My question is if it's cheaper to fire-proof everyone's house, or to have everyone go and buy solar for their properties, or to just accept some people and properties are going to burn in a fiery inferno from time to time.
A quick Google shows that there were $7B in insurance claims for the Camp Fire. At $15K per install of solar, that's ~500k homes. Apparently fire-proofing a house has similar costs. There are something like 7M homes in California. Many of those are in urban areas, so let's say there are 2M in fire-prone areas.
It actually seems worthwhile to just pay for the upgrades.
You make a good point - deploying local generation on a per house basis (via renewables) would decentralize utility operations and remove the need for the remotely located transmission and pipeline infrastructure that could potentially ignite dry surroundings.
Even maintenance divisions that routinely trim trees and foliage growing up on high voltage lines must cover lots of ground because everything is so scattered (they sometimes even use helicopters wielding huge saws). Preventative measures like this consume labor and profit margins, and apparently aren't always sufficient (Camp Fire).
A neighborhood in a dry area equipped with its own energy storage and generation assets would likely never be completely vacant - at least one resident would always be present to sound the alarm in the event of a Powerwall or solar short prompted fire. Even so, smoke detectors are probably connected on the web or allocated emergency frequencies? Fire hydrants are legally required to be near homes. Fire stations shouldn't be far.
A decentralized grid fire outbreak wouldn't be up a dirt road in the mountains - paved road access to a neighborhood would diminish response time relative to what it would require to scramble expensive firefighting aircraft.
A residential transformer is bringing it down from nearly 14 kV...
do not build in the middle of the forest. simple, really. Well, not that simple since people spent their lifetime savings buying the land and building but nothing else works. You probably need 500-1000 yards cleared forest to avoid the fire (embers in the roof and all) and even then all the infrastructure will be melted.
PG&E is trying to hold the state hostage. Want us to pay for fires? Fine, we'll cut power to danger zones that weren't economically viable anyway.
It's 100 feet as long as you adopt smart building practices for the roof (use tile, composition, or metal instead of wood shingles; cover all vents with mesh; clear gutters and other accumulations of dead plant matter). Tile roofs do not generally catch fire from embers.
100 feet or roughly 30.5 meters. Maybe, if you are in around the middle of residential area, your house will escape. Meaning if your neighbor's tree or house burns, it will not ignite yours--if you do all that's required. Next to the forest? Not a chance. A little wind and you see how fast flames move.
Also in a community, not everyone (or maybe, very few) has a 100 feet room to clear and maintain.
Edit: Even if you do have 100 feet to maintain, go on a two week vacation and see how many leaves gather.
> Edit: Even if you do have 100 feet to maintain, go on a two week vacation and see how many leaves gather.
You don't need a 100-foot break to protect your house from burning leaves. The 100-foot break is to protect your house from the incinerating radiation of torching trees.
You can technically even have trees within the 100-foot break. The goal is to prevent a situation where individually burning trees accelerate combustion in a feedback loop. If they're burning more slowly they're radiating less energy and thus you don't need as much space to the house.
>>Sometimes, that channel of upward-flowing air can collapse in one small spot. Then the hot air in the atmosphere plummets through the weak point. “You get a very fast wind moving down toward the ground, and when it hits the ground, it spreads like jelly slopping across the floor,” Williams said. “It can also send white-hot air out in front of the flame, incinerating the landscape before the actual flame has arrived. It can cause forests to spontaneously combust without coming into contact with a flame.”
When this upward-moving air pattern stays strong, it creates other kinds of problems. It can loft burning wood high into the atmosphere, carrying it many miles away from the center of the fire. When this debris finally lands, it can start new fires. In 2011, Williams lived dozens of miles from the edge of the blaze, yet he remembers semi-burned sticks falling like drizzle in his backyard. “These were twigs that you hold in your hand and say, ‘Wow, this actually weighs something. This made it 35 miles in the air,’” he said."
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/californ...
The redox flow batteries exhibit promising attributes for grid storage applications. These types of batteries don't suffer from thermal runaway in the same way lithium-ion do. Check out what RedFlow and ESS are doing in the market.
This is the result of trying to hold the power company in total responsibility for every fire for which it was the proximate cause.
