PG&E Outage Darkens Northern California Amid Wildfire Threat

Perhaps adding insult to injury, yesterday PG&E e-mailed electricity customers in California an advertisement for an emergency backup solar generator, on sale for the low, low price of $14K! This will probably be the first e-mail in people's inboxes when the power comes back on. https://www.facebook.com/pg/cleangreensolarmachine/posts/

The bottom line is PG&E is running payback...period. This is what the citizens get for suing. PG&E doesn't care about the enormous amount of difficulty families go through with no power. It hits financially...and what about folks on health equipment, schools are closed, people can't go to work. Once again the working and middle classes are told to stick it...sorry for the crudeness. I live in Santa Rosa, CA. and in the past two years since the fires have seen PG&E crews out trimming trees and brush a total of 5 times. Much of their equipment is 40+ years old, wires are not insulated...and my understanding is what PG&E budgets for maintenance, whatever isn't spent, is given to the shareholders. The company needs to be broken up and regulated by a hopefully honest state government dept.

Like almost all publicly traded companies, PG&E puts the interests of shareholders above everyone and everything else. Is this really the right business model when public safety is at such risk? PG&E sought rate increases to upgrade power lines, but used those increases to enrich senior mgmt. Why have they been able to get away with this? I agree with those who’ve suggested PG&E needs to be broken up. PG&E is unfit to provide such an essential service to so many people. -not to malign the hard working people who provide the services, but those people don't call the shots. PG&E does deserve to stay in business. Time to try something completely different.

I see comments about power outages from storms, etc. Yup, I've suffered through those (10 days in Irene and the same with Sandy, plus a few 1-2 day winter (no heat/stove/fireplace) outages). Like many, can't afford a generator. Any power outage is troublesome at best. It is more than an "inconvenience," as some have said. Your well and septic won't work. You have no water (except stocked bottled which goes quickly), you cannot wash your hands or dishes. You have no lights, no way to cook or refrigerate anything. Hundreds of dollars of food go to waste. No heat (most of us don't have wood stoves or fireplaces). You cannot work (no internet). There are no traffic or street lights. For vulnerable folks - elderly, children, disabled (with automated doors, etc.), outages are dangerous. In essence, they are apocalyptic. If a planned outage must happen, it should be planned well and last as little time as possible. Sure, our ancestors lived like this but that's all they knew, and they were 100% prepared to live like that.

Power outages in one of the richest parts of the world beg the question of how we got here. California’s hyper-regulation, progressive politics, loose restrictions on liabilities, and blurred separation of powers have led to a business environment in which it is difficult to make a decent return for selling electricity into a large and wealthy market.

Lessons learned so far: 1) When the PG&E power outage map shows your house outside the outage zone, maybe go ahead and charge your cell phone anyway. 2) Gas stove Bialetti = civilization’s greatest gifts (this morning at least). 3) Procrastinating about moving camping gear from living room to attic is actually super strategic foresight (please note, Husband :). 4) Gratitude that my biggest concern about the outage is the status of the Boca Burgers in our freezer — and concern about the vulnerable populations for whom this outage is frightening and even dangerous. We need a better plan B, California.

Sorry, know everyone wants to live near the ocean with views in CA. However, it's an arid state and it's overpopulated and far too many people now populate the coastal areas. Fires are a natural phenomenon in CA, but the more precautions that can be made, the better. And that means stopping building homes in fire prone areas, on the side of mountains, or on the beach. They were told there would be an outage in plenty of time. Not sure of why this article takes the stand it does, except that the NYTimes wants us to believe this is about climate change (a daily topic, whether relevant or not).

Time to go solar. The IPCC reports tell us it is urgent. Now, this.

" We are going to protect human life first" . William p Johnson. How many Lives are being placed in grave danger by this self protecting action ?? Their concern for human life has been proven to be a lie. By their failure to maintain all the equipment and structures they are responsible for.

Does this not make the case for solar panels?

I never believed this "spark" from PG&E was the cause. I hope they keep these rolling blackouts going to finally put that myth to rest. The long term source these fires are climate change, and at heart of that problem is overpopulation. Welcome to the world of climate change. This sort of thing will become the norm.

