first you'd see the massive McDonald's sign in the distance, then maybe a Burger king sign or a gas station sign, a massive monolith spiking 100m into the sky. A lot of it felt really bleak.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    I wonder why that never goes well, because it's an incredibly offensive and out of touch statement. Yes there are schools, pharmacies, and grocery stores, you just didn't see them because you were passing through. That is nowhere near the level of homeless shooting up in the street, it's just a small community. Of course you see signs and gas stations, because you are driving through the towns on the highway...
    - scruple 7y ago
      And, where else are people "driving through" supposed to get fuel, exactly? If not for the towns they pass through? Good grief...
      - vineyardmike 7y ago
        Oh please. Fuel? Fast Food? Its right next to the highway, so you can pass through without spending too much time in town. The statement was offensive, and they were called-out. Lets not nit-pick unnecessarily.
    - grawprog 7y ago
      Well they must have been hidden from the mapbook and Google maps too, because couldn't find them there either.
- dmode 7y ago
  This comment makes no sense. In developing countries power gets shut off, because there is not enough of it. CA actually over produces power. The shut off is a result of acute climate change and dry conditions that have affected the state. And unlike a developing country, a corporation in a developed country is responding to legal risk and shutting power down. This is exactly opposite of a developing country, where corporations face no legal risk of their actions at all
  - augustocallejas 7y ago
    Power consumers won’t make the distinction between both scenarios; their power is off in both cases.
    - dmode 7y ago
      That doesn’t equate to “developing country” like living standards as the OP was suggesting. There is a distinction. As someone who actually was born and raised in India, this is not even remotely the same thing. It is like saying traffic jams in NYC are like Mumbai, therefore NYC is like a developing country
  - corodra 7y ago
    >The shut off is a result of acute climate change and dry conditions that have affected the state. No, no, nope. They are shutting off power to aged infrastructure. This is the one time a global warming culprit is using global warming to gain sympathy. They refuse to update extremely aged and damaged power lines. The same lines that can fall due to normal hazardous weather. Newer ones are not in as much risk. Look at a map of the blackouts. They aren't large grids. They are specific small areas.
- plughs 7y ago
  Conversely I find it interesting how quickly discussions of California quickly morph into the implication that there is little worth considering outside of the specific economy of 'silicon valley'. I can think of no one - from the people I've known since Kindergarten from the people I've met in the last few months at my new job - who can be described as 'super-rich' or living in 'shanty-towns'. There are plenty of working class folk living quite comfortably but their stories don't fit into our 'outrage culture' so they are conveniently ignored.
- himeexcelanta 7y ago
  Ya except Mill Valley and Sausalito in Marin county both experienced blackouts during the most recent shut down. Both of those cities being rather wealthy.
mikorym 7y ago
As a South African, the initial reaction is a knee-jerk, snide comment "get some", since we have frequent power outages due to a combination of institutional incompetence and malicious actors. (Apparently, at one point, we had outages that were "staged" in order for the Gupta family to make money from coal sales; I am not sure how it worked.) But as a more sober and conscientious observer, what are the reasons for this? Is it that fires have been causing too much damage? Is it that the utility companies are slacking? From the article it is not clear whether putting off the power is a successful mitigation strategy. It's a bit unimaginable for California to have the same problems that we have. In our case we have politics that inadequately qualified people are promoted to management and hence my question about whether there is logic to this. But the main difference is we don't have the same fire issues that California has, or at least, situations where the power lines are the cause of fires. Edit: We do have fires, but I think we have other (less straightforward/tangible) issues that we debate in our spare time.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  PG&E has been paying out dividends and executive bonuses instead of reinvesting in their infrastructure for years. And bought off a number of state politicians. Now that climate change is creating conditions for the already wildfire-prone landscape of California to suffer more frequent and severe events, the power companies are washing their hands of it. Short of some major state or federal investment in upgrading energy infrastructure (like the green new deal), I wouldn’t expect that to change.
  - paganel 7y ago
    > PG&E has been paying out dividends and executive bonuses instead of reinvesting in their infrastructure for years. And bought off a number of state politicians. Re the dividends part, that's an issue on which our present society will have to work more and more, because afaik most of those dividends go into the coffers of pension funds/insurance companies/big institutional investors which by their very nature "trickle down" that money mostly to people aged over 45 or 50. Most of those reinvestments you mention will get their financial return in 20-30 years' time, by which point the age-group I mentioned earlier (the over 45-50) will either be dead or to old too care that much about it.
scarejunba 7y ago
We can't live in the forest. Building in the tinderbox is CA's equivalent of TX's building in the flood plain.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  You can, there are some fairly straightforward principles of building in these environments to prevent the spread of fires, the technique works. Now, getting folks to care about fixing their homes, when they are insured for such a small proportion of the costs they generate, is a taller order.
bamboozled 7y ago
Really, California is considered the tech hub of the world, how is this ok ?
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  Well, like hundred years of propaganda starting from the Edward Bernays times convinced generations to accept this broken system of privately owned monopolies, which has this inherent perverse incentive to rent seek with no limit and neglect actual products or services they are supposed to provide.
mrfusion 7y ago
I asked this in another thread and got a healthy dose of downvotes instead of an answer. But why can’t they do a controlled burn along the path of the power lines? If it’s too risky they could even do it at a different time of year when there’s less risk.
- michaelbuckbee 7y ago
