5 ms·

PG&E Had Systemic Problems with Power Line Maintenance, California Probe Finds

82 points by grzm 7y ago

olliej 7y ago
But at least they were paying out dividends. Sure those dividends were being paid directly by tax dollars in the form of the inevitable bail out, but at least private individuals got that money first.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post snarky rage comments here. I know it's the internet, but that's not what this site is for, as you'll notice if you review the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/DJ4RR http://archive.is/DJ4RR
- campfireveteran 7y ago
  Thank you, kind person.
samcheng 7y ago
After the San Bruno pipeline explosion, where PG&E gas pipeline maintenance and inspection records were falsified, is anyone surprised? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion#Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion#L... If a company is forced to implement a "compliance and ethics monitoring program" by the federal government, it has some serious culture problems.
- throw0101a 7y ago
  > If a company is forced to implement a "compliance and ethics monitoring program" by the federal government, it has some serious culture problems. And where were the state regulators in all of this? Someone on HN once mentioned that CPUC [1] allowed deferred maintenance on a lot of stuff because it helped to keep rates down. This prevented customers screaming at politicians. True/plausible? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Co...
  - lscotte 7y ago
    > And where were the state regulators in all of this? In bed with PG&E the whole time, of course.
jiqiren 7y ago
Executives that let this happen under their watch should be charged with the deaths of those 85 people.
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  Completely agree with you, but I'll be surprised if even the outsized bonuses and dividends they paid themselves over the past ten years (with money which should have gone to line maintenance and upgrades) are clawed back.
  - costcopizza 7y ago
    Not sure why this is being downvoted as it's been the case.
olivermarks 7y ago
PG&E is far away from the concept of a modern 'smart grid', running archaic and obsolete overground infrastructure. It is incredible that companies like Tesla are also in California when the Paradise fire, caused by a 100 year old rusty pylon failing on an inaccessible hillside, resulted in massive subsequent precautionary power outages that rendered EV's useless in recent emergency situations.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  California's a big state...
- Johnny555 7y ago
  To be fair, gas powered vehicles are less effective in a power outage too since without power (or a backup generator) at the gas station, they can't refuel. Of course, you can drive your gas powered car outside of the area to refuel, but you can do the same with an EV -- during the recent PG&E scheduled outages, EV owners worked out a rotation for the EV chargers at work so they could all recharge at work while the power was out at home. My gas powered car can go about 160 miles on half a tank of gas (which is about the average amount I have in it at any time). If I had an EV, I'd charge it overnight, so I'd have 200 - 300 miles of range in the event of a power outage.
  - namibj 7y ago
    Well, you can bring gas in far more easily than the equivalent amount of electricity... That said, scheduled outages shouldn't ever be a thing except when you're getting new in-house wiring. Anything else that can be scheduled should only cause a few seconds of power loss during the physical switchover from your line getting disconnected from the old feed-in and re-connected to the new feed-in. If this takes more than a minute, they're doing something wrong (yes, this implies stripping the cable while live and all that. Routine, and easy to contain at the voltages (<1kV) involved. Higher voltages do come up, but at least here in Germany those are redundant setups usually based on rings at the smallest (10kV) scale. The redundancy would be reduced during this, but that's just an increased failure risk, not a certain outage.)
Aloha 7y ago
I wish I could find a copy of this report online
- mzs 7y ago
  It's on the CPUC FTP server ftp.cpuc.ca.gov:News_and_Outreach 'I1906015 Appendix A SED Camp Fire Investigation Report REDACTED.pdf' '259 MB' '12/2/19, 7:40:00 AM'
  - l1n 7y ago
    ftp://ftp.cpuc.ca.gov/News_and_Outreach/I1906015%20Appendix%20A%20SED%20Camp%20Fire%20Investigation%20Report%20REDACTED.pdf for a link
apexalpha 7y ago
>PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January, citing more than $30 billion in potential liabilities from fires sparked by its equipment. This fall, the utility has blacked out millions of its own customers during strong winds to try to prevent its equipment from starting more fires, a move that has generated widespread criticism, including from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state leaders. How does this work if a private utility company seeks bankruptcy? Do its responsibilities get taken over by the government? Can they even seize operations?
- nostrademons 7y ago
  PG&E's in Chapter 11. In Chapter 11 bankruptcy the company continues operating as if nothing had happened. (Well, except that there may be layoffs and work furloughs if the company lacks sufficient cash to pay salaries, and they're probably not making major capital investments.) What changes is the capital structure - the payments due to creditors and dividends paid to shareholders. Basically the company is saying "Well, guess we don't have the money to pay all our debts, so nobody's getting anything until we work out a new arrangement that we can actually support with our assets and cash flows." In this case the bankruptcy was triggered by court judgments that found PG&E liable for the 2018 fires, so the bankruptcy means that the court settlements are suspended while another court figures out who's going to pay for them. In practice, what often happens during Chapter 11 proceedings is that the stock goes to nearly zero (it's close but not there yet with PG&E), on the assumption that many of the common stockholders will be wiped out and the debt recapitalized as shares. Bonds also become very risky, as bondholders expect that they may not see all of the principal repaid. Assets can be sold off to pay creditors - this is part of the negotiations in the bankruptcy proceedings. But ordinary workers largely keep on doing their jobs, though there's a big cloud of "will there be layoffs or not?" surrounding it. It's very rare (and almost unheard of in the U.S.) for a private corporation to be nationalized and taken over by the government; the government generally is not in the business of running complex operations, other than the military. Even in the financial crisis of 2009, bankrupt organizations were recapitalized by the government (where the government basically took over the debt and wiped out existing shareholders) rather than seized (where the government installs its own people and takes over operations).

