PG&E's Radical Plan to Prevent Wildfires: Shut Down the Power Grid [WSJ-Paywall]

[Sgent]

Source: Wall Street Journal

PG&E Corp. PCG 1.39% can’t prevent its power lines from sparking the kinds of wildfires that have killed scores of Californians. So instead, it plans to pull the plug on a giant swath of the state’s population.

No U.S. utility has ever blacked out so many people on purpose. PG&E says it could knock out power to as much as an eighth of the state’s population for as long as five days when dangerously high winds arise. Communities likely to get shut off worry PG&E will put people in danger, especially the sick and elderly, and cause financial losses with slim hope of compensation.

In October, in a test run of sorts, PG&E for the first time cut power to several small communities over wildfire concerns, including the small Napa Valley town of Calistoga, for about two days. Emergency officials raced door-to-door to check on elderly residents, some of whom relied on electric medical devices. Grocers dumped spoiling inventory. Hotels lost business.

PG&E is “essentially shifting all of the burden, all of the losses onto everyone else,” said Dylan Feik, who was Calistoga city manager until earlier this month.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-es-radical-plan-to-prevent-wildfires-shut-down-the-power-grid-11556337671?mod=hp_lead_pos6

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I'll post another site if I see one.

Edited to add source:
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/692249102/millions-could-lose-power-under-pg-es-plan-to-prevent-wildfires

[droidamus2]

1. Just Stupid

Do these people realize the areas of Northern California that have been hardest hit also get some of the highest temperatures during fire season. The Redding/Paradise areas that were hit last summer can have literally weeks where it is over 105 every day and some over 110. You can't just turn off people's air conditioning and not expect to have bad results.

[Sgent]

5. Here's PG&E calculation

If we don't cut of electricity: 30B liability and 100 people die
If we do cut off electricity: Lost sales of 1-5 days, unknown # people die

It sucks but until they can guarantee that there isn't a fire hazard its the right math for them.

Honestly I think this is mostly a way to get the regulators or legislature to provide some sort of liability shield.

[wryter2000]

2. It sucks, for sure.

But I imagine the people of Paradise would rather have lost the contents of their freezers than their entire town.

All the power lines need to be put underground. It requires a huge infrastructure project that, frankly, is too big for the company alone to do. State government needs to step in. If we had a rational federal government, it would have to give a grant as well.

[Mopar151]

15. Underground power lines are not going to happen.

They have their own vulnerabilities - like lightning strikes! In the Northeast, we have wind conditions like this, and plenty of outages - it generally takes an ice storm to take down much of the grid.
BUT - It takes an aggressive approach to maintain "vegetation control". There are as many "Tree Service" trucks/crews as there are "electricInc" trucks. Anytime they arent' clearing storm damage, they are maintaing "right of way". The "foresters" who coordinate this are very proactive.
Unless PG&E execs have seen this approach succeed for themselves, and they find a PILE of money to handle the startup costs, It won't happen. Too bad, 'cuz we have plenty of Honduran coffee farmers who could use a couple years of work to tide 'em over....

[Maxheader]

3. The winds are causing trees to fall on the equipment and what?

Sparks? Explosive electrical discharges..?

We get outages from trees on power lines in kansaas all the time..no pasture or residential fires...
Do get fires started by idiots with cigarettes thrown out the window..lightning

[wryter2000]

6. In California in late summer and during fall

There hasn't been any rain for months. Normal for us. Everything is dry and waiting for the tiniest spark to go up in flames. In a few minutes, you have a raging fire.

[BamaRefugee]

8. Us Californians already know what we'll hear on TV in the fall...

"Massive wildfires are being fed by the huge amount of fuel that grew after torrential winter rains"....

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. Downed lines, from whatever source, can cause sparks.

In a very hot, very dry area, the lines cause instant fire.

another cause is stupidity....the massive and very fast moving 2017 Oregon fire was caused by teenagers who threw fireworks into the brush
on a hiking trail,.The fire was reported almost immediately by other hikers, but hot dry conditions let it spread to cover 50,000 acres and burn for 3 months.
Other causes:
Lightening
sparks from using a chain saw, which is why states can close an area to logging, chain saw use.
Campfires, esp. by people who just leave the area with out making sure all of the fire is totally out.

cigs used to be a major cause, back when a lot of people smoked.

Even hot car mufflers..

[Sgent]

20. Actually on the cigs

they implemented a change in the paper that prevents the cigarette from burning at a high temperature unless someone is actively huffing on it. Massively reduces the chance of house (and I assume forrest) fires.

[dixiegrrrrl]

22. I'll be darned.

did not know of that....thanks.