  I was curious myself and this article seems to describe the issue well: https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-help-solve-californias-fire-problem-so-why-arent-there-more-of-them https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-he... TL;DR it's a mix of human resources and education issues
- MiguelVieira 7y ago
  PG&E maintains over 18,000 miles of transmission lines.
  - mrfusion 7y ago
    So the question is how many of those go through fire prone areas. Perhaps there’s a 90/10 rule for where to expend the most effort.
- roel_v 7y ago
  It's not just alone the paths, but also near distribution stations, which are closer to urban areas where you can't do burns. Some lines are close to urban areas. Some areas can't be burned at all because the smoke always hits urban areas. And before you can burn you have to clear a long way from the power poles themselves so that they don't get damaged. And so on. Controlled burns aren't all that controlled in reality. It's hard to do in places that are near human settlements. (I do disaster planning work in Australia, and while I'm not an expert on bush fires or controlled burning by a long shot, I don't see why those things would be different between the two places).
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  There are a few related risks coming into play here, and controlled burns specifically along power transmission paths may not be appropriate. Fire risk largely boils down to: 1. Ignition. 2. Fuel. 3. Weather. 4. Endangered resources, particularly but not exclusively structures. 5. Fire spread mechanisms. Weather is largely beyond control, but includes both immediate (high winds, low humidities, high temps, dry soil and vegetation) and long-term (drought, flood-drought cycles) elements. Ignition is where PG&E are largely concerned. Electric lines and other equipment can and have caused previous fires. Keep in mind that activities such as mowing grass, getting flat tyres, and hammering have caused previous major conflagrations. At this point, ignition is all but a certainty. Fuel includes both plants and structures. Due to 80+ years of near-total wildfire suppression, and exacerbated by climate change and plant disease, fuel loads are extreme. Wildfires are typically wind and ember driven, rather than simply being a wall of frame. Hotspots and ignition points occur outside the principle fire front by distances of hundreds to thousands of metres -- a quarter mile to several miles in Freedom Units. Structures specifically are vulnerable to wildfire largely when embers impinge on structures or immediately surrounding flammables: exposed decks, surrounding brush, eves, and the like. If immediate ignition can be limited, through architictureal, landscaping, or treatment (sprinkler, foam, gel) mitigations, most structures are actually fairly resilient, though heat and smoke damage can still result. A near wall-of-flame approach can still shatter window glass and ignite interiors through radiant heat. To your suggestion: What safes transmission lines more than anything is clearing any nearby brush or trees. You don't need to burn it away, you simply need plant matter not to contact transmission wires and equipment. This is generally an easier, and far more controllable approach than even prescribed burns. Road and heliocopter-based tree-trimming and removal can and do work. Prescribed burns can work on overall fuel load. This is a treatment applied generally at a regional level, affecting acres to miles of terrain. It's generally best done during or immediately after the wet season (to avoid uncontrolled burns), and away from structures, including power equipment. One of the huge weaknesses of many utility systems is adequate monitoring. For all the industry advocacy I've seen of "smart meters" and the like, applying sensors, monitors, and active monitoring of transmission lines, gas likes, water systems, pipelines, etc., seems absolutely primative. Smart meters are revenue-generating (or loss-avoiding), equipment monitoring and controls apparently aren't seen that way. Finally: construction and emergency planning around wildfire events clearly needs to be upgraded. The good thing about institutional and methodical approaches is that they can incorporate collective wisdom. The bad thing is that they are frequently reactive, conservative, and cruft-ridden. Early-stage approaches are often grossly inadequate, late-stage approaches are often geared at outdated assumptions, experience, and methods. Paradise, CA, had a wildfire disaster plan. It was abolsolutely inadequate to the situation faced. The 2018 Camp Fire began at 6:33 am. First units were on scene slightly before 7 am. As of 7:34, 911 operators were still telling Paradise residents there was no immediate danger. (https://ktla.com/2019/02/01/first-camp-fire-911-calls-reveal-what-paradise-dispatchers-told-concerned-residents-were-not-in-any-danger/ https://ktla.com/2019/02/01/first-camp-fire-911-calls-reveal...). The fire entered Paradise at 8 am, some 20k (16 miles) from the ignition point, and evacuation was not ordered until about 10 minutes later, and then for only sections of the town, as the fire response plan called for staged evacuations from specific zones. Residents died in their homes awaiting specific evacuation orders which either never came, were transmitted over inadequate channels, or were never received. Video interview / docu covering many of these points: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gxt7L4x_NQo https://youtube.com/watch?v=gxt7L4x_NQo As with other megadisasters, a huge contributing failing was of imagination and understanding by planners, authorities, responders, and residents, both in the moment and for years beforehand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018_Wildfire) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018_Wildfire) PG&E were directly responsible for part of the risks, and were absolutely negligent in this and other recent disasters such as the 2017 Northern California wildfires and 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion. Though the ultimate fire was all but certainly inevitable. I happened to travel along the next W-E highway north of Paradise in 2015, taking CA-32 and CA-36 from Chico, CA, to Mt. Lassen, in early October. I was struck by how bone-dry the forest was, as well as the temperatures (~90F) and humidity (low). Thankfully winds were nonexistent. But as someone who's spent a fair bit of time driving through remote, mountainous, and forested terrain, I felt distinctly uneasy and could directly perceive the risks. I was happy to be through the region, despite its beauty (and it really is a fantastic drive). (I've done a number of rural-country road trips since 2000, and the memories of both fire scars and regions later consumed by major fires has left a strong impression.) News of the Camp Fire three years later did not surprise me. The friend I'd visited in Chico was my first source of news of the fire via social media posts. There are numerous videos of the Camp (and other) wildfires on YouTube. This is a well-produced synoptic overview by Vox which does a fair job of conveying the scope, scale, speed, and effects. Nothing but seeing in person can truly do the phenomenon justice. https://youtube.com/watch?v=nwup6tA_OzQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=nwup6tA_OzQ
