PG&E Should Compensate Customers For Power Shutoffs, California Governor Says (cnn.com) 174
Pacific Gas & Electric should give rebates or credits to each of its nearly 800,000 customers affected by last week's power shutoffs, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, demanding that the utility "be held accountable." CNN reports: The utility intentionally cut power to almost 800,000 customers in Northern California last week in an effort to prevent downed utility lines and equipment from causing wildfires amid dry and windy conditions. Some customers were without power for days. Newsom is urging PG&E to give credits or rebates of $100 to each residential customer and $250 to small businesses as "some compensation for their hardships," a release from the governor's office said Monday. "Californians should not pay the price for decades of PG&E's greed and neglect," Newsom said in the release. "PG&E's mismanagement of the power shutoffs experienced last week was unacceptable."
PG&E CEO Bill Johnson responded by saying it had carried out the shutoffs in accordance with a plan that the California Public Utilities Commission had approved, under the commission's guidelines, and pointed to the fact that no wildfires were started. "While we recognize this was a hardship for millions of people throughout Northern and Central California, we made that decision to keep customers and communities safe," Johnson said in a statement. "That was the right decision." Californians blasted the utility for the move. While PG&E has been blamed for deadly wildfires in the past, critics said it should have invested in improving its infrastructure instead of just cutting off power for days.
PG&E CEO Bill Johnson responded by saying it had carried out the shutoffs in accordance with a plan that the California Public Utilities Commission had approved, under the commission's guidelines, and pointed to the fact that no wildfires were started. "While we recognize this was a hardship for millions of people throughout Northern and Central California, we made that decision to keep customers and communities safe," Johnson said in a statement. "That was the right decision." Californians blasted the utility for the move. While PG&E has been blamed for deadly wildfires in the past, critics said it should have invested in improving its infrastructure instead of just cutting off power for days.
First world countries (Score:5, Insightful)
First world countries bury anything but the highest voltage power lines. Buried power lines rarely cause wildfires.
What is the voltage of the power lines that were shut down? Why weren't they in the ground already?
Re:First world countries (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Why weren't they in the ground already?
Because proper maintenance and safety cost money and the stockholders don;t like reduced profits.
It's really rather simple.
Re:First world countries (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First world countries (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many Regulation! until it fails from an easily preventable problem, then we ask where is the regulations.
If private companies wants governments to cut down on regulations, they really need to amp up their game, to make sure they are providing the best service possible. Because PG&E is showing how greed is cutting in the ability to provide a necessary service to a wide area.
I have found in my career Regulations for the most part are only a small part of a companies budget. Normally for a large organization a team of 5 FTE is enough to make sure the regulations are met. However most of these companies don't want to spend that, then spend much more on litigation because they failed to follow regulations. Then they cry how bad all these rules are.
Re:First world countries (Score:4, Insightful)
Utilities are different. Their income is basically 100% based on regulation. A government authorizes a utility when it realizes it doesn't make sense for there to be more than one company providing a service (e.g. you only want one company stringing up power lines or burying water pipes everywhere). In exchange for the monopoly, the utility company agrees to oversight by a public utilities commission [wikipedia.org] which regulates prices (the company doesn't set the prices - it can request a price increase, but the PUC has to OK it) and sets a maximum profit margin the company can make. Unlike a private company or even a publicly traded company, the PUC typically has complete access to a utility company's accounting books.
PG&E is required by regulations to:
The problem here is with the first two. Clearly it costs too much (both in terms of equipment, manpower, and liability) to provide electricity to these rural communities. But the California PUC isn't allowing them to charge enough for electricity to recoup those costs. A regular company faced with these conditions would simply cut their losses and stop offering service to the area. But the state requires PG&E to provide service to these rural communities. So there's no mathematical way for the company to comply with all these requirements. They needed to come up with the extra money somehow, and they did it by skimping on tree trimming around power lines (since that's a cost cut which doesn't bite you until there's a fire). A lot of companies have simply left California altogether because of impossible legal requirements like this.
