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Bad forest management or ... bad electrical equipment ? This excerpt of the last week tonight show 90 year old electric line equipment responsible for fires :

Bad forest management or ... bad electrical equipment ? This excerpt of the last week tonight show 90 year old electric line equipment responsible for fires : https://youtu.be/qBpiXcyB7wU?feature=shared&t=515 https://youtu.be/qBpiXcyB7wU?feature=shared&t=515 I don't pretend to know anything and I don't know how common this is but it is pretty concerning and I wonder if anything has been done about that.

whimsicalism 2y ago
pg&e at least is investing very heavily in undergrounding i believe but it is still slow going and expensive like many megaprojects in cali
- mistrial9 2y ago
  once again, completely backwards understanding.. PG&E has been avoiding many upgrades to their millions of miles in cables, for decades, and has repeatedly outsourced the maintenance that they were required to do.. they falsified records to avoid doing maintenance, the pipes blew up, and PG&E became the first public utility to be convicted of murder AFAIK The utility repeatedly plants stories about how much they are doing, and how expensive upgrades are, in the public media as a reflexive PR device and that is what is being repeated, apparently
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    i'm not sure why you're mixing and matching stuff about electrical cables causing fires and the San Bruno explosion. upgrades are expensive, PG&E is barely profitable, and it operates in a very challenging regulatory environment. California liability law + juries impose extremely outsized liability judgements compared to the rest of the country... other utilities have caused actions that lead to death but it generally does not mean billions of dollars in liability judgement. Compare the West fertilizer explosion in Texas, the liability it generated, with PG&E liability judgements. I understand that it is always attractive to have a simple explanatory story with a clear villain. I encourage you to resist that appeal.

whimsicalism 2y ago

pg&e at least is investing very heavily in undergrounding i believe but it is still slow going and expensive like many megaprojects in cali

mistrial9 2y ago
once again, completely backwards understanding.. PG&E has been avoiding many upgrades to their millions of miles in cables, for decades, and has repeatedly outsourced the maintenance that they were required to do.. they falsified records to avoid doing maintenance, the pipes blew up, and PG&E became the first public utility to be convicted of murder AFAIK The utility repeatedly plants stories about how much they are doing, and how expensive upgrades are, in the public media as a reflexive PR device and that is what is being repeated, apparently
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  i'm not sure why you're mixing and matching stuff about electrical cables causing fires and the San Bruno explosion. upgrades are expensive, PG&E is barely profitable, and it operates in a very challenging regulatory environment. California liability law + juries impose extremely outsized liability judgements compared to the rest of the country... other utilities have caused actions that lead to death but it generally does not mean billions of dollars in liability judgement. Compare the West fertilizer explosion in Texas, the liability it generated, with PG&E liability judgements. I understand that it is always attractive to have a simple explanatory story with a clear villain. I encourage you to resist that appeal.