
PG&E may cut power to 850k California customers this weekend due to fire risk - johnny313
https://www.pgecurrents.com/2019/10/25/forecasts-indicate-potential-for-historic-wind-event-this-weekend-approximately-850000-customers-notified-that-they-may-be-impacted-beginning-saturday-evening/
======
vanniv
Welcome to the third world country known as California, where we can't even
get reliable electric service.

Used to be the shining star of progress in the world, now this.

~~~
jvagner
I’m moving back to SF on Nov 1 for work. It’s bemusing to watch the fire,
electrical and BART outages this week. I’ve had CA related travel stays
cancelled twice for PG&E outages.

Looking for a place to stay/live, too.. if anyone here can help. Will be on
Embarcadero, but I like the east bay, and beyond.

~~~
malyk
Check out AC Transit Transbay Bus routes and live near one of those in
Alameda/Oakland/Berkeley.

Here in north oakland I have a 45 minute commute with a seat every day on the
bus.

~~~
jvagner
Yes. Back in the day, I commuted to SOMA from Lafayette -- had that worked out
quite nicely.

I'll be starting from Oakland, found a spot to land that will give me a little
time to work through market availabilities to find the right place.

But what you suggest is more or less what I'm aiming for, with Lafayette/WC as
a possible extension if I can keep the home-to-BART commute easy.

I do like to get up at 430am and BART early, which opens things up a bit.

------
tomohawk
PG&E was forced to spend an extra $1.5B to $4.5B per year on green energy,
which almost doubled the electric rates in CA.

[https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/pges_bankruptcy...](https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/pges_bankruptcy_renewable_energy_costs_at_800_of_market_rates.html)

Perhaps the money would have been better directed at upgrading transmission
lines, etc.

------
dmix
Are they under pressure from regulators or courts to never start another fire
again or something?

~~~
tssva
My guess is the ultimate end game is to get the state to pass a law shielding
them from liability if they do start another. "Shield us from liability and we
will stop the blackouts."

~~~
rndgermandude
The state should (i.e. probably will not) counter by throwing a few of their
execs in jail for their role in starting fires due to failure to maintain
their stuff aka gross negligence.

~~~
SamReidHughes
But the houses were built next to this tinderbox. They were going to burn
eventually.

~~~
hackeraccount
That. Is that really case? I mean honestly. I really suspect that a large part
of the problem is the desire for people to have a house in the woods but I'm
unclear as to how you could quantify that suspicion. Or who has.

~~~
SamReidHughes
The fact that they burned is proof. As t -> infinity, the probability of a
wildfire approaches 1, even without electricity.

------
Animats
Yes, I know. I may get a power shutoff.

It's not for all of California. In Silicon Valley, it's mostly west of I-280,
although my own area, about 2 miles east of I-280 in San Mateo County, is on
warning status.

~~~
Rebelgecko
Unless I'm reading it wrong it looks like the "Power shutoff potential" is
elevated or higher for all of their CA territory

~~~
nostrademons
You're reading it wrong. Most of the denser urban areas are excluded,
including SF and most of urbanized Silicon Valley; the reporter tweeting this
sensationalized it.

Here's the actual map:

[https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=64ec74b4d4...](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=64ec74b4d46f43eab0cbd813fdc80f4f)

~~~
bsamuels
that map is a lot more damning from a visual perspective, even if it doesnt
capture that many people

------
NotHereNotThere
Ha! They are blocking users outside of the USA:

Block ID: GEO02 Block reason: Access from your Country was disabled by the
administrator.

------
SlowRobotAhead
Side note: I found it interesting to see the discussion from people who have
solar panels and learned that without a whole house battery the panels are
practically useless when the power is out.

I thought it was just worth noting as a time people think they have one thing,
and discover it’s something else entirely.

~~~
Filligree
That's surprising to me. The need for capacitance is common sense to anyone
with an understanding of electricity, which I would have assumed to include
people who install solar panels on their homes.

