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PG&E power line suspected in Dixie fire was set to be buried underground
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.md/utkoY https://archive.md/utkoY
- cheaprentalyeti 5y agoAlso possibly relevant: "College professor held in wildland arson spree near California’s massive Dixie Fire"[0] [0]: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article253403045.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article253403045.html
- dpedu 5y agoIsn't this fire known to be caused by intentional arson? https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/11/us/former-college-instructor-charged-arson-dixie-fire/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/11/us/former-college-instructor-...
- jeffbee 5y agoNo, this wacko was setting fires in a fire. The events involving the power line happened a month ago. Fire has been going on for a while.
- cheaprentalyeti 5y agoThe existance of this particular wacko suggests the followup question: maybe the original fire was arson too?
- jeffbee 5y agoThere is as much evidence that this fire was started by arson as there is it was started by a laser beam from Xenu, i.e. none. On the other hand, we have this solid first-hand information about a fire that started between a tree and a power line. Why the need to have alternate theories without supporting evidence? https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21011683/pge-dixie-fire-filing.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21011683/pge-dixie-fi...
- dylan604 5y agoThat's a bit of rationale that could be said of most things running rampant on the internet. However, this is the state we are in where you can argue fact until you are blue in the face, and the listener will not budge from their views.
- cheaprentalyeti 5y agoExcept Xenu hasn't been arrested for starting fires. This guy has.
- jdavis703 5y agoFires start for a variety of reasons in CA. - Manure pile fires - Garbage trucks unloading smoldering debris - Lightning strikes - Off-road motor vehicles and equipment - Gender reveals gone wrong - Improper camp fires - Failing electrical infrastructure - Arson I don’t know why of all the possible causes we’d jump to arson.
- lazide 5y agoDon’t forget - hot sunny day + discarded clear glass bottle starts fire - idiots shooting at rocks in the middle of nowhere and causing sparks (Yes, those have really happened)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jeffbee 5y agoFor a more visual idea of what happened, here is a user-contributed "street view" close to the very spot that PG&E mentions in their filing. You can see what the relationship is between this terrain, the forest, and the power lines. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.83185,-121.4410804,3a,75y,50.09h,106.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAF1QipM7bRPPKFqDjBvgfCcentg7dfM6vWimdYVWkAYb!2e10!7i7680!8i3840 https://www.google.com/maps/@39.83185,-121.4410804,3a,75y,50... Personally I feel like burying this is a waste of money. The entire Feather River Project generates less than 1% of California's peak power demands, and it doesn't generate it in the late summer when we actually need it. California replaces this amount of generating capacity with new rooftop solar every 10 months at current pace, or with individual utility-scale PV plants that are being completed regularly. It's not worth the fires. We can afford to turn it off.
- penneyd 5y agoThose pylons are really short, why aren't the lines way above the trees?
- lazide 5y agoCost
- fjabre 5y agoAgree with this. State should be investing heavily in solar for everyone. The future of firefighting should be heavily invested in. Have there been YC proposals for novel firefighting tech? If not then why not? Obviously a field ripe for disruption.
- maerF0x0 5y ago> A vegetation management inspection took place Jan. 14 but did not flag the tree that’s believed to have fallen on the line as needing work, he said. > PG&E had also inspected the two poles between which the tree was found leaning May 13 and found nothing that required corrective action, Noonan said. I used to work at a theatre as a teenager. We used to have these sign in sheets for bathroom inspection. Nobody really ensured the bathroom was in perfect shape. Basically just ensured there wasn't an obvious pile of vomit in plain sight. I'm not entirely trying to say that there's been foul play here, but I guess I'm trying to point out that it's not very good evidence that nothing was wrong and it seems clear that something was wrong (given the fire).
- newbamboo 5y agoMy concern here is that every fire somehow becomes a cash cow for pg&e. It’s not clear, to me at least, aside from this article which may be premature given the arson suspect, that burying lines will solve the fire problem. So PG&E gets a ton of money, somewhat undeservedly IMO, and the state will still have fires but less resources to fight them with. I hope I’m wrong. It just seems like the worse pg&e does, the more funding they get. Perverse incentives are a real issue in economics.
- notatoad 5y agoYeah, if it's not a power line then something else will start the fires. The problem isn't the initial spark, it's the hundreds of square miles of tinder-dry wildland. Not sure it's a perverse incentive, but it's probably not a productive use of money. But it's human nature to look for the problems that we are capable of solving, and we know how to bury powerlines. We don't know how to reverse the effects of climate change.
