SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
PG&E files for bankruptcy. Here's why that could mean bigger electricity bills
PG&E Corp., which owns California's largest electric utility, filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday in anticipation of huge legal claims, starting an unpredictable process that could take years to resolve and is likely to result in higher energy bills for the millions of Californians who depend on Pacific Gas & Electric for power.
PG&E said a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, which allows the company to continue operating while it comes up with a plan to pay its debts, was the only way to deal with billions of dollars in potential liabilities from a series of deadly wildfires, many of which were sparked by the company's power grid infrastructure.
"Through this process, we will prioritize what matters most to our customers and the communities we serve — safety and reliability," interim Chief Executive John R. Simon said in a statement. "We believe that this process will make sure that we have sufficient liquidity to serve our customers and support our operations and obligations."
Energy experts say PG&E's rates probably will increase when the utility emerges from Chapter 11 protection because bankruptcy inevitably makes it more expensive for a company to borrow money and creates large legal and other bankruptcy-related costs. The utility passes such expenses along to its customers.
"It's almost impossible to see a way out of this that doesn't have some short-term cost increases," Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a recent interview.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:00PM (9 children)
It turns out that if a private company responsible for infrastructure goes bankrupt (maybe because they took profit instead of investing in said infrastructure), everyone else ends up paying. Will share holders pay back some of their dividends?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:08PM (8 children)
If a company public or private falsifies records, disobeys codes about brush clearance around transmission towers or poles, and any other violations of law, just for the sake of profit . . .
. . . then the INDIVIDUALS who made those decisions should end up in prison.
Period.
There shouldn't be some shield for people committing crimes . . . just because it is profitable to do so.
The Mafia commits crimes, for profit, yet we seem to think of them as criminal. Maybe because we see real victims.
But white collar crimes also have victims. The customers who will pay higher rates. People whose homes or property was destroyed. People without power, when an outage occurred just minutes before a fire had started.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/19/us/camp-fire-pge-invs/index.html [cnn.com]
> A failure of gardening.
> In the aftermath of this year's Camp Fire in Butte County, which has claimed at least 86 lives, PG&E reported "an outage" on a transmission line in the area where the blaze began, about 15 minutes before it started.
> The company provided a list of "new and enhanced safety measures," including upgrading its vegetation management efforts,
> "What we have to do is put a fire chief in charge and make PG&E garden its power lines and make PG&E modernize its equipment,"
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:31PM
For once Fake News CNN is right. It comes down to GARDENING. The RAKING and the WATERING. As I've said many times. You RAKE the forest. Then you WATER it. Keep that up and no fires. Look at Finland, I was with the President of Finland, he said "we're a Forest Nation." He called it a forest nation, and they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don't have any problem. Or what it is, it’s a small problem. But California is totally insane. They're diverting massive amounts of water into the Pacific Ocean. While their forests are dieing. And they don't TREE CLEAR. They leave so many dead Trees standing there. And they can catch fire so easily. So easily.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:38PM (1 child)
Agreed. The shareholders of a publicly traded company have no say in what happened. They are victims, not villains. The ones responsible are those that decided to break safety code laws.
The question is to what extent are safety code violations responsible and to what extent can this be a cause of lighting strikes and natural disasters outside of their control. I haven't really dug into it but has anyone else read into it?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 30 2019, @06:32PM
The question is to what extent are safety code violations responsible and to what extent can this be a cause of lighting strikes and natural disasters outside of their control. I haven't really dug into it but has anyone else read into it?
These are the fire codes in question. Can't say I'm familiar with them at all, though. [ca.gov]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bussdriver on Wednesday January 30 2019, @06:54PM (1 child)
It should be public. Like the DoT and the roads. Politicians need to live or die on the power company just as they do with transportation falling apart.
Electricity is as NECESSARY as roads are.
Monopolies can not compete. A monopoly's competition is the oversight system itself; it's naturally anti-democratic and will always end up attacking freedom in the end (ironically with Orwellian marketing saying they are the freedom fighters.)
Profit is NOT required for infrastructure and there are plenty of people who are not solely motivated by greed. (Which are the types you need in politics; only fools elect greed addicts...)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 30 2019, @07:33PM
A smart greedy non-fool might elect greed addicts?
I suppose in some sense they are a fool.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30 2019, @09:52PM (2 children)
It's a great idea that will never happen.
Who would bother running a company they could not leach money from
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 31 2019, @02:45PM (1 child)
We live in a capitalist system. There is nothing wrong with owning a company. Or having it publicly tiraded. There is nothing wrong with it being profitable. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the blessings of that profitability.
