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This is a poor time to be a PG&E apologist. While there are several factors that contributed to the ignition, scale, and duration of the fires, PG&E has been fo

This is a poor time to be a PG&E apologist. While there are several factors that contributed to the ignition, scale, and duration of the fires, PG&E has been found criminally negligible. People are rightly angry. They are still being victimized today for PG&Es long history of behavior. They see no evidence that PG&E is working to correct the situation. They're told, "Hey, but you don't want a fire right" as if that is the only alternative. People want reliable, safely transported power. PG&E is not delivering. And even if PG&E weren't to blame, they've fumbled on every one of these outages from a customer perspective. I was never even notified of the first outage. They communicated through Twitter and some other media. Even the one we had in common I rarely use and when I use I don't see every post. Their website was frequently down. During the second outage their website often had no information, vague information, or inaccurate information. Our neighbors got power back days before we did. We literally had parts of our neighborhood all around us with power, but we went without. And during that time they announced a third outage with the same poor-quality information. We didn't even know if we'd get power back on before the next one hit. Also during that time, they stopped having humans answering their phones. Instead they just had a machine parrot the same (lack of) information that was available on their website. So, I don't know what to tell you. The idea that "a judge made them do it" is absurd. A judge made them do the right thing or to not do the thing at all. It is their history of not doing the right thing, but still doing that thing, that lead us all here.

harshreality 7y ago
Being mad about the past (and PG&E did bad things in the past) doesn't have any bearing on what they're doing now. Their equipment is poorly maintained. Fire risk is high. What do you want them to do, keep running power in high risk areas, cause more fires, and go more bankrupt? CA taxpayers pay either way, either more disruption from power outages or more property destruction. Note I'm talking operationally. Clawing back money from executives and dissolving the company are not operational changes that address the risky equipment and dangerous conditions. Neither of those will address this year's or next year's problems, and that $100 million would pay for burying at most about 50 miles of transmission lines. As far as disabling the automatic reclosers, maybe they should, but I'm going to take a wild guess that that they don't do that for a reason, and not just that they are being stupid. Perhaps those breakers are tripped so frequently that not reclosing them automatically would lead to massive outages anyway, and those would be unplanned outages which would be more difficult for people to handle. Nobody is talking about letting them off the hook. They're in bankruptcy court and judge Alsup is taking things seriously. But being mad and assigning penalties isn't going to fix the fires or the blackouts any time soon. It would have been good years ago to dig through PG&E's financials and get mad years about their misuse of maintenance funds, but nobody did that, or at least nobody got sufficiently mad if they did. It's too late to be mad about prior malfeasance once a disaster materializes. Actual solutions would be to raise rates immediately by a lot, like 50-100%, and pay people starting now to go out and mitigate problems (clear vegetation) and start to coordinate repairs. Every $.01 (per kWh) rate increase generates $6 million per day assuming an average of 25,000 MW and no usage-based pricing (and completely inelastic demand). 25e6 kW times 24h times $.01/kWh
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  What do you want them to do Easy. Step 1: the $100 million from the safety budget that got redirected to the CEO? Get it back. With interest. Use that $100+ million to start undergrounding lines. Step 2: disable the automatic reclosers like every other California utility does during fire season. Step 3: submit a dissolution plan to the CPUC
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    >Use that $100+ million to start undergrounding lines. That'll get them how much, maybe 10-20 miles? LADWP just paid $130 million for 11 miles of undergrounding (although it was a higher voltage line in an urban area which is a bit more expensive)
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      That'll get them how much, maybe 10-20 miles? Closer to 100 miles. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/pge-underground-power-lines-cost-14503808.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/pge-underground-power...
    - cgriswald 7y ago
      Even if that's all they get, they should think of it as a PR expense. I think spending it on clearing vegetation it would go farther in the short term and go a long way towards taking away the negative talking points about them. That bonus is a big sticking point with a lot of people.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  > What do you want them to do... 1. Deliver reliable, safely-transported power as nearly every other utility in the United States is able to do. 2. Fix the problem. 3. Handle the outages like professionals. Maintain lines of communications with customers. Keep information as accurate and up-to-date as possible. (1) has been made impossible for decades according to PG&E. (2) isn't really happening[0], fault PG&E. (3) might be completely outside their wheelhouse. [0]- https://www.kqed.org/news/11767619/monitors-spot-check-of-pge-wildfire-safety-effort-finds-missed-trees-recordkeeping-errors https://www.kqed.org/news/11767619/monitors-spot-check-of-pg... But sure, it's just the past people are angry about, so let's let PG&E off the hook.
Blackstone4 7y ago
I agree with most of what you said. The situation totally sucks for Californians and from what I can tell PG&E has and is badly managed. Maybe I just like playing devil's advocate and going against the crowd.
mc32 7y ago
Also the state wants to control PG&E but doesn’t want to take any of the blame for how PG&E are regulated. Of course they are nominally “private”. The state also bears responsibility but of course they have a ready scapegoat!
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  Also the state wants to control PG&E but doesn’t want to take any of the blame for how PG&E are regulated. Of course they are nominally “private”. The state also bears responsibility but of course they have a ready scapegoat! Remind me again, which regulations required PG&E to keep such poor records that blowing up a San Bruno neighborhood was a result? Which regulations forced them to dump toxic chemicals (hexavalent chromium) into the Hinkley water? Which regulations forced PG&E to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on stock buybacks instead of undergrounding high risk wires? Which regulations forced PG&E to pay out copious dividends instead of vegetation management?
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    Did you mean which public commission signed off on all of that? The answer: The California Public Utilities Comission. Did CPUC directly tell them to break the law? No, but CPUC approved every budget that criminally neglected maintenance. And when the San Bruno explosion happened as a predictable result, CPUC worked with PG&E to pick a judge they liked. https://m.sfgate.com/crime/article/Officials-demand-criminal-probe-of-PG-amp-E-s-5767564.php https://m.sfgate.com/crime/article/Officials-demand-criminal... So yes, our state government shares responsibility for all of it.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      Did you mean which public commission signed off on all of that? No. Did CPUC directly tell them to break the law? No, but CPUC approved every budget that criminally neglected maintenance. You mean the maintenance budget that PG&E redirected to executive compensation? So yes, our state government shares responsibility for all of it. Well, no. If you steal a cookie from a cookie jar that's your own damn fault. If you steal a cookie from a cookie jar that's not the fault of your parents for leaving an unlocked cookie jar within reach.
njarboe 7y ago
But have you seen their adds advising those that really need reliable power to look into buying their own generator? I guess getting people to spend billions on their own power generation could work.
iudqnolq 7y ago
And every year PG&E set a budget that failed to properly maintain their systems and instead funneled the money to executives, shareholders, and political donations they did so in a collaborative process with the California Public Utilities Comission. If any California governer ever wanted PG&E to invest in maintenance, they just had to say the word.

