
‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/business/pge-california-outage.html
======
dstroot
It will be interesting watching how all this plays out. As others have noted
the liability math has certainly changed. Enough to bankrupt one of the
largest utility companies in the country.

One the other hand this is _also_ a political statement. They are clearly
signaling to the politicians that they better shield them from further
liability or expect more of this behavior. Shut the power down when the wind
blows, after each earthquake until the lines can be checked, etc. My money is
the politicians fold. The stock rose 3% Friday.

~~~
luckydata
My money is they get taken over by the state. Privatizing a utility was always
a stupid move to begin with and they are finally proving it beyond any
reasonable doubt. It's time we get to fixing all the damage Regan did to this
country.

~~~
tryptophan
Private utilites work just fine in every other state. Maybe this just a
California being California issue again.

No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater...

~~~
danans
> Maybe this just a California being California issue again.

California is a high fire risk state regardless of whether the utility is
publicly owned or investor (aka privately) owned. The risk is on a level that
doesn't occur in many other states.

If the costs of fires are going to be socialized anyways (by immunizing
utility from the liability, hence putting the burden on the ratepayers), the
question of whether the utility should be publicly owned in order to reduce
the obligation to shareholders is a valid one.

Either that or PGE will have to dramatically increase it's expenditures on
maintenance to reduce the fire risk, which will have to come from
shareholders' and ratepayers' pockets (the latter of which is not permitted
under current PUC rules, IIUC).

~~~
BurningFrog
> _...or PGE will have to [...] which is not permitted under current PUC
> rules_

Sounds a lot like California being California to me...

~~~
Dylan16807
Your "[...]" skips over the option where they have smaller immediate profits
in exchange for securing the future of the company. Is that a bad option for
some reason?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
A company selling shares to raise capital is an alternative to other methods
of raising capital, like taking out a loan. Asking why they don't just make
smaller profits is like asking why they don't just pay a lower interest rate
on their loans. It presumes that someone exists who is willing to lend them
the money at the lower rate of return.

Companies have the option of shutting down operations and selling off their
assets. PG&E presumably has a fleet of trucks and equipment, land rights etc.,
which were paid for with investors' money. If their profits fall below the
level that could be achieved by selling off those assets and then investing
the money at the market rate of return, it becomes profitable for raiders to
come in and buy the company and do that with it, so the company has to stay
more profitable than that in order to prevent that from happening.

~~~
Dylan16807
> A company selling shares to raise capital is an alternative to other methods
> of raising capital, like taking out a loan.

Not selling shares. _Having smaller dividends_. That doesn't assume anyone is
willing to loan them money.

> If their profits fall below the level that could be achieved by selling off
> those assets and then investing the money at the market rate of return, it
> becomes profitable for raiders to come in and buy the company and do that
> with it, so the company has to stay more profitable than that in order to
> prevent that from happening.

Ugh. I'm not sure via what mechanism, exactly, but it should not be possible
for a monopoly power company to just dissolve and sell off the trucks for a
tiny quick profit.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Not selling shares. _Having smaller dividends_. That doesn't assume anyone
> is willing to loan them money.

They already sold the shares and used the money to buy trucks and stuff. The
dividends are effectively the interest on that money.

Suppose (made up numbers) that they have ten billion dollars in assets, but a
twelve billion dollar market cap because of the expectation that those assets
will be used to make future profits. Now you say "just make smaller profits"
which means their market cap falls to eight billion dollars because of the
expectation of smaller dividends.

Someone on Wall St then notices that they can make two billion dollars by
buying them for eight billion and selling their assets for ten.

> I'm not sure via what mechanism, exactly, but it should not be possible for
> a monopoly power company to just dissolve and sell off the trucks for a tiny
> quick profit.