While PG&E has been somewhat deficient in maintaining their network they have no control over the weather, winds, firefighting budgets, or forest policy.
Yet it alone is now to be held in total responsibility for all fires that originate with its equipment? thats absurd.
> This is the result of trying to hold the power company in total responsibility for every fire for which it was the proximate cause.
Yes, otherwise they'd just keep burning down the state because of their preference for extracting profits over safety maintenance like they did the last two years, instead of blackouts to prevent fires. But, bad as the blackouts are, the food are worse, so insofar as the blackouts result from PG&E coming to grips with the liability impacts of causing fires, they are a good thing.
A better thing would have been PG&E not underfunding maintenance for several years, but that would have meant less dividends for shareholders.
PG&E spent at least 5 years falsifying maintenance records. Verifying that they did all of the maintenance that they claimed to have done would have been a rather substantial task.
There are standards for how close tree limbs can be to a power line. PG&E asked for money to meet those standards. PG&E accepted that money. Then PG&E didn't meet those standards.
Sure acts of god, environmental changes, and other unusual issues start fires. However California has been hot and dry periodically and the existing standards provide good protection... it's just that PG&E is not meeting them.
Not sure how nationalization would help. PG&E has a state monopoly right? What if we went in the opposite direction and allowed smaller companies in to start competing, like what we have with ISPs?
What you'd get is a bunch of small companies competing. And, human nature being what it is, at least some of them would scrimp on maintenance and tree trimming, and hope that they'd continue to be lucky. And some of those wouldn't be lucky, and you'd still get fires.
The difference would be that when Billy Bob's Power Company set off a multi-billion-dollar fire, it would just fold. Sally Sue's Power Company would buy up their assets (but not their liabilities) for pennies on the dollar, and you'd be left hoping that Sally Sue did better at maintenance than Billy Bob.
You can vote out elected officials, it forces transparency, and also has the bonus of a government multiplier[1], you can't do that with the C-levels of PG&E and a private company.
Additionally, and I think this is non-debatable in the USA (though I'm up for debate, and to be wrong), C-levels have their primary and sole obligation to shareholders. When push comes to shove, and tough decisions need to be made, in
the USA it is always in the interest of shareholders unless mandated by the government. Sometimes better businesses push for that mandate, so they can remain competitive and not be flaming piles of shit unable to compete... [2].
PG&E executives, right now, can use this (shareholder returns) as disguise for moral ineptitude in their social circles allowing them to escape ridicule as monsters.
No amount of competition will fix these problems and incentivize the correct behaviour for a _utility_ as long as they're obligated to return dividends before moral decency.
[2] This is also a vector for abuse by monopolies and oligopolies; where, they lobby for regulation which creates a barrier to entry (in the market) insurmountable to new organizations and institutions.
> Additionally, and I think this is non-debatable in the USA (though I'm up for debate, and to be wrong), C-levels have their primary and sole obligation to shareholders.
No. Shareholders have a residual claim. Corporations have to obey the law, pay their debts, and pay their other obligations first. Shareholders may only claim from what remains.
There's already growing competition in power generation. But power transmission is a natural monopoly, and that (the power lines) is what causes fire risk.
The fact is that many Californians are served by an under-maintained aging grid, nominally maintained by a public-private utility with regulated pricing. PG&E is thrashing because they can't raise rates and they can't cut off customers and they don't have a maintenance time machine, so they are made a whipping boy for not solving the impossible.
At least this is focusing our attention on our electrical grid issues. There's major fire risk, but solar demands modernization as well. Let's hope this crisis does not go to waste.
Perhaps you read my comment as a defense of PG&E. I carry no water for them! I'm a Californian and I hope only for reliable affordable power, and climate change leadership.
> Maybe they could use some of that to a) not burn down california and b) provide their customers with reliable power.
Unfortunately they cannot because they are literally bankrupt.
> PG&E needs to be dissolved
Dissolving PG&E does not magically cut back vegetation or modernize the grid. That's the whipping boy: it's like blaming Exxon for climate change. It directs the energy of our anger to impotent punishment for past misdeeds, without solving today's problems.
CA's electrical grid has maintenance debt and underinsured fire risk. I think you're saying that my utility bill is more than enough to cover that - if so, that's great news! I'd love to be convinced that Calfornia can have reliable safe power for no more than I'm paying now.
