General > General Technical Chat
Californians out of electricity cant get gasoline to generators!
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Cyberdragon:

--- Quote from: IanB on October 12, 2019, 08:42:54 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on October 12, 2019, 07:53:45 pm ---Caveat:  At the moment, I am not affected by the outages.  I suppose that could change.  We had a few short duration outages last year.  It was always the sagging lines crossing the street out in front of our house.  You could see where the wires went through the neighbor's trees.  Of course they were going to short out when the trees got wet and blown by the wind!

--- End quote ---

But electricity companies should be fined for this. They are supposed to survey their lines and cut back trees to maintain adequate clearance. There is no excuse for lack of maintenance.

--- End quote ---

Here on the east cost they come and chop the shit out of your trees and charge you for it since you didn't (couldn't afford to) trim them yourself/hire someone. >:(
floobydust:
Running a critical infrastructure into the ground for profit.
There are no laws or penalties for corrupt corporate ethics in the utility industry.
google, facebook, apple - power would not get cut to their offices.

Con Edison New York is similar with many blackouts, transformer and underground cable fires, outraged politicians etc. Con Ed wants an 8.6% rate hike and it's pretty easy to use outages for blackmail to squeeze more cash out of customers.
Marco:

--- Quote from: rstofer on October 12, 2019, 07:53:45 pm ---risk burning the state to the ground during these high wind events.  We tried burning it down last year and made pretty good progress.

--- End quote ---

You didn't even make a dent yet ... effective fire prevention is three quarters of a century old, that's a lot of extra fuel for forest fires. It's going to burn eventually and the higher it piles up and the lower the canopy gets the faster and more widespread it burns.

I suspect putting fire breaks around all infrastructure and stopping fire prevention almost entirely is the only real solution. There's too much surplus fuel to handle mechanically, it has to burn sometime.

PS. as for the rich people who want to live among the trees, let them pay for the privilege one way or another (I'd suggest putting a very wide firebreak deeper in the forest, football field wide, or just accepting your house will burn down eventually).
Yansi:

--- Quote from: Marco on October 12, 2019, 10:08:53 pm ---PS. as for the rich people who want to live among the trees, let them pay for the privilege one way or another (I'd suggest putting a very wide firebreak deeper in the forest, football field wide, or just accepting your house will burn down eventually).

--- End quote ---

Or just teach Americans to put the damn distribution wiring into the ground, like the developed central Europe does.
soldar:

--- Quote from: IanB on October 12, 2019, 08:42:54 pm --- But electricity companies should be fined for this. They are supposed to survey their lines and cut back trees to maintain adequate clearance. There is no excuse for lack of maintenance.
--- End quote ---

Utilities are regulated by the State. The people demand low energy prices, NYMBY, etc. Politicians running for election promise the impossible and get elected. Raising prices would backfire immediately while keeping low prices means delayed maintenance which will come back to bite you later... when some other politician is running.

PG&E had a net loss of some billion in 2018 so there's no way they could pay for all the needed improvements. But the people of California will continue to demand the impossible and politicians will continue to promise to deliver the impossible. That's democracy in action. The people want the impossible and they want it now.

The same thing is happening with pensions and other expenses like infrastructure maintenance and modernization.


--- Quote --- Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
-H.L. Mencken
--- End quote ---


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