The answer is to bury the power lines, as in Europe. Unfortunately this comes with a high cost, but electricity is a necessity these days and people without electricity right now may be willing to pay substantially more a month so as to ensure it doesn't have to be shut down.

Build you home in the middle of the forest. Allow trees to grow close to your home and don’t bother to clean pine needles from the top of your roof. Leave old cars and other debris lying around your home. Complain about zoning and other rules and regulations (the government is the enemy). Protest if the power is cut to avoid fires. Sue the company if there is a fire.

We certainly would have appreciated more advance notice! Since we have had family and friends smoked out the last two years we do believe shutdowns are important until the grid gets updated. We also know that gas leakage from household lines is a great polluter roughly equal to cars so electrification is very necessary. Also, gas lines cannot be turned off as well as electricity and the homes in Santa Rosa with gas tanks exploded. So electricity is the way to go but the grid needs vast work. I was up at 4am because my son was off to speak at an electrification conference in the Bay Area ( funny, huh?) and the stars were amazing beyond anything. The co-op was open but the bread shelves were empty. Luckily the fruit was wonderful!!!!

Sounds like a reasonable plan that for most, the exception being those whose lives depend on power, is really an inconvenience. Californians are lucky that they do not loose power often from storms. We in the Northeast deal with power outages all the time. Once I dealt with 2 weeks of no power without water (well) and heat or cooking. The second week the town provided a gallon of water and dry ice per household. So the towns should step up to help out. My only complaint is inspection of wires should be done prior to fire season with rolling outages so at least one can go to a neighboring town for supples, gasoline and food. Be prepared people. This is the world we now live in.

Like it or not, this is one situation where blaming the power company is not going to get you anything but no power. SOMEBODY has to operate those power lines, and they are problematic, without an easy or economical fix. So you can complain all you want about PG & E, but the bottom line is that the rate payers will have to pay whatever the cost is to make the lines safe, and it will surely be VERY EXPENSIVE. At some point everyone in these areas will have to balance that huge cost against the likelihood of fires--- without always looking for a scapegoat to sue and further drive up the cost of power.

Well....to the folks in Cali, we have been told and told and told about this possibility for months now, but I guess you might have had to listen to the 'fake news' (mainstream radio/TV) to hear about it, or go to a city council meeting once in awhile, or read your flyers that come with your power bill, geez. PG&E started the warning of this particular power shutoff early this week. The local city councils and county supervisors have also mentioned this possibility for months, on the Central Coast and I'm sure elsewhere. Generators have been running out the doors of the big box stores since spring. Those in the Bay area, etc should become more educated over where their power and water comes from and how one action in the system can affect other areas hundreds of miles away. Perhaps this should be a heads up for the kind of chaos we could be facing with a major quake. You won't get a 2-3 day warning on that one. We choose to live in a beautiful state, but a volatile one. There is lots to discuss going forward-public sector v. private sector in meeting our energy needs, the 'urban wildland interface' and whether or not property rights have become so powerful that one can rebuild several times over in clearly vulnerable areas, etc. I am hopeful that public discourse about important infrastructure issues can resume (or begin) and we can come together from all sides to do so. Secure infrastructure is what keeps us a first world economy.

If the power shut offs become the new norm, this might result in bringing house prices down, and making these areas more affordable. Not a bad (un)intended consequence.

This is, to me, a vindictive response to the general punitive measures rightfully imposed upon PG&E. This is a case where nationalization of a monopolistic company should be considered. I’ll be interested to see what the monetary and human safety repercussions will amount to. In my particular case living in Santa Cruz county I have been monitoring the winds on a marvelous APP called PredictWind. My power was shut off around mid-night Thursday morning. PredictWind was showing winds in Santa Cruz county as being 0 to 5 knots (0 to 6 mph) for the area though Thursday until the afternoon when our typical wind pattern returns with Westerly winds to 15 knots in the bay. This information is obviously available to PG&E and did not pose any unusual threat to our area.

