Utility Giant PG&E Voluntarily Shuts Off Power, Could Impact 800,000 Californians (npr.org) 210
Pacific Gas & Electric began cutting off power to nearly 800,000 customers across large swaths of Northern and Central California Wednesday morning, in a planned outage that it says is necessary to avoid the risk of fire. From a report: PG&E gave residents in more than 30 counties advance warnings about the power cut, which it says would "proactively" reduce the dangerous effects of a potential "widespread, severe wind event" forecast for Wednesday. The utility giant's transmission lines have been linked to wildfires that have devastated communities in California. It filed for bankruptcy protection in January, and it's been roundly criticized for mismanagement and safety failures. As of Wednesday morning, people in Humboldt, Marin, Napa, Sonoma and other counties are currently without power in the initial phase of PG&E's Public Safety Power Shutoff. "The decision to turn off power was based on forecasts of dry, hot and windy weather including potential fire risk," PG&E said in a statement about the outage.
Inverse condemnation (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a cautionary tale of what happens when one party is left unchallenged to pursuit the logical conclusions of their own ideology unanchored to reality.
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This is a cautionary tale of what happens when one party is left unchallenged to pursuit the logical conclusions of their own ideology unanchored to reality.
Mod correction. The above post should be modded, +1 Insightful. Please mod correctly.
Re:Inverse condemnation (Score:5, Informative)
Odd then (Score:3)
When Enron did itâ(TM)s bit of nasty, Gray Davis was governor and the state senate and assembly were democrat controlled. They allowed Enron to happen. Davis was responsible for deregulation.
But you think they were Republicans.
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It's the republicans fault that California is, for the most part, a single party state that cannot keep the power on because of failed fire prevention policy and a little wind?
You would think that since there are no opposition from republicans in CA the State would be able to do all the wonderful things they claim to be able to do. I am not sure how turning off the power because of a little wind is the fault of Republicans.
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We kind of had a Republican governor within living memory
Actually 4 - The Governator, Pete Wilson, George Deukmejian, and the Gipper.
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there are no opposition from republicans in CA
Not quite. We kind of had a Republican governor within living memory, and the agricultural areas of the state tend to elect Republican state reps.
-jcr
Who? Arnold? The guy who gave a speech on Father's Day bashing men and praising women while he was diddling the maid?
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I saw an article about that the other day which provided the solution to climate change. Apparently a nuclear war between Pakistan and India would stop global warming in its tracks.
Re: Inverse condemnation (Score:2)
So, the Democrats that have been running California for ages are actually Republicans.
Itâ(TM)s all blindingly clear now...
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While voting for presidential elections California is a solid blue state, however when broken up by districts you see it is actually purple, (like all other states)
What we call a solid state is often 60% favoring one political party. But with millions of people 40% is still a big number to deal with.
California is extremely successful considering how many environmental concerns it needs to deal with. Those States on the East Coast, who rarely have serious droughts, fires, earthquakes. Who mostly have to de
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occasional (and increasingly more common due to climate change) hurricane
You are fake news.
We had an unusual lull in hurricane activity between Katrina and 2016. We're just returning to normal patterns in line with historical hurricane seasons.
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But CA has the 7th (or is it 8th now?) biggest economy in the world. It used to be 5th, but ignore that!!
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But CA has the 7th (or is it 8th now?) biggest economy in the world. It used to be 5th, but ignore that!!
Your comment is correct if you reverse the order, I'm surprised you didn't do a simple google search before your post.
Source: "California now has the world's 5th largest economy" MAY 4, 2018 / 6:35 PM / AP www.cbsnews.com.
California's economy has surpassed that of the United Kingdom to become the world's fifth largest, according to new federal data made public Friday. California's gross domestic product rose by $127 billion from 2016 to 2017, surpassing $2.7 trillion, the data said.May 4, 2018
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No. This is an example of what happens when corporations are allowed to pursue profits unchecked. This has very little to do with how fire prone California is and very much to do with shoddy maintenance practices at PG&E. PG&E has a history of failing to perform adequate maintenance on its power lines, which has resulted in those power lines sparking numerous fires, including some very damaging ones. Courts in California have held PG&E liable for the damages caused by those fires, which has
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I don't think so. I think this is a corporation. That a developed country would use air power lines and not underground ones in the 21st century is beyond me.