This isn't an us vs them situation. It's not The People vs The Power Company. The ones who ultimately pay the cost of providing electricity to these remote communities, liability for fires, and now liability for power outages, are other customers, not PG&E. PG&E is merely a pass-through entity, a black box which takes in customer payments at one end, and sends the money back out as power, new equipment and maintenance, payouts for liability settlements, and now payouts for power outages. If you want to mandate that a utility be legally responsible for new costs (liability for fires and power outages), then that must be coupled with an increase in the price you allow them to charge. You cannot legally require them to increase the money out, while at the same time refusing to allow them to increase the money in, and expect it to work. The money in has to be equal to or greater than the money out, or the company will simply go bankrupt. That math is inescapable, even if you are the largest legislative body in the 50 states.
California is degenerating (Score:3)
California will backslide into 3rd world status if they can't keep the lights on. Incompetent governance and regulation is the final cause of this debacle; 49 other states manage to make things work with hundreds of local utilities.
All those other utilities have 'greedy stockholders ' and are evil corporations and blah blah blah.... but the lights stay on.
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"Considering that PG&E is pretty much broke"
PG&E tried to pay out a dividend last quarter despite claiming to be "pretty much broke".
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Whether you like it or not CA has regulated themselves into a clusterfuck from hell
[citation needed]
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"or they will file Chapter 11"
PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection on January 29, 2019.
Re: First world countries (Score:2)
So what you're saying is they should have started fixing it decades ago because it takes decades of work to fix it.
Re:First world countries (Score:5, Insightful)
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PG&E negligently didn't bother to properly maintain their equipment, in favor of delivering higher profits to their shareholders. Seriously, how many other power companies have this problem? I've never before, in my life, heard of any other power company having to shut their grid down in a stiff breeze because their infrastructure is so fragile. Hell, when I lived in Florida, FP&L routinely managed to keep my power up and running in everything up to and including the occasional category 3 hurrica
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SCE, the power company for most of southern California that isn't covered by LA's DWP, also had shutdowns during this wind event. SCE's equipment has started fires over the last few years (see the 2017 Thomas fire), and may also be to blame for the fire that burned through the San Fernando Valley last week. Part of it is neglect, but the fact is that California is getting hotter and drier as the years go on. There is so much fuel laying on the ground that is bone dry, and when the Santa Ana winds pick up an
Re:First world countries (Score:5, Informative)
Much of the terrain is mountains or foothills and would cause exponentially higher install costs or be unfeasible due to being 100k+ volt lines. Then on the local level you have everyone chastizing PG&E for not maintaining the lines, but when it comes time for a linesman to cut back their favorite tree in the front yard to make clearance, they raise hell and don't allow it.
Re:First world countries (Score:4, Interesting)
Much of the terrain is mountains or foothills and would cause exponentially higher install costs or be unfeasible due to being 100k+ volt lines. Then on the local level you have everyone chastizing PG&E for not maintaining the lines, but when it comes time for a linesman to cut back their favorite tree in the front yard to make clearance, they raise hell and don't allow it.
We had this happen locally where I live. We tend to get really bad ice storms every few years. A while back a really bad one hit and took out power to about 1M homes. Every complained that the power company was being lax with their forestry work. But when they went to trim back trees along the streets everyone raised hell about it.
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100KV power lines should not be above anyone's front yeard, or back yard for that matter. 100KV lines should be at least 100ft away from any building, with the power utility having at least 30ft of right of way of each side of the cables. All vegetation in that right of way should be cleared
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Then on the local level you have everyone chastizing PG&E for not maintaining the lines, but when it comes time for a linesman to cut back their favorite tree in the front yard to make clearance, they raise hell and don't allow it.
Zero of the fires were started in areas where PG&E wasn't allowed to cut trees, and most challenges to cutting are resolved in favor of the utility.
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Because California is larger than many first world countries.
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And completes with many third world countries for top honours as well.
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Isn't it time for you to go watch "football"?
Might be hard to do if he lives in California and his power is still out.
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Very little power goes underground. (Score:2)
Burying cables is really expensive. And buried cables are much less efficient at transmitting power - with the cables that close to the ground, the capacitance of the cables is greater, and so are losses. In addition, cables in the air can radiate any resistive losses, cables in the ground cannot.
All this means is that, generally, only the low voltage supply within a modern community goes underground. And this is only because they went underground when the community is set up - once all the other services a
Re:Very little power goes underground. (Score:4, Insightful)
Burying cables is really expensive. And buried cables are much less efficient at transmitting power - with the cables that close to the ground, the capacitance of the cables is greater, and so are losses.