[BamaRefugee]

4. It's happening in Southern California already.

I live in a town just east of Pasadena, and a couple of months ago, when extremely high winds were expected, SoCalEdison just shut off the power to the entire area, several towns.
Modern life STOPS with no power, you can't watch tv for news on blackout, your phone can't be recharged, ATMs don't work, gas pumps don't work, stop lights are out at intersections,and on and on.
It was like there had been a big earthquake. Ironically the high winds did not really materialize, so it was all for nothing and took an entire day to get everybody back on the grid.
I go to Edison fairly often for work and was told by folks in the Legal Dept. that this was their new policy, due to MASSIVE lawsuits from power lines in high winds making sparks that allegedly started fires.

[More_Cowbell]

12. Yes, Southern California Edison kind of pioneered this

Some local news coverage of the Northern California fires last year mentioned that if power lines blow down, as opposed to being shut down deliberately, the system keeps sending power through as a test to see if the lines are really down. According to those news reports, that makes the fire danger worse. I couldn't quickly find a story about that, though (I remember that the coverage I saw about it was on TV news).

We have some hard choices ahead in California.

[Ramsey Barner]

7. Private profit, public risk

The environmental and health costs are mere externalities. The shareholders' interests Trump the public's.

[Mr.Bill]

9. They shut down power in some communities near me

and they did it with only 30 minutes notice.

[CaptainTruth]

10. I see sales of generators spiking. They're a must-have here on the FL coast.

[hunter]

18. That's trading one hazard for another.

There's always going to be people doing foolish things like refilling a generator when it's running and starting fires, transporting fuel in dangerous ways, putting generators too close or inside structures and poisoning people with carbon monoxide, improperly wiring them... etc.

And then, of course, the noise and air pollution.

[Sgent]

21. Some of that

but if I was going to be subject to an annual 1-5 day period w/o electricity I'd try to get a natural gas generator if they have gas lines, or propane if not.

[MyWorldIsBlue]

11. New home or neighborhood based power supplies

are needed to relieve the potential nightmare of power outages due to potential fire risks.
Neighborhood power packs with good storage potential could make sure that power is available to citizens with health risks that need electricity to function. These could be solar, wind or propane powered at need.
Most houses in rural and mountainous areas also usually have propane tanks on their property. Propane and power companies should have power generators attached to the propane lines to provided power.
Tesla power packs and inverters in homes, businesses and hospitals are necessary to allow for food storage, medical devices and gasoline pumps to be able to provide the barest minimum of services.
Since power companies want to limit their liability by cutting off power, they should also be legally obligated to provide other power sources to their customers.
If a camper or motor home can be made to live off the grid, a house should be the same way.

[rwsanders]

14. There are other ways to store solar or wind energy...

The most intriguing to me involved putting electric motors on loaded (heavy) rail cars. Times of high power output moves the train up the hill, times of high power demand, it is allowed to roll back down.
Combine this with a decentralized renewable power generation grid and household batteries and it might work.

[hunter]

19. My wife's parents live in a rural area that experiences these sorts of outages.

They get their water from a well.

They're very resourceful when there's no power, drawing water off the storage tank and carrying it into the house to flush the toilet and wash their hands with, and otherwise getting along with LED flashlights and camping lamps. Their stove is propane.

I think a solar water pump with battery backup would be a great convenience to them, so they'd still have working indoor plumbing whenever the power was out, but they don't like spending money on "technology" even if we'd be paying for it.

My great grandma was similar. She lived on the family ranch in a small two room cabin and that had no indoor plumbing. From childhood into her nineties she carried water into her house in a bucket to keep the reservoir of the kitchen wood stove filled.

When her grandson, my mom's cousin, bought an electric pump and plumbing for the kitchen of the ranch's "big house" from the Sears Catalog, my great grandma was convinced he was a spendthrift, that his wife was lazy, that he'd bankrupt the family, etc., etc...

Even with solar panels selling for a dollar a watt on Amazon, and even if I installed such a system myself, it still looks like a very significant expense to people living on "fixed incomes."

[ROB-ROX]

16. I liven the middle of California

I live 25 miles east of STOCKTON. PGE sends tree trimmers around every year to cut branches around power cables. I have oak trees which are trimmed 20 feet below the power lines. I think it is time for people to invest in solar or wind power. California's goal of renewable power is a good idea. I think if the state FINANCED this bold power idea then more people would support this "alternative" power......My county had a BIG fire from power lines in 2016. My county also "harvests" trees from several BIG federal tree preserves. One park is called "BIG TREES" which has big trees.......

[AllaN01Bear]

17. pg & e was told by a judge last year to cut power during high winds and winds happened before

the camp fire , but did not.
i consider that endangerment.
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2018/11/28/510260.htm
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pge-judge-wildfires-20190109-story.html
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/Could-murder-charges-be-brought-against-PG-E-13500945.php
if nikola tesla had his way , we would have wireless power distribution instead of this tangled mess of power lines .