harshreality 7y ago

Being mad about the past (and PG&E did bad things in the past) doesn't have any bearing on what they're doing now. Their equipment is poorly maintained. Fire risk is high. What do you want them to do, keep running power in high risk areas, cause more fires, and go more bankrupt? CA taxpayers pay either way, either more disruption from power outages or more property destruction. Note I'm talking operationally. Clawing back money from executives and dissolving the company are not operational changes that address the risky equipment and dangerous conditions. Neither of those will address this year's or next year's problems, and that $100 million would pay for burying at most about 50 miles of transmission lines. As far as disabling the automatic reclosers, maybe they should, but I'm going to take a wild guess that that they don't do that for a reason, and not just that they are being stupid. Perhaps those breakers are tripped so frequently that not reclosing them automatically would lead to massive outages anyway, and those would be unplanned outages which would be more difficult for people to handle. Nobody is talking about letting them off the hook. They're in bankruptcy court and judge Alsup is taking things seriously. But being mad and assigning penalties isn't going to fix the fires or the blackouts any time soon. It would have been good years ago to dig through PG&E's financials and get mad years about their misuse of maintenance funds, but nobody did that, or at least nobody got sufficiently mad if they did. It's too late to be mad about prior malfeasance once a disaster materializes. Actual solutions would be to raise rates immediately by a lot, like 50-100%, and pay people starting now to go out and mitigate problems (clear vegetation) and start to coordinate repairs. Every $.01 (per kWh) rate increase generates $6 million per day assuming an average of 25,000 MW and no usage-based pricing (and completely inelastic demand). 25e6 kW times 24h times $.01/kWh