kylehotchkiss 7y ago
The amount of home generators is going to quickly increase, which will do wonders for air quality when the power lines are cut.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  Or Tesla is going to sell heaps of Powerwalls and solar panels
  - oh_hello 7y ago
    Having looked at all of these options recently, I can say very few people would chose Powerwalls and solar over a standby generator. A whole house generator capable of running everything in your home, including HVAC, for many days on end will run ~$10-14k installed. A single Powerwall alone costs about that much and can't distribute nearly as much power as the generator.
    - pythonaut_16 7y ago
      How much fuel does the generator consume? What is the switch-over time? Would it be useful for service interruptions or only full blackouts?
      - Consultant32452 7y ago
        My uncle lives in a place that loses power often. His system is propane. When the power goes out you might notice the lights flicker. I don't know how much fuel it consumes.
      - oh_hello 7y ago
        The switch over time is around 30 seconds. When your power is restored from the grid, it switched back seamlessly. Fuel is a great question. I have never looked at the consumption. Mine runs off the natural gas line, so I have no tank to fill. With this setup I feel I am in good shape for short and extended outages.
appleflaxen 7y ago
If this is the best that the private sector can do, it seems like it is probably time to let the public sector take over.
- Ottolay 7y ago
  The liability risk from the fires is so high nobody is going to want to invest money in PG&E to fully clear all the fire prone lines. Also significantly raising prices is usually not allowed. Instead the existing share holders just try to bleed out whatever money they can. When the free market does not work for a necessary public service it should be time for the government to take over.
  - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
    When they are not allowed to raise prices, you can hardly call it a free market.
- randyrand 7y ago
  Why would the public sector do better?
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Public power -- public utility districts -- very often do better. Sacramento gets power from one, SMUD.
  - kayfox 7y ago
    Because they exempt themselves from liability.
asdf333 7y ago
if the ceo can’t figure it out he needs to be replaced.
surds 7y ago
I was in CA last year with the major wildfires going on. Not there this time, so am curious if this approach worked this year. If yes, I suppose that controlled, scheduled blackouts is a positive move (not a competent one given that this is CA we are talking about) as it avoids a huge loss of lives, property, forest and avoids a ton of air pollution. (The generators are gonna cause it anyways. :( ) On the flip side, is PG&E using this time to improve infrastructure or should expect it to extend the timeline by another decade in 7-8 years from now?
lmilcin 7y ago
I am not from US but this smells as if PG&E tried to force California and general population to demand PG&E to be deemed not responsible for fires.
- gimmeThaBeet 7y ago
  That's definitely a dimension of what's happening, none of the utilities have ever been cool with the nebulous liability presented by inverse condemnation. I think if anyone were in their shoes, they wouldn't be either. PG&E knows that they're way less liable for damage caused by service interruptions than they see they are for being responsible for wildfires. They're doing what California wants them to even if it's not the intent of the law. That's mainly why I think seizing PG&E doesn't solve your problems in the short/medium term. If the state owned their lines tomorrow, they haven't seen the last wildfire. I just don't see a scenario in which the state is as eager to pick as high a number when determining liabilities.
  - joshstrange 7y ago
    Unless I'm missing something this completely ignores the decades of mismanagement and paying huge bonuses/salaries instead of reinvesting in infrastructure. PG&E put themselves in this position should be held accountable.
    - james-mcelwain 7y ago
      Right, I'd be sympathetic to this liability argument if they weren't extracting profits and neglecting maintenance. Obviously the fire issue is bigger than a single utility, but their actions here leave them little public good will.
      - ncmncm 7y ago
        I would demonstrate my sympathy for their desire not to be a public utility anymore by confiscating their assets, firing their management, and turning their assets over to someone who does want to be a public utility.
rpmcmurdo 7y ago
I am from the east coast, and compared to where I grew up, the power grid is way more reliable. Where I grew up, the utilities were not undergrounded, and many neighborhoods were heavily forested. Whenever there was a big front of thunderstorms in summer or, worse, an ice storm in the winter, large swaths of the area would lose all of their utilities besides natural gas. Sometimes these outages would last several days. It was inconvenient, but nobody wanted to pay for the cost of undergrounding utilities, so it was something you just dealt with. A few people bought generators, but most didn't. The only time the outages really caused hardship was during ice storms, but fortunately those were pretty rare. I now live in CA. PG&E made the right call here. A couple days of no electricity is better than burning an entire town to the ground in a firestorm.
jameskegel 7y ago
It’s really sad how tribalist politics have pervasively overtaken rational discussions. I dream of discourse that doesn’t devolve into conversations about leftists, conservatives, and various interest groups.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
this is what happens when you sue a company for something that was an acceptable risk. it now becomes unacceptable and this is the consequence.
- dano 7y ago
  I think you're right on target with that observation. A compromise of limited liability and aggressive infrastructure upgrades may be the way to go.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
"But Johnson said it could take 10 years before such outages are "really ratcheted down significantly." " Strikes me as a CEO that suddenly wants very much to have his golden parachute and be out of this pickle.
Rarok 7y ago
I don't understand how the powerlines can affect to wildfires. They can put powerlines in any place or how it works? In my country (Spain) there are laws to say exactly how much meters of free space are needed depending on what capacity has the powerline. That means that you can't build anything there and that if a powerline goes in your forestal terrain you can't plant any tree there (thats why people don't like powerlines over theirs lands). That also does that all the forestal ground have a good number of firewalls because of the powerlines.