In addition, buried cables are struck by lightning. This is not just a overhead transmission line problem. I have a section of line in my office that was buried, and melted from a direct hit.
What this is, is the law of unintended consequences in action. Trying to prevent wildfires means some inconvenience, it just turns out to be more inconvenience than some folks thought.
We have a similar issue here in verdant Pennsylvania. Our problem is trees. The power companies try to keep up with trimming, but with all the rain we get, stuff grows quickly. And with 100 foot trees in many places, it would be massive forestry action. So in may area, power goes out frequently.
The solution is to get some personal power generation for the outages.
Re:Very little power goes underground. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, trees don't grow that much in the winter, so you have an entire season where there is barely any growth.
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I used to live in a third world "shithole" near the equator, and they keep up with cutting down trees around power lines just fine, even with a failing economy. So don't start crying about how much rain you get in Pennsylvania, which seems to be about half as much as where I'm talking about, even with a generous direct conversion from inches of snow to inches of rain. Also, trees don't grow that much in the winter, so you have an entire season where there is barely any growth.
Such anger issues - or are you just incapable of civility? Or more likely all of the trees around the houses have been cut down.
Well, if every tree in my neighrhood that could possibly fall over on a power line was cut down, we'd look like the cleared portions of the Brazilian rain forest. My Twin oaks in my front yard could fall on the power lines in the back yard right of way. That happens with trees over 100 feet tall. Ain't happening. We like our trees. So I have emergency power generation.
Now g
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In addition, buried cables are struck by lightning. This is not just a overhead transmission line problem. I have a section of line in my office that was buried, and melted from a direct hit.
Not to claim that that is not possible, but I've never heard of that, and I'm convinced that proper engineering can exclude that kind of event. Then again, in a place where switching off the power is considered an acceptable solution, social engineering may well be valued higher... You have my sympathy.
Remember, the portion of lightning that we see is going from the ground or struck surface to the cloud. It happens all the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The problem in California is not social engineering, or voting Democrat. The problem is the ecosystem.
Much of California is semi-desert, and increasingly so. Seasonal dry grass and sage, coupled with the Santa Ana winds, which are hot, dry, and very low humidity. Doesn't take much to cause fires. The length of the fire season has also increas
Re:Very little power goes underground. (Score:4, Informative)
All of those reasons have been dealt with by better cable construction techniques.
Source: We dump 500,000V straight from the solar plant nearby which I helped build. Full Transmission lines, 40 miles.
Protip: HVDC has far fewer problems with transmission vs HVAC.
Come back when you actually work in this industry.
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well lets click the link about the outtage, oh it says transmission lines, lets go to google ... hey google what's the typical voltage on a US transmission line? 345,000 volts oh ok, that's why you ignorant and lazy twatwaffle, shut the fuck up
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What is the voltage of the power lines that were shut down? Why weren't they in the ground already?
The shutdown consisted of transmission lines at 115 kV, down to distribution circuits at 12 kV. There are likely some 4 kV distribution systems as well. Naturally, the service transformers downstream of these go with it.
In addition to costs, electrical theory tells us that capacitance is a serious problem for high voltage insulated and shielded lines. A 345 kV transmission line, for example, would be limited to about 25 miles or so. I'm not an EE, but the short version is that you don' just put a system's
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First world countries bury anything but the highest voltage power lines
Yes, we should be doing that here, and PG&E has given out enough money in executive compensation and stock dividends to have paid for it by now. But it's worth mentioning that the EU only has buried about 41% of their power lines, and California has buried about 18%. But it costs us twice as much to do right because this is earthquake country, and there are places where it's just not feasible because the ground is too rocky.
Consequently, we have spent about as much as Europeans on burying lines (per met
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First world countries bury anything but the highest voltage power lines.
No. New projects bury anything but the highest voltage power lines. Every first word country in the world still have areas where power is delivered overhead. Burying retrospectively is what is technically called in the industry: "Insanely fucking expensive"
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The reasons on why not to, start at page 8.
I'm sure this will also be moderated to -1 troll in 10 minutes or less.
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Just because he predicted it would be?
It's actually informative.
