20 ms·

PG&E will bury 10k miles of power lines so they don't spark wildfires

353 points by boulos 5y ago

Google234 5y ago
The $30 billion in unemployment benefits that California lost to fraud to could have completely solved this crisis…
- ardit33 5y ago
  And build more than 1/3 or the high speed rail!
  - adanto6840 5y ago
    Is this true (the railway cost)? Which rail specifically, what destinations/points does it service -- any link/source? Not doubting you by any means, just interested in more information. Edit: Ty -- interesting.
    - reissbaker 5y ago
      The California HSR: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
    - ardit33 5y ago
      The whole thing is estimated to be around $80-90B (probably more, given the current inflation). With the money already allocated, plus if they had managed not to waste 25B out of that 30B (and the fraud was only 5b), they would have had enough money to get at least half of it done.... Get a major piece of infrastructure done, and help with global warming/emissions goals. But, no. Not in Cali. And that's why nothing gets build. Sheer, Government waste at work... The state is being led by trust-fund babies, that found everything ready, and never had to work for it, and they are just squandering all that fortune.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > The whole thing is estimated to be around $80-90B (probably more, given the current inflation). > With the money already allocated, plus if they had managed not to waste 25B out of that 30B (and the fraud was only 5b), they would have had enough money to get at least half of it done.... Don't projects like this almost always significantly overrun projected costs?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        renewiltord 5y ago
        Oh, they certainly will, and this one will be the mother of them all. Original projections of $33 billion, now up to $100 billion. Tutor Perini (Dianne-Feinstein-related company) will have a field day. You can be a genius investor like Nancy Pelosi or you can be a genius construction company owner like Ms. Feinstein's husband. Either way, California rewards hard work and skill.
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        Are concrete pours managed by the mob out there? Curious that the elevated concrete aqueduct is the only thing they’re making progress on.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    In the Pacific NW, I'd settle for a train that managed to average 60mph. The PNW used to be well served with trains. Now - the government has destroyed most of the right-of-way. What's left is still being destroyed at a rate of maybe 2 miles for every new mile of track laid. They decided the Battery tunnel wasn't good enough anymore. So they dug a new tunnel. What to do with the excavated rubble - why stuff it in the old Battery tunnel, rendering it unusable. The government likes to buy tunnel boring machines. What do they do when finishing a tunnel? Why, the sell the zillion dollar machine for scrap! After all, what spends money faster than buying a new boring machine for the next tunnel!
    - toast0 5y ago
      > They decided the Battery tunnel wasn't good enough anymore. So they dug a new tunnel. What to do with the excavated rubble - why stuff it in the old Battery tunnel, rendering it unusable. What did you want done with that tunnel? I think it had earthquake issues separately from the viaduct, and without the viaduct, I'm not sure how useful the tunnel would be anyway. Stuffing it with the rubble reduces the cost of rubble disposal and fills the tunnel without the cost of fill dirt or whatever. The new tunnel is definitely nicer than the old one, but I don't drive around seattle enough to know if it has the same utility. > The government likes to buy tunnel boring machines. What do they do when finishing a tunnel? Why, the sell the zillion dollar machine for scrap! After all, what spends money faster than buying a new boring machine for the next tunnel! I'm not sure how reusable these machines are; they kind of all come in different sizes and have customized needs, and they're hard to store. Can't just leave them halfway through the tunnel for years.... But yeah, Seattle loves tunnels almost as much as Kitsap traffic engineering departments love traffic circles, but Seattle has a bigger budget.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        The claim was that the old Battery tunnel had earthquake issues. I don't believe it would have been more expensive to put a liner in than bore a new tunnel with a liner. What use to put it to? More capacity! Could have run light rail through it. Made it a bike tunnel. Make it a pedestrian mall. The big cost of boring tunnels is the boring machine. At minimum, they could have simply kept right on boring. Doubtless Seattle could use a lot more tunnels for mass transit. Seattle has a terrible right-of-way problem, mainly because they wrecked all the rail right-of-way. I don't see the issue with just storing it at the end of the tunnel. It wouldn't be long before it was clear another tunnel would be needed.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  This is factually true.
- gogopuppygogo 5y ago
  Don’t even start looking into the public sector pension fund bailouts…
- rexreed 5y ago
  This is true, although PG&E is still a private company, so I don't think the government can take over the job of being the utility in this case.
- grumblenum 5y ago
  The most insightful comment is also the most downvoted. What did HN mean by this?
wombatpm 5y ago
When you look at their track record with buried gas lines, I’m not sure this will be the safety fix they think it will be
- wonnage 5y ago
  power lines don't explode like gas lines
  - lazide 5y ago
    They can if the right conditions are met - see ‘arc flash’
    - disillusioned 5y ago
      That is still, you know, categorically not exploding like a gas line, which, you know, in recent memory blew an entire neighborhood of 38 homes off the map. Hitting a buried line with a backhoe is unpleasant enough, sure, but you're not destroying dozens of buildings in one go.
      - supperburg 5y ago
        Exactly. Gas can leak and build up for hours or days, slowly accumulating enough chemical energy to create a massive explosion. At least hypothetically. And there are huge explosions on record as you point out. An electric line is not even in the same category. Any comparison is silly and ignorant.
Trias11 5y ago
That's why i left CA. Hard pressed to find more fraudulent state.
- elygre 5y ago
  Where is the fraud in this context?
  - Trias11 5y ago
    Where tax money goes? Hair gel? It's one of the highest taxed state in US with raising crime, poverty, filth, dying cluture, political hipocrisy and accelerating exodus to lower taxed states.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      I mean, some of that is true, some is false - the question remains though, what does that have to do with the burying of electric lines to prevent fires?
    - caymanjim 5y ago
      What does any of that have to do with PG&E?
    - notafraudster 5y ago
      Hypocrisy is spelled with a "y", not an "i", as the second letter.
      - totetsu 5y ago
        Hipocrisy is spelled with a "y", not an "i", as the second letter.
      - Trias11 5y ago
        You passed the test. Ata boy.
goler 5y ago
Are the associated costs passed to ratepayers at cost or is there some allowance for a positive investment return for PG&E shareholders?
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  In theory rate hikes have to go through California regulators but, at the same time, the company is allowed a certain rate of return. In practice I have no clue how it works out though.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Typically in markets like CA and TX you will have a rate case go to the public utility commission. I'm more familiar with Texas' approach (it was a data source for my dissertation); the idea is to let the companies charge enough to cover reasonable costs.
- black_puppydog 5y ago
  Shouldn't "won't be sued for negligence" cover the investment, given that they know their equipment is a fire hazard?
  - jlmorton 5y ago
    No, it won't, because PG&E doesn't have the money to do this, and the company is already majority-owned by the PG&E Fire Victim Trust after emerging from bankruptcy. There are no rich shareholders to foist the costs on. No investors are going to pay tens of billions of dollars, more profit than PG&E generated over several decades, to pay for 10% of the electric wires to be buried. If there were any investors on the hook for this, they would simply declare bankruptcy and walk away. The only option here is that the costs are paid by ratepayers, or taxpayers. There is no other option available.