The government always has the option to be the buyer itself, or find one that
wants to continue operating as a power company. But then it either has to
raise its own capital or bring about a regulatory environment that allows a
private company to meet the market rate of return and thereby raise a
sufficient amount of private capital.

~~~
Dylan16807
For a utility, "keep being a utility" needs to be above "larger profits" on
the list of core objectives, and shareholders need to accept that before
buying in.

Whether that's just by writing it down, or having 30 billion in penalties if
they stop delivering power, or by making dividends vest over 20 years...

------
zaroth
Judge William Alsup (remember him?) who is overseeing the PG&E case in San
Francisco said about shutoffs;

“The prudent thing to do when you’re uncertain is to turn the power off,” he
said. “When the public complains that everything in the refrigerator is bad
and the ice cream melted, then you could blame the judge. I’m willing to take
the heat.”

[1] - [https://www.kqed.org/news/11737336/judge-pge-paid-out-
stock-...](https://www.kqed.org/news/11737336/judge-pge-paid-out-stock-
dividends-instead-of-trimming-trees)

~~~
rectang
Alsup is my favorite jurist. He's 74; may he preside forever.

The above quote benefits from a little more context. Alsup's point is that
PG&E paid dividends while slashing the maintenance budget — and as a judge,
he's willing to step in and say "that's not right".

~~~
zaroth
He _also_ made that point.

But his point here is that if we’re willing to assign liability to PG&E for
damages from a brushfire sparked tomorrow... if in your mind PG&E is truly
_responsible_ for any resulting death or destruction if a tree falls on their
transmission lines during a time of critical fire risk and sparks a blaze....
then it is not only prudent, but it would be morally and economically
imperative to shut down the lines during those critical risk periods.

There are several competing theories of liability and responsibility. Under
strict liability, a fire happens, the root cause was an electrical spark, the
utility is liable. You can’t operate a grid across all of California during
55mph winds at the end of the hot dry summer under those terms, and not go
bankrupt.

From PG&E;

“California is one of the only states in the country in which courts have
applied inverse condemnation to events caused by utility equipment. This means
that if a utility’s equipment is found to have been a substantial cause of the
damage in an event such as a wildfire – even if the utility has followed
established inspection and safety rules – the utility may still be liable for
property damages and attorneys’ fees associated with that event.”

There are a lot of variables in how damaging a wildfire may be. What _sparked_
the fire is only one small variable in the chain of events. Forest management,
building zones encroaching on forested areas, presence of fire brakes,
disaster preparedness and response, emergency alerts all play a significant
role, and those are just the factors CA can directly control. The weather, the
climate is another matter.

“But for the spark” is a reductionist way to lay the blame for a multi-billion
dollar fire. CA wildfires _will_ burn every single year. The sparks are
_inevitable_. The amount of preventative maintenance that theoretically can be
done amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars.

It doesn’t serve CA’s common interest for electricity to cost $1/kWh. Risk
mitigation is a statistical analysis, not an absolute. At some point you’ve
invested enough that the risk is “mitigated” even if it isn’t “eliminated” and
we accept this type of risk mitigation everywhere in modern life, the
electrical grid should be no different.

How many people die driving on CA’s highways every year? How many could be
saved with $100 billion of safety improvements? Do you shut them down until
you can be _certain_ no one else will die due to a deficient design or,
perhaps, due to a gore point impact attenuator that hasn’t been reset?

A cursory look at PG&E financials shows that on ~$17b in revenue they spend
~$5b on supply and ~$7b on maintenance. They had been running $1-$1.5b
surpluses the last few years. I wonder looking at other utilities how those
ratios would stack up.

Would $1b more maintenance have prevented the Camp Fire? Entirely impossible
to say. We do know that the full maintenance list runs into the $10s if not
$100s of billions.

~~~
Aloha
While I think everyone agrees that PG&E has been somewhat negligent in
maintaining its network - as someone who works with utilities, I agree with
you - I think its absurd to try to bill all the costs of every fire to the
utility that may have sparked it - it's exceedingly irrational to do so.

