4 ms·

> PG&E is way below one nine of availability this year You’ve been without utility power for two full weeks in 2023?!

nucleardog 4y ago
Can’t speak to California, but where I am in Canada (national capital region) I’ve been without power for over 14 days total in the past 12 months and we don’t have half the problems they do. There was an eight day outage, a four day outage, and a couple ~24 hour outages. Surprisingly very few short outages or brownouts or anything. I’m sitting at having utility power ~95% of the time over the past 12 months. I’d have no problem believing two weeks… or more.
OkGoDoIt 4y ago
Yes. There’s been a lot of storms this spring and the wind has brought down power cables left and right. That’s in addition to whatever other crap is up that’s causing power and even occasionally gas to be shut off for days at a time. Depending on where you live in the bay area, you might’ve had a few hour long shut offs, a few day long shut off’s, or worse and that’s just this year. I personally have had almost 3 total days without power where I live in the inner sunset of San Francisco, including 6 incidents of between 1 and 5 hours, and 1 period of two whole days. I have friends elsewhere in the city who’ve had it a lot worse. I don’t personally know anyone who has had 14 days total outages, but I would absolutely believe it given what I have seen. Also my personal PG&E bill for my home of two people and a baby is over $500 a month between electric and gas. I also run a small-midsize 400 seat theater in SF Chinatown and the monthly power and gas bill for that is almost $3000 a month even though we only run events two or three days a week. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
- throwaway892238 4y ago
  Everybody should listen to The Dollop's episodes on PG&E. It's pretty nuts. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDollop/comments/11e1c8u/the_dollop_572_pge_part_one/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDollop/comments/11e1c8u/the_doll... https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDollop/comments/11kmmsk/the_dollop_573_pge_part_two/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDollop/comments/11kmmsk/the_doll... Amazingly this is not the worst US utility company. They are all pretty horrible.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    Wow now I feel really grateful to have maybe one or two outages (that last maybe an hour) per year!
nemo44x 4y ago
It’s becoming more and more common, especially in places with older homes which the East Coast is full of. There are many, many millions of home with 100A or even 50A service. That was standard until the 80’s and 90’s. The grid was built to support that. But now a lot more people run AC and electric car charging, among other things like induction ranges. The infrastructure is struggling to keep up. A lot of it is super old and it’s not uncommon to come across 50 year old transformers, etc. Brownouts and blackouts have become rather common. But the gas always works. Where I live a lot of people have installed natural gas generators.

Can’t speak to California, but where I am in Canada (national capital region) I’ve been without power for over 14 days total in the past 12 months and we don’t have half the problems they do. There was an eight day outage, a four day outage, and a couple ~24 hour outages. Surprisingly very few short outages or brownouts or anything. I’m sitting at having utility power ~95% of the time over the past 12 months. I’d have no problem believing two weeks… or more.

OkGoDoIt 4y ago

Yes. There’s been a lot of storms this spring and the wind has brought down power cables left and right. That’s in addition to whatever other crap is up that’s causing power and even occasionally gas to be shut off for days at a time. Depending on where you live in the bay area, you might’ve had a few hour long shut offs, a few day long shut off’s, or worse and that’s just this year. I personally have had almost 3 total days without power where I live in the inner sunset of San Francisco, including 6 incidents of between 1 and 5 hours, and 1 period of two whole days. I have friends elsewhere in the city who’ve had it a lot worse. I don’t personally know anyone who has had 14 days total outages, but I would absolutely believe it given what I have seen. Also my personal PG&E bill for my home of two people and a baby is over $500 a month between electric and gas. I also run a small-midsize 400 seat theater in SF Chinatown and the monthly power and gas bill for that is almost $3000 a month even though we only run events two or three days a week. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

throwaway892238 4y ago
Everybody should listen to The Dollop's episodes on PG&E. It's pretty nuts. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDollop/comments/11e1c8u/the_dollop_572_pge_part_one/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDollop/comments/11e1c8u/the_doll... https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDollop/comments/11kmmsk/the_dollop_573_pge_part_two/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDollop/comments/11kmmsk/the_doll... Amazingly this is not the worst US utility company. They are all pretty horrible.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  Wow now I feel really grateful to have maybe one or two outages (that last maybe an hour) per year!

nemo44x 4y ago

It’s becoming more and more common, especially in places with older homes which the East Coast is full of. There are many, many millions of home with 100A or even 50A service. That was standard until the 80’s and 90’s. The grid was built to support that. But now a lot more people run AC and electric car charging, among other things like induction ranges. The infrastructure is struggling to keep up. A lot of it is super old and it’s not uncommon to come across 50 year old transformers, etc. Brownouts and blackouts have become rather common. But the gas always works. Where I live a lot of people have installed natural gas generators.