- jdavis703 5y agoI don’t believe the PUC will allow PG&E to have a guaranteed rate of return on undergrounding. My understanding is that ratepayers are the ones who are going to be funding this project, not the shareholders. So yeah PG&E gets to avoid liability and also sell more electricity (there’d be no more PSPS events). But they won’t be able to charge higher transmission rates beyond the cost of undergrounding.
- dehrmann 5y ago> My understanding is that ratepayers are the ones who are going to be funding this project, not the shareholders. I think that's the deal, though. Utility investors buy utilities knowing their rates are regulated and there's limited growth in exchange for stability. When the cost of providing electric changes, whether it's because wholesale prices increase or a new cost emerges (burying power lines), ratepayers are on the hook. The key is allocating the costs correctly. Burying major transmission lines (if this is even needed) should be shared, but local lines need to be paid for by local communities. Owning a cabin is fine, I just have no interest in subsidizing its power because it's in a fire risk area.
- mjevans 5y agoIt's far harder for me to personally find PG&E morally culpable when they were working at the fastest pace allowed by legal mechanisms to transition to a safer fully-buried infrastructure.
- x0x0 5y agoThey're planning to bury 10k miles of electric lines, at a price tag of $15-$30B (they have 5.5m customer accounts). https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/22/pge-power-lines-california-wildfires/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/22/pge-power-l...
- nemonemo 5y agoWho pays the bill eventually? I would wish the people directly benefit from the power line should pay for it. (The article seems paywalled.)
- x0x0 5y agoThe customers are going to pay. The company will notionally take out the bonds, but the dollars will have to come from the customers...
- toast0 5y agoI don't know about California, but what I hear from my local utility in WA is that absent specific circumstances that make basic above ground wiring infeasible, undergrounding has to be paid for by the customers served, it can't be paid by general revenues as is the case for repair and maintenance. We're mostly seeing service disruptions from downed lines and not wildfires though. Fire safety requirements might be grounds for general funds to pay for undergrounding, but you'd really need to check with the state regulations.
- mjevans 5y ago"A drone seen flying over the fire in the hours after it started is rumored to have been operated by PG&E or one of its contractors, Ramsey said. The sighting grounded firefighting aircraft for the evening, he said." Incorrect calculus, scramble the local military with a kill order for the drone, clear the skies of unauthorized craft.
- lostlogin 5y agoThis sounds like a good way of starting more fires.
- dylan604 5y agoRadio frequency jamming would be enough to kill/incapaciate most drones. It doesn't require the use of sidewinder missiles. Edit: however, if you're going to this level, I'd rather them just triangulate the signal from the controller and go pick up the offenders. I'm for people being able to responibly be allowed to operate drones, but if you're actively intefering with an active fire response, you're not being responsible. Could we not equip the fire fighting aerial equipment with radio jamming equipment specifically targeting drone frequencies? If your drone is within the cone of their jamming, you're in the wrong to begin with, so tough cookies.
- fjabre 5y agoWhy are there no request proposals from YC for new or novel firefighting tech? Are wildfires not an engineering problem? California is YC's backyard. PG and friends all have their lives in Nor Cal where most of these recent fires have been taking place. I am perplexed by the silence of YC and other bay area stars like Google, Apple and the bay area tech giants that seem oddly silent on the matter. Would it take Google or Apple's campus burning down before they took the threat seriously?
- yupper32 5y agoThe bay area campuses are not in danger from the fires, except for smoke. And there is otherwise not much money to be made in firefighting tech. That's about it.
- fjabre 5y agoSo they are ok with their vacation homes and the other half of the state burning down as long as their campuses are ok? Not much money to be made by saving lives, health, and billions of dollars in infrastructure damage?
- yupper32 5y ago> So they are ok with their vacation homes and the other half of the state burning down as long as their campuses are ok? Apparently! > Not much money to be made by saving lives and billions of dollars in infrastructure damage? No, there's not. Where would the money come from? The public? Good luck with that.
- dylan604 5y ago>Not much money to be made by saving lives, health, and billions of dollars in infrastructure damage? I think you are confusing the money that can be lost due to damage from a fire being a large number compared to the amount of money available to spend on fire fighting itself. A private company in business to make money does not care about the money saved from things not being damaged. Insurance companies have an interest in that. The only way for fire tech to make money would be to come up with an extremely vile scheme to ensure people used their services. Fire tech could extort insurance companies/private owners a percentage of their property's value in order to save their home from the fires. You'd then see door to door sales people using phrases like "it'd be a shame if something were to happen to this lovely home of yours". Some distopian level of society where your house is actively worked to prevent it from burning, but you neighbors house is now a pile of burning embers because they weren't a member while the team working your house stands there and watches.