PG&E has no control over the weather, winds, firefighting budgets, or forest
policy, yet it alone is now to be held in total responsibility for all fires
that originate with its equipment? thats absurd.

~~~
speedplane
> I think its absurd to try to bill all the costs of every fire to the utility
> that may have sparked it ... PG&E has no control over the weather, winds,
> firefighting budgets, or forest policy, yet it alone is now to be held in
> total responsibility for all fires that originate with its equipment? thats
> absurd.

There are two reasons why you're wrong.

First, PG&E can't control the weather but did have control over its
operations, e.g., how it maintained its equipment, how much it prepared for
problems, how it managed risk. It may be tricky to determine if it's truly at
fault, but it's equally tricky to determine that it's in the clear.

Second, a large utility is not like a private company. We cannot let a large
utility fail, and therefore they are more like a government organization than
a private company. When they mess up and hurt people, everyone needs to pitch
in and help, not just those that are affected, as everyone shares the benefits
and responsibilities of keeping them afloat.

~~~
closeparen
The law is strict liability, meaning it doesn't matter whether there was a
good-faith effort to prevent the problem or not.

~~~
speedplane
> The law is strict liability, meaning it doesn't matter whether there was a
> good-faith effort to prevent the problem or not.

I'm not advocating strict liability here. I'm arguing that when a large
company has a history of negligence that gave rise to similar incidents, the
burden should shift to them to prove they were not the cause of the accident.

------
cagenut
IMHO finding problems with how PG&E handled this will be much like looking
through your graphs and logs after an outage. When you go looking for trouble,
you find it, but most of what you see, despite being true and bad, is just
red-herrings and statistical noise. The real causal factors are systemic and
so deeply baked in that its very important we find scape goats lest we have to
come to grips with what a 2C future means to electrical distribution across a
vast sprawl spread through rapidly drying forest.

~~~
svaha1728
Completely agree. It is very unlikely that a utility will step in to fill
PG&E’s shoes. Infrastructure, generally speaking, is more expensive to
maintain than we realize.

------
heimatau
What I strongly believe is being overlooked here is _not_ the fact that their
'liability math' has changed but the fact that this is the result of regional
utility monopolies.

The entire energy sector are allowed to operate in these terrible ways because
they have local governments supporting their terrible business models.

Price of energy hasn't gone down because there is no actual competition.
Without these large government subsidies, there'd be little to no action to
"be green" Even though Nuclear is the greenest (taken every factor in and
equalizing the playing field). But I digress.

PG&E isn't the only problem. Atlanta had a blackout recently. NY had one. This
issue isn't isolated. It's central planning at it's worst.

~~~
bsder
And yet when you try deregulating it, you wind up with Enron.

In my opinion, electricity needs to now become a government function. The more
people install solar panels and batteries, the less profitable electricity is
going to be.

It's a death spiral eventually completely dominated by the fixed costs of
keeping the network connected and enough electricity production in reserve
rather than the variable costs of baseline consumption.

~~~
coredog64
The CA-Enron fiasco was not “deregulation”, it was “reregulation”. CA said
that utilities could not purchase power on the futures market, but had to buy
it on the spot market. Enron, by some strange coincidence, always had to take
plants off line during peak hours, leading to high spot prices.

There’s nothing deregulated about forbidding futures contracts.

------
romaaeterna
If you are trying to cut California's wildfire risk, increasing legal
liability of its electric utility is about the dumbest place to put your
leverage that anyone could imagine. California could turn its power grid off
entirely and only make a small dent in overall fire risk over time. All that
dry brush has to go away somehow, and nature has historically done it with
fires (no PG&E necessary).

Despite massive wealth, the California government's slide into 3rd-world
standards has been pretty fast.

~~~
rrss
If you are trying to reduce the risk of wildfires caused by PG&Es negligence,
increasing its legal liability is the best place to push.