Where something wrong occurs is when the business is run in a way that is against the public interest and common good. Regulations are needed to put constraints on just how far business can go. Pollution. Chemical, Toxic, Biological or Radioactive waste. Corrupting politicians. False advertising. Misleading, deceptive and confusing product marketing. Those are just some examples of reasonable constraints.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:00PM
Well of course there is nothing wrong with companies being publicly tiraded! That's what's happening here.
There may even be nothing wrong with them being publicly traded. After all, what could be better than gaining Utility from a Utility?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:29PM (12 children)
Solar in California has already achieved grid parity, I believe, so if PG&E raises prices even more they're only going to sink that much faster. Given the large share of the US economy that state is responsible for, its achieving energy independence via renewable energy would confer an enormous advantage to businesses and consumers there, and also boost the US economy further.
Basically, after break-even of solar installation costs you're freeing up all the money that would have gone to purchasing energy for investment in, and consumption of, other things. The US spends $365 billion on oil every year, so some portion of that would accrue to California and amount to a sizeable stimulus package every year.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:40PM (1 child)
They own the Energy Grid. Which is why they're getting so many lawsuits. Which is why they filed the B.K. As it says in the Summery.
And possibly they'll raise prices, right? They'll want to raise prices. And a big part of that is, they charge for the Energy Grid. Higher price for using Energy Grid. So the electric that goes through that one will cost more. Whether it's Solar Power, Wind Power or Flower Power.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 30 2019, @08:13PM
They own the Energy Grid.
That's the rub, ain't it? Time for some of that civil asset forfeiture, or even good old eminent domain.
They shouldn't be allowed to own the grid. They should be paid to build and maintain it, so we can fire them and seize their ill gained profits when they fuck up.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:53PM (1 child)
Electricity rates rising mean that the PV system I installed 3 years ago will pay off even faster.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:02PM
If you did the Off Grid, you can laugh. As everyone else cries from the horrible pain (beautiful feeling). But if you hooked up to PG&E Energy Grid -- not so fast!!!!
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Wednesday January 30 2019, @07:04PM (7 children)
Well if that is so, it will be interesting to see how they handle buying of surplus solar energy from individuals.
The current energy market assumes one of three traditional categories: base load, load following, peaking. Currently energy demand function is essentially sinusoidal with period of one day with a bunch of noise. Solar and wind production functions do not match demand function.
This, I suspect, is going to lead to a spectacular failure down the road.
As solar becomes less expensive then grid supplied energy, more people install solar. Efficiency of energy delivered will decrease as demand becomes less predictable and more volatile. This will likely lead to higher costs, repeat.
Where the spectacular failure will come in is when some event occurs that blocks sunlight for a week or two(bonus if low wind). I am sure some storage will be added, but probably not that much. So with insufficient storage many will need to get energy from the grid. That the grid can no-longer supply that demand because of less demand due to high prices cause the grid to remain at the same capacity or shrink. Hello rolling blackouts.
To avoid this, pricing of electrical energy must change. Preferably integrated with long term policies and planning. Do you believe this will happen? I do not.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 30 2019, @08:21PM (4 children)
pricing of electrical energy must change.
Metering electricity is dumb. We generate way more than we use. The connection costs should be fixed, based on the wire gauge going into your house/office/factory...
And we need a global grid [geni.org] too.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Wednesday January 30 2019, @09:33PM (3 children)
To say that we generate more then we use, if didn't, the costs would be enormous. Some industrial plants can take days to weeks to get back to full production after a unplanned power outage. Electricity is produced on demand. There is practically ZERO electrical energy storage. Sure there is storage in hydro, unspent fuel but that is not electrical energy storage. So if you generate somewhat more you dump excess as heat. If somewhat less is produced you get brownouts, less still you get blackouts.
As to metering, it is not silent, it is critical as signals to the free market to allow efficient operation. My point was that the price function is out dated. It needs to be updated for the new forms of energy production. And at the very least it costs energy to make the equipment to produce/extract energy. That has a price. We are not post scarcity.
Fixed connection costs per energy capacity? That ignores: power factor(you want good quality sin waves on the grid), the current demand and supply curves, median distance from source to sink(longer it has to go the more it costs).
Global grid: If electricity is not metered, who pays for the grid?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday January 30 2019, @10:30PM (2 children)
who pays for the grid?
I already said, it's paid for with hook up and fixed monthly maintenance fees. Generation, as it becomes more decentralized, is becoming less of an issue.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Thursday January 31 2019, @12:48AM (1 child)
Sorry, I was meaning who pays for the global grid. Because that should be separate project(s), since it is large and non trivial capital project.