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Oogath. You deserve your handle of WaffleMonster.
You can read it that way if you want to, but I read it more as conflicts of various interests, some of whom are biased in favor of short term gains and others biased in favor of longer term gains. There wasn't a party to the event that was unchallenged by someone, and lots of people were arguing about what was factual and what was necessary, with people tending to believe, or at least espouse publicly, those things that would favor their goals.
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CA is in a human regression spiral. Hope they come to their senses soon and kick the regressives out of the Democrat party.
From what I hear Californians are abandoning their utopia and trying to spread all of that awesomeness to the neighboring states too.
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It's interesting how the right is trying to bring back the old communism boogyman. It's getting like the days of McCarthy again, with anyone you disagree with labelled as an ideological leftist, opposed to the American Way Of Life and a threat to the very survival of the nation.
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Not in the US - in the US the right wing party is the anti-science/progress/success/freedom party. They're actually famous for decreasing funding for science and even going as far as to think climate change is a hoax.
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in the US the right wing party is the anti-science/progress/success/freedom party. They're actually famous for decreasing funding for science and even going as far as to think climate change is a hoax.
One of the final acts of the Bush administration was to acknowledge AGW. They'll admit climate change is real so long as they don't have to do anything about it. The voters think it's false, though. That's why Trump loves the poorly educated [usatoday.com], in the same sense that he "loves" a bucket of KFC.
Re:Inverse condemnation (Score:5, Funny)
I guess both sides in the US are against science. The alt-right thinks global warming is a hoax, the conservatives see no economic solution, the independents don't know enough about it and the left says women are biologically the same as men.
Cut off service vs fixing the problems. (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that companies and organization who are in the infrastructure business, seem to try to put off the needed maintenance and upgrades as far as they can.
Well maintained power grid can be safe in high fire area, if they are well maintained and upgraded.
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The problem is that companies and organization who are in the infrastructure business, seem to try to put off the needed maintenance and upgrades as far as they can.
Well maintained power grid can be safe in high fire area, if they are well maintained and upgraded.
What is the risk relative to other similar systems operated by other utilities?
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What is the risk relative to other similar systems operated by other utilities?
Yes.
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Agreed.
Years ago, the entire southern half of OH was in the dark and, in many cases heat, one winter following an ice storm where tree limbs knocked down power lines after years of lack of any maintenance by Columbus and Southern Power. (Because, you know, maintenance costs money.) We were without power for nearly two weeks with other parts of the outage area affected for even longer.
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Re:Cut off service vs fixing the problems. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cut off service vs fixing the problems. (Score:4, Interesting)
CPUC gets to decide what kinds of maintenance can be done,
PG&E isn't doing most of the maintenance that the CPUC will allow.
and how much profit PG&E is allowed to make.
PG&E is paying out over $100M to its CEO while he presides over skipping contractually obligated maintenance.
The CPUC is complicit, but not at all in the way you describe. They haven't done their job of holding PG&E accountable, and to me that points directly to corruption. But everything you've said is either false or irrelevant.
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The previous PG&E CEO, Geisha Williams, [wikipedia.org] (until early this year) was a Latina - a woman. Great diversity, the first Fortune 500 Latina CEO! Hurray! As she was CEO whilst PG&E literally melted down. And it was a WOMAN, not a man. You're talking out of your ass, as usual.
Now, the current CEO was the nation's highest paid Federal employee [sacbee.com], who's made $8.1 million as a Federal employee of the TVA. Yes, a Federal employee making $650,000+ per month, moving from one utility to another. Revolving do
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Hmm, must have added an order of magnitude in my memory. I will remember to correct that in the future.
I don't actually give a fuck what the gender of the CEO is, because I don't care about them as a person, just like they don't care about other people.
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CPUC is allowing maintenance, and in many cases require the maintenance to be done. The CPUC does have some culpability here, mostly for being lax on allowing utilities to defer maintenance in the past. When the pro-profit crowd is in charge then they give leeway to utilities who complain about the cost of upkeep.
Inverse Condemnation (Score:5, Interesting)
Under California law, PG&E (and other providers), are liable for fires caused by their equipment even if it is maintained under best practices [bloomberg.com]. Therefore the most prudent action may actually be to cut the power all togehter, to eliminate any possibility of fire.