~~~
romaaeterna
No, I'm afraid that you can't materially reduce the fires by preventing some
(small) number of ignitions. The problem is the dry brush buildup. Something
will spark it eventually.

Having someone to blame is fun politics, but it's not going to get California
out of the mess. It's not even a fire management problem. California covers a
region of the world that has been having decades or centuries-long drought
phases for millennia. The last few decades were built up during the good
times. It's getting dryer now, and there will be more fires throughout this
dry phase, however many years or decades it lasts.

~~~
rrss
I didn't say you could materially reduce fires, only the ones caused by PG&Es
negligence. There will still be fires, but maybe they won't be caused-in-fact
by lack of reasonable maintenance of power lines.

~~~
shortandsweet
Ok so? Wild fires keep happening. When will the state take responsibility for
what they own instead of trying to pawn it off on the utility?

------
qqqwerty
Just to provide some context, there was a pretty big fire in Southern
California[1] the same week as the PG&E blackouts. The humidity across CA was
really low, which is just as much as a factor as the wind. On one hand, the
blackouts were probably excessive, and possibly politically motivated. On the
other, no major wildfires occurred in PG&E territory, but a fairly large one
happened in LADWP territory[1]. PG&E is in tough spot, no one will know for
certain if the blackouts actually accomplished anything, but if a wildfire
occurs and they don't cut the power, then they hold the liability.

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/11/photos-saddleridge-
fi...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/11/photos-saddleridge-fire-
kills-2-displaces-100000/)

~~~
lugg
> nursing homes and other critical services scrambled to find backup power and
> even government agencies calling the company were put on hold for hours

I would say they accomplished a whole damn lot. People are going to be a
million times more prepared for the next one.

Nursing homes being without a power backup is an unnaceptable state of
affairs.

The amount of people that seemed utterly lost about what to do without power
is disturbing. People should be more prepared. Especially given last year's
events.

It's rediculous people are blaming PG&E for this. I think they're an awful
company but they made the right call here and seem to be acting amicably.

A short notice and smooth event was basically impossible given that even
government agencies don't know the right numbers to call.

------
sargram01
I used to think power outages we’re mainly a developing country problem, this
definitely changes my understanding of the tiers of maturity of countries.

~~~
sidlls
Many aspects of PG&E should bring to mind developing countries: corruption,
graft, incompetent management, etc. It's an embarrassing situation to be in,
and both PG&E and the state government are culpable.

~~~
inferiorhuman
So it's the state's fault that PG&E is corrupt? Please.

~~~
sidlls
No, they're independently corrupt, and have overlapping interests.

~~~
inferiorhuman
So how is the state culpable for PG&E's corrupt behavior?

------
marcyb5st
Honest question here: I'm from Italy and here we have problems with fires as
well. However, here power lines and district transformers are placed
underground except high voltage and ultra high voltage ones, but those are
above tree height and rely on much sturdier metal structures.

My understanding is that burying power lines is cheaper in the long run and
less prone to failures (trees falling, cars smashing the utility poles, ...).
Therefore, why can't this be done in the US and especially California? Or is
it already done for new developments? If no, is it because of regulations?

~~~
e40
I believe it's solely a cost issue, as California is very large.

------
simpsond
Public utilities should not be for profit companies, especially public listed
companies. They shouldn’t aim to maximize profits. If they were to instead
maximize utility, they may re-invest in infrastructure more heavily and put
power lines under ground. Maybe I am missing something and someone can offer a
counter argument.

~~~
rb808
You'll say that until the company is full of public service workers who dont
care and electricity costs 3x as much. Pretty much every developed country has
privatized electricity generation to keep prices down.

~~~
electic
This isn't accurate. In the Bay Area some cities have decided to run their own
public utilities instead of relying on PG&E.

For example, Santa Clara runs their own public utility[2]. The average
resident pays about 10.4 cents per KWh. That's about 30 percent less than
rates PG&E charges.

Also, their energy is greener and their infrastructure is better maintained.