Has deployments gotten broad enough that not just (curious) early adopters
install them, now?

~~~
randyrand
Capacitance is not the word you’re looking for.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance)

You mean electrical storage.

~~~
Filligree
Capacitance is definitely the word I'm looking for. I'm thinking of the
spikiness of current draw in electronics, as an extreme example, and the way
we cope with that is precisely capacitors.

------
lsh123
PG&E: don't sue us or we will turn off power for you.

------
btmorex
Can we just get public utilities back? At least if a public utility is run
poorly, we can attempt to fix it via legislation.

PG&E sucks, doesn't care, and probably the people responsible are still making
bank.

~~~
jeffdavis
What exactly should they do differently? How should you run a power company in
a tinderbox?

~~~
oarabbus_
I'm kind of astounded that you're framing the question in this manner,
honestly. Perhaps you're simply unaware of the situation at hand.

>Six of the 10 most destructive fires in California history were started by
electrical equipment. PG&E’s equipment has sparked 19 major fires in 2017 and
2018. The utility was blamed for last year’s Camp Fire that destroyed the town
of Paradise and killed 86 people. SoCal Edison is under mounting scrutiny over
potential links to the start of the Saddleridge fire in Sylmar. Edison’s power
lines also started the 2017 Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties
that killed two people.

Maybe they can start by replacing old, faulty equipment that is causing
literally millions in damage and fatalities?

~~~
wtfisthis1
just FYI the tower that started this fire was recently inspected and repaired.
this it's not as simple as more maintenance when we have piss poor fire
prevention

------
johnny313
Explanation from PG&E: [https://www.pgecurrents.com/2019/10/25/forecasts-
indicate-po...](https://www.pgecurrents.com/2019/10/25/forecasts-indicate-
potential-for-historic-wind-event-this-weekend-approximately-850000-customers-
notified-that-they-may-be-impacted-beginning-saturday-evening/)

------
campfireveteran
Text at 10/25/2019 8:31 AM

    
    
        PG&E Safety Alert: Due to weather forecast, PG&E may turn off power in a portion of our service area. More info: pge.com/pspsupdates. Text UNENROLL to unsubscribe.
    

Text at 10/25/2019 7:27 PM (identical)

    
    
        PG&E Safety Alert: Due to weather forecast, PG&E may turn off power in a portion of our service area. More info: pge.com/pspsupdates. Text UNENROLL to unsubscribe.
    

There is a high wind advisory in effect from 10/25 8 PM to 10/26 10 PM.

Most likely, they will shut off the power sometime between now (9 pm) and 3
am. It seems they do it while people are asleep to minimize numbers of angry
customers calling in.

PS: I have the generator out, fueled and cords laid down ready to continue
runnig the refrigerator and Netflixing while Xfinity lasts the first 18-24
hours until they shutoff internet/phone (VOIP)/TV. We're lucky as we still
have Dish that we are about to get rid of and rebundle with Xfinity.

------
vermontdevil
Won't be surprised to see sales of batteries (PowerWall, etc) and solar to
tick up due to this.

~~~
leovander
We recently had a power outage at the 10 story building we are in. No idea how
long it was in the works, but a week later they installed a giant array of
Tesla of Tesla Powerpacks.

~~~
r00fus
was that an array[array[Tesla Powerpack]] or array[Tesla[Tesla[Powerpacks]]]

~~~
mensetmanusman
10^4 Powerpacks!

------
jammygit
> Block reason: Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator.

Canada is blocked?

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Czech Republic, too.

------
vinylkey
Hopefully this leads to the state getting good deal in the inevitable public
takeover.

~~~
mmanfrin
Honestly, I hope this leads to the state having cause to take it over with no
cost. Stakeholders need to bear the burden of the organizations abysmal
record.

~~~
jeffdavis
I'm not blaming all of these fires on PGE. The state is simply not resilient
to fire -- the smallest fires quickly become infernos.