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There is no reason that 25KV and under are not underground. Any reasonably developer country already has 35KV and under underground
Vicious circle (Score:4, Insightful)
I (purposefully) don't keep abreast of what all goes on in California, however I was under the impression that the fires last year were due to the dry conditions, coupled with high winds and the failure of some power equipment (due to the high winds if I remember correctly). Then California deemed that the power company would be financially responsible for the damage caused by those massive fires - is that correct? So essentially California is forcing the power companies to kill power during times of maximum fire risk, because of the liability California has burdened the power companies with - they really don't have any other choice if they don't want to be sued out of existence. So now, if California is requiring the power companies to give refunds during these outages, the power companies will have even less money to try and maintain their lines, and thus the fire risk will increase even more. That seems to fall under the category of "making things worse" doesn't it?
Or maybe I have that wrong?
Re:Vicious circle (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, you got it 100% correct.
The governor wants his cake and to eat it too. There is two ways to keep the lights on, ol'e residents of California. Either you pay exorbanate electric rates to cover the liability exposure from fires and other liabilities... OR You exempt the power company from liability and use state funds to pay civil judgements and pay exorbanate taxes for lower electric rates. Your choice.. Or, you can accept what the Electric company is doing by shutting down the power grid in dangerous places.
Truly this is a huge catch 22. Because no matter how you slice this, the economy of California is irreparably damaged either through excessive taxation, high electric rates or from the lack of electric power.
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California's policies have created these problems. I can see why Newsom, a proponent of those policies, would want it to be someone else's fault.
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California's policies have created these problems. I can see why Newsom, a proponent of those policies, would want it to be someone else's fault.
The majority of California's forests are [mis]managed by the federal government [ktvu.com], and PG&E has paid out over $4.5 billion in dividends [kqed.org] while neglecting maintenance.
Tell us again how it's all California's fault.
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Wrong I think. For a start the power company won't have "even less money" to spend on maintenance. The maintenance budget isn't related to profitability at all, it's set a the minimum level required to maximize profits.
That minimum level doesn't include safety equipment that will prevent fires in case of line damage. California is looking to adjust the equation and make safety equipment the most profitable option.
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Any "level" of spending on "anything" in the private sector has to be covered by actual money.
New safety equipment costs money....
Moving new "safety equipment" around CA costs money.
Ensuring all of CA gets the design work it needs costs
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You cannot "maximize profits" by reducing maintenance costs if "the maintenance budget isn't related to profitability at all," and you also cannot "maximize profits" when the profits are set in a regulatory cost of capital proceeding [ca.gov] and then the operations and maintenance charges are separat
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High demand meant that the power lines were overloaded, resistive heating in the wires together with hot weather heated them up, and they sagged until they made contact with the untrimmed vegetation below the towers. The sparks created fires.
Part of the solution is getting out there and trimming trees under your lines - that takes time and money - and upgrading your transmission lines - which takes a lot of time and a lot of money.
Something that is happening is distributed solar power, which supplements the
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My guess is California wants to take the business over so it is run by the state, but it is unlikely they will do a better job and will end up have tax payers paying for damages and upgrades anyways because it still won't make any profit.
My guess is that the state government doesn't know what it wants other than to avoid any blame for the problems with the electric grid.
If they take over PG&E then the state alone is responsible for any fires. They don't want that cost. If the power goes out because of a fire, or whatever, then it's the state that did it. They don't want that either.
All they want is someone else to blame. But it is the state utility commission that approved the power outage, and once it happened people complained. N
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It is PG&E that want to have their cake and eat it to. They want to not pay for maintenance of their infrastructure and also not pay for the consequences of not maintaining their infrastructure, yet still get paid for failing to provide service.
Re: Vicious circle (Score:2)
Don't forget that PG&E is a privately-owned public utility monopoly. All the bureaucracy of a government agency, plus all the short-sighted greed of capitalism. No wonder it works so well!
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Cant manage the forests due to green politics.
Have to turn the power off.
Cant turn the power off all summer...
So manage the power networks and forests... but green politics...
Back to having to turn the power off...
But people need power for cooling, work, production, education, food...
But the power is not good for the forests in summer.
Bring in real experts from around the USA to actually "design" a power gird that can work
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I (purposefully) don't keep abreast of what all goes on in California, however I was under the impression that the fires last year were due to the dry conditions, coupled with high winds and the failure of some power equipment (due to the high winds if I remember correctly). Then California deemed that the power company would be financially responsible for the damage caused by those massive fires - is that correct?