The problem with for profit utilities is that they are incentivized to keep
things as lean as possible. They neglect maintenance of their infrastructure
and use that money for bonuses and dividends. You can see that played out here
[1].

[1] [https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-E-diverted-
safety-...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-E-diverted-safety-money-
for-profit-bonuses-2500175.php)

[2] [http://www.siliconvalleypower.com/](http://www.siliconvalleypower.com/)

~~~
roenxi
> The problem with for profit utilities is that they are incentivized to keep
> things as lean as possible. They neglect maintenance of their infrastructure
> and use that money for bonuses and dividends.

They aren't incentivised to be excessively lean. The incentive structure for
someone who has spent a fortune on expensive capital investment is to maintain
it.

There is no point incentive to build a vast system of poles and wires then
letting it degrade over time.

Anyway, it won't be capitalist incentives at work; it will be something in the
details of the regulations. In Australia, due to poor market regulations, we
have the opposite problem where our utilities spend far too much on grid
maintenance.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_There is no point incentive to build a vast system of poles and wires then
letting it degrade over time._

Sure there is: short-term profit.

~~~
roenxi
That isn't an incentive, that is just greed. And not actual "make the most
money" greed, but stupid greed where that is the choice that they would make
if they don't think at all and nobody points out the obvious to them.

Making a long-term investment to squeeze it for unsustainable short term
profits is genuinely stupid. There is no incentive to do that. They would make
more money milking the grid for long-term profits.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_Making a long-term investment to squeeze it for unsustainable short term
profits is genuinely stupid._

If you've got a better name for it I'm all ears. But PG&E has been neglecting
their infrastructure at least since the early 90s when their lackadaisical
approach to clearing brush led to the Sierra Fire in '94.

Keep in mind that PG&E's record keeping was so lax that they blew up a
neighborhood in San Bruno after increasing the pressure on a gas pipeline
without knowing if the line could support such pressure. Apparently PG&E also
got sued a couple years ago by shareholders alleging gross mismanagement and
demanding safety reforms. I'd say there's plenty of stupid and greed at PG&E
to go around.

~~~
roenxi
> If you've got a better name for it I'm all ears.

'Incompetence' would be the normal choice. And standard run-of-the mill
incompetence has nothing to do with profit motives or incentives.

You can get incompetence with any governance structure; it isn't related to
profit motives. If they are being sued by their own shareholders that is quite
solid evidence that it isn't capitalist incentives that are the problem.

------
hackeraccount
I'm genuinely confused over just how heavily regulated PG&E really is. Some
people are saying it's basically an unregulated monopoly that does whatever it
wants. That in the course of trying to make lots of money they screwed over
the state.

Other people are saying it's a heavily regulated utility. The state of
California is saying how much it can make and what it can do with the money it
makes. They point to how much it's invested in solar power. They'd also claim
the state didn't mandate work on power infrastructure maintenance - indeed it
made it harder to cut back trees. It made it harder for residence to clear
trees but still allowed them to build amidst a large amount of fuel. That the
state basically used PG&E as a cut out for it's own ends - i.e. we're not
raising taxes we're just allowing PG&E to raise rates and then mandating what
PG&E has to build out.

One of those two stories has to be wrong, correct?

~~~
generalpass
If PG&E were not heavily regulated, why wouldn't they have even just one
private competitor? I mean, how hard of a sell is it: knock on door and say,
"We're not PG&E." I'm pretty sure 60% of prospects would sign up right away.
I've lived 30+ years in California and everybody hates PG&E. I've never talked
to someone who had a different opinion.

~~~
inferiorhuman
_If PG &E were not heavily regulated, why wouldn't they have even just one
private competitor? I mean, how hard of a sell is it: knock on door and say,
"We're not PG&E." I'm pretty sure 60% of prospects would sign up right away.
I've lived 30+ years in California and everybody hates PG&E. I've never talked
to someone who had a different opinion. _

Why? Because PG&E has fought long and hard to keep their monopoly. They've
gone so far as to keep the Ayatollah of the Assembly on their payroll. Marin
got a very neutered version of Marin Clean Energy as a result of PG&E and San
Francisco still hasn't been able to sneak public power legislation past PG&E.