    - black_puppydog 5y ago
      I see, thanks for explaining. That would have made for a nice addition to the article. :) IMHO an infrastructure of this size & importance might just as well be state owned, but I guess rate hikes will also do. As long as there is some mechanism to help (yes, probably with tax money) those who might not be able to afford them...
kumarvvr 5y ago
We are beginning to see the real costs of Global warming, the exact thing activists were bull horning about and the same thing corporations were denying.
- mikewarot 5y ago
  Mostly we're seeing the costs of not managing forest in a sustainable manner. But, yes, climate change is making that stupidity worse.
  - shusaku 5y ago
    The costs of not managing forests well, the costs of building cities so close to the ocean, the cost of growing food in what is now a desert, the cost of having population centers in areas which reach 50 degrees in the summer, global warming is going to “uncover” quite a lot of costs.
    - loopz 5y ago
      Not to mention warming and acidication of the oceans: https://www.quora.com/When-will-the-world-s-oceans-lose-their-ability-to-absorb-carbon-dioxide-and-what-will-be-the-consequences?share=1 https://www.quora.com/When-will-the-world-s-oceans-lose-thei... https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts/ocean-acidification https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co... https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/the-ocean-cannot-absorb-much-more-co2-4990 https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/the-ocean-cann...
- nickysielicki 5y ago
  https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/mckelvey/mckelvey3.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/mckelvey/mckelvey3.pd... Look at figure 41.2 in the second pdf. Wildfires are not historically worse than they have ever been. You're falling victim to recency bias. You can absolutely credibly claim that wildfires are not more or less common than they have been historically, it's all in the noise. The activists have not been proven right, and the corporations have not been proven wrong. edit: note that I'm not denying the existence of climate change nor denying that it may eventually have an effect on forest fires. I'm merely claiming that the data does not support what you're saying.
rmason 5y ago
I have what I think is a legitimate question. Wouldn't it be an order of magnitude cheaper just to clear all the trees 120 feet either side of the power line? Plant the cleared land to alfalfa and solicit bids from farmers to harvest it every year.
- dfsegoat 5y ago
  What you describe is essentially the program they had in place already. Maybe not 120 feet, but certainly some distance. They hire contract helicopters year round to survey lines, and task crews to clear brush. I live in Sonoma County, CA [1,2,3] - so we see the effort. I think you might also be underestimating the scale of the power infrastructure in CA. The hydro etc. power generators in the north of the state are located in extremely remote areas. My brother was a consulting engineer for PG&E in Northern CA, on a lot of their Hydropower infrastructure - most of the generation sites were only accessible by humans with helicopter flights, or 2-3 hr drives on poorly maintained roads. The transmission lines are not really accessible except by helicopter survey. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNU_Lightning_Complex_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNU_Lightning_Complex_fires 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Fire 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire
  - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
    it may be hard work but it's necessary.
- smt88 5y ago
  That would destroy thousands of miles of wildlife habitat, and it would certainly cover some private property too. Plus you'd have to do it regularly, not once.
- carpdiem 5y ago
  Not really. Trees are actually somewhat hard to burn, so most wildfires start by catching dry underbrush on fire instead. So in this case, that would just be the alfalfa. Key to remember is that power lines can spark when they're damaged by winds (which can lead to the lines themselves being close enough to the ground for the spark to traverse to the underbrush).
breck 5y ago
Love it! My vision of the future has all power lines buried. Mostly thinking in the cities but fire prevention is a plus as well. If anyone has any leads on startups or innovators in the tunneling space please share or each out!
- jlmorton 5y ago
  I mean, obviously everyone desires to have the power lines buried, the issue is that it costs something like $250 billion dollars to do it in California alone.
- randmeerkat 5y ago
  https://www.boringcompany.com/ https://www.boringcompany.com/
- leecb 5y ago
  > My vision of the future has all power lines buried. Singapore already has already achieved this. It's actually quite pleasant to not have any overhead lines. They are currently replacing the main electricity distribution cables that run under roads, and replacing them with a system that runs in tunnels 60m underground. This depth is necessary to avoid other systems like the subway(MRT) that run at shallower depths. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/deepest-tunnels-spore-start-carrying-electricity-end-2018 https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/deepest-tunnels-spore-...
  - breck 5y ago
    Fascinating. Thanks for the link! I remember from a visit to Singapore a decade ago the fantastic subway and all the underground malls, but had no idea how advanced their tunnels were. Thanks!
  - baxinho0312 5y ago
    Works for distribution networks for households in the cities, but but for high voltage transmission lines.
  - lorenzhs 5y ago
abeppu 5y ago
How do other places with dry forested areas deal with this? Are there similar regions from which California should be learning? Also, if we get a major earthquake, are they going to have to dig all the lines up again? Also, can we just note how crazy it is that this company blew up a neighborhood, burned down a town, was convicted in these separate incidents, and is still allowed to have a monopoly on power for a broad region? Why are corporate convicts apparently treated so well, but natural persons who are convicted are treated so poorly?
- anonAndOn 5y ago
  Don't forget the company also poisoned an entire town.[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley,_California
- stickfigure 5y ago
  Those places burn too. You want electricity, right? PG&E is one way to get it. You could replace the people in charge, you could replace the owners, you could even nationalize the whole thing and you still have the same problem: Vast amounts of incredibly expensive, aging infrastructure, drying climate, and homes built into the wildland boundary interface. There's no magic trick that will solve this problem. The money for electrical upgrades will have to come from taxpayers and/or ratepayers; there isn't anyone else. And it will only reduce the probabilities of big fires. The huge Carr fire in Redding was started by sparks from a towed trailer. The LNU complex last year was lightning (plus one guy trying to cover up a murder with arson). It's not all electrical... probably not even a majority.
  - MiguelX413 5y ago
    Just take the money from the profits lol
    - vkou 5y ago
      There won't be any profits if they actually go ahead and fix it. You'd have to claw it back from prior shareholders who benefited from that unethical behaviour.
chongli 5y ago
I have a question I haven’t seen anyone address so far: how much can we expect this to reduce the frequency of wildfires? Intuitively, to me, the effect would seem to be negligible. All of the conditions for wildfires will remain in place. It’ll simply be something else that lights the spark. If it’s not power lines it’ll be lightning. So then to follow up: what is the point? To deflect blame from PGE? And who pays for it?
- jlmorton 5y ago
  I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's not entirely insignificant, but it certainly is not the driver of wildfires. If we perfectly buried all the power lines, we'd have fewer fires, but we'd still have most of the fires we already have. The primary problem remains fire suppression practices, forest management, and changing climate. This seems like a very expensive way to eliminate a quarter of our wildfires.
  - completelylegit 5y ago
    As someone who lives 15 miles from Paradise, CA - A “very expensive solution” makes it sound like there are inexpensive solutions that would be just as effective. If there were, wouldn’t PGE have implemented them? Maybe its just “the solution”.
    - habibur 5y ago