I live in the north bay. There are a couple things about this power outage that didn’t occur to us. Our T-mobile cell service did not work so we received no Nixle alerts. If there had been a fire this would have been a serious problem. The other was the traffic problems that no traffic lights has created. Again in the event of an evacuation this would have been wholesale disaster. But of course the weather report was wrong and there has barely been a puff of wind for 2 days. So we are sitting in the dark without phones for no reason😳

This reminds of winter storms in VT that occasionally shut down human activity. It makes me realize how vulnerable we are in the scheme of things, and unimportant to boot.

The current “public safety power shutoff (PSPS) should be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back. With two bankruptcies in 20 years, a massive natural gas pipeline explosion and fire, and multiple fatal wildfires ignited by their equipment, PG&E is clearly being lead by the clueless. It is past time for the legislature and the PUC to get off the stick and force this monster to be broken into several companies that should be much more manageable. Think in terms of a natural gas distribution company, an electric generation company, and multiple electric distribution companies. With its track record, can anyone imagine PG&E attracting the caliber of leaders it needs to dig its way out of the morass the current team has created? We need a stable, reliable, safe energy supply in Northern California. A fresh start attracting the best and brightest leaders may well be needed to get moving to that goal.

I'm just curious..what have the utility companies in hot spots around the country been doing to bring their infrastructure up to a standard for the present and the future? Also, how many intelligent people believed that a trillion dollar tax cut and trillion dollar infrastructure spending made any sense? Personally, from my perspective, the whole country has gone loco.

While they likely cannot see this, my thanks to those who are enduring power outages. Let's hope it prevents another catastrophic event.

PG&E is a publicly traded company whose billing rates to customers are controlled by the state regulators. Such a centralized essential service SHOULD be overseen by a government agency, but the company's priorities are split between shareholders' returns and quality service to customers. Guess which one has taken the back seat for decades (with a complicit blind eye from regulators)?

Sorry to say, but they had ample notification this was going to happen. They should have prepared better. You can't accuse PG&E of negligence on one hand and complain when they are proactive on the other. That said, why hasn't the system grid been "fire proofed" in the past? There are ways, but I suspect no one wanted to pay for it. As the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

We can thank the lawyers in the world for this debacle like so many others and you can throw in environmentalists as well. Why? Well first we do not live in a perfect world and delivering high and low voltage electricity is definitely not a perfect science equipment wise. High winds cause lines to sway hard and in Northern California many of those lines end up hitting trees. PG&E does their best to trim back trees but we are talking tens of millions of trees here. Fires are going to happen when you mix high winds and big electrical equipment and lines. That has been going on for many many decades. But because lawyers sued PG&E to bankruptcy instead of PG&E simply having to cover the cost of homes lost, you now have a company saying they will not get sued again if they can help it. Of course the people suffer and especially the poor, as is always is the case in California. Add to that the policies that changed about forest management under Obama and Jerry Brown in 2013 in which the environmentalists won to not allow controlled burns in non-fire seasons and not allowing the clearing of forest floors of dead trees and bushes both of which have caused the wildfires to get 100 times worse since being implemented. Environmentalists call forest management "unnatural". Tell that to the millions of animals burned to death and thousands of homes lost each year. So thank you lawyers and liberal policies (that dont work)for causing misery and costing the state billions.

So the power company was blamed for the blaze and everyone raged about it. The consequence is that the power company is now turning off the electricity and people are raging about that. Sounds like a no win situation. Maybe these people should move out of the woods.

When northern California deregulated they let the cat out of the bag and lost it. The whole reason for regulation was to ensure that electrical companies maintained their power plants and distribution grids. PG&E like others decided that profits where more important then continuity. Looks like it's time to catch the cat and I'm so glad that I don't work for them or any power company any more.

I suspect that PG&E's intentional blackout is a stunt aimed at gaining political leverage in order to seek legislation that would limit PG&E's financial liability in the event of another fire storm caused by downed power lines like the one last year that burned down Paradise. PG&E's thinking is that the public will not tolerate more intentional blackouts. But with hot, dry and windy weather being the norm, it's inevitable that there will me many more intentional blackouts until PG&E gets want it wants.