~~~
generalpass
It seems you may be misreading my comment or I am misreading yours. It is the
regulation that PG&E is paying for. That is how they keep the competition out.

------
blondie9x
Wildfires were prevented in the North of California where this occurred. The
South of California was not spared and the Saddleridge wildfire still rages. I
think yes more backup power and staffers are needed at community centers but
these black outs are an important way to save lives.

~~~
someonehere
Cal Fire investigators said they spoke with two different witnesses who said
they saw someone who may have started one of the fires. The other fire near
Redlands was started from a garbage truck dumping its load in an emergency to
put out a fire inside of its haul. Which fire are you referring to that
started from SoCal Edison?

------
clouddrover
Electric cars have the potential to act as a backup power supply for your home
to help mitigate power outages like these. The CCS and CHAdeMO standards are
working on vehicle-to-home (and vehicle-to-grid) protocols:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x78XGElU2I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x78XGElU2I0)

[https://www.chademo.com/technology/v2x/](https://www.chademo.com/technology/v2x/)

[https://insideevs.com/news/342354/charin-ccs-combo-
standard-...](https://insideevs.com/news/342354/charin-ccs-combo-standard-to-
offer-v2g-by-2025/)

~~~
LeoPanthera
My EV (a leaf) has a built in DC-DC converter to power the 12 volt system and
charge the 12 volt battery - it will supply a kilowatt when the car is turned
on.

In previous blackouts I have connected a kilowatt inverter to the car and used
it to power stuff. It worked great and it was very useful.

------
hw
This was a haphazard, poorly planned outage. Similarly to planning for an
outage on a website used by millions of people and businesses, communication,
status updates and minimizing disruptions are key. I'm surprised no one at PGE
thought about making sure their site could handle the extra traffic. Not
staffing community resource centers is akin to telling people to check Twitter
for information but not bringing in anyone to field DMs from customers.

California pays a much higher $ per kwh of electricity compared to many other
states in the US, and I'm guessing 'you get what you pay for' doesn't apply
when in this case.

------
hackbinary
Natural monopolies should not be private.

~~~
hackeraccount
At some point - and I suspect PG&E has reached this point but I'm not sure - a
regulated monopoly is the same thing as a public utility.

If you tell someone what they have to do, what they can charge and how much
they can make then what's the distinction but that entity and part of the
government?

~~~
mjevans
Budgets; and this is the argument, the natural monopoly parts, like the roads
we drive on, should be owned by the people, not a company.

------
solotronics
Is there not a technical solution to this? A side effect here will be people
creating their own power systems. I have already had my power go off 4 times
this year and now I am looking at solar panels, batteries, and a natural gas
generator.

~~~
skybrian
The solution is maintaining residential power lines well enough so they can't
start fires. (But how much are people willing to pay for that?)

Or, yes, buying a generator. Looks like Home Depot has a good selection.

~~~
solotronics
So I did a bunch of research and the best generators of these types are the
Winco and Cummins ones. The ones they sell at Home Depot are not meant to run
more than a couple hours at a time.

If you want a generator that will run for weeks on its own you need to look
for "off grid".

------
GWSchulz
For years and years and years, there was a scrappy little newspaper in San
Francisco that warned (very much obnoxiously at times) about PG&E’s continuing
private control of energy and power in the Bay Area and Northern California.

That newspaper no longer exists. During my three years as a reporter there, I
carefully avoided ever having to write PG&E stories, which were a near-fetish
for the publisher, Bruce Brugmann.