Re:Cut off service vs fixing the problems. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's basic risk assessment. They just got hit with $billions in fees/fines over the last incident. They can't really afford to have that happen again. If the company is responsible for the fires, then they have to be able to make these sorts of decisions based on their own criteria.
If - on the other hand - we wanted to solve this in a public manner, we would instead make inspections a government service paid for by taxes on companies like PG&E (likely contracted out to OTHER private parties, unaffiliated with energy producers).
Make the damn utility public already (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Make the damn utility public already (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait, privatizing profits and socializing losses is the staple of our economy, why do they get singled out?
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regulates investor-owned electric and gas utilities within the state of California, including Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric. Among its stated goals for energy regulation are to establish service standards and safety rules, authorize utility rate changes, oversee markets to inhibit anti-competitive activity, prosecute unlawful utility marketing and billing activities, govern business relationships between utilities and their affiliates, resolve complaints by customers against utilities, implement energy efficiency and conservation programs and programs for the low-income and disabled, oversee the merger and restructure of utility corporations, and enforce the California Environmental Quality Act for utility construction
PG&E can't do anything without CPUC approval. Rather than capitalize on profits and socialize profits, this is socialize profits and privatize losses. CPUC says what can and cannot be done with transmission lines, rates, service, marketing, sales, etc.
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resolve complaints by customers against utilities
I would say 'where's my power' should be high on the list...
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No, they did not socialize the losses. They just got hit with $11 B in a settlement over a previous fire. This is the natural reaction to holding them accountable.
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Wellllll, it's been said:
For forms of government let fools contest
What 'ere is best administered is best
That's clearly an oversimplification, because it says nothing about how goals are decided upon, but it's not without merit.
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Ok I can't stand the stupid...
Did you just compare forest in Quebec and I'm assuming further north, to forest in California? California is mostly desert, or high desert, or mountainous regions. There is very little rain. I could throw a match on the ground and start a fire in these conditions. The weather is totally different. The trees are totally different. The topology is totally different.
I agree shutting down power is not smart, and there should be better maintenance, but I believe this is really
When you sue your provider... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you sue your provider into near bankruptcy because a spark from their hardware caused a massive wild fire, don't be surprised if they get extremely cautious around high winds and low humidity.
Re:When you sue your provider... (Score:4)
Exactly. This is hilarious and I bet there's more than a little "Fine, fuck you - watch this" from PG&E on this. People are so stupid, it's like the morons who blame the oil companies for global warming. Listen, motherfucker, you'd be living like a 19th century pauper without the industrial/oil age. We are all to blame for global warming, trying to skapegoat the people who sold us the shit we were desperate to buy is fucking pathetic.
Same with power - shit happens, there will be fires caused by the power you demand. Don't like it then agree to pay a shitload more to improve your infrastructure or shut the fuck up about it and deal with the natural consequences. Suing PG&E seems like the least wise thing to do about it, it solves nothing and will just raise rates.
Re:When you sue your provider... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:When you sue your provider... (Score:5, Funny)
If they don't pay them that sort of money, how will they be able to recruit and keep individuals brave enough to turn the power off instead of doing costly preventative maintenance?
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Nobody is surprised, and now they will be sued again, but for a different reason. Hopefully they'll be driven out of business and be replaced by a public utility answerable to taxpayers rather than shareholders.
And who can't be sued when they cause a wildfire.
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Note that when a public utility fails in their duties and is then sued, the taxpayers end up footing the bill.
Re:When you sue your provider... (Score:5, Interesting)
Negligent is relative. People cost money. Equipment costs money. Brush doesn't clear itself and modern equipment doesn't spring anew from the soil. Revenue to pay for those things comes from electricity rates and the California Public Utility Commission approves (or denies) electricity rate increases.
Most people don't understand that when you allow a monopoly to provide a service, you need to have both an escape plan and an ongoing effort to keep your monopoly financially healthy. The escape plan ONLY works when the monopoly is healthy, but you want to go in a different direction. You can't plan for sudden collapse. To prevent that sudden collapse, you need to keep your monopoly healthy.
California hasn't been managing that balance properly. They've kept rates lower than necessary for PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E to meet their responsibilities in maintaining their infrastructure and clearing brush. As such, a couple failures resulted in catastrophic losses which put multiple monopolies at the verge of collapse.