97 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

Context from the official statement is that PG&E does expect to require blackouts, but it will not be the same magnitude of black outs as seen a few weeks ago.

jjulius 7y ago
Where did you infer that? Literally the first sentence is... >The CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. told California energy regulators that the state will likely see blackouts for another 10 years like the one imposed last week that left as many as 800,000 customers without power. Not only that, but it's impossible to claim that future blackouts won't be of the same magnitude. The blackouts are determined by weather patterns, none of which can be predicted this far out. It's entirely possible we get another weather forecast in a year that calls for the same region-wide high winds and dryness.

_red 7y ago

I've lived in two developing countries in my life, and its interesting how CA is morphing back into that. Small enclaves of super-rich, very high price communities where everything works, surrounded by large swaths of shanty towns where nothing works.

claudeganon 7y ago
After living in LA for a few years, it certainly does feel exactly the way you describe within the city. But those juxtapositions are literal blocks apart from each other. The Google campus is next door to a shanty town in Venice, and their security sic the police on them for any minor infractions (or just made up ones). Very similar situation with the redevelopment downtown. It really does give you a bleak portrait of the tolerance for inhumanity within the context liberal Capitalism. California is ostensibly as “wacky leftist” as the US gets and it’s a bleak, cruel place in many regards.
- maxaf 7y ago
  American liberals are always yelling for more “humanity”, but they keep quiet about the requirement that humanity must come at someone else’s expense. Yes, we need cheaper housing - but not here. Yes, guvment must build better jails - but not here. Yes, please run more buses - but not down my street. Yes, we must accept more refugees - but put them somewhere far away, certainly not anywhere near my child’s route to school. Liberalism and NIMBYism are joined at the hip. Liberalism is loud and ostentatious, while NIMBYism is prosecuted quietly via the court system, lobbying, and political donations. There’s a certain poetic beauty to how both seem to coexist in the same group of people.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - fallingfrog 7y ago
    Humanity must come at someone else’s expense? Just meditate on that thought for a minute. Think about it carefully. In your mind, on whose backs do you suppose that wealth was built?
    - maxaf 7y ago
      Yes, that's what the liberals are saying. They're yelling for more humanity, but they want it to come at someone else's expense. This isn't my principle; it's the liberals'. I'm not the one who should be meditating on anything, as I'm also not the one preventing affordable housing from being built.
      - fallingfrog 7y ago
        Wrong answer. The wealth of those you want to protect from taxes is and has always been built on the backs of the poor who you want to deprive of public services. They built your homes, they tend your gardens, they raise your children, they guard you while you sleep. Yet you whine and complain when they want buses that run on time and a place to sleep.
cobweb1 7y ago
California has one of the lowest average IQs of any state. If you remove the tech workers and the old-time republicans, there's not many big brains left to go around.
- maltalex 7y ago
  [Citation Needed]
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    This was the first google result. California is 48th. And that of course includes all the smarties in silicon valley who I assume bring up the average. https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/we-compared-average-iq-score-in-all-50-states-results-are-eye-opening.html https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/we-compared-average-iq-sc...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - shantly 7y ago
      Wonder what the ranked order looks like for "% of population attending or employed by a university".
    - bluthru 7y ago
      And the Asian immigrants. People from south of the border are bringing the average down hard.
  - devtul 7y ago
    Nothing personal, but this kind of comment really grind my gears. When I read a claim like the one made in that comment, I take that as a lead and am grateful that someone brought light to that POV so I can explore more, e.g. freaking google it. The [Citation Needed] approach would make all comments boringly long and harder to write, all conversations white-paper like, which isn't bad of course, but has its place. How many times I felt lazy and just dropped my comment because I knew that the [Citation Needed] comments were bound to come, and while I have a good insight about the subject, I had no will to spend more energy on that nor any inclination for taking flak from lazier unconstructive commenters.