Sort of. The situation is complicated and there is enough blame to go around, but first you have to understand the setting. California has always been a land of frequent fires, and the natives formerly set fires every year [californiachaparral.org] to keep down the underbrush. This sometimes resulted in larger forest fires, which they simply let burn, because they didn't live in the forest. They lived in clear spaces. And the ones that did live in forest lived there seasonally, and they'd set the fires when they moved to another loc
Go solar (Score:4, Interesting)
Or rather, go off grid. PG&E is do expensive that if you run some A/C and have a slightly larger dwelling, it becomes much cheaper to go solar on the medium run.
There is a tiered system, and your costs can easily reach 40c/kWh. Compared to 12c/kWh national average that is too high. There are many causes contributing to this. For example, PG&E is a huge monopoly with little competition, they have to provide power to very remote villages at the same rate (subsidized by all other customers), and of course the high cost of infrastructure maintenance mentioned by others here.
If you have a moderately sized home, a solar installation would pay for itself in 7 to 10 years. You can pair this with a large enough battery, and a backup diesel generator for bad weather and go completely off the grid (or partially for these kind of circumstances, and only tap into the grid when necessary).
Since it is almost impossible to break free of PG&E monopoly, even after their bankruptcy, this might be a viable option.
why the power cuts? (Score:2)
it's important to keep in mind that they cut the power to avoid liability for their poorly maintained power lines, not as a consequence of the fire risk.
If they had adequately maintained their infrastructure, the power cuts would not be necessary. So don't let them blame the weather for this, they cheaped out on their infrastructure to save some money and so now they have to cut power to avoid getting sued into bankruptcy after the studies have found that their unmaintained lines are starting fires. (durin
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Cant make changes to a CA forest.
So its gets difficult. Costs go up.
Cant make power cost more.
Cant spend more on infrastructure as that would make power cost more...
Cant work around the forests as power has to use the grid.
CA puts more demands on forest protection, demands the power stays on, demands the power costs stay low...
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The shareholders and directors need to be assured that cutting corners on essential safety maintenance has a negative return - it's the only thing that will get them to start maintaining their lines.
You expect the shareholders to pay for this? That will work just once. After that the shares become so toxic that the utilities will have no investors and they just go out of business.
Then what? Everyone in California just shivers in the dark and cold?
If you want them to maintain their lines then they need to see a profit in it. What caused the outage was that even though the lines met all standards for maintenance the state still declared the utility liable. Because even properly maintained lines can
Slumming for votes? (Score:2, Troll)
Ah come on. When the courts where holding the electric company liable for the damage caused by the fires, you were on that bandwagon sir. Now you are asking for billions in compensation for the power getting shut off. Great, you are slumming for votes I see, trying to buy votes with other people's money..
The Electric company is a "for profit" enterprise and has it's rates controlled by the government. If you squeeze them too much, they will go bankrupt and then what happens to your power grid? Nothing
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PG&E tried to pay out a dividend last quarter rather than fix their infrastructure.
PG&E caused actual damage to the property of others and has failed to complete basic precautions to avoid further damage yet are literally reaping a profit from that.
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Yea, here it comes.. PG&E has money to burn so lets milk them for it, never mind who the shareholders are.. Try to think a bit more about what's happening here because the law of unintended consequences will bite you really hard if you are not thinking long term.
I got to ask, who controls the rate structure that PG&E gets to charge? Oh that's right, a government entity. Hmm, could it be that PG&E's profit margins are set by government regulations? I think so. Given the situation here, I'd be
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"PG&E has money to burn so lets milk them for it, never mind who the shareholders are."
No, PG&E is trying to externalize their costs.
" they are headed to bankruptcy court."
PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection on January 29, 2019.
"they won't be allowed to charge more to pay for their civil liabilities for the fires"
Why would they need to charge more if they are already generating a profit that they want to pay out in dividends?
Compensate for what? (Score:2)
Is electric service sold differently in CA? Here in PA I pay per actual usage. If I use zero electric then my bill is zero. How does CA expect PG&E to compensate people for a metered service they didn't use. Maybe I can get local gas stations to compensate me for not using their fuel?
CA is fucking crazy.
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"If I use zero electric then my bill is zero."
If you CHOSE to use zero electric, sure, but that has nothing to do with this situation.
Re:Compensate for what? (Score:4, Insightful)
What might they be compensated for?