But maybe he was right about giving public ownership a real shot in the Bay
Area, even if he was annoying as shit about it at times. (It should also be
noted that he was from a heartland state where public power is common.)

~~~
generalpass
Why does it seem like there are popularly presented the following two options:

1\. A single government-mandated monopoly provider everywhere with no
competition.

2\. Government provider.

------
tsomctl
> The company, which is facing $30 billion in liabilities from recent
> wildfires started by its equipment

Conspiracy theory (which is shared by everyone I've talked to): PG&E turned
off the power to make a political statement that they shouldn't be liable for
wildfires.

Edit: by "not be liable", I mean passing legislation to achieve this.

~~~
cagenut
That is pointlessly over-dramatizing a clear and obvious fact. They went from
risk tolerant to risk averse because the liability math changed. There's no
conspiracy, its the simple difference between "not my problem" and "cover your
ass".

~~~
ceejayoz
The liability math didn't change.

Decades of pretending that liability didn't exist just caught up with them.

~~~
pascalxus
the math changed because they were sued for something that should've been
acceptable risk. So now it's unacceptable risk. What goes around, comes
around.

~~~
joe_the_user
They didn't wind-up liable because arcing electricity just happens to
sometimes 'cause fire.

They wound-up liable because they gutted their tree-trimming operations and
paid the difference in dividends. That is something that definitely makes you
liable regardless of whether the original thing is an acceptable risk.

Now, it's hard to if this is indeed a "bail us out or we'll shut down at every
strong breeze" statement or whether they are legitimately worried the lines
they neglected actually now ignite at every strong breeze.

Either way, I think the average Californian justifiably hates this company.
But it seems unlikely things will change.

~~~
makomk
The Camp Fire, which is the one that looks likely to bankrupt them, probably
wasn't even caused by inadequate tree trimming. Apparently one of their power
lines had a weak, defective fixing which failed due to the same high winds
that caused the fire to spread so rapidly and uncontrollably.

~~~
joe_the_user
Uh, it seems obvious that the question is not tree trimming in particular but
maintenance generally. The gas explosion the killed thirty people might
hypothetically have been just an accident but logic, rules-of-thumb and actual
evidence available all pointed to it being a problem of inadequate PG&E
maintenance. Assuming the cause was a defective power line, maybe it was
totally an accident but it seems unlikely in the scheme of things - most
likely it was part of their pattern of negligence.

Edit: Note, the Camp Fire has bankrupted them. They are bankrupt, in
bankruptcy proceedings. They are also on criminal (not civil) probation. None
of this stopped their stock from rising after the recent events - where a more
naive me might expect their stock holders' money would be forfeit once they
reached the level of bankruptcy (unsecured debtors and all).

------
cryptozeus
I came to first world country from 3rd world country only to end up in same
blackout situations.

------
Simulacra
"as climate change makes wildfires more frequent and intense." That's reporter
bias. I'm not saying it's right or wrong but to throw that in there is clear
bias.

~~~
rhegart
Nytimes does this bias every article post 2017

------
williamDafoe
PG&E is the worst power company in the western hemisphere. First in 2000 they
had massive power outages due to early deregulation which led to the
impeachment of governor Gray Davis. In 2017 the company killed thousands of
customers and billions in property because of fires they caused! Now in 2019
they are doing massive shutdowns and directly killing their customers on life
support! We have the highest prices (.22c a kilowatt hour) despite having lots
of of green power generators who get half that rate based on a crooked
"wholesale" reimbursement scheme! California could do better with any 3rd
world power company, PG&E is always horribly run ..

~~~
reaperducer
PG&E is a terrible company, but spewing a bunch of nonsense hyperbole isn't
helpful.

Someone else pointed out that your statements about deaths are false. So I'll
point out that California's electricity isn't 22¢/kWh. The California average
is 16.06¢.

[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/)

States that have it worse:

    
    
      Hawaii: 26.05¢
      Alaska: 19.10¢
      Connecticut: 17.55¢
      Massachusetts: 17.12¢
      Rhode Island: 16.42¢
      New Hampshire: 16.17¢

~~~
jjav
> California average is 16.06¢

Not sure how they come up with such a number, but California is large and has
many electricity providers.

