https://ktla.com/2019/10/11/norcal-man-on-oxygen-died-minutes-after-power-shutdown-officials/
We are traveling so missed all of this but we live south of San Francisco and, while some of our county lost power, we did not. It does, indeed, sound like a mess and the issues with the medically frail/dependent on electricity for care as well as traffic lights being out seem particularly worrisome.
My understanding is that the time window for outages remains very vague. I’m still trying to work with insurer so I can get a battery so my medical equipment will allow me to take needed medication during any outages when I’m in CA (heck or in HI).
Regarding the fire in Porter Ranch, the news said the high power line was owned by PG&E.
The fire created a traffic nightmare closing parts of the 5, 14, 118, 405 and 210 freeways.
The powee companies should bury the lines but that costs twice as much.
Estimates that I have seen shows that it costs 5x to bury lines.
As an aside, burying lines is painful for homeowners to do any upgrades to their house to add more capacity. As an example, to convert from the standard “old house” 100-125 Amps to 200 or 400 Amps would require a retrenching that costs $8K and up depending on how far the distance is from the meter to the junction. With EVs becoming more prevalent, this is a painful reality that many homeowners are facing.
We had another thread about this, probably one of the last big fires, so I looked this up again:
“It costs about $3 million per mile to convert underground electric distribution lines from overhead, while the cost to build a mile of new overhead line is less than a third of that, at approximately $800,000 per mile, according to a section on PG&E’s website called Facts About Undergrounding Power Lines.”
Very interesting site:
https://www.pgecurrents.com/2017/10/31/facts-about-undergrounding-electric-lines/
That site also says 81,000 of overhead. Obviously, fewer are in the fire areas. But even 500 miles…you can do the math.
Oddly enough, the PG&E power cuts affected people here in Maine, including us. My husband’s childhood friend and his wife were set to come out, and they reserved a room at a B and B run by friends of ours. Because of the power cut, they had to cancel their trip and run a generator every two hours to try to save two freezers full of rare meat that he had shot himself. The meat is worth more than the cost of the trip, and he had to enter special lotteries to be able to take it. We completely sympathize, and it got us thinking about how many people are affected much more seriously.
Unicorn?
All the lines in our 25 year old subdivision are underground. Better aesthetically and saves in the long run. I think most newer areas are burying. The power companies need to prioritize safety first over other expenditures.
The lines in our 60+ year old subdivision are all arial.
Our neighborhood cable, phone and power lines are underground. BUT the substations aren’t and can’t be (well…I suppose they could be at some huge cost). Around here (New England) the issues with power are substation related most of the time, and not line related.
It’s the main feeds that matter…not the lines to your neighborhood.
^ yes it is a major issue overall, but in the last couple of years, especially on the Weat Coast, consumers are more in tune with getting battery storage/backups. Though I see a lot more people with backup generators instead in my area.
You need a powerwall if you want a backup. A solar roof alone is not going to work. A powerwall serves as a generator replacement of sorts - without the stinky gas. I guess the solar can be set up to recharge the battery first and then feed the grid, but I have no idea if that is how it does work in reality.
Yes, solar alone is not sufficient, since they are designed to shut down if the grid goes down to avoid endangering utility workers.
A battery backup (basically a house UPS) would be needed to keep the house electricity up during a power failure. Solar could be used to charge the battery during the day for use during the night.
Be sure to consider cloudy days when solar production is only a small fraction of that during sunny days.
PG&G sounds like an epitome of incompetence. They should break it up and sell the pieces to other utilities.
About the solar, Tesla has battery that can be attached to the wall to store the power.
I believe PG&E filed for bankruptcy and there is a class action suit against them (ironically one of our s’s got a letter in the mail yesterday addressed here for inclusion in a class action suit against PG&E)
The Tesla Powerwall is one of the better known home battery offerings, but is not the only one.
My mistake. The electrical tower that may have sparked the Porter Ranch fire was SoCal Edison not PG&E.
So Cal Edison had determined not to cut power. How or why they made that decision, was not reported.