All of this is something you'd expect during a natural disaster or in an impoverished country. These people had to put up with it because PG&E wasn't prepared for California weather in California.
Actually, the reason is a bit more subtle. Before recently, the minimum cost path was to simply let the lines fail and start fires. Now that there is a risk of actually sharing in the costs incurred for the fire, the new minimum cost path is to turn off the power. There is precedent that a utility can be held harmless for service outages due to weather or other natural causes, but this is really pushing that definition. If the state raises the cost for making this choice, then the new minimum cost path will likely be to improve the physical infrastructure to work properly in high winds.
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Whether it's water, gas, or electricity there has always been a minimum monthly service cost with a certain amount of kWh that you can use "for free".
And it's not unusual to have certain minimum service requirements where the utilities have to ensure a certain amount of availability per year.
Re: Compensate for what? (Score:2)
All of my charges in San Diego (SDGE) are proportional to the metered usage. So, it would appear that if my usage is 0, my fees will all be 0 as well.
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That is not actually true, at least not in most of the US. Look at your itemized monhtly bill. There are monthly charges that are not tied to usage.
Re: Compensate for what? (Score:2)
Here in CA (where this story is about) all fees are proportional to usage. At least they are on my bill.
There IS a minimum monthly fee, but I'd have to have my power out for about 27 days in a single month before that kicks in.
Quick fix (Score:2)
Just eminent domain the entire power infrastructure and sell the rights to the competing bidders. I don't know why governments decide to let these things happen. All it takes is a couple of whippings and industry will fall in line and become good actors.
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Not Just Electrical Infrastructure... (Score:2)
It's not just the state's electrical infrastructure that PG&E fails to maintain properly, it's the natural gas distribution system too.
The explosions and fire in San Bruno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion [wikipedia.org] in 2010 was directly caused by PG&E's failure to maintain their system properly. This disaster killed eight people and as a result PG&E is a convicted felon.
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Let us also not forget dumping of hexavalent chromium [wikipedia.org]. PG&E is a criminal conspiracy to defraud The People and the ringleaders don't care how many hundreds of people they slaughter along the way.
California: Just give us money! (Score:2)
Basically California's trying to just set things up so that no matter what happens, businesses are just fined, fined, fined and when in doubt, fined...
Re:US local interest only (Score:5, Insightful)
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Most of the companies based there would immediately move back to the United States, they wouldn't pay the outrageous taxes they would be assessed.
Why would they have to pay more than they pay now? They haven't left yet.
With no standing army, it would then be taken over by China or Mexico, depending on whatever agreement they came up with between them.
The USA would just sit there and watch it happen, right?
In this fantasy world in which it is possible for California to secede, the tax money we currently spend on national defense would be spent on... national defense, only the nation would be called California. And we would certainly have a defense agreement with the USA, because it wouldn't be in the USA's best interest to see California conquered by an adversary.
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California isn't very popular outside California.
Why does everyone move here, then? California isn't the most populous state in the nation by accident.
I suspect if the other 49 states took a vote California might well get the boot.
But then where would they ship all their homeless?
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I'm not sure your point. I'm not arguing that California would somehow manage to retain its current economic power without the rest of the US, any more than I'd argue that Germany or France could without the EU.
Many of the same people who think California could never make it without the US are ardent supporters of Brexit. Not the most intellectually consistent folks.
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"With no standing army"
We have our own standing army, it's called seriously territorial street gangs.
You think the Mexicans or Chinese want a gang war with the Crips and Bloods, let alone Vice Lords, Gangsta Disciples, Latin Kings, and more joining forces? You give all of the gangs in the state a reason to unite, and you'd have a force big enough to partially compete with the US military, and likely just as heavily armed.
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"With no standing army"
We have our own standing army, it's called seriously territorial street gangs.
You think the Mexicans or Chinese want a gang war with the Crips and Bloods, let alone Vice Lords, Gangsta Disciples, Latin Kings, and more joining forces? You give all of the gangs in the state a reason to unite, and you'd have a force big enough to partially compete with the US military, and likely just as heavily armed.
Plus california has a national guard right?
Re:US local interest only (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing you are forgetting is that the behavior of American corporations is exported world wide through trade deals. This is the problem with nationalists, they are ignorant and easily taken advantage of.
Re: US local interest only (Score:2)
Right, news about Silicon Valley has no relevance to computer nerds...
