Except the rolling blackouts that California experienced were not due to safety reasons or infrastructure failures, but because Enron conspired to schedule (pla

Except the rolling blackouts that California experienced were not due to safety reasons or infrastructure failures, but because Enron conspired to schedule (planned) plant maintenance at many facilities at the same time, in order to maximize profit (due to a loophole in CA’s then-newly-deregulated electricity market). The recent “public safety power shutoffs” (which are not rolling blackouts) are also not due to safety reasons, but because PG&E was trying to blackmail the state into bailing them out against lawsuits for the fires they caused. It is a case of “well, shucks, since we can’t absolutely guarantee that our power lines will never start a fire with 100% certainty… I guess we have no choice but to turn off power for some of your constituents, who will be selected in such a way that at least one person in every county will be affected (and thus color the entire map red) but without significantly reducing the number of kWh we deliver (and can charge for) while doing so”. In both cases, the power company was not unable to deliver power, but chose not to because they believed they could score political points by holding ratepayers hostage.