They deserve some blame, of course. Clearly arson is wrong, and so is
negligence. But how negligent are they really being? It seems like the latest
fire was caused by a tower that was regularly inspected.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_But how negligent are they really being?_

PG&E has a history of astounding incompetence and negligence, so probably
very. PG&E blew up a San Bruno neighborhood because they were so lax about
record keeping. I just heard something blow up about half an hour ago (sounded
like a transformer). I still have power, but the last time this happened (a
month or so ago) PG&E cut power for nearly 20 hours before even bothering to
send anyone to investigate (overall I was without power for 22 hours).

 _It seems like the latest fire was caused by a tower that was regularly
inspected._

The easy answer is that this infrastructure should be underground so that it
can't cause these sorts of fires in the first place.

From reddit:

 _From OP 's article: "The utility says the transmission level outage on the
power line relayed and did not reclose." _

Which means:

 _From OP 's article: "The utility says the transmission level outage on the
power line relayed and did not reclose."

Unless I'm mistake, the "re-closing" refers to a line that becomes de-
energized somehow- the circuit is broken, or "opened". Sometimes this is
because a physical cable broke from wind or a tree branch, sometimes it's a
technical malfunction; so PG&E sends some juice through the (potentially
physically broken) line to see if the current returns, and attempts to restart
the line.

Basically, the re-closing sends live current through a line that may be
physically compromised, in order to see if it's not compromised and can be
turned back on simply. So, in this case, it seems likely that a) wind broke
one of PG&E's major transmission lines, causing it to fall onto the tinder-
like brush below the tower, and then PG&E sent juice through that broken line,
at least once (in the past the re-closers would make three attempts.)

PG&E apparently let one of their cables fall on dry brush, and then sent
sparks through it, possibly multiple times, starting the fire. _

This poster goes on to point out that Southern California utility companies
typically disable this behavior during fire season and other posters pointed
out that typically older reclosing mechanisms were just dumb relays that you
couldn't easily disable while newer infrastructure will be using SCADA devices
that you could easily disable.

~~~
wglb
>The easy answer is that this infrastructure should be underground so that it
can't cause these sorts of fires in the first place.

Is it feasible to put the very high voltage lines underground? I know it is
done for residential areas.

------
cagenut
My understanding is that they have already filed for Chapter 11. Also the
stock has fallen from 50 to 5.

Meaning, the "old" PG&E is already dead. We can beat said dead horse over exec
bonuses and tree trimming failures all we like, but its somewhat beside the
point. How to go forward?

Specifically, in Chapter 11 right now they're surely aggressively trying to
re-negotiate every financial thing they can touch. Another fire opening up
another lawsuit right now would almost instantly torpedo any deals in the
works.

Its a remarkably lose-lose situation.

------
cnst
Again?

BTW, I'd like to see how much they've spent retrofitting their website to
handle the load of the customers trying to find out the details of the outage
as it relates to their neighbourhood, and how soon after the start of the
cutoffs that their website will go down again.

Prior discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212135)

~~~
ummonk
How hard can it be to put it behind Cloudflare caching really?

~~~
cnst
If they use cookies and lots of user tracking, I'd estimate the big 4 bidding
to do it on a budget of just few dozen mils.

------
syntaxing
After moving to the west coast, I've learned that PG&E is suprisingly shitty
(and absurdly expensive). I actually had a blackout for over three hours in
SF. It actually forced me to do some blackout planning by buying some high
efficiency portable solar panels just in case.

~~~
inferiorhuman
In my thirty-odd year experience, PG&E is more reliable in San Francisco than
elsewhere in the Bay Area.

------
minimaxir
Important note: San Francisco seems to be getting a pass for the blackout.

~~~
daphneokeefe
SF is not at risk for grass fires and forest fires. It's a big city.

~~~
inferiorhuman
While true, PG&E is going to cut power to a lot of urban parts of the Bay Area
later today.

------
msandford
Sounds like they're not really a utility anymore.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I’m not defending them... but what are the chances that the state
mismanagement of forestry leading to an excess of fuel that WILL eventually
burn, and their hefty fines for the previous fire have made the power company
cautious to the point that delivering service is a dangerous business
prospective?