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More new tax and big gov in CA is passed on as a new design cost and tax to the world.
Should the world pay extra for a CA tax for energy use in CA?
This is your future (Score:2, Offtopic)
What you do not realize is that California was built by the U.S. as a testbed for practical effects of socialist ideology.
There are many places around the world leaning socialist as it were, so California is giving you a great heads-up as to what to prepare for in the probably not so distant future. Why not make use of other people's suffering?
Also there are lots of very interesting technical stories coming out of this purposeful dropping of service for a few days - like the fact that solar panel installat
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"Slashdot is becoming a local news site for US readers."
Judging by your UID you haven't been here long enough to know that this site was a US-centric fucking blog before it EVER became a tech journalism site, you moron.
Apparently the idiots modding you up forgot that, too.
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Slashdot is becoming a local news site for US readers.
A US origin site, visited mostly by people from the US, owned by a US based parent with servers in the US, and advertisers based in the US shows US centric stories?
Shall we call this US Gate? I mean Holy stating the fucking obvious batman!
Re: US local interest only (Score:4, Informative)
They made a movie about that in the 70s. California falls into the sea, and the only person who cares is some illegal immigrant who left some white girl to die by the roadside, then goes on to break some more laws.
Right, the laws of physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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] Probably. On the other hand, getting to work (to earn the money needed to pay for all that stuff) is pretty hard if your car won't work. And keeping a job when your car only works sometimes can be tricky too....
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Hospitals and other critical infrastructure usually have backup power, but you're obviously not smart enough to work in one of those industries.
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The outage wasn't uniform across California. If you looked at the maps you could see that they were spotty. Commuters in California do have this tendency to commute from cheaper areas around the cities (more likely to be affected) into the more downtown areas where businesses are located (less likely to be affected).
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I would think that people going for days without electricity have bigger problems then where they're going to charge their cars.
You mean like having an idiot for a governor?
Where does he think that the utility is going to get this money? It comes from the ratepayers one way or another. Every dollar they make comes from the people that buy the electricity, any changes to the rates means less money for repairs, such as wages for the people making the repairs. This will only raise rates for the people, or mean people will quit for better paying work.
Another idiot move here is that the utilities don't do anything unless the regulator
Biggest losers - fuel car owners. (Score:3)
...because fuel stations require power to pump, so when the power goes out, so do they. The lineups at the few stations to have arranged for backup power were very long.
In contrast, most people with electric cars charged them overnight, when cooler temperatures and lower demand allowed the power company to restore power. Some also purchased solar systems and household batteries, enjoyed their own power and so never noticed the power outage.
Re: Why don't they leave? (Score:2)
Yay for atomic power in a major earthquake zone! What could possibly go wrong??!
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Yay for atomic power in a major earthquake zone! What could possibly go wrong??!
You believe a modern nuclear power plant can't handle an earthquake? Earthquakes happen all the time, and nuclear power plants all over the world have managed them safely.
What could go wrong? Higher CO2 emissions and higher electricity rates.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
California's power sector emissions, meanwhile, are over twice as high today as they would have been had the state kept open and built planned nuclear plants. Had California spent an estimated $100 billion on nuclear instead of on wind and solar, it would have had enough energy to replace all fossil fuels in its in-state electricity mix.
California will have to turn to nuclear power sooner or later. We should hope this happens sooner than later.
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We didn't lose power here in SoCal with the latest Searles Valley earthquake.
I can tell you don't engineer and build things.
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To charge a car takes a lot of energy, and assuming the solar panels cover only the land for the charging station there won't be enough sun to last long before the batteries run down.
It would be most ironic if folks used diesel electricity generators to charge their electric cars.
Or, finding an energy source that is more reliable, of greater energy density, and hopefully not something that produces the CO2 and air pollution that they are trying to avoid with the electric cars.
Mini car nukes . . . ?
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Basing an argument on the premise of artificially limiting solar panel installations to the square footage of a traditional power plant is absurd.
Nice strawman, or a total miss on the premise. Elon Musk says he will put solar panels and batteries at the car charging stations to alleviate future problems of losing the grid. This kind of area is unlikely to provide the kind of energy required to charge cars that come. Especially in the case if people come because they cannot charge at home. The batteries can only be stacked so high, and the solar panels can only be so big, before reaching limits on the land the station is allowed to build on, and l