But for PG&E in the Bay Area, let me quote from my PG&E electric bill here in
hand:

Daytime: $0.53476 (delivery) + $0.25069 (generation) = $0.785/kWh

Part-peak: $0.28917 (delivery) + $0.10643 (generation) = $0.396/kWh

Night: $0.13578 (delivery) + $0.03968 (generation) = $0.175/kWh

The cheapest rate is 17.5 cents per kWh, that is late at night (currently
after 11pm, soon to be changed to be after midnight).

Daytime rate is 78.5 cents per kWh! This is PG&E in the Bay Area.

~~~
mrep
Oof, that's awful. I just got a bill recently here in seattle and got a $10.67
base charge and an additional $0.0902 charge per KWH for a total price of
$48.50 dollars for 415 KWHs used in a 68 day period.

------
bobcostas55
Is there no technical solution here? They were fined 30 billion, surely that
could pay for some sort of fancy lower-risk transmission mechanism?

~~~
dredmorbius
Very roughly, transmission line costs range from $2,500 - $16,000/mi.

[https://sites.utexas.edu/energyinstitute/files/2016/11/UTAus...](https://sites.utexas.edu/energyinstitute/files/2016/11/UTAustin_FCe_TransmissionCosts_2016.pdf)

PG&E has 106,000 miles of total distribution:

[https://www.pge.com/en_US/about-pge/company-
information/prof...](https://www.pge.com/en_US/about-pge/company-
information/profile/profile.page)

Which works out to less than $2 billion, so the $30 billion would account for
at least an _alternate_ (if not necessarily safer) system.

~~~
Pinckney
The numbers you've quoted, from page 7, are per MW mile, not per mile.

~~~
dredmorbius
Thanks, that was a really quick check. And yeah, that would increase the costs
markedly.

(My initial thought on posting was that $30 billion would _not_ be enough,
though the first read of actual per-mile costs, neglecting per MW-mile, seemed
to suggest otherwise.)

~~~
Pinckney
This PDF from Wisconsin puts the cost at $280k-390k/mi depending on the
voltage of the line. They put the cost of underground transmission lines at
$1.5M-2M/mi for the same voltages.

[https://psc.wi.gov/Documents/Brochures/Under%20Ground%20Tran...](https://psc.wi.gov/Documents/Brochures/Under%20Ground%20Transmission.pdf)

------
Cannibusted
PG&E failed to keep the grid energized.

They have abdicated their responsibility.

They even blame it on climate change, which shows they are controlled by left-
wing political zealots.

Glad I'm not in California!

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads further into political, regional, or ideological
flamewar.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
Overtonwindow
A good article but the reporter is throwing in a lot of things that shows
their bias

------
gdubs
Controversial, I realize, but perhaps we should talk seriously about
nationalizing the grid. Hold a competition between the best engineering
schools. Design a grid that can distribute zero carbon energy, and
intelligently cut power in emergency situations.

------
pascalxus
The wildfire situation in CA was not helped by all those houses so darn close
to each other.

~~~
catalogia
> _[In Paradise, California] There were 12,981 housing units at an average
> density of 708.5 per square mile (273.5 /km²)_

That doesn't seem so unusually dense to me. And the pictures I saw online of
the burned houses all have the foundations reasonably far away from each
other. These were houses with yards around them, not row homes put right up
next to each other.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_California#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_California#/media/File:Paradise_after_the_Camp_Fire,_July_2019-7428.jpg)

------
Simulacra
"as climate change makes wildfires more frequent and intense."

That's reporter bias. I'm not saying it's right or wrong but to throw that in
there is clear bias.

~~~
adrianN
NASA agrees with the reporter:
[https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/wildfires.html](https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/wildfires.html)

