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PG&E outages in S.F. leave 130k without electricity
- Avicebron 10mo agoI wonder if anyone in the emergency operations center has offered up the idea that there should be more than one entity providing power...
- inferiorhuman 10mo agoDunno, I think it's quite reasonable to class electricity as a natural monopoly. What's less reasonable is regulatory capture. Landline telephones were insanely reliable in their heyday because they were required to be so. PG&E is reckless because they're allowed to be reckless. Edit: For non-Americans, landline telephones were highly regulated up until '82 with AT&T having a government sanctioned monopoly.
- Avicebron 10mo agoSure, and I would be lying if the libertarian bacon-wrapping of what I said was more than an litmus test and karma play, but the concept of good governance on a company like PG&E is so far out of the realm of possibility since citizen's united (and the public warping of perspective to agree with it) I don't see a very reasonable path forward to getting these (lovely, sweet, pure-hearted, well-meaning, community-oriented, positive, hard-working) people under control. EDIT: *language, think of the children.
- bloppe 10mo agoRather than get another utility involved, I'd rather see far more incentives for installing home storage and ideally solar as well, especially for rental properties. Nothing's more resilient than a distributed grid.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Ragnarockooo 10mo agoWe should have small NFRs in every backyard
- roenxi 10mo agoOne-off incidents don't really mean anything in the big picture. However, I do recall back when there were grid problems in Texas a few years ago someone justifying the high prices California paid as due to their high grid reliability and solid regulatory framework (California pay 2x as much IIRC). I'm too far away to really get into the details but it'd be much more interesting to have a comparison on the reliability of the Californian grid compared to other US states and even countries. When it comes to high availability the diminishing returns to spending set in pretty quick and I get the impression there is a slow return to economic reality happening as voters are forcing governments to start paying attention to energy again, environmentalists or otherwise.
- inferiorhuman 10mo agoThe same substation went up about a decade ago, I'd be pretty cautious about calling problems with PG&E infrastructure "one off". California's rates were rationalized, in part, because California is taking steps to increase reliability. It's been decades seen we've seen rolling blackouts at the hands of Enron. Long-term plans to increase intra-state transmission capacity are in place and are currently being executed (you're welcome to dig them up on the ISO's site). The weather related preemptive power cuts have been pared back dramatically since their introduction. We're talking hundreds of thousands of people without power for days versus hundreds or thousands for hours. Let's not forget that the "grid problems" you're referring to cost some ratepayers tens of thousands of dollars because that's the sort of retail electric plan that was legal in Texas. But also please don't lump all Californians one group. PG&E rate payers are extorted for some of the highest electric rates in the nation (as are SDG&E and most IOU rate payers). Folks with access to municipal power in California pay far less.
- drusenko 10mo agoThat claim would be hilarious and also wildly inaccurate, that OP apparently never heard of a PSPS. California’s grid is not particularly resilient or reliable, and certainly not in the 2016-2020 time frame. Also, the regulatory framework is awful and high prices are driven by a mix of 1- regulatory capture and disincentives to utilities saving money, 2- wildfire mitigation costs, 3- NIMBYism and the lack of ability to build anything quickly, and then a hodge podge of CA specific issues.
- ChrisArchitect 10mo agoWaymo fleet halts in San Francisco during power outages https://twitter.com/breaking911/status/2002568542835876194 https://twitter.com/breaking911/status/2002568542835876194
- ChrisArchitect 10mo agoRelated: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams https://missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf-waymo-halts-service-blackout/ https://missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf-waymo-halts-service-blac... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46342412)
- ChrisArchitect 10mo agohttps://archive.ph/oWr3M https://archive.ph/oWr3M
- troglo-byte 10mo agoHoping this mega-mess pushes the city's effort to buy its own grid past the finish line. PG&E has been fighting it tooth and nail. Not that it will necessarily make for fewer blackouts, but a ~50% rate discount would be nice. That's what users in Santa Clara pay IIRC, and SF even owns the hydro generator at O'Shaughnessy Dam.