      PGE is more concerned about the billion dollar law suites. This solution makes economic sense to them. But doesn't help the fire. As long the dry woods are piling up, which it eventually will, something else will trigger the fire. And amount of fire won't be even reduce by 25%. But the court won't be able to blame PGE then, that's the whole point.
      - brazzy 5y ago
        This, exactly. A PGE power line probably sparked the deadly Paradise fire, and I've repeadly see people blaming them for the deaths with metaphorical pitch forks in hand, completely ignoring the far more complex reasons for people being unable to get away from that fire safely.
repiret 5y ago
I was under the impression that the higher dielectric permittivity of soil made it impractical to bury AC transmission lines. Are they switching to DC while they're at it? Is there some other solution? Are the problems caused by high permittivity overblown?
- unishark 5y ago
  Very possible, unless there's some other trick nowadays. AC does not go far underground or under water, but high voltage DC can be used for much longer distances.
  - morpheos137 5y ago
    The cables can be thick jacketed with a dialectrict and heavily shielded with copper tape or braid or similar material and the jacket and shielding limits the leakage but makes the cable much more expensive to manufacture and install.
- sunstone 5y ago
  I was wondering the same thing. HVDC is 'an under the radar' technology that is set to rework a lot of the grid world wide. With projects underway to send power from Australia to Singapore or Iceland to the UK it's likely to turn up in many places, even California.
- AriedK 5y ago
  https://research.tudelft.nl/en/publications/technical-performance-of-ehv-power-transmission-systems-with-long https://research.tudelft.nl/en/publications/technical-perfor... Good read if you're interested in the technicalities. They do bury high voltage (380kV) AC lines, sometimes even construct a tunnel for them, but I doubt they'll do that in this case.
giantg2 5y ago
So what burial equipment or service providers do we buy calls on?
thedougd 5y ago
Take the opportunity to burry empty conduit with it and lease it to telcos.
- dd36 5y ago
  Good idea. Maybe even get The Boring Company to make usable tunnels.
- agilob 5y ago
  I don't know technicalities, but we have this in Wales. There are tunnels on top of which we have railways. The tunnels have power cables and fiberoptic cables. Sometimes they flood in west-mid Wales, last I know and remember was 2012 and we (Aberystwyth, Machynlleth) route internet traffic to North Wales or Ireland instead to Birmingham.
  - thedougd 5y ago
    In my region, they mostly run this new, flexible plastic conduit with horizontal borers or a piercing tool. They'll dig holes several feet deep and dozens of feet apart. In one hole they start this tool and it digs its way horizontally to the next hole. From what I've seen, the conduit effortlessly follows. I'm sure geology makes a difference. Here's a marketing video for one of these piercing tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=Hs3C2LMzSPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=Hs3C2LMzSPg
hestefisk 5y ago
We did this in Denmark many, many years ago. It is also significantly cheaper to maintain as you no longer need to manage vegetation around the powerlines, perform pole / cross-arm inspection etc. In some countries the main hesitation to underground cabling for transmission lines has been up front cost as well as unions (=less maintenance, less work).
- urthor 5y ago
  Imagine it was significantly cheaper if you measured it over a 3+ year time-span. Not over a 1-2 year time-span. The unwillingness of corporations to minimize OpEx by taking on significant one-time CapEx, in order to pretty the books, lives on in so many domains.
  - Consultant32452 5y ago
    Another important factor is that highly regulated local monopolies like power companies may have certain restrictions like only being able to charge a certain % over cost. Well, you'd much rather have 5% of a large number than a small number, so you're incentivized to do the more expensive long term thing.
    - QuercusMax 5y ago
      Health insurance has been doing this too.
    - lazide 5y ago
      It definitely explains a lot of what PG&E has done sometimes - maximum inefficiency and cost in some areas, incredibly (long term destructive) cheap in others.
  - bcrl 5y ago
    Minimizing OpEx is one of the main drivers of telcos to switch to fibre. Companies like Bell Canada are telling their shareholders that network maintenance costs will drop as copper is decommissioned and services are migrated to fibre.
thedougd 5y ago
Some coastal communities and islands in North Carolina took this route. In addition to beautification, they're more resilient to storms and hurricanes. https://www.starnewsonline.com/article/NC/20071122/News/605126317/WM https://www.starnewsonline.com/article/NC/20071122/News/6051...
LinuxBender 5y ago
When they say 10k miles, do they mean 10k miles of land or of cable? Asking because my military unit used individual cables to exaggerate numbers. i.e. 6 strands at 1 mile would become "6 miles of cable run". Either way, great they are doing this. I hope they prevent some fires and save some lives.
- noahmbarr 5y ago
  It’s a typical non-disclosed denominator issue.
  - whyenot 5y ago
    As mentioned in the NPR story, it's about 10% of their distribution and transmission lines.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Reminds me of a story a colleague told me, from his early job working in tech support call center for a phone company. He recounts of an issue with a customer complaining about low Internet speeds, despite being located close to the distribution building for the whole area. Seemingly, everything should've been fine. A cable leaves the distribution building, goes into the ground, and reappears a short distance later near the customer's house. Upon close inspection it was discovered that the cable did not take a straight route underground - instead of cutting the cable to necessary length, someone just buried the entire spool, and the total cable length was close to a kilometer or so. The signal, unboosted, barely got through to the other end.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Ohmuhgawd, this is so bizzare. That cable is not free, and wasting that much of it was surely to get noticed, wouldn't it? Questions, so many questions. Was this a contractor sticking to the man by wasting all of that cable? Was it someone trying to earn points for how much cable they "installed" that month? Wouldn't it be more financially beneficial to cut the cable as normal, and then sell of the spool to a scrapper or other used cable place? Was this a team of people that all agreed this would be a bad idea? So sounds like a movie plot
boringg 5y ago
I assume the liability costs far outweigh costs to upgrade/operational costs. Likely will ratebase a bunch of this work as well. That and they might just get kicked of business by the CPUC if they didn't manage their risk profiles more effectively.
rexreed 5y ago
"Great they are doing this" but passing the cost on to their customers, who will foot the bill for it. So maybe you should thank the PG&E customers who will end up paying for it.
- indymike 5y ago
  > "Great they are doing this" but passing the cost on to their customers, who will foot the bill for it It's probably worth it to the customers, too. So much so that PG&E's survival is in question if they don't start taking fire safety super-seriously.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Most PG&E customers don't live in fire zones, though.
    - njarboe 5y ago
      I would say most of them do. Look at a satellite map of the Bay Area. Most cities are built right up against forested areas that I would call fire zones. The Santa Rosa fire and the Oakland hills fire were quite large and burned thousands of homes in urban areas, but started in forested areas nearby. Saying people should stop building in the forest and stay in cities will prevent the problems when the forests burn forget that most of the cities in California are next to forests that burn (Bay Area, Los Angeles, etc.). I guess we could clear cut those.
    - randerson 5y ago
      Many live downwind of the smoke, though.
- baby 5y ago
  I’m not sure I get your point.
- pradn 5y ago
  The customers use the electricity they generate. Who else would pay for it?
account4mypc 5y ago
Off topic, but how do underground power lines stay cool? I always thought long distance powerlines got really hot.
- elric 5y ago
