4 ms·

I do think the recent fires have nudged things towards more undergrounding. I'm familiar with some of the dialogue in similarly rural/affluent peninsula towns,

I do think the recent fires have nudged things towards more undergrounding. I'm familiar with some of the dialogue in similarly rural/affluent peninsula towns, and it's mostly a debate about safety versus cost to underground. There's an effort to underground the utilities near Foothill College by tapping into Santa Clara County Fire's funds for improved fire safety, since they're allowed to use these funds in that specific location.

zbrozek 6y ago
The justification is that there's a particularly high density and quantity of wiring around that fire station (one of two for LAH, IIRC) and that Moody is a major access route for emergency services and evacuation. A giant bundle of wires coming down across the road would strangle a response. A simplistic napkin math computation says that the cost delta in electricity between what Santa Clara pays and what PG&E customers pay, times the amount of electricity that LAH residents consume would pay for the entire undergrounding in 5-6 years. So to my mind, it seems like a simple argument in favor of a municipal power utility that charges PG&E rates until it pays off its infrastructure, and then charges a more reasonable rate thereafter. Of course this assumes that LAH could achieve Santa Clara levels of cost efficiency, but it doesn't seem crazy either.
- hkmurakami 6y ago
  Makes sense -- Moody Road is a pretty dicey road for access and there's a decent number of homes that could easily be cut off there. Presumably in such a situation the opposite side access from Page Mill Road would be jeopardized as well. Too bad the deadline has passed for nomination for LAH Town Council. You should run next time ;)
- jldugger 6y ago
  I've kinda wondered this for a while -- why is SVP (Santa Clara) cheaper than PG&E?
  - thephyber 6y ago
    SVP isn't weighed down with debt from {the Erin Brockavitch lawsuit, the San Bruno gas explosion, the Paradise fire} incidents (among other, less infamous ones). More likely, though, is that smaller and newer utilities are likely to be more nimble than the big behemoth that has lots of tech debt and internal and external bureaucracy.
    - kgermino 6y ago
      I also wonder how much of it just comes down to serving a small dense area vs a large varied one. If you can focus on the cheapest customers to serve and avoid the overhead from needing to cover a large area it should be at least a little cheaper.
  - zbrozek 6y ago
    As far as I can tell it's a cost-plus model. If PG&E wants to grow its revenue, it has to do something that costs more. They have a perverse incentive to make everything as expensive as possible. https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/how-rates-work/learn-how-rates-are-set/learn-how-rates-are-set.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/how-rates-w...

zbrozek 6y ago

The justification is that there's a particularly high density and quantity of wiring around that fire station (one of two for LAH, IIRC) and that Moody is a major access route for emergency services and evacuation. A giant bundle of wires coming down across the road would strangle a response. A simplistic napkin math computation says that the cost delta in electricity between what Santa Clara pays and what PG&E customers pay, times the amount of electricity that LAH residents consume would pay for the entire undergrounding in 5-6 years. So to my mind, it seems like a simple argument in favor of a municipal power utility that charges PG&E rates until it pays off its infrastructure, and then charges a more reasonable rate thereafter. Of course this assumes that LAH could achieve Santa Clara levels of cost efficiency, but it doesn't seem crazy either.

hkmurakami 6y ago
Makes sense -- Moody Road is a pretty dicey road for access and there's a decent number of homes that could easily be cut off there. Presumably in such a situation the opposite side access from Page Mill Road would be jeopardized as well. Too bad the deadline has passed for nomination for LAH Town Council. You should run next time ;)
jldugger 6y ago
I've kinda wondered this for a while -- why is SVP (Santa Clara) cheaper than PG&E?
- thephyber 6y ago
  SVP isn't weighed down with debt from {the Erin Brockavitch lawsuit, the San Bruno gas explosion, the Paradise fire} incidents (among other, less infamous ones). More likely, though, is that smaller and newer utilities are likely to be more nimble than the big behemoth that has lots of tech debt and internal and external bureaucracy.
  - kgermino 6y ago
    I also wonder how much of it just comes down to serving a small dense area vs a large varied one. If you can focus on the cheapest customers to serve and avoid the overhead from needing to cover a large area it should be at least a little cheaper.
- zbrozek 6y ago
  As far as I can tell it's a cost-plus model. If PG&E wants to grow its revenue, it has to do something that costs more. They have a perverse incentive to make everything as expensive as possible. https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/how-rates-work/learn-how-rates-are-set/learn-how-rates-are-set.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/how-rates-w...