- inferiorhuman 10mo agoFollow the money. Who appoints people to regulate electricity in California? The governor. Who mentored California's current governor? Willie Brown. Who does Willie Brown work/lobby for? PG&E.
- themafia 10mo agoThe California Assembly is one of the weakest legislative bodies in the entire nation. It's too disorganized to engage in any effective oversight or lawmaking. It's left to the people to come up with constitutional amendments to try to manage this enormous machine. It's a beautiful state. There's literal mountains of opportunity here. It's lately all too easy to become irrationally angry at these con artists and their ruinous agendas.
- inferiorhuman 10mo agoWillie Brown hasn't been in the Assembly for decades and the governor directly controls the CPUC.
- themafia 10mo agoMy understanding is the governor has to follow laws that are written by the assembly. If one wanted to constrain or force his behavior that would be a perfect instrument to accomplish it. Have I misunderstood this? If not, then this would be the reason for my comment. Or is your point that the total lack of checks and balances afforded by the Assembly presents us no additional problems over Willie Brown's current employment?
- akersten 10mo ago> Firefighters were using specialized carbon monoxide equipment to extinguish the flames on the first floor of the four-story building, A concerning miss in proofreading or am I learning about a new fire-fighting technology today?
- n00bs 10mo agoYeah, pretty sure they meant carbon dioxide!
- rasz 10mo agoMight be dihydrogen monoxide, you never know.
- onionisafruit 10mo agoCarbon dioxide is a “very specialized mix of carbon monoxide” with an extra oxygen atom bound to each molecule.
- burnt-resistor 10mo agoAs a Camp Fire climate refugee and week+-long PG&E PSPSes running on generators, hello from hill country TX. While we have ERCOT that is only slightly better and Enron-style market pricing, energy production infrastructure has actually caught up so long as not too many gigadatacenters are built to automate spamming Youtube with fake cat videos.
- nine_k 10mo agoRussia bombs a power station in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands are left without electricity. Ukraine bombs a power station in Russia, hundreds of thousands are left without electricity. Peaceful winter weather, no major storm, hurricane, earthquake, heat, frost, catastrophic rainfall in SF. 130k people are left without electricity. In the former two cases, the cause is that something terribly wrong is happening for years. In the latter case, likely, too.
- bink 10mo agoAre you suggesting Ukraine and Russia don't also have occasional outages caused by equipment failures or bad decisions unrelated to the war?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- whimsicalism 10mo agoTIL traffic lights in SF don’t have a backup power flash red mode.
- m463 10mo agois that what flashing red indicates? I thought it might be that signalling is broken, possibly centralized.
- avidiax 10mo agoIt indicates an intersection fault. I've seen it happen in front of me in Texas when lightning struck too close to the cabinet.
- onionisafruit 10mo agosometimes it just means it’s too late at night to worry about traffic lights so just treat it like a stop sign.
- bob1029 10mo agoWhat is the story on leveraging natural gas infrastructure in SF? In parts of Texas we've made the grid a non-issue with lots of standby natural gas generation. About 80% of the homes in my community have full backup. Wednesdays get pretty noisy at noon around here. All of the public utilities can go for days without grid power now. The winter storm was the last time anyone saw difficulties with gas infrastructure. I don't know of anyone who lost gas service, even during the event. In the TX hill country and in more rural areas, these things run on buried propane tanks and in most cases there is enough fuel on site to run continuously for weeks before a truck has to show up. I think there is something to be said for a semi-reliable grid encouraging resilience over time. You can't have it too unreliable, but it seems like there is a sweet spot that encourages high quality contingencies to develop.
- onionisafruit 10mo agoWhy Wednesday at noon? Is that the traditional time to test your generator or something?
- bob1029 10mo agoYes, apparently it is some kind of unofficial standard in the area.
- kelnos 10mo ago> Wednesdays get pretty noisy at noon around here. It's a shame that, during the sunniest part of the day, grid supply is supplemented by burning fossil fuels, rather than just using the energy from that sun.