What would California have done had PG&E actually gone bankrupt? I know the company doesn't just stop doing business, but do you think all those engineers and electricians are going to stick around waiting to get laid off? For their pension investments to get dumped? No, they're going to start shopping around. And THAT'S when the shit hits the fan. Suddenly, PG&E wouldn't have the people to do what work they're doing NOW let alone all the work they SHOULD be doing.
You have to keep your service providers healthy. Regulate them. Keep them on a leash. But also make sure they can afford to meet your demands.
What happens when you turn the power back on? (Score:2)
Maybe you didn't have the initial spark events, but perhaps you get new ones when you turn it back on if there are any downed lines, or a tree dangling from the wires...
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Maybe you didn't have the initial spark events, but perhaps you get new ones when you turn it back on if there are any downed lines, or a tree dangling from the wires...
Which is why they said after the event, power would not be restored until the system had been inspected.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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I have mine... http://www.westinghousenuclear... [westinghousenuclear.com]
Learn more about how you can partner with Westinghouse on eVinci Micro Reactor. Contact Kris Paserba, Marketing manager, at 412-374-4971.
That's code for "We've got bupkiss. Absolutely nothing but this webpage. Pay us and we'll try to design something, but it will cost you hundreds of millions of dollars and probably won't work the first time."
Much as blindseer might like for such a reactor to exist, it doesn't, and the likelihood that it will come from bankrupt Westinghouse is zero.
The fission reactor industry needs its own version of SpaceX, and for much the same reasons the launch industry needed SpaceX. So the question is, who is the T
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My area is affected (Score:2)
And it's a beautiful, nothingburger day here regarding wind + temp. Really sucks to think of how much money is being lost by local businesses, food from peoples refrigerators going bad, medically sensitive and elderly people who need electricity for basic comfort and livelihood not having what they need. I think the wind is worse than in other areas but I can't imagine it's bad enough to down power lines. Oh well, I'm not a multi-billion dollar power company so I don't have the authority (or insight to the
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Customers and people (Score:2)
The story states > 800K "customers" - that is probably well over a million people. Saw that UC Santa Cruz is also canceling classes too.
California is fast becoming the new Venezuela.
Voluntarily? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah mate. This is payback for the lawsuits against them.
Underground Wires (Score:2)
Time to chainsaw up boys! (Score:3, Interesting)
With the power out, now would be an excellent time to go around cutting down all those hazard trees that are threatening the power lines in the first place.
Question is, do Californians have the temerity and balls of steel [youtube.com] required to do the needful?
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No, they don't. They won't cut or do controlled burns. The environmentalists won't let them. You can't even properly maintain your own property in many cases.
So, California will burn again this fall.
Re:Time to chainsaw up boys! (Score:5, Informative)
PG&E and tree contractors have been crawling all over California this year. And the fire inspectors gave me multiple notices to cut back the trees and grass on my rural property. California does require property owners to cut back brush and PG&E is required by law to clear fire hazards and provide clear emergency routes for fire and utility trucks.
That idea that California is sitting on our collective thumbs because of misguided environmentalism is horseshit leaking from your brain.
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It's the story that's being told, and the anti-green people eat it up like it was true. I was getting a ride from someone from Mississippi, and she commented how she'd hate to live in California because then she wouldn't be allowed to hunt anymore. Craziest thing I ever heard, and completely false.
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Yes, there is that, but there are plenty of groups suing over those policies and actively slowing the activities down. A cursory search on the Internet reveals as much:
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2... [eastbaytimes.com]
https://www.sacbee.com/latest-... [sacbee.com]
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/... [pressdemocrat.com]
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nobody's saying they've actually caught up on their inspections, just that they're working on it.
Re:So glad (Score:4, Interesting)
I have solar panels. They do no good when the power is out because they are grid-tied. The previous owners of my house made the right call in getting grid-tied solar to drive their power bills down. They never guessed that PG&E would become unreliable and shut the power off for potentially days at a time.
Off grid systems require a large battery bank, which takes up quite a bit of space, wears out, and must be replaced. I'll be looking to upgrade my grid-tied to a hybrid system once I can fund the upgrade. Until then the gasoline generator will be my only source of power a few days a year.
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Off grid systems require a large battery bank,
Only if you expect power at night. They only require an inverter with islanding support, otherwise. And you could hook up your genset to autostart when the inverter couldn't handle the load.