microcolonel 7y ago
> Small enclaves of super-rich Indeed, and these same people often constantly prattling on about progressive politics.
mtbcoder 7y ago
> high price communities where everything works, surrounded by large swaths of shanty towns where nothing works. This isn't something that's only attributable to CA. Economically depressed towns relatively close to highly concentrated areas of wealth are all over America. Also, the scale of poverty in places like the south, Appalachia, the rust belt, rural America often meets or exceeds that of third-world countries.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  Oh there's other poor places, it's okay guys. Let them keep shooting up and shitting in the street. When you dismiss it like that, you're giving up on a solution and letting it fester.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
grawprog 7y ago
This never goes over well when I say it but, on my most recent trip through America driving across 5 States, much of what we drove through did not look like what I would consider developed. For hundreds of miles the only towns we'd come across had nothing but fast food places a gas station and usually multiple churches and then just houses, no schools, no grocery stores, no hospitals or doctors, though usually a pharmacy, and not much else for at least a hundred miles in any direction from these places. Between these would just be highways dotted with billboards telling you not to kill yourself or smoke meth. You could always see the 'towns' coming about 50 miles away though, first you'd see the massive McDonald's sign in the distance, then maybe a Burger king sign or a gas station sign, a massive monolith spiking 100m into the sky. A lot of it felt really bleak.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  I wonder why that never goes well, because it's an incredibly offensive and out of touch statement. Yes there are schools, pharmacies, and grocery stores, you just didn't see them because you were passing through. That is nowhere near the level of homeless shooting up in the street, it's just a small community. Of course you see signs and gas stations, because you are driving through the towns on the highway...
  - scruple 7y ago
    And, where else are people "driving through" supposed to get fuel, exactly? If not for the towns they pass through? Good grief...
    - vineyardmike 7y ago
      Oh please. Fuel? Fast Food? Its right next to the highway, so you can pass through without spending too much time in town. The statement was offensive, and they were called-out. Lets not nit-pick unnecessarily.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    Well they must have been hidden from the mapbook and Google maps too, because couldn't find them there either.
dmode 7y ago
This comment makes no sense. In developing countries power gets shut off, because there is not enough of it. CA actually over produces power. The shut off is a result of acute climate change and dry conditions that have affected the state. And unlike a developing country, a corporation in a developed country is responding to legal risk and shutting power down. This is exactly opposite of a developing country, where corporations face no legal risk of their actions at all
- augustocallejas 7y ago
  Power consumers won’t make the distinction between both scenarios; their power is off in both cases.
  - dmode 7y ago
    That doesn’t equate to “developing country” like living standards as the OP was suggesting. There is a distinction. As someone who actually was born and raised in India, this is not even remotely the same thing. It is like saying traffic jams in NYC are like Mumbai, therefore NYC is like a developing country
- corodra 7y ago
  >The shut off is a result of acute climate change and dry conditions that have affected the state. No, no, nope. They are shutting off power to aged infrastructure. This is the one time a global warming culprit is using global warming to gain sympathy. They refuse to update extremely aged and damaged power lines. The same lines that can fall due to normal hazardous weather. Newer ones are not in as much risk. Look at a map of the blackouts. They aren't large grids. They are specific small areas.
plughs 7y ago
Conversely I find it interesting how quickly discussions of California quickly morph into the implication that there is little worth considering outside of the specific economy of 'silicon valley'. I can think of no one - from the people I've known since Kindergarten from the people I've met in the last few months at my new job - who can be described as 'super-rich' or living in 'shanty-towns'. There are plenty of working class folk living quite comfortably but their stories don't fit into our 'outrage culture' so they are conveniently ignored.
himeexcelanta 7y ago
Ya except Mill Valley and Sausalito in Marin county both experienced blackouts during the most recent shut down. Both of those cities being rather wealthy.