  Above ground "High Temperature, Low Sag" cables can reach 200°C. Underground cables can still go up to 90°C, which is still flamin' hot. They're usually buried at least 1 meter deep, which gives the heat a decent chance to dissipate. But in those areas with high chances of fires, I'd be wary all the same :-/. Of course, the above mostly applies to high voltage & high current situations, think 150kV, 300MVA monster connections. I doubt PG&E manages 10k miles of high voltage power lines. If we're talking residential interconnections, there won't be any issues burying those.
- niffydroid 5y ago
  I would have thought they'd need to put sections of cooling in, if not maybe they have some form of oil or other liquid to help dissipate the heat? I thought one of the many reasons why the UK still does overhead between chunks of the grid is for cooling and easier maintenance.
titzer 5y ago
Meanwhile, in Germany, they've been burying powerlines for over a century so the entire country doesn't look like ass.
- icpmoles 5y ago
  For the high voltage lines Germany is pretty much still at less than 10%. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Statistics-of-AC-Underground-Cables-in-Power-Swingler-Daly/2af3fbbbdb5343167f470f4ae0b9970f7948c5f9 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Statistics-of-AC-Under...
morpheos137 5y ago
I don't understand why it is not just cheaper to clear the above ground rights of way. There are multiple reasons why transmission lines are not typically underground. The 240 from the pole to the house sure. The 240k from the plant to your local substation not so much. Subterrainian cables are more expensive and less energy efficient than aerials. High capacitive losses, higher maintenance and installation costs, more expensive shielding and jacketing materials needed.
ManBlanket 5y ago
Are we just going to ignore the fact wildfires are a natural occurrence and the entire reason we're experiencing catastrophic wildfires now is from decades of obsessively preventing every fire? Not saying we should go around creating fire hazards but compared to efforts to mitigate fuel overload by thinning and controlled burns, burying some power lines is a drop in a bucket barely worth mentioning. Utility corporations don't do things out of the kindness of their hearts. Guarantee PG&E are doing this for some kind of maintenance, tax, social, or litigious incentive. It certainly has more to do with the bottom line and their PR department is trying to spin it as some altruistic BS. Why are we jerking them off over this when if California's forests were properly managed a small risk of fire wouldn't be a concern, and in many cases may be a boon to the ecosystem? Piss take, I know, but nature is pressing her reset button and it's our fault. Let's not act like PG&E has anything to do with it.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  Exactly. This is good for PG&E because it can't be blamed for wild fires. The wild fires will still continue to happen only now it will be the set remaining causes: (lightning, car exhaust systems, campers' fires, arsonists, ...) It's NOT primarily or even remotely Global Warming however. California has a fundamentally dry climate the intrinsically assures wild fires will occur. Expanding in wild fire prone areas is a direct result of real estate booms and costs, which are primarily high for artificial human reasons such as NIMBYism, greed, real estate as investment, etc.
  - danans 5y ago
    > It's NOT primarily or even remotely Global Warming however. California has a fundamentally dry climate the intrinsically assures wild fires will occur. Global warming is an amplifier for wildfire risk, not a cause. The increasing length of the dry season under the influence of global warming has made these sorts of fires that much more likely.
  - nomel 5y ago
    Fire is such an ancient and normal part of California that redwoods have evolved to be fireproof, with many local trees and plants having seeds that require fire for germination. [1] [1] https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/your-national-forests-magazine/how-trees-survive-and-thrive-after-a-fire https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/your-national-fo...
xyzzy21 5y ago
This will at least relieve PG&E from responsibility of causing wild fires. BUT it won't stop wild fires if forest maintenance continues to remain unfunded by the California state government! Putting lines underground definitely will also increase maintenance costs - that's why overhead lines get used in the first place. So electricity rates will remain higher as well.
ttul 5y ago
It’s almost as if there needs to be some form of tax on carbon emissions to help pay for mitigation of the effects of climate change.
xtat 5y ago
PG&E is a criminal enterprise- no love until they restructure from the top down.
jbverschoor 5y ago
Almost everything is in the ground in the Netherlands.
dthunder 5y ago
We're taking a different approach in Australia (the state of Victoria specifically), and not only are we replacing bare wire overheads with buried cables [0], we are also implementing Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiter (REFCL) technology to lower the risk of bushfires due to downed wires. [1] When powerlines come into contact with the ground or a tree, arcing can occur. If the line remains live and continues arcing, the risk of fire is quite high. REFCL tech works by detecting the phase-to-earth faults that occur when a one of the three-phase powerlines breaks and falls to the ground. REFL instantly reduces the voltage on the fallen line, and boosts the voltage on the other two phases. REFCL will then test the faulted line after a few seconds, and if the fault was intermittent full service is restored. If not, the whole line is removed from service to prevent fires and make the line safe to work on. On Total Fire Ban days (very high risk of fire due to weather conditions), the REFCL settings operate at increased sensitivity. There's a requirement in Victoria that by 2023 all high risk zone substations have to install REFCL technology, and all HV customers connected to those zone subs have to be REFCL compliant (their equipment must be able to handle the over-voltages that occur during REFCL operation). [0] https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/electricity/powerline-replacement/powerline-bushfire-safety-program/network-assets-program/high-voltage-network-assets-program https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/electricity/powerline-replacem... [1] https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/safety-and-emergencies/powerline-bushfire-safety-program/network-assets-program/rapid-earth-fault-current-limiter-refcl https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/safety-and-emergencies/powerli...
- avidiax 5y ago
  > REFL instantly reduces the voltage on the fallen line, and boosts the voltage on the other two phases. I didn't get how that would work, so I did a bit of research. REFCL effectively grounds the affected phase so that it is 0V with respect to ground. But the other 2 phases retain the same voltage relative to the affected phase, so they have increased voltage relative to ground. https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/-/media/Files/AusNet/Community/REFCL-Fact-Sheet-3-HV-customer-solutions-v2.ashx?la=en https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/-/media/Files/AusNet/Commu...
- Andys 5y ago
  Additionally, we have increased patrols of the wires in regional areas, installation of spreader bars, and regular clearing of the trees and shrubs near the wires.
kumarski 5y ago
California might need to limit the extent to which it: - lets environmentalists file viable injunctions against logging on federal lands - prohibits or greatly limits grazing
silexia 5y ago
Burying a mile of cable takes several big machines running diesel fuel (very bad for the environment). Call it approximately 300 gallons of diesel per mile. This plan will burn 300 * 10,000 = 3,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel. This plan is far worse for the environment then simply doing more controlled burns to reduce fire risk.
stevenalowe 5y ago
...again.
rapjr9 5y ago
I wonder if robots could help. Design some to go through the forests and mulch all the deadwood. They could work in geographic bands to create large fire breaks so the entire forest floor would not have to be mulched. There would be some environmental effects I'm sure (insects, mice, etc would get mulched as well) but that seems better than the devastation a fire causes. This seems like a limited enough problem that current technology could handle it with some human supervision in the field.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Seems like it would be cheaper to just monitor transmission lines more closely. Detect sparks and shut off the affected lines before they have time to ignite brush. Maybe a job for cameras and machine learning?