General grid maintenance, yes of course it would come out of general connection fees.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 31 2019, @01:33AM
I was meaning who pays for the global grid.
"Global grid" is just a bunch of local/national grids all connected together. Money isn't the real issue. Petty politics is. I suppose expecting that kind of cooperation is a difficult prospect. We'd rather build walls instead of bridges.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 30 2019, @10:42PM
Oh noes! People are going to install solar capacity, and the electric industry is going to have to learn to adjust to how to use them on a large scale. As opposed to continuing to use fossil fuels or nuclear plants for power generation, which we all know never fail and cause absolutely no problems whatsoever to anyone.
I know people who have built and live totally on an off-grid power system. It turns out that windmills and solar panels, plus second-hand substation batteries, work just fine for them. And it's in an environment where weather varies a lot more seasonally than in California too. So the problems you're describing are plainly solvable.
Also, higher electrical prices mean people will be encouraged to conserve power. How would that be a bad thing when it comes to providing the electric power needed?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 30 2019, @11:57PM
That's more true of wind than solar. Solar produces best during the hours of peak demand. Germany's Energiewende has amply demonstrated this; the installed solar has already lopped off the profitable portion of the curve for the utilities. The utilities are stuck with the baseload in the overnight when they operate in the red, according to spot prices.
As for storage, battery backups will become more common as the battery tech improves and as sources of electricity switch to renewables. Tesla already installed a battery backup system for a utility in Australia, I believe, so there's a precedent now.
Failures will be much less catastrophic with massively distributed power generation. Smart switches are an option for households that want to retain a grid tie. Micro-grids are an option for neighborhoods or towns that want to go co-op style.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:45PM (10 children)
People working at a company screw up so badly that over 80 people die and 18,000 buildings burn to the ground, equalling something like $16.5 billion in losses. As a result, those company's customers who had either nothing to do with this or were its victims have to pay a bunch of money for the mistake that the company's employees made, while the people who actually screwed things up are basically unaffected. Does that make sense to you?
And don't give me the "Well, it's so much money they can't possibly come up with the money any other way" line. If they're doing stuff that carries the risks of these kinds of losses, they should have been carrying some pretty darn hefty insurance policies, and the insurance company would be on the hook. There are companies out there that sell those kinds of insurance policies out there.
This is the classic "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" approach which worked so well for Goldman Sachs and many other major firms. And it's why any belief that capitalism always rewards good behavior and punishes bad behavior is complete hogwash.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:13PM (1 child)
Actually, $16.5b is a really big loss relative to insurers too. See https://www.naic.org/prod_serv/MSR-PB-18.pdf. I would imagine a contract that large would require multiple reinsurers to spread the potential losses.
It wouldn’t be cheap either. The cost of property insurance is basically the cost of a covered accident times an estimated frequency rate plus a profit/risk margin plus policy service costs. In hindsight, PG&E has racked up at least $20b over 20 years. A premium for adequate insurance coverage for this should be at least a $1b per year. That’s probably better than coming up with a bankruptcy plan that involves paying installments on the $16.5b over as long of a timeframe as they can negotiate, but it’s not an easy solution either.
The other potential hindsight solution would be mitigating the fire risk of their equipment. That’s not necessarily a bargain either. I’m guessing this might entail something like expanding the easements for the equipment that produces fire hazards to include fire breaks. That’s a lot of propert owners to negotiate with.
I wouldn’t rush to judgment too quickly in all of this. California is relatively unique in terms of its large population centers, comparatively recent development and arid conditions.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:58PM
I'd be more sympathetic if PG&E hadn't boosted dividends each of the previous two years, both times prompting a nice increase in their stock price. That's an indication that upper management was more interested in paying investors and probably themselves than they were in either purchasing the necessary insurance or equipment upgrades.
The problem with not punishing the people responsible for causing the problem is that it creates a substantial incentive to skimp on risk management efforts like insurance, maintenance, and equipment upgrades and instead claim higher profits in the short-term. The investors see the lowered expenses and thus higher profit margins, the managers responsible get nice big bonuses and promotions, and everybody's happy until it turns out those risks were actually a problem.
An example of this happening in a different economic sector: Between 2000 and 2008, a division of AIG which had previously been a sleepy backwater of the company started selling insurance against losses in mortgage-backed securities. The manager of that division was lying about how risky this was to his superiors (according to my brother-in-law's dad who worked there at the time), and so upper management saw the big jump in sales but not the big risks they were taking on and gave him appropriate raises and promotions commensurate with his huge success. This was great for all involved, until everyone simultaneously realized in 2008 that the mortgage-backed securities and thus all the related derivatives were worthless, and pushed AIG beyond its ability to pay claims, and that was one of the major reasons the entire global economy tanked ruining millions of people's lives and wrecking a couple of countries in the process (Greece and Spain). Whoopsie-daisy. But in the meantime, the guy who had been in charge of this just waltzed away with his millions. And now you see the problem.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday January 30 2019, @06:14PM
Utilities, which are natural monopolies, should not be for-profit entities.