But from what I've read, PG&E has a backlog of work and liability risk, plus limited ability to raise rates. So either our bills or taxes go up. And when then do, hopefully it also provides for the grid modernization necessary for climate change. (And wringing out the PG&E rent seekers would be fine by me too.)
With the net incoming directly from their financials, how were they prevented from clearing lines of fire hazards? They are bankrupt NOW because they failed to act with the resources at hand. Did they argue for rate increases to make the lines safe while at the same time failing to use that net income to clear the lines of hazards?
There is this false dichotomy woven in your arguments equating rate increases with safety measures.
Did I say that there is magic in a PG&E dissolution? If the organizational structure of PG&E can't use the resources it has (people, money, influence) to operate the grid safely, someone else needs to take over. When someone is systematically lousy at their job, they get fired.
Your rhetoric is riddled with logical fallacies, you aren't making analogies that explain your reasoning. You are making straw men and putting words in my mouth.
trying to paint the parent comment as a misleading trickster isn't very helpful, and just stating PG&E's net income doesn't touch on how regulated utilities work.
Removing all the profit puts a couple 2-3 year band-aid over the fact that PG&E's infrastructure recovery requests make up the bulk of their cases.
CPUC sees all their projections, plans, requests, and expenses, compensation when they come to them for rate cases. They also make decisions on executive compensation and incentive plans. Whether or not you make the assumption that CPUC is in cahoots with IOUs, what changes when you liquidate PG&E, when the new boss is just the old boss' boss?
You're probably better off trying to rebuild some generation system avoiding transmission lines in risky areas.
> What if we went in the opposite direction and allowed smaller companies in to start competing, like what we have with ISPs?
So, multiple competing electric distribution systems with the total fire danger being worse than that of the worst maintained? That would be...very, very bad, strictly worse than the status quo.
If you mean basically competing retail providers using PG&E’s distribution infrastructure, then that doesn't change anything relevant from the status quo.
Make it a public service run by the California Resources Agency, answering to the same cabinet secretary as CalFire does, then you've got both the Agency Secretary and the Governor who have a pretty strong incentive to ensure that: (1) deferred maintenance doesn't cause massive fires, and (2) deferred maintenance doesn't require blackouts to prevent causing massive fires.
What government run entities are well managed? The federal government runs a deficit every year. State schools are always screaming for more funding and yet US children lag behind the world in math. The same incentives that exist while private will exist if public: avoid punishment and avoid losing your job at all costs because it’s just a simple infrastructure company with a monopoly to be a utility.
> The federal government runs a deficit every year.
There are many reasons for that, but it doesn't matter in deciding who should control California's power system.
> State schools are always screaming for more funding and yet US children lag behind the world in math.
Change "and yet" to "because" and I'm right there with you.
> The same incentives that exist while private will exist if public: avoid punishment and avoid losing your job at all costs because it’s just a simple infrastructure company with a monopoly to be a utility.
A publicly traded company is legal bound to motives ulterior to what is best for the people of California.
Sacramento has that, it's called SMUD. I don't know if it's any better. Are they keeping their lines and equipment free of tree branches? Are they having power outages? Are they blowing up neighborhoods?
It's not really appropriate to compare any of the California municipal utilities to something like PG&E — SMUD isn't tiny, but they have a fraction of the T&D infrastructure of PG&E.
Fair comparisons would be to San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. Both have had selective power shutoffs in the recent wind. Also, note that SCE did not power down some lines and it appears their equipment caused a wildfire:
SDG&E has been using public safety power shutoffs for some time, and has a pretty good system of sectionalizers to make the outage areas more granular than PG&E's. That said, they don't have anywhere near the T&D infrastructure of PG&E.
Yeah in all seriousness I like that structure for other reasons, but it’s not necessarily more likely to force foresight and proper maintenance. Government oversight and/or insurance companies should be enforcing fire safety here.
Do you think taxpayers ought to be on the hook when a state-run electric company burns down a town, or should California invoke sovereign immunity when that happens?
Why does the word "ENRON" keep flashing on and off in my head?