353 points by boulos 5y ago

Google234 5y ago

The $30 billion in unemployment benefits that California lost to fraud to could have completely solved this crisis…

ardit33 5y ago
And build more than 1/3 or the high speed rail!
- adanto6840 5y ago
  Is this true (the railway cost)? Which rail specifically, what destinations/points does it service -- any link/source? Not doubting you by any means, just interested in more information. Edit: Ty -- interesting.
  - reissbaker 5y ago
    The California HSR: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
  - ardit33 5y ago
    The whole thing is estimated to be around $80-90B (probably more, given the current inflation). With the money already allocated, plus if they had managed not to waste 25B out of that 30B (and the fraud was only 5b), they would have had enough money to get at least half of it done.... Get a major piece of infrastructure done, and help with global warming/emissions goals. But, no. Not in Cali. And that's why nothing gets build. Sheer, Government waste at work... The state is being led by trust-fund babies, that found everything ready, and never had to work for it, and they are just squandering all that fortune.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > The whole thing is estimated to be around $80-90B (probably more, given the current inflation). > With the money already allocated, plus if they had managed not to waste 25B out of that 30B (and the fraud was only 5b), they would have had enough money to get at least half of it done.... Don't projects like this almost always significantly overrun projected costs?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - renewiltord 5y ago
        Oh, they certainly will, and this one will be the mother of them all. Original projections of $33 billion, now up to $100 billion. Tutor Perini (Dianne-Feinstein-related company) will have a field day. You can be a genius investor like Nancy Pelosi or you can be a genius construction company owner like Ms. Feinstein's husband. Either way, California rewards hard work and skill.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      Are concrete pours managed by the mob out there? Curious that the elevated concrete aqueduct is the only thing they’re making progress on.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  In the Pacific NW, I'd settle for a train that managed to average 60mph. The PNW used to be well served with trains. Now - the government has destroyed most of the right-of-way. What's left is still being destroyed at a rate of maybe 2 miles for every new mile of track laid. They decided the Battery tunnel wasn't good enough anymore. So they dug a new tunnel. What to do with the excavated rubble - why stuff it in the old Battery tunnel, rendering it unusable. The government likes to buy tunnel boring machines. What do they do when finishing a tunnel? Why, the sell the zillion dollar machine for scrap! After all, what spends money faster than buying a new boring machine for the next tunnel!
  - toast0 5y ago
    > They decided the Battery tunnel wasn't good enough anymore. So they dug a new tunnel. What to do with the excavated rubble - why stuff it in the old Battery tunnel, rendering it unusable. What did you want done with that tunnel? I think it had earthquake issues separately from the viaduct, and without the viaduct, I'm not sure how useful the tunnel would be anyway. Stuffing it with the rubble reduces the cost of rubble disposal and fills the tunnel without the cost of fill dirt or whatever. The new tunnel is definitely nicer than the old one, but I don't drive around seattle enough to know if it has the same utility. > The government likes to buy tunnel boring machines. What do they do when finishing a tunnel? Why, the sell the zillion dollar machine for scrap! After all, what spends money faster than buying a new boring machine for the next tunnel! I'm not sure how reusable these machines are; they kind of all come in different sizes and have customized needs, and they're hard to store. Can't just leave them halfway through the tunnel for years.... But yeah, Seattle loves tunnels almost as much as Kitsap traffic engineering departments love traffic circles, but Seattle has a bigger budget.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      The claim was that the old Battery tunnel had earthquake issues. I don't believe it would have been more expensive to put a liner in than bore a new tunnel with a liner. What use to put it to? More capacity! Could have run light rail through it. Made it a bike tunnel. Make it a pedestrian mall. The big cost of boring tunnels is the boring machine. At minimum, they could have simply kept right on boring. Doubtless Seattle could use a lot more tunnels for mass transit. Seattle has a terrible right-of-way problem, mainly because they wrecked all the rail right-of-way. I don't see the issue with just storing it at the end of the tunnel. It wouldn't be long before it was clear another tunnel would be needed.
bpodgursky 5y ago
This is factually true.
gogopuppygogo 5y ago
Don’t even start looking into the public sector pension fund bailouts…
rexreed 5y ago
This is true, although PG&E is still a private company, so I don't think the government can take over the job of being the utility in this case.
grumblenum 5y ago
The most insightful comment is also the most downvoted. What did HN mean by this?

wombatpm 5y ago

When you look at their track record with buried gas lines, I’m not sure this will be the safety fix they think it will be

wonnage 5y ago
power lines don't explode like gas lines
- lazide 5y ago
  They can if the right conditions are met - see ‘arc flash’
  - disillusioned 5y ago
    That is still, you know, categorically not exploding like a gas line, which, you know, in recent memory blew an entire neighborhood of 38 homes off the map. Hitting a buried line with a backhoe is unpleasant enough, sure, but you're not destroying dozens of buildings in one go.
    - supperburg 5y ago
      Exactly. Gas can leak and build up for hours or days, slowly accumulating enough chemical energy to create a massive explosion. At least hypothetically. And there are huge explosions on record as you point out. An electric line is not even in the same category. Any comparison is silly and ignorant.

Trias11 5y ago

That's why i left CA. Hard pressed to find more fraudulent state.

elygre 5y ago
Where is the fraud in this context?
- Trias11 5y ago
  Where tax money goes? Hair gel? It's one of the highest taxed state in US with raising crime, poverty, filth, dying cluture, political hipocrisy and accelerating exodus to lower taxed states.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    I mean, some of that is true, some is false - the question remains though, what does that have to do with the burying of electric lines to prevent fires?
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    What does any of that have to do with PG&E?
  - notafraudster 5y ago
    Hypocrisy is spelled with a "y", not an "i", as the second letter.
    - totetsu 5y ago
      Hipocrisy is spelled with a "y", not an "i", as the second letter.
    - Trias11 5y ago
      You passed the test. Ata boy.

goler 5y ago

Are the associated costs passed to ratepayers at cost or is there some allowance for a positive investment return for PG&E shareholders?

bcrosby95 5y ago
In theory rate hikes have to go through California regulators but, at the same time, the company is allowed a certain rate of return. In practice I have no clue how it works out though.
- tomrod 5y ago
  Typically in markets like CA and TX you will have a rate case go to the public utility commission. I'm more familiar with Texas' approach (it was a data source for my dissertation); the idea is to let the companies charge enough to cover reasonable costs.
black_puppydog 5y ago
Shouldn't "won't be sued for negligence" cover the investment, given that they know their equipment is a fire hazard?
- jlmorton 5y ago
  No, it won't, because PG&E doesn't have the money to do this, and the company is already majority-owned by the PG&E Fire Victim Trust after emerging from bankruptcy. There are no rich shareholders to foist the costs on. No investors are going to pay tens of billions of dollars, more profit than PG&E generated over several decades, to pay for 10% of the electric wires to be buried. If there were any investors on the hook for this, they would simply declare bankruptcy and walk away. The only option here is that the costs are paid by ratepayers, or taxpayers. There is no other option available.
  - black_puppydog 5y ago
    I see, thanks for explaining. That would have made for a nice addition to the article. :) IMHO an infrastructure of this size & importance might just as well be state owned, but I guess rate hikes will also do. As long as there is some mechanism to help (yes, probably with tax money) those who might not be able to afford them...