Basic logic.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 31 2019, @05:22AM (6 children)
While PG&E was grossly and perhaps criminally negligent here, it doesn't absolve the many other parties responsible for this mess. There's a good chance those people would have died and those buildings burn anyway just because of the poor fire fighting response and the unsafe landscaping of the properties in question.
I doubt California with its obsession over all sorts of trivial risks would fail to pass regulations on the sort of fire hazards that PG&E is accused of having created. So why weren't those regulations enforced? "Socialize the losses" requires the collusion of a party capable of distributing such losses among a larger population. That's not capitalism.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday January 31 2019, @10:13PM (5 children)
PG&E's level of responsibility was determined in courts after a lot of lawsuits and such went back and forth. No fire = no deaths and no buildings burned, PG&E's mistakes caused the fire, ergo PG&E is responsible.
Like nearly all for-profit companies, PG&E's response to government regulations they think are too expensive are, in approximate order:
1. Lie to the government. This is the main function of corporate "regulatory compliance" departments, so since they're already paying people they might as well get them to lie.
2. Buy off the people responsible for creating or approving the regulations so no regulations get written that you're not already complying with. This is still usually a lot cheaper than complying with the regulations that would have been written had they not bribed anyone.
3. Buy off the people responsible for enforcing the regulations so they conveniently don't find anything wrong when they look. This bribery can range from fairly cheap (if it's slipping an inspector an extra $100 or something) to very expensive (dishing out a lot of cash to entire departments).
4. Stonewall investigations enough that law enforcement basically gives up and settles for a large-sounding-but-not-actually-that-big fine and no admission of wrongdoing.
5. Comply with the regulations enough to get the regulators off their backs, at which point you go back to step 1.
The thing is, when government regulations are necessary, the best thing for society at large is to have enforcement agencies that are ruthless enough to get through steps 1-4 relatively quickly and repeatedly until the cheapest thing the company can do is comply with the regulations.
Yes, it is. It's not the theoretical capitalism described by pro-capitalist economists, but it is how what is commonly called "capitalism" is actually working right now in lots of industries and companies. It happens because enforcement is lax enough that breaking the rules is cheaper and easier than following the rules, and thus breaking the rules is the path to maximizing shareholder value.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 01 2019, @02:36AM (4 children)
So what? "Late capitalism" has as much relationship to "capitalism" as "fake diamonds" do to "diamonds". I'll note that a lot of other states don't have the problems that California has.
Why blame capitalism when it's flawed enforcement of regulation and a couple of decades of bad energy policies? California is notorious for failing in these things. They passed all kinds of laws to mandate fossil fuel plants move outside of the state boundary, almost bankrupted PG&E early last decade in the California electricity crisis, and then looked the other way when the crippled PG&E had to ship in massive amounts of power on shifty transmission lines in order to do its own job and deliver power to millions of California voters.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday February 01 2019, @09:10PM (3 children)
No True Scotsmaning, I see.
The claim that other states haven't had large-scale screw-ups by power companies is demonstrably wrong.
I live in Ohio (which has been for the most part had a state government controlled by Republicans for whatever that's worth). Its largest power utility, FirstEnergy, decided to skimp on equipment upgrades, operator training, and line maintenance to increase their profit margins. One day in 2003, those risks turned into reality, blacking out approximately 55 million people in 8 states and Ontario for 2 days. About 100 people died in incidents caused in whole or in part by the outage (e.g. home medical devices not working).
It's also worth mentioning that incident had absolutely nothing to do with any of the specific regulations you mentioned.
Because organizing utilities as for-profit businesses gives the people in charge of making decisions an incentive to do the wrong thing by making it more profitable to do the wrong thing than the right thing. I know the concept is inconceivable to somebody who thinks Capitalism=Good and Government=Bad, but you have phenomena like this that demonstrate that capitalist organizations on average have a poor track record when it comes to managing giant risks.
Oh, and the California electricity crisis you mentioned? That was the fault of Enron, Inc [marketwatch.com] because they realized they could increase their profits by intentionally creating power shortages and blackouts, so that's exactly what they did. That's an even stronger demonstration of the problem: Enron's fundamental goal was to maximize shareholder value, not to provide reliable electrical current to residents of California, and they acted on that goal.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 02 2019, @02:21PM (2 children)
To the contrary, capitalism is one of those things people complain about when they deliberately break it.