mikorym 7y ago

As a South African, the initial reaction is a knee-jerk, snide comment "get some", since we have frequent power outages due to a combination of institutional incompetence and malicious actors. (Apparently, at one point, we had outages that were "staged" in order for the Gupta family to make money from coal sales; I am not sure how it worked.) But as a more sober and conscientious observer, what are the reasons for this? Is it that fires have been causing too much damage? Is it that the utility companies are slacking? From the article it is not clear whether putting off the power is a successful mitigation strategy. It's a bit unimaginable for California to have the same problems that we have. In our case we have politics that inadequately qualified people are promoted to management and hence my question about whether there is logic to this. But the main difference is we don't have the same fire issues that California has, or at least, situations where the power lines are the cause of fires. Edit: We do have fires, but I think we have other (less straightforward/tangible) issues that we debate in our spare time.

claudeganon 7y ago
PG&E has been paying out dividends and executive bonuses instead of reinvesting in their infrastructure for years. And bought off a number of state politicians. Now that climate change is creating conditions for the already wildfire-prone landscape of California to suffer more frequent and severe events, the power companies are washing their hands of it. Short of some major state or federal investment in upgrading energy infrastructure (like the green new deal), I wouldn’t expect that to change.
- paganel 7y ago
  > PG&E has been paying out dividends and executive bonuses instead of reinvesting in their infrastructure for years. And bought off a number of state politicians. Re the dividends part, that's an issue on which our present society will have to work more and more, because afaik most of those dividends go into the coffers of pension funds/insurance companies/big institutional investors which by their very nature "trickle down" that money mostly to people aged over 45 or 50. Most of those reinvestments you mention will get their financial return in 20-30 years' time, by which point the age-group I mentioned earlier (the over 45-50) will either be dead or to old too care that much about it.

scarejunba 7y ago

We can't live in the forest. Building in the tinderbox is CA's equivalent of TX's building in the flood plain.

microcolonel 7y ago
You can, there are some fairly straightforward principles of building in these environments to prevent the spread of fires, the technique works. Now, getting folks to care about fixing their homes, when they are insured for such a small proportion of the costs they generate, is a taller order.

bamboozled 7y ago

Really, California is considered the tech hub of the world, how is this ok ?

zzzcpan 7y ago
Well, like hundred years of propaganda starting from the Edward Bernays times convinced generations to accept this broken system of privately owned monopolies, which has this inherent perverse incentive to rent seek with no limit and neglect actual products or services they are supposed to provide.

mrfusion 7y ago

I asked this in another thread and got a healthy dose of downvotes instead of an answer. But why can’t they do a controlled burn along the path of the power lines? If it’s too risky they could even do it at a different time of year when there’s less risk.