kumarvvr 5y ago

We are beginning to see the real costs of Global warming, the exact thing activists were bull horning about and the same thing corporations were denying.

mikewarot 5y ago
Mostly we're seeing the costs of not managing forest in a sustainable manner. But, yes, climate change is making that stupidity worse.
- shusaku 5y ago
  The costs of not managing forests well, the costs of building cities so close to the ocean, the cost of growing food in what is now a desert, the cost of having population centers in areas which reach 50 degrees in the summer, global warming is going to “uncover” quite a lot of costs.
  - loopz 5y ago
    Not to mention warming and acidication of the oceans: https://www.quora.com/When-will-the-world-s-oceans-lose-their-ability-to-absorb-carbon-dioxide-and-what-will-be-the-consequences?share=1 https://www.quora.com/When-will-the-world-s-oceans-lose-thei... https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts/ocean-acidification https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co... https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/the-ocean-cannot-absorb-much-more-co2-4990 https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/the-ocean-cann...
nickysielicki 5y ago
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/mckelvey/mckelvey3.pdf https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/mckelvey/mckelvey3.pd... Look at figure 41.2 in the second pdf. Wildfires are not historically worse than they have ever been. You're falling victim to recency bias. You can absolutely credibly claim that wildfires are not more or less common than they have been historically, it's all in the noise. The activists have not been proven right, and the corporations have not been proven wrong. edit: note that I'm not denying the existence of climate change nor denying that it may eventually have an effect on forest fires. I'm merely claiming that the data does not support what you're saying.

rmason 5y ago

I have what I think is a legitimate question. Wouldn't it be an order of magnitude cheaper just to clear all the trees 120 feet either side of the power line? Plant the cleared land to alfalfa and solicit bids from farmers to harvest it every year.

dfsegoat 5y ago
What you describe is essentially the program they had in place already. Maybe not 120 feet, but certainly some distance. They hire contract helicopters year round to survey lines, and task crews to clear brush. I live in Sonoma County, CA [1,2,3] - so we see the effort. I think you might also be underestimating the scale of the power infrastructure in CA. The hydro etc. power generators in the north of the state are located in extremely remote areas. My brother was a consulting engineer for PG&E in Northern CA, on a lot of their Hydropower infrastructure - most of the generation sites were only accessible by humans with helicopter flights, or 2-3 hr drives on poorly maintained roads. The transmission lines are not really accessible except by helicopter survey. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNU_Lightning_Complex_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNU_Lightning_Complex_fires 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Fire 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire
- SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
  it may be hard work but it's necessary.
smt88 5y ago
That would destroy thousands of miles of wildlife habitat, and it would certainly cover some private property too. Plus you'd have to do it regularly, not once.
carpdiem 5y ago
Not really. Trees are actually somewhat hard to burn, so most wildfires start by catching dry underbrush on fire instead. So in this case, that would just be the alfalfa. Key to remember is that power lines can spark when they're damaged by winds (which can lead to the lines themselves being close enough to the ground for the spark to traverse to the underbrush).

breck 5y ago

Love it! My vision of the future has all power lines buried. Mostly thinking in the cities but fire prevention is a plus as well. If anyone has any leads on startups or innovators in the tunneling space please share or each out!

jlmorton 5y ago
I mean, obviously everyone desires to have the power lines buried, the issue is that it costs something like $250 billion dollars to do it in California alone.
randmeerkat 5y ago
https://www.boringcompany.com/ https://www.boringcompany.com/
leecb 5y ago
> My vision of the future has all power lines buried. Singapore already has already achieved this. It's actually quite pleasant to not have any overhead lines. They are currently replacing the main electricity distribution cables that run under roads, and replacing them with a system that runs in tunnels 60m underground. This depth is necessary to avoid other systems like the subway(MRT) that run at shallower depths. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/deepest-tunnels-spore-start-carrying-electricity-end-2018 https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/deepest-tunnels-spore-...
- breck 5y ago
  Fascinating. Thanks for the link! I remember from a visit to Singapore a decade ago the fantastic subway and all the underground malls, but had no idea how advanced their tunnels were. Thanks!
- baxinho0312 5y ago
  Works for distribution networks for households in the cities, but but for high voltage transmission lines.
- lorenzhs 5y ago

abeppu 5y ago

How do other places with dry forested areas deal with this? Are there similar regions from which California should be learning? Also, if we get a major earthquake, are they going to have to dig all the lines up again? Also, can we just note how crazy it is that this company blew up a neighborhood, burned down a town, was convicted in these separate incidents, and is still allowed to have a monopoly on power for a broad region? Why are corporate convicts apparently treated so well, but natural persons who are convicted are treated so poorly?

anonAndOn 5y ago
Don't forget the company also poisoned an entire town.[0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley,_California
stickfigure 5y ago
Those places burn too. You want electricity, right? PG&E is one way to get it. You could replace the people in charge, you could replace the owners, you could even nationalize the whole thing and you still have the same problem: Vast amounts of incredibly expensive, aging infrastructure, drying climate, and homes built into the wildland boundary interface. There's no magic trick that will solve this problem. The money for electrical upgrades will have to come from taxpayers and/or ratepayers; there isn't anyone else. And it will only reduce the probabilities of big fires. The huge Carr fire in Redding was started by sparks from a towed trailer. The LNU complex last year was lightning (plus one guy trying to cover up a murder with arson). It's not all electrical... probably not even a majority.
- MiguelX413 5y ago
  Just take the money from the profits lol
  - vkou 5y ago
    There won't be any profits if they actually go ahead and fix it. You'd have to claw it back from prior shareholders who benefited from that unethical behaviour.

chongli 5y ago

I have a question I haven’t seen anyone address so far: how much can we expect this to reduce the frequency of wildfires? Intuitively, to me, the effect would seem to be negligible. All of the conditions for wildfires will remain in place. It’ll simply be something else that lights the spark. If it’s not power lines it’ll be lightning. So then to follow up: what is the point? To deflect blame from PGE? And who pays for it?

jlmorton 5y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's not entirely insignificant, but it certainly is not the driver of wildfires. If we perfectly buried all the power lines, we'd have fewer fires, but we'd still have most of the fires we already have. The primary problem remains fire suppression practices, forest management, and changing climate. This seems like a very expensive way to eliminate a quarter of our wildfires.
- completelylegit 5y ago
  As someone who lives 15 miles from Paradise, CA - A “very expensive solution” makes it sound like there are inexpensive solutions that would be just as effective. If there were, wouldn’t PGE have implemented them? Maybe its just “the solution”.
  - habibur 5y ago
    PGE is more concerned about the billion dollar law suites. This solution makes economic sense to them. But doesn't help the fire. As long the dry woods are piling up, which it eventually will, something else will trigger the fire. And amount of fire won't be even reduce by 25%. But the court won't be able to blame PGE then, that's the whole point.
    - brazzy 5y ago
      This, exactly. A PGE power line probably sparked the deadly Paradise fire, and I've repeadly see people blaming them for the deaths with metaphorical pitch forks in hand, completely ignoring the far more complex reasons for people being unable to get away from that fire safely.

