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I've lived in a few dozen cities (most very, very rural) in the US, and The Bay has, by far, the worst electricity out of any of them. We have longer outages as
by hansvm 2y ago
I've lived in a few dozen cities (most very, very rural) in the US, and The Bay has, by far, the worst electricity out of any of them. We have longer outages as a planned practice than I'd have from ice storms knocking down half the forest or waves partially flooding the town.
As an outside observer, the fact that PG&E can lie to the state and request money for maintenance, subsequently sending that money to shareholders, looks like a likely candidate for many of the problems.
It's especially annoying that it's the lowest quality power while it's working (compared to a pure sine signal), has the highest count of days with some power blip, the highest number of full days without power each year, it's 2.5x more expensive than anywhere else I've lived, and they don't even have snow or ice or the same levels of wind and rain as the other places with better power. Plus they're servicing more people per square mile. It ought to be more efficient.
Maybe CA really is special somehow, but it looks like ordinary corruption.
- krallja 2y agoCalifornians blame it all on Enron, but that can't be the only reason, right?
- zmgsabst 2y agoThe Enron scandal was 24 years ago, which is a generation ago — almost two. I’d guess the problem is more endemic to their political system.
- cinntaile 2y ago20-30 years is 1 generation.
- ahoef 2y agoThere are genetic generations and cultural generations. I think they mean the cultural generations.
- mschuster91 2y agoThe thing is, large scandals can have an aftereffect that lasts for decades. Berlin for example had a massive bank collapse in 2001 under the Conservative government that ended up placing the state of Berlin into billions of euros worth of debt and financial risk. The succeeding SD/Left/Green triplet coalitions had to fire-sell off many state-held assets like the water utility (that ended up a disaster on its own [2]) and especially a huge amount of residential real estate, which is now contributing to the insane rent explosions in Berlin. To this day, Berlin hasn't recovered from all the penny-pinching of the last decades. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Bankenskandal https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Bankenskandal [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Wasserbetriebe#Streit_um_Rekommunalisierung_und_Angemessenheit_der_Wasserpreise https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Wasserbetriebe#Streit...
- bigfudge 2y agoThis sounds like the state of the entire UK
- graemep 2y agoMuch worse. I am really sick of British people (those who have not lived abroad or had really experience of other countries) thinking the UK is uniquely bad. Its in fact better than than most places in most ways. Why do you think people want to immigrate here (including lots of highly skilled people who can pick where they live, and lots of people from other rich countries)? Why do you think so many of us with dual nationality who can just go somewhere else as a right live (ship our stuff and get on plane, whenever we like) here? We have not had anything on the scale of what the GP describes of a city going billions into debt - even Birmingham is orders of magnitude less bad. The government sold assets, but not at fire sale prices. I do not think selling utilities was a great idea, but its not as bad as either what GP describes, nor the "small town in Michigan" example at the top of this thread (when did you last experience a blackout in the UK?).
- DrillShopper 2y agoAnd then they killed the nuke plants for coal because they're scared little babies.
- theGnuMe 2y agoThe deep Texas freeze was the same thing.
- a123b456c 2y agoDon't forget SDG&E/Sempra. San Diego locals hate them with a passion. It is crazy that an area with such abundant solar generation and environmental concerns should have such expensive power.
- tekknik 2y agoSome areas served by SDG&E have community owned power generation and SDG&E handles delivery. The price SDG&E charges for delivery is usually 30% more than generation costs. Power bills increased after switching to community generated power.
- taneq 2y agoYou guys are getting full days without power? That’s disappointing. I’m in Australia and since moving a decade ago to a suburb with underground power, I think we’ve had maybe three or four outages that lasted long enough to notice, and all were fixed within a few hours.
- nasmorn 2y agoI frequently visit a farm in Austria on the very end of a rural transmission line that can be cut during storms by tree fall almost every year. I don’t think they have ever been without power for a full day. In Vienna if average something like 8min a year