inferiorhuman 7y ago
What do you want them to do Easy. Step 1: the $100 million from the safety budget that got redirected to the CEO? Get it back. With interest. Use that $100+ million to start undergrounding lines. Step 2: disable the automatic reclosers like every other California utility does during fire season. Step 3: submit a dissolution plan to the CPUC
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  >Use that $100+ million to start undergrounding lines. That'll get them how much, maybe 10-20 miles? LADWP just paid $130 million for 11 miles of undergrounding (although it was a higher voltage line in an urban area which is a bit more expensive)
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    That'll get them how much, maybe 10-20 miles? Closer to 100 miles. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/pge-underground-power-lines-cost-14503808.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/pge-underground-power...
  - cgriswald 7y ago
    Even if that's all they get, they should think of it as a PR expense. I think spending it on clearing vegetation it would go farther in the short term and go a long way towards taking away the negative talking points about them. That bonus is a big sticking point with a lot of people.
cgriswald 7y ago
> What do you want them to do... 1. Deliver reliable, safely-transported power as nearly every other utility in the United States is able to do. 2. Fix the problem. 3. Handle the outages like professionals. Maintain lines of communications with customers. Keep information as accurate and up-to-date as possible. (1) has been made impossible for decades according to PG&E. (2) isn't really happening[0], fault PG&E. (3) might be completely outside their wheelhouse. [0]- https://www.kqed.org/news/11767619/monitors-spot-check-of-pge-wildfire-safety-effort-finds-missed-trees-recordkeeping-errors https://www.kqed.org/news/11767619/monitors-spot-check-of-pg... But sure, it's just the past people are angry about, so let's let PG&E off the hook.

Blackstone4 7y ago

I agree with most of what you said. The situation totally sucks for Californians and from what I can tell PG&E has and is badly managed. Maybe I just like playing devil's advocate and going against the crowd.

mc32 7y ago

Also the state wants to control PG&E but doesn’t want to take any of the blame for how PG&E are regulated. Of course they are nominally “private”. The state also bears responsibility but of course they have a ready scapegoat!

inferiorhuman 7y ago
Also the state wants to control PG&E but doesn’t want to take any of the blame for how PG&E are regulated. Of course they are nominally “private”. The state also bears responsibility but of course they have a ready scapegoat! Remind me again, which regulations required PG&E to keep such poor records that blowing up a San Bruno neighborhood was a result? Which regulations forced them to dump toxic chemicals (hexavalent chromium) into the Hinkley water? Which regulations forced PG&E to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on stock buybacks instead of undergrounding high risk wires? Which regulations forced PG&E to pay out copious dividends instead of vegetation management?
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  Did you mean which public commission signed off on all of that? The answer: The California Public Utilities Comission. Did CPUC directly tell them to break the law? No, but CPUC approved every budget that criminally neglected maintenance. And when the San Bruno explosion happened as a predictable result, CPUC worked with PG&E to pick a judge they liked. https://m.sfgate.com/crime/article/Officials-demand-criminal-probe-of-PG-amp-E-s-5767564.php https://m.sfgate.com/crime/article/Officials-demand-criminal... So yes, our state government shares responsibility for all of it.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    Did you mean which public commission signed off on all of that? No. Did CPUC directly tell them to break the law? No, but CPUC approved every budget that criminally neglected maintenance. You mean the maintenance budget that PG&E redirected to executive compensation? So yes, our state government shares responsibility for all of it. Well, no. If you steal a cookie from a cookie jar that's your own damn fault. If you steal a cookie from a cookie jar that's not the fault of your parents for leaving an unlocked cookie jar within reach.

njarboe 7y ago

But have you seen their adds advising those that really need reliable power to look into buying their own generator? I guess getting people to spend billions on their own power generation could work.

iudqnolq 7y ago

And every year PG&E set a budget that failed to properly maintain their systems and instead funneled the money to executives, shareholders, and political donations they did so in a collaborative process with the California Public Utilities Comission. If any California governer ever wanted PG&E to invest in maintenance, they just had to say the word.