Welcome to the third world country known as California, where we can't even get reliable electric service.<p>Used to be the shining star of progress in the world, now this.
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.<p><a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/pges_bankruptcy_renewable_energy_costs_at_800_of_market_rates.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/pges_bankruptcy...</a><p>Perhaps the money would have been better directed at upgrading transmission lines, etc.
Yes, I know. I may get a power shutoff.<p>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.
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.<p>I thought it was just worth noting as a time people think they have one thing, and discover it’s something else entirely.
Can we just get public utilities back? At least if a public utility is run poorly, we can attempt to fix it via legislation.<p>PG&E sucks, doesn't care, and probably the people responsible are still making bank.
Text at 10/25/2019 8:31 AM<p><pre><code> 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.
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Text at 10/25/2019 7:27 PM (identical)<p><pre><code> 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.
</code></pre>
There is a high wind advisory in effect from 10/25 8 PM to 10/26 10 PM.<p>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.<p>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.
My understanding is that they have already filed for Chapter 11. Also the stock has fallen from 50 to 5.<p>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?<p>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.<p>Its a remarkably lose-lose situation.
Again?<p>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.<p>Prior discussion:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212135" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212135</a>
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.
Background on why california has so many fires:
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/climate/why-california-fires.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/climate/why-california-fi...</a><p>Answer: Santa Ana Winds + above ground power lines + fire suppression. From the article:<p>It’s counterintuitive, but the United States’ history of suppressing wildfires has actually made present-day wildfires worse.<p>“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.<p>“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.”<p>In recent years, the United States Forest Service has been trying to rectify the previous practice through the use of prescribed or “controlled” burns.
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:<p><a href="https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=64ec74b4d46f43eab0cbd813fdc80f4f" rel="nofollow">https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=64ec74b4d4...</a><p>The announcement is for 850K customers, while if it were really for all of their CA territory it'd be tens of millions.