Monday, November 18, 2019

PG&E is playing with fire this time.

PG&E may cut power to 750,000 California residents this week to reduce wildfire risk.

I started hearing rumors about this two days ago, but predicting the weather is hard. So I decided to wait to see what was going to happen. Now they have started notifying counties this is a possibility.

Thankfully this sounds like it's only going to be a one day event. Or until they can get the lines inspected - but a lot of people lost money last time. Can you imagine how mad they are going to be is they lose a refrigerator full of stuff right before the Holiday?

8 comments:

  1. That last one there were a lot of businesses closed for days up towards Eureka and down by Fort Bragg (that's where we were then).
    Not only hard on the business but on the people who live paycheck to paycheck.

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  2. YES. Exactly. People who can't afford to miss a single days pay. It was pretty remarkable that the CEO'S attitude was - you can go to food banks, and just feel glad we didn't burn your house down.

    I hope you made it to glass beach while you were in Ft Bragg. It really is remarkable, and since they don't let us dump glass into the ocean anymore who knows how long it will be around. Yes I know people might hold a dim view of this opinion, but glass is just made of sand.

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  3. Hello She Said, I do not foresee this situation getting better. If it is illegal for the utilities to clear brush in their rights of way (illegal to solve the problem), they will cut power to show they made the effort to limit fires. Every fire will force them to cut more service in the future and every non fire will be used as proof the process of cutting service is successful.

    The utilities are businesses and need to make money or preserve their investors capital in legal / regulatory duress. The customers will have to go without power. Obviously this is an impossible situation to be a going concern so probably state will take over. Except, it will still be illegal to clean up the brush; so , the method of cutting power will remain and grow.

    Please take measures to protect yourself and your husband. The power company and the state are not going to make it better. jeff denver

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  4. So who wants to start the Reddit thread that encourages people to send packs of marshmallows to PG&E's HQ?

    Californians to PG&E: We didn't start the fire! :-)

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  5. They can pitch this as a safety issue if they want but I think it has more to do with negative energy prices on the windiest days. Have you seen how many windmills are on the delta now? Who wants to bet that they get out of paying money when they have to shut down due to Emergency. What does their leverage do when it flips upside down? DF

    https://www.utilitydive.com/news/prognosis-negative-how-california-is-dealing-with-below-zero-power-market/442130/

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  6. I haven't been up there in a while. But it is an interesting perspective I hadn't really thought about.

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  7. We made it to see the glass beach, there was a lot of glass there but all real small. Like you say it's been awhile since "they" allowed glass to be put down there.
    Beautiful country.

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  8. I hadn't considered another possibility ...

    What if PG&E forms the Bank of PG&E (but with a different name)?

    Two California assembly members have introduced a bill to allow local governments to form their own public banks.

    I completely forgot about La Banque Postale in France until I saw one the other day.

    It's a bank run by the French postal system, and it seems to work OK, but why couldn't EDF also run a bank?

    So with that in mind, why couldn't PG&E run a bank?

    Why shouldn't PG&E figure out some way how to shift as many liquid assets to something that resembles a bank, but without the PG&E name, so the past profits of the company aren't going to be looted by state socialists who want to get into the same sort of banking games that North Dakota implemented?

    In the meantime, why not send these bozos and their friends in CalGov some packets of marshmallows to go with their regularly scheduled fires?

    But you say you don't want to send a big bag of marshmallows that requires to stand in line at the post office?

    No problem!

    Jet Puffed sells marshmallows in ten ounce packs!

    Just as long as your padded envelope doesn't weigh more than three ounces, you're good to go for self-service mailing as first class mail.

    Hey, I'm just trying to help the People of California(tm) send the right kind of message to those people they foolishly thought they could control by voting for them!

    :-)

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