Fake energy shortages was why Enron was able to charge exorbitant prices for electricity. You'd think that Americans would have that seared into their brains.
The Enron rolling blackouts were manufactured arbitrage bookkeeping nonsense, but there was nothing fake about the Camp Fire smoke that covered the Bay Area. It was horrifying.
And why not? If they get hit with a lawsuit, they can just jack up the rates or if citizens get too noisy, just shut them off for a week or two and show them who's the boss here. It's not like the customers can go elsewhere, and they are guaranteed 10% return on the money by the state by ROE rate arrangements, whatever happens. How many other "private" companies do you know that are guaranteed to make money no matter what?
They were the proximate cause but not the ultimate cause. When the state is that dry, something is going to start a fire sooner or later, and when it does, it's going to be bad.
They are basically being penalized for being the straw that broke the camel's back.
Probably better maintenance would have helped some, but it's not like they bear all the blame for the destruction caused by the fire.
I would accept that argument if it happened once, but alas it didn't.
While anyone can start a wildfire, they are a large actor, which causes them. They make profit and could invest money to reduce their part in it, but as long that is an external cost, there is no economic motivation. That's not penalisation, it's economics.
I think implicit in PG&E's decision to neglect maintenance was that they weren't allowed to raise rates and it wouldn't actually be very economical to do maintenance to reduce wildfire risks, so shareholders preferred profits were returned to them rather than reinvestment into e.g. maintenance. So adding the "motivation" to reduce wildfires might've made them more likely.
I don't think anyone is claiming they bear "all" the blame. That would be an issue for a court to decide if it ever came to it.
Instead, the counterposition here seems to be that they should bear none of the blame, that any liability on their part is an injustice, and that refusing preventative maintenance and literally unplugging regions at risk is somehow an acceptable outcome. And that seems insane.
If they can't provide the service they're contracted to provide, they need to be regulated to be sure they do. The market has failed (and this isn't the first time PG&E got caught playing ridiculous games with regulators at the expense of customers, I was in California during the electricity crisis of 2000).
Given that a great deal of the risk is directly cause by maintenance that PG&E has chosen to defer for years... how is it not under their control?
I can accept that perhaps some other parties should share some of the liability, but it seems completely unsupportable to claim that PG&E has no control over these risks and should be absolved of all responsibility.
Well, they could start with actually trying to avoid starting fires rather than just not bothering with routine fire prevention tasks. They are not remotely close to a company that did everything they could to avoid starting any fires but did anyway because it was unavoidable.
Instead, the electric rates reflect the multibillion cost of the dividends PG&E paid while not safeguarding it's lines properly, either by burying or clearing trees, etc., around them. You are paying billions of dollars either way, the question is whether you are getting safer electrical infrastructure or richer power company shareholders out of it.
The cost while incalculable by me, I'd guess is likely north of 100b dollars to bury everything. It's probably 1b alone for just the environmental impact statements.
As part of some settlement PG&E buried the lines in my old neighborhood. Took three years. I heard some comments that at that rate they could underground all the lines in San Francisco in about 400 years.
I'm unsure but I think a lot of the issue is that feeder lines are often run through unfortunate areas. Fire prone, subject to high winds, and difficult to reach quickly. One suspects that under grounding is likely impossible. Instead they would need to reroute the lines. Then there are all the diffuse rural suburbs.
People expect them to properly take care of the lines and surrounding area which means spend money at the problem but hard to do if you are maximising profit over safety.
California has real livability problems even for wealthy tech workers. The traffic has become unbearable thanks to Waze routing everyone all over surface streets, mass transit changes of any kind reliably take 10 years minimum to implement. Heck even closing Market St to cars is going to take more than 5 years for some reason. This is just icing on the cake. It’s really time to think seriously about moving.
My question is if it's cheaper to fire-proof everyone's house, or to have everyone go and buy solar for their properties, or to just accept some people and properties are going to burn in a fiery inferno from time to time.
A quick Google shows that there were $7B in insurance claims for the Camp Fire. At $15K per install of solar, that's ~500k homes. Apparently fire-proofing a house has similar costs. There are something like 7M homes in California. Many of those are in urban areas, so let's say there are 2M in fire-prone areas.
It actually seems worthwhile to just pay for the upgrades.