michaelbuckbee 7y ago
I was curious myself and this article seems to describe the issue well: https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-help-solve-californias-fire-problem-so-why-arent-there-more-of-them https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-he... TL;DR it's a mix of human resources and education issues
MiguelVieira 7y ago
PG&E maintains over 18,000 miles of transmission lines.
- mrfusion 7y ago
  So the question is how many of those go through fire prone areas. Perhaps there’s a 90/10 rule for where to expend the most effort.
roel_v 7y ago
It's not just alone the paths, but also near distribution stations, which are closer to urban areas where you can't do burns. Some lines are close to urban areas. Some areas can't be burned at all because the smoke always hits urban areas. And before you can burn you have to clear a long way from the power poles themselves so that they don't get damaged. And so on. Controlled burns aren't all that controlled in reality. It's hard to do in places that are near human settlements. (I do disaster planning work in Australia, and while I'm not an expert on bush fires or controlled burning by a long shot, I don't see why those things would be different between the two places).
dredmorbius 7y ago
There are a few related risks coming into play here, and controlled burns specifically along power transmission paths may not be appropriate. Fire risk largely boils down to: 1. Ignition. 2. Fuel. 3. Weather. 4. Endangered resources, particularly but not exclusively structures. 5. Fire spread mechanisms. Weather is largely beyond control, but includes both immediate (high winds, low humidities, high temps, dry soil and vegetation) and long-term (drought, flood-drought cycles) elements. Ignition is where PG&E are largely concerned. Electric lines and other equipment can and have caused previous fires. Keep in mind that activities such as mowing grass, getting flat tyres, and hammering have caused previous major conflagrations. At this point, ignition is all but a certainty. Fuel includes both plants and structures. Due to 80+ years of near-total wildfire suppression, and exacerbated by climate change and plant disease, fuel loads are extreme. Wildfires are typically wind and ember driven, rather than simply being a wall of frame. Hotspots and ignition points occur outside the principle fire front by distances of hundreds to thousands of metres -- a quarter mile to several miles in Freedom Units. Structures specifically are vulnerable to wildfire largely when embers impinge on structures or immediately surrounding flammables: exposed decks, surrounding brush, eves, and the like. If immediate ignition can be limited, through architictureal, landscaping, or treatment (sprinkler, foam, gel) mitigations, most structures are actually fairly resilient, though heat and smoke damage can still result. A near wall-of-flame approach can still shatter window glass and ignite interiors through radiant heat. To your suggestion: What safes transmission lines more than anything is clearing any nearby brush or trees. You don't need to burn it away, you simply need plant matter not to contact transmission wires and equipment. This is generally an easier, and far more controllable approach than even prescribed burns. Road and heliocopter-based tree-trimming and removal can and do work. Prescribed burns can work on overall fuel load. This is a treatment applied generally at a regional level, affecting acres to miles of terrain. It's generally best done during or immediately after the wet season (to avoid uncontrolled burns), and away from structures, including power equipment. One of the huge weaknesses of many utility systems is adequate monitoring. For all the industry advocacy I've seen of "smart meters" and the like, applying sensors, monitors, and active monitoring of transmission lines, gas likes, water systems, pipelines, etc., seems absolutely primative. Smart meters are revenue-generating (or loss-avoiding), equipment monitoring and controls apparently aren't seen that way. Finally: construction and emergency planning around wildfire events clearly needs to be upgraded. The good thing about institutional and methodical approaches is that they can incorporate collective wisdom. The bad thing is that they are frequently reactive, conservative, and cruft-ridden. Early-stage approaches are often grossly inadequate, late-stage approaches are often geared at outdated assumptions, experience, and methods. Paradise, CA, had a wildfire disaster plan. It was abolsolutely inadequate to the situation faced. The 2018 Camp Fire began at 6:33 am. First units were on scene slightly before 7 am. As of 7:34, 911 operators were still telling Paradise residents there was no immediate danger. (https://ktla.com/2019/02/01/first-camp-fire-911-calls-reveal-what-paradise-dispatchers-told-concerned-residents-were-not-in-any-danger/ https://ktla.com/2019/02/01/first-camp-fire-911-calls-reveal...). The fire entered Paradise at 8 am, some 20k (16 miles) from the ignition point, and evacuation was not ordered until about 10 minutes later, and then for only sections of the town, as the fire response plan called for staged evacuations from specific zones. Residents died in their homes awaiting specific evacuation orders which either never came, were transmitted over inadequate channels, or were never received. Video interview / docu covering many of these points: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gxt7L4x_NQo https://youtube.com/watch?v=gxt7L4x_NQo As with other megadisasters, a huge contributing failing was of imagination and understanding by planners, authorities, responders, and residents, both in the moment and for years beforehand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018_Wildfire) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018_Wildfire) PG&E were directly responsible for part of the risks, and were absolutely negligent in this and other recent disasters such as the 2017 Northern California wildfires and 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion. Though the ultimate fire was all but certainly inevitable. I happened to travel along the next W-E highway north of Paradise in 2015, taking CA-32 and CA-36 from Chico, CA, to Mt. Lassen, in early October. I was struck by how bone-dry the forest was, as well as the temperatures (~90F) and humidity (low). Thankfully winds were nonexistent. But as someone who's spent a fair bit of time driving through remote, mountainous, and forested terrain, I felt distinctly uneasy and could directly perceive the risks. I was happy to be through the region, despite its beauty (and it really is a fantastic drive). (I've done a number of rural-country road trips since 2000, and the memories of both fire scars and regions later consumed by major fires has left a strong impression.) News of the Camp Fire three years later did not surprise me. The friend I'd visited in Chico was my first source of news of the fire via social media posts. There are numerous videos of the Camp (and other) wildfires on YouTube. This is a well-produced synoptic overview by Vox which does a fair job of conveying the scope, scale, speed, and effects. Nothing but seeing in person can truly do the phenomenon justice. https://youtube.com/watch?v=nwup6tA_OzQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=nwup6tA_OzQ

kylehotchkiss 7y ago

The amount of home generators is going to quickly increase, which will do wonders for air quality when the power lines are cut.

newnewpdro 7y ago
Or Tesla is going to sell heaps of Powerwalls and solar panels
- oh_hello 7y ago
  Having looked at all of these options recently, I can say very few people would chose Powerwalls and solar over a standby generator. A whole house generator capable of running everything in your home, including HVAC, for many days on end will run ~$10-14k installed. A single Powerwall alone costs about that much and can't distribute nearly as much power as the generator.
  - pythonaut_16 7y ago
    How much fuel does the generator consume? What is the switch-over time? Would it be useful for service interruptions or only full blackouts?
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      My uncle lives in a place that loses power often. His system is propane. When the power goes out you might notice the lights flicker. I don't know how much fuel it consumes.
    - oh_hello 7y ago
      The switch over time is around 30 seconds. When your power is restored from the grid, it switched back seamlessly. Fuel is a great question. I have never looked at the consumption. Mine runs off the natural gas line, so I have no tank to fill. With this setup I feel I am in good shape for short and extended outages.

appleflaxen 7y ago

If this is the best that the private sector can do, it seems like it is probably time to let the public sector take over.

