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Beyond cost, what is stopping somebody from going off grid, and relying entirely on their own solar + battery system? Is there some law that makes this illega
by drewg123 3y ago
Beyond cost, what is stopping somebody from going off grid, and relying entirely on their own solar + battery system? Is there some law that makes this illegal? If not, it seems like this would cause a lot of upper income folks to just disconnect from the grid.
I've never had such unreliable power as I had when I lived in Mountain View (and I've lived in Buffalo, NY and in the hurricane alley in North Carolina). PG&E is a disaster.
- m463 3y ago> PG&E is a disaster. It's fascinating to me how santa clara and palo alto are within a few miles and both have reasonable electric utilities with acceptable rates.
- surajrmal 3y agoDensity. PG&E needs to cover a lot of more rural land including many fire prone areas which the more local municipal services do not
- photonbeam 3y agoSplit pge up then, let the rural areas pay what they cost
- b112 3y agoNo. You're apeing their propaganda. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39814204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39814204 Quebec is far far far more rural than any part of California, it just performs maintenance and pruning. And yet? Lowest rates in Canada/US. It's all PG&E not performing required, easily done pruning.
- drewg123 3y agoThe problem in my neighborhood (literally right across the 101 from the Google MTV campus) was that PG&E never bothered to bury the lines, and the overhead lines were poorly maintained and overgrown by trees. So whenever there was wind, branches would drop, and take out the power. We'd have an outtage quite regularly. Contrast to my neighborhoods in other states where the power wires were buried, and the only times we were without power was when the transmission lines to the entire neighborhood were taken out by weather far more severe than I ever saw in CA.
- b112 3y agoTo be fair, I live in rural Quebec, and none of rhe power lines are buried. Yet these power lines travel through woods, forests, and? The vegetation is kept pruned. Meanwhile, even with Hydro Quebec performing normal maintenance (unlike PG&E), we have the lowest power rates in Canada nad the US. And that's with a far more rural population, compared to SV, which means a lot more pruning per customer served. The problem is PG&E, not that the lines aren't buried.
- anamax 3y agoPalo Alto and Santa Clara both have "city owned utilities". Those utilities don't produce power, they don't bring power into the cities, they may not even distribute power within the cities. What they do do is buy power and sell it to the residents. Thanks to 1930s laws, they get first claim on the least expensive power sources in California. Both Santa Clara and Palo Alto "power companies" have also managed to minimize the "hey, there's a large pile of money and if we only raise rates just a bit, think of all the good that we could do." I mention that because San Jose has started a local "utility" that doesn't have appreciably lower rates than PG&E.
- bombcar 3y agoIt is illegal in some locations. Usually by: cannot have a dwelling without power. Cannot legally have power without a grid connection. Ergo if people are living there you have to have a grid connection. But if you’re rich enough, you could work around it.