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The solar panels don't help in this case unless you've got enough battery backup to go "off grid".
Re:Let's admit it. (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean PG&E is looking like a failed Corporation operating purely on inertia from their past.
FTFY
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Not from California, so I don't follow this too closely. Are you saying that PG&E would have been able to make their lines safe enough to remove the risk of getting sued in case they start a fire if CPUC hadn't stopped them? My impression was that this was just a CYA move by PG&E since they were sued from last year's fires.
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CPUC set up the rules, and when they backfired - PG&E was blamed,
Zero of the fires PG&E has started by skipping tree maintenance involved trees the CPUC won't let PG&E cut.
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Making the lines as "safe as possible" (which is what those who don't have to actually do the work, pay for it, or understand basic economics usually want of every business but their own Etsy offerings which they rarely send to a lab for full analysis of toxins before selling - odd that) would necessitate undergrounding tens of thousands of miles of distribution and transmission lines which would cost many tens of billions of dollars and, as these newly undergrounded lines begin to fail in 30 to 40 years, i
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Well, to be fair PG&E was complacently negligent, and slow on maintenance. They could have done a lot better, and they should have when the climate started changing and trees started dying.
That said, if they'd tried to do advance preparation they've have been in trouble for wasting money. Climate change deniers would have objected to paying for changes needed because the climate had changed, even though it had already changed enough to change the risk factors considerably.
IMNSOH opinion, PG&E is t
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On the other hand, the CPUC shirks their authority when it comes to regulating rates.
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They did. They CAN'T legally remove trees or brush in many areas. They CAN'T dig to bury transmission lines like sane states do.
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They CAN remove the trees and brush and they can bury transmissions lines. PG&E doesn't want to spend the money on it though, they weren't even willing to spend the money maintaining the infrastructure they already own. The was a long period of time that the CPUC wasn't being sufficiently rigorous with its oversight so they should accept some blame as well.
Re:Let's admit it. (Score:5, Informative)
That is a lie. Or perhaps you're just misinformed.
PG&E buried the power lines to Pt. Reyes seashore though forests decades ago.
What's going on is that conditions have changed, and that's causing forests that used to be healthy to start dying. Some of it's weather, but more is climate. E,g, pine beetles are now living where they previously couldn't survive the winter, and are killing trees that used to be safe from them. I think there's also something about the gypsy moth spreading into new areas. A dry year or two isn't a real problem, and even seven are survivable by a healthy tree. When it gets infested by insects that it's not adapted to, that's a whole different story.
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They did. Environmentalists won't let them.
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Just tired of the gigantic sucking sound. Everything you say is wrong or irrelevant. Are you getting paid for this shit or is being wrong all the time just a hobby?
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True, but I don't think California's failure is limited to PG&E.
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Yup, PG&E is badly managed essentially, it's entirely profit driven and so safety inspections and measure were deferred. Economic Darwinism says that they should be allowed to fail now that they have massive lawsuits looming. This is absolutely NOT a thing about California politics, it's about poorly mantained privately owned power infrastructure and what is essentially an arid climate with plenty of droughts.
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CA is looking more and more like a failed State operating purely on inertia from the past.
This privatization experiment is a failure. Reaganomics doesn't work. Time for California to go back to good old reliable socialism.
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They could do what Europe has done in the early 1980s already: Put the damn wires underground.
Seriously, every time I am in Cali, it feels like getting back to the 1970s. Or some third world country.
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They could do what Europe has done in the early 1980s already: Put the damn wires underground.
Can you even begin to imagine the lawsuits and protests if the digging equipment showed up to do this through swathes of CA countryside? They're prevented from even trimming the trees back and you want them to dig up the place? Hahahahahaha!
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They could do what Europe has done in the early 1980s already: Put the damn wires underground.
Only 41% of Europe's power lines are buried [bloomberg.com], and they are mostly directly buried instead of being buried in conduit, which doesn't work in earthquake country. Even though we have to use more expensive conduit burial, 18% of PG&E's distribution lines are buried. So it costs about twice as much, and they have about half as much buried.
TL;DR: All of Europe's lines aren't buried, and it's blatantly obvious why more of ours aren't.
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You're wrong. Not totally wrong, but wrong. And notice that this was within a metropolitan area.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.... [cbslocal.com]