Is a utility forced to make decisions that could put the entire company at
risk? IDK. I’m asking.

~~~
onezerozeroone
[https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/california-
wildfir...](https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/california-wildfires-
trump-tweet-malibu-camp-fire-woolsey-hill-ventura-county-a8629801.html)

------
anilshanbhag
Background on why california has so many fires:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/climate/why-california-
fi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/climate/why-california-fires.html)

Answer: Santa Ana Winds + above ground power lines + fire suppression. From
the article:

It’s counterintuitive, but the United States’ history of suppressing wildfires
has actually made present-day wildfires worse.

“For the last century we fought fire, and we did pretty well at it across all
of the Western United States,” Dr. Williams said. “And every time we fought a
fire successfully, that means that a bunch of stuff that would have burned
didn’t burn. And so over the last hundred years we’ve had an accumulation of
plants in a lot of areas.

“And so in a lot of California now when fires start, those fires are burning
through places that have a lot more plants to burn than they would have if we
had been allowing fires to burn for the last hundred years.”

In recent years, the United States Forest Service has been trying to rectify
the previous practice through the use of prescribed or “controlled” burns.

~~~
hinkley
The distinction that may be lost on many people is that plants that were very
common in these areas were plants that could tolerate low to moderate
intensity fire. In some cases the plants are so adapted to fire that they only
reproduce after a fire. No fire, no new plants. Plants that aren't fire
resistant get substantial selective pressure against them after every fire,
while the fire 'loving' plants have reduced competition.

But if you block the fires for a long time, you get not just more fuel
building up, but more flammable plants building up. The whole process created
hotter fires, that can damage or kill even the resistant plants. There is no
phoenix to rise from those ashes.

Prescribed burns are done, in theory, when the fuel+heat+oxygen equation is
barely favorable enough to sustain a burn. This clears the fuel and maladapted
plants and leaving the rest more or less intact. But a sudden wind or a nearly
certain rainstorm that doesn't happen and you have a lot of explaining to do
to the public.

~~~
thaumaturgy
One point here where I readily criticize the state is that they have a very,
very narrow window during which prescribed burns are allowed to happen due to
air quality management rules. Those need to be relaxed and fixed like
yesterday; certainly the air quality impacts of out-of-control wildfires is
far worse than the air quality impacts of prescribed burns.
([https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article23048168...](https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article230481684.html))

------
nostrademons
Title is hyperbole. If you look at the maps most of the major urban areas are
excluded, notably all of SF and most of Silicon Valley:

[https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=64ec74b4d4...](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=64ec74b4d46f43eab0cbd813fdc80f4f)

The announcement is for 850K customers, while if it were really for all of
their CA territory it'd be tens of millions.

~~~
huydotnet
This comment should get more upvote. Thanks for the more accurate information.

Also, the page pointed you to this one
[https://psps.ss.pge.com/](https://psps.ss.pge.com/) to check if your address
is in the impact zone or not. Seems like it works this time.

------
throw03172019
Anyone know how much money they save by shutting off power for a large
majority of their customers?

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I would assume they aren’t billing for kW/hr when kilowatts aren’t being used.
So, they seem to be turning off their income as well as some costs. Their
expenses however still exist in the form of infrastructure, employees, etc.

I find it more likely they themselves are under contract to create, buy,
transfer, use, so many megawatts over so much time than the customer will have
to pay for service that was turned off.

~~~
cronix
> So, they seem to be turning off their income as well as some costs. Their
> expenses however still exist in the form of infrastructure, employees, etc.

Yes, but they're weighing that loss of revenue against potentially having to
pay out billions in damages if they cause another fire. It looks like the last
fire is going to cost them over $18 billion, since that's what they're trying
to cap it at last I saw.
[https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-09/pge-
looks-...](https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-09/pge-looks-to-cap-
wildfire-costs)