82 points by grzm 7y ago

But at least they were paying out dividends. Sure those dividends were being paid directly by tax dollars in the form of the inevitable bail out, but at least private individuals got that money first.

dang 7y ago
Please don't post snarky rage comments here. I know it's the internet, but that's not what this site is for, as you'll notice if you review the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/DJ4RR http://archive.is/DJ4RR

campfireveteran 7y ago
Thank you, kind person.

samcheng 7y ago

After the San Bruno pipeline explosion, where PG&E gas pipeline maintenance and inspection records were falsified, is anyone surprised? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion#Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion#L... If a company is forced to implement a "compliance and ethics monitoring program" by the federal government, it has some serious culture problems.

throw0101a 7y ago
> If a company is forced to implement a "compliance and ethics monitoring program" by the federal government, it has some serious culture problems. And where were the state regulators in all of this? Someone on HN once mentioned that CPUC [1] allowed deferred maintenance on a lot of stuff because it helped to keep rates down. This prevented customers screaming at politicians. True/plausible? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Co...
- lscotte 7y ago
  > And where were the state regulators in all of this? In bed with PG&E the whole time, of course.

jiqiren 7y ago

Executives that let this happen under their watch should be charged with the deaths of those 85 people.

AndrewBissell 7y ago
Completely agree with you, but I'll be surprised if even the outsized bonuses and dividends they paid themselves over the past ten years (with money which should have gone to line maintenance and upgrades) are clawed back.
- costcopizza 7y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted as it's been the case.

olivermarks 7y ago

PG&E is far away from the concept of a modern 'smart grid', running archaic and obsolete overground infrastructure. It is incredible that companies like Tesla are also in California when the Paradise fire, caused by a 100 year old rusty pylon failing on an inaccessible hillside, resulted in massive subsequent precautionary power outages that rendered EV's useless in recent emergency situations.

newnewpdro 7y ago
California's a big state...
Johnny555 7y ago
To be fair, gas powered vehicles are less effective in a power outage too since without power (or a backup generator) at the gas station, they can't refuel. Of course, you can drive your gas powered car outside of the area to refuel, but you can do the same with an EV -- during the recent PG&E scheduled outages, EV owners worked out a rotation for the EV chargers at work so they could all recharge at work while the power was out at home. My gas powered car can go about 160 miles on half a tank of gas (which is about the average amount I have in it at any time). If I had an EV, I'd charge it overnight, so I'd have 200 - 300 miles of range in the event of a power outage.
- namibj 7y ago
  Well, you can bring gas in far more easily than the equivalent amount of electricity... That said, scheduled outages shouldn't ever be a thing except when you're getting new in-house wiring. Anything else that can be scheduled should only cause a few seconds of power loss during the physical switchover from your line getting disconnected from the old feed-in and re-connected to the new feed-in. If this takes more than a minute, they're doing something wrong (yes, this implies stripping the cable while live and all that. Routine, and easy to contain at the voltages (<1kV) involved. Higher voltages do come up, but at least here in Germany those are redundant setups usually based on rings at the smallest (10kV) scale. The redundancy would be reduced during this, but that's just an increased failure risk, not a certain outage.)

Aloha 7y ago

I wish I could find a copy of this report online

mzs 7y ago
It's on the CPUC FTP server ftp.cpuc.ca.gov:News_and_Outreach 'I1906015 Appendix A SED Camp Fire Investigation Report REDACTED.pdf' '259 MB' '12/2/19, 7:40:00 AM'
- l1n 7y ago
  ftp://ftp.cpuc.ca.gov/News_and_Outreach/I1906015%20Appendix%20A%20SED%20Camp%20Fire%20Investigation%20Report%20REDACTED.pdf for a link

apexalpha 7y ago

>PG&E sought bankruptcy protection in January, citing more than $30 billion in potential liabilities from fires sparked by its equipment. This fall, the utility has blacked out millions of its own customers during strong winds to try to prevent its equipment from starting more fires, a move that has generated widespread criticism, including from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state leaders. How does this work if a private utility company seeks bankruptcy? Do its responsibilities get taken over by the government? Can they even seize operations?

nostrademons 7y ago
PG&E's in Chapter 11. In Chapter 11 bankruptcy the company continues operating as if nothing had happened. (Well, except that there may be layoffs and work furloughs if the company lacks sufficient cash to pay salaries, and they're probably not making major capital investments.) What changes is the capital structure - the payments due to creditors and dividends paid to shareholders. Basically the company is saying "Well, guess we don't have the money to pay all our debts, so nobody's getting anything until we work out a new arrangement that we can actually support with our assets and cash flows." In this case the bankruptcy was triggered by court judgments that found PG&E liable for the 2018 fires, so the bankruptcy means that the court settlements are suspended while another court figures out who's going to pay for them. In practice, what often happens during Chapter 11 proceedings is that the stock goes to nearly zero (it's close but not there yet with PG&E), on the assumption that many of the common stockholders will be wiped out and the debt recapitalized as shares. Bonds also become very risky, as bondholders expect that they may not see all of the principal repaid. Assets can be sold off to pay creditors - this is part of the negotiations in the bankruptcy proceedings. But ordinary workers largely keep on doing their jobs, though there's a big cloud of "will there be layoffs or not?" surrounding it. It's very rare (and almost unheard of in the U.S.) for a private corporation to be nationalized and taken over by the government; the government generally is not in the business of running complex operations, other than the military. Even in the financial crisis of 2009, bankrupt organizations were recapitalized by the government (where the government basically took over the debt and wiped out existing shareholders) rather than seized (where the government installs its own people and takes over operations).