Ottolay 7y ago
The liability risk from the fires is so high nobody is going to want to invest money in PG&E to fully clear all the fire prone lines. Also significantly raising prices is usually not allowed. Instead the existing share holders just try to bleed out whatever money they can. When the free market does not work for a necessary public service it should be time for the government to take over.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  When they are not allowed to raise prices, you can hardly call it a free market.
randyrand 7y ago
Why would the public sector do better?
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Public power -- public utility districts -- very often do better. Sacramento gets power from one, SMUD.
- kayfox 7y ago
  Because they exempt themselves from liability.

asdf333 7y ago

if the ceo can’t figure it out he needs to be replaced.

surds 7y ago

I was in CA last year with the major wildfires going on. Not there this time, so am curious if this approach worked this year. If yes, I suppose that controlled, scheduled blackouts is a positive move (not a competent one given that this is CA we are talking about) as it avoids a huge loss of lives, property, forest and avoids a ton of air pollution. (The generators are gonna cause it anyways. :( ) On the flip side, is PG&E using this time to improve infrastructure or should expect it to extend the timeline by another decade in 7-8 years from now?

lmilcin 7y ago

I am not from US but this smells as if PG&E tried to force California and general population to demand PG&E to be deemed not responsible for fires.

gimmeThaBeet 7y ago
That's definitely a dimension of what's happening, none of the utilities have ever been cool with the nebulous liability presented by inverse condemnation. I think if anyone were in their shoes, they wouldn't be either. PG&E knows that they're way less liable for damage caused by service interruptions than they see they are for being responsible for wildfires. They're doing what California wants them to even if it's not the intent of the law. That's mainly why I think seizing PG&E doesn't solve your problems in the short/medium term. If the state owned their lines tomorrow, they haven't seen the last wildfire. I just don't see a scenario in which the state is as eager to pick as high a number when determining liabilities.
- joshstrange 7y ago
  Unless I'm missing something this completely ignores the decades of mismanagement and paying huge bonuses/salaries instead of reinvesting in infrastructure. PG&E put themselves in this position should be held accountable.
  - james-mcelwain 7y ago
    Right, I'd be sympathetic to this liability argument if they weren't extracting profits and neglecting maintenance. Obviously the fire issue is bigger than a single utility, but their actions here leave them little public good will.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      I would demonstrate my sympathy for their desire not to be a public utility anymore by confiscating their assets, firing their management, and turning their assets over to someone who does want to be a public utility.

rpmcmurdo 7y ago

I am from the east coast, and compared to where I grew up, the power grid is way more reliable. Where I grew up, the utilities were not undergrounded, and many neighborhoods were heavily forested. Whenever there was a big front of thunderstorms in summer or, worse, an ice storm in the winter, large swaths of the area would lose all of their utilities besides natural gas. Sometimes these outages would last several days. It was inconvenient, but nobody wanted to pay for the cost of undergrounding utilities, so it was something you just dealt with. A few people bought generators, but most didn't. The only time the outages really caused hardship was during ice storms, but fortunately those were pretty rare. I now live in CA. PG&E made the right call here. A couple days of no electricity is better than burning an entire town to the ground in a firestorm.

jameskegel 7y ago

It’s really sad how tribalist politics have pervasively overtaken rational discussions. I dream of discourse that doesn’t devolve into conversations about leftists, conservatives, and various interest groups.

deleted 7y ago

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thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

this is what happens when you sue a company for something that was an acceptable risk. it now becomes unacceptable and this is the consequence.

dano 7y ago
I think you're right on target with that observation. A compromise of limited liability and aggressive infrastructure upgrades may be the way to go.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

"But Johnson said it could take 10 years before such outages are "really ratcheted down significantly." " Strikes me as a CEO that suddenly wants very much to have his golden parachute and be out of this pickle.

Rarok 7y ago

I don't understand how the powerlines can affect to wildfires. They can put powerlines in any place or how it works? In my country (Spain) there are laws to say exactly how much meters of free space are needed depending on what capacity has the powerline. That means that you can't build anything there and that if a powerline goes in your forestal terrain you can't plant any tree there (thats why people don't like powerlines over theirs lands). That also does that all the forestal ground have a good number of firewalls because of the powerlines.