repiret 5y ago

I was under the impression that the higher dielectric permittivity of soil made it impractical to bury AC transmission lines. Are they switching to DC while they're at it? Is there some other solution? Are the problems caused by high permittivity overblown?

unishark 5y ago
Very possible, unless there's some other trick nowadays. AC does not go far underground or under water, but high voltage DC can be used for much longer distances.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  The cables can be thick jacketed with a dialectrict and heavily shielded with copper tape or braid or similar material and the jacket and shielding limits the leakage but makes the cable much more expensive to manufacture and install.
sunstone 5y ago
I was wondering the same thing. HVDC is 'an under the radar' technology that is set to rework a lot of the grid world wide. With projects underway to send power from Australia to Singapore or Iceland to the UK it's likely to turn up in many places, even California.
AriedK 5y ago
https://research.tudelft.nl/en/publications/technical-performance-of-ehv-power-transmission-systems-with-long https://research.tudelft.nl/en/publications/technical-perfor... Good read if you're interested in the technicalities. They do bury high voltage (380kV) AC lines, sometimes even construct a tunnel for them, but I doubt they'll do that in this case.

giantg2 5y ago

So what burial equipment or service providers do we buy calls on?

thedougd 5y ago

Take the opportunity to burry empty conduit with it and lease it to telcos.

dd36 5y ago
Good idea. Maybe even get The Boring Company to make usable tunnels.
agilob 5y ago
I don't know technicalities, but we have this in Wales. There are tunnels on top of which we have railways. The tunnels have power cables and fiberoptic cables. Sometimes they flood in west-mid Wales, last I know and remember was 2012 and we (Aberystwyth, Machynlleth) route internet traffic to North Wales or Ireland instead to Birmingham.
- thedougd 5y ago
  In my region, they mostly run this new, flexible plastic conduit with horizontal borers or a piercing tool. They'll dig holes several feet deep and dozens of feet apart. In one hole they start this tool and it digs its way horizontally to the next hole. From what I've seen, the conduit effortlessly follows. I'm sure geology makes a difference. Here's a marketing video for one of these piercing tools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=Hs3C2LMzSPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=26&v=Hs3C2LMzSPg

hestefisk 5y ago

We did this in Denmark many, many years ago. It is also significantly cheaper to maintain as you no longer need to manage vegetation around the powerlines, perform pole / cross-arm inspection etc. In some countries the main hesitation to underground cabling for transmission lines has been up front cost as well as unions (=less maintenance, less work).

urthor 5y ago
Imagine it was significantly cheaper if you measured it over a 3+ year time-span. Not over a 1-2 year time-span. The unwillingness of corporations to minimize OpEx by taking on significant one-time CapEx, in order to pretty the books, lives on in so many domains.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  Another important factor is that highly regulated local monopolies like power companies may have certain restrictions like only being able to charge a certain % over cost. Well, you'd much rather have 5% of a large number than a small number, so you're incentivized to do the more expensive long term thing.
  - QuercusMax 5y ago
    Health insurance has been doing this too.
  - lazide 5y ago
    It definitely explains a lot of what PG&E has done sometimes - maximum inefficiency and cost in some areas, incredibly (long term destructive) cheap in others.
- bcrl 5y ago
  Minimizing OpEx is one of the main drivers of telcos to switch to fibre. Companies like Bell Canada are telling their shareholders that network maintenance costs will drop as copper is decommissioned and services are migrated to fibre.

thedougd 5y ago

Some coastal communities and islands in North Carolina took this route. In addition to beautification, they're more resilient to storms and hurricanes. https://www.starnewsonline.com/article/NC/20071122/News/605126317/WM https://www.starnewsonline.com/article/NC/20071122/News/6051...

LinuxBender 5y ago

When they say 10k miles, do they mean 10k miles of land or of cable? Asking because my military unit used individual cables to exaggerate numbers. i.e. 6 strands at 1 mile would become "6 miles of cable run". Either way, great they are doing this. I hope they prevent some fires and save some lives.

noahmbarr 5y ago
It’s a typical non-disclosed denominator issue.
- whyenot 5y ago
  As mentioned in the NPR story, it's about 10% of their distribution and transmission lines.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Reminds me of a story a colleague told me, from his early job working in tech support call center for a phone company. He recounts of an issue with a customer complaining about low Internet speeds, despite being located close to the distribution building for the whole area. Seemingly, everything should've been fine. A cable leaves the distribution building, goes into the ground, and reappears a short distance later near the customer's house. Upon close inspection it was discovered that the cable did not take a straight route underground - instead of cutting the cable to necessary length, someone just buried the entire spool, and the total cable length was close to a kilometer or so. The signal, unboosted, barely got through to the other end.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Ohmuhgawd, this is so bizzare. That cable is not free, and wasting that much of it was surely to get noticed, wouldn't it? Questions, so many questions. Was this a contractor sticking to the man by wasting all of that cable? Was it someone trying to earn points for how much cable they "installed" that month? Wouldn't it be more financially beneficial to cut the cable as normal, and then sell of the spool to a scrapper or other used cable place? Was this a team of people that all agreed this would be a bad idea? So sounds like a movie plot

boringg 5y ago

I assume the liability costs far outweigh costs to upgrade/operational costs. Likely will ratebase a bunch of this work as well. That and they might just get kicked of business by the CPUC if they didn't manage their risk profiles more effectively.

rexreed 5y ago

"Great they are doing this" but passing the cost on to their customers, who will foot the bill for it. So maybe you should thank the PG&E customers who will end up paying for it.

indymike 5y ago
> "Great they are doing this" but passing the cost on to their customers, who will foot the bill for it It's probably worth it to the customers, too. So much so that PG&E's survival is in question if they don't start taking fire safety super-seriously.
- lupire 5y ago
  Most PG&E customers don't live in fire zones, though.
  - njarboe 5y ago
    I would say most of them do. Look at a satellite map of the Bay Area. Most cities are built right up against forested areas that I would call fire zones. The Santa Rosa fire and the Oakland hills fire were quite large and burned thousands of homes in urban areas, but started in forested areas nearby. Saying people should stop building in the forest and stay in cities will prevent the problems when the forests burn forget that most of the cities in California are next to forests that burn (Bay Area, Los Angeles, etc.). I guess we could clear cut those.
  - randerson 5y ago
    Many live downwind of the smoke, though.
baby 5y ago
I’m not sure I get your point.
pradn 5y ago
The customers use the electricity they generate. Who else would pay for it?

account4mypc 5y ago

Off topic, but how do underground power lines stay cool? I always thought long distance powerlines got really hot.

elric 5y ago
Above ground "High Temperature, Low Sag" cables can reach 200°C. Underground cables can still go up to 90°C, which is still flamin' hot. They're usually buried at least 1 meter deep, which gives the heat a decent chance to dissipate. But in those areas with high chances of fires, I'd be wary all the same :-/. Of course, the above mostly applies to high voltage & high current situations, think 150kV, 300MVA monster connections. I doubt PG&E manages 10k miles of high voltage power lines. If we're talking residential interconnections, there won't be any issues burying those.
niffydroid 5y ago
I would have thought they'd need to put sections of cooling in, if not maybe they have some form of oil or other liquid to help dissipate the heat? I thought one of the many reasons why the UK still does overhead between chunks of the grid is for cooling and easier maintenance.

titzer 5y ago

Meanwhile, in Germany, they've been burying powerlines for over a century so the entire country doesn't look like ass.

icpmoles 5y ago
For the high voltage lines Germany is pretty much still at less than 10%. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Statistics-of-AC-Underground-Cables-in-Power-Swingler-Daly/2af3fbbbdb5343167f470f4ae0b9970f7948c5f9 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Statistics-of-AC-Under...

morpheos137 5y ago

I don't understand why it is not just cheaper to clear the above ground rights of way. There are multiple reasons why transmission lines are not typically underground. The 240 from the pole to the house sure. The 240k from the plant to your local substation not so much. Subterrainian cables are more expensive and less energy efficient than aerials. High capacitive losses, higher maintenance and installation costs, more expensive shielding and jacketing materials needed.

ManBlanket 5y ago

Are we just going to ignore the fact wildfires are a natural occurrence and the entire reason we're experiencing catastrophic wildfires now is from decades of obsessively preventing every fire? Not saying we should go around creating fire hazards but compared to efforts to mitigate fuel overload by thinning and controlled burns, burying some power lines is a drop in a bucket barely worth mentioning. Utility corporations don't do things out of the kindness of their hearts. Guarantee PG&E are doing this for some kind of maintenance, tax, social, or litigious incentive. It certainly has more to do with the bottom line and their PR department is trying to spin it as some altruistic BS. Why are we jerking them off over this when if California's forests were properly managed a small risk of fire wouldn't be a concern, and in many cases may be a boon to the ecosystem? Piss take, I know, but nature is pressing her reset button and it's our fault. Let's not act like PG&E has anything to do with it.

xyzzy21 5y ago
Exactly. This is good for PG&E because it can't be blamed for wild fires. The wild fires will still continue to happen only now it will be the set remaining causes: (lightning, car exhaust systems, campers' fires, arsonists, ...) It's NOT primarily or even remotely Global Warming however. California has a fundamentally dry climate the intrinsically assures wild fires will occur. Expanding in wild fire prone areas is a direct result of real estate booms and costs, which are primarily high for artificial human reasons such as NIMBYism, greed, real estate as investment, etc.
- danans 5y ago
  > It's NOT primarily or even remotely Global Warming however. California has a fundamentally dry climate the intrinsically assures wild fires will occur. Global warming is an amplifier for wildfire risk, not a cause. The increasing length of the dry season under the influence of global warming has made these sorts of fires that much more likely.
- nomel 5y ago
  Fire is such an ancient and normal part of California that redwoods have evolved to be fireproof, with many local trees and plants having seeds that require fire for germination. [1] [1] https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/your-national-forests-magazine/how-trees-survive-and-thrive-after-a-fire https://www.nationalforests.org/our-forests/your-national-fo...

xyzzy21 5y ago

This will at least relieve PG&E from responsibility of causing wild fires. BUT it won't stop wild fires if forest maintenance continues to remain unfunded by the California state government! Putting lines underground definitely will also increase maintenance costs - that's why overhead lines get used in the first place. So electricity rates will remain higher as well.

ttul 5y ago

It’s almost as if there needs to be some form of tax on carbon emissions to help pay for mitigation of the effects of climate change.

xtat 5y ago

PG&E is a criminal enterprise- no love until they restructure from the top down.

jbverschoor 5y ago

Almost everything is in the ground in the Netherlands.

dthunder 5y ago

We're taking a different approach in Australia (the state of Victoria specifically), and not only are we replacing bare wire overheads with buried cables [0], we are also implementing Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiter (REFCL) technology to lower the risk of bushfires due to downed wires. [1] When powerlines come into contact with the ground or a tree, arcing can occur. If the line remains live and continues arcing, the risk of fire is quite high. REFCL tech works by detecting the phase-to-earth faults that occur when a one of the three-phase powerlines breaks and falls to the ground. REFL instantly reduces the voltage on the fallen line, and boosts the voltage on the other two phases. REFCL will then test the faulted line after a few seconds, and if the fault was intermittent full service is restored. If not, the whole line is removed from service to prevent fires and make the line safe to work on. On Total Fire Ban days (very high risk of fire due to weather conditions), the REFCL settings operate at increased sensitivity. There's a requirement in Victoria that by 2023 all high risk zone substations have to install REFCL technology, and all HV customers connected to those zone subs have to be REFCL compliant (their equipment must be able to handle the over-voltages that occur during REFCL operation). [0] https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/electricity/powerline-replacement/powerline-bushfire-safety-program/network-assets-program/high-voltage-network-assets-program https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/electricity/powerline-replacem... [1] https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/safety-and-emergencies/powerline-bushfire-safety-program/network-assets-program/rapid-earth-fault-current-limiter-refcl https://www.energy.vic.gov.au/safety-and-emergencies/powerli...

avidiax 5y ago
> REFL instantly reduces the voltage on the fallen line, and boosts the voltage on the other two phases. I didn't get how that would work, so I did a bit of research. REFCL effectively grounds the affected phase so that it is 0V with respect to ground. But the other 2 phases retain the same voltage relative to the affected phase, so they have increased voltage relative to ground. https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/-/media/Files/AusNet/Community/REFCL-Fact-Sheet-3-HV-customer-solutions-v2.ashx?la=en https://www.ausnetservices.com.au/-/media/Files/AusNet/Commu...
Andys 5y ago
Additionally, we have increased patrols of the wires in regional areas, installation of spreader bars, and regular clearing of the trees and shrubs near the wires.

kumarski 5y ago

California might need to limit the extent to which it: - lets environmentalists file viable injunctions against logging on federal lands - prohibits or greatly limits grazing

silexia 5y ago

Burying a mile of cable takes several big machines running diesel fuel (very bad for the environment). Call it approximately 300 gallons of diesel per mile. This plan will burn 300 * 10,000 = 3,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel. This plan is far worse for the environment then simply doing more controlled burns to reduce fire risk.

stevenalowe 5y ago

...again.

rapjr9 5y ago

I wonder if robots could help. Design some to go through the forests and mulch all the deadwood. They could work in geographic bands to create large fire breaks so the entire forest floor would not have to be mulched. There would be some environmental effects I'm sure (insects, mice, etc would get mulched as well) but that seems better than the devastation a fire causes. This seems like a limited enough problem that current technology could handle it with some human supervision in the field.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Seems like it would be cheaper to just monitor transmission lines more closely. Detect sparks and shut off the affected lines before they have time to ignite brush. Maybe a job for cameras and machine learning?