Ok, how many states again is Ohio? Nor do I recall saying that every other state was perfect.
So does organizing utilities on any other principle. California, for example, didn't get in a situation where it had to import massive power from other states because of its for-profit businesses, but rather because the not-for-profit people blocked most power generation in the state for a number of decades.
A "poor track record" compared to what? Who does it better? The "too big to fail" people who keep bailing poor decision makers out? The old communist world that casually ignored massive ecological damage when it suited them (and were near completely incompetent in economic matters)? The welfare states that have near universally evolved into machines for transferring wealth from the younger (and not yet born) generations to older generations?
It's very easy to glibly go on about the "poor track record" when one doesn't have to care if anyone out there can do it better.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday February 02 2019, @07:14PM (1 child)
When it comes specifically to electricity:
- Canadians get their power cheaper than people in the US.
- People in Europe, Japan, Singapore, and quite a few other countries have substantially fewer outages and other power problems than the US does.
- Within the US, municipal power companies are more reliable than for-profit utilities [eia.gov].
Some serious ideas that would potentially help:
1. Requirements for insurance on more of the risks businesses take. Insurance premiums are basically a charge for taking risks, and the insurance company will spend a great deal of time evaluating the risks and setting their premiums accordingly as well as making recommendations on how to lower those risks.
2. Make pay-for-performance for top management pay out several years after the relevant decisions are made. So instead of handing out big checks in 2019 for someone who got the stock price up in 2019, you hand out that check in 2024, provided their gains "stuck" for that period. This would reduce the incentive management currently has to favor short-term gains over long-term risks.
3. As many countries require, have the Board of Directors include representatives of the low-level employees, affected governments, and others who are affected by the business's decisions but aren't investors.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 03 2019, @02:57AM
There's a lot more hydroelectric power per capita. Same goes for Norway. Those tricks only get you so far in the US.
At higher cost and higher population density. For an extreme example, the average cost of electricity in Germany and Denmark is roughly three times higher (35 and 33 cents per KWh [wikipedia.org]) than the average rate in the US (10.48 cents per KWh [eia.gov]).
This is reasonable - or posting a bond of sufficient size.
They can do that already. I think a large part of the reason that's such a mess is that many of the decisions are done with other peoples' money. I think organizations like PIMCO or CalPERS care more if their names get into the news than if the investments perform well.
That's a terrible idea. Those people have no stake in the company. The low-level employee just sucks a pay check. The government is just looking for an excuse to extort money, and "others" could be a variety of other parasites (than the ones mentioned). And all of that creates conflicts of interest that can go the other way as well. If my too big to fail business is 25% government owned (like say Renault is, they're 25% owned by France), then that gives incentives to the government to compromise France in order to support their investment in Renault.
Anyway, going back to the original post, there's another important point that gets ignored here. Even with the supposed effects of "late capitalism", companies are fundamentally in compliance with a huge amount of regulation that didn't exist 50 years ago. There are important measures like workplace safety and pollution that are much better now than then. If companies really are bypassing regulation, then where's the evidence for it?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:55PM (5 children)
So, to me, a Capitalist society tempered by a bit of socialism could have possibly DENIED an event such as this and the banking bail-outs etc, helping to preserve lives and resources!
Gob bless American capitalism...it makes the rich richer (or at least they don't see jail time) and the poor poorer (or just fucked completely).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday January 30 2019, @05:01PM (2 children)
I think regardless of your form of government bribery will always overcome
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 30 2019, @05:08PM (1 child)
NO! I will cut off your arms!
Unless you pay me. ;)
Yeah... humans are shite....I'm glad I'm not human.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30 2019, @10:45PM
This identity politics is getting out of hand!
Sir, are you classified as human?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Dd_qiuWxPs [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday January 30 2019, @10:19PM (1 child)
I don't think the mix of capitalism or socialism can really make much of an impact here. Surely the greed of PGC bears some blame, but the PUC that's supposed to regulate it was corrupt--revolving door regulation, aka, "regulatory capture". A state-run utility would have financial issues too. The cause of the Tubbs fire is most likely on private property (not the grid) and it seems to be undisputed that the earlier Valley Fire (remember when *that* was a big deal?) was caused by a poorly wired hot-tub on private property. Guerilla wiring is going to happen. The desire to foolishly save a buck permeates all levels of society. Capital, labor, public, private. Nobody is immune.
Also, running electricity through tinder is inherently dangerous.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 30 2019, @10:58PM
Running it through Grindr is, too.
XD
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Funny) by Sulla on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:58PM (1 child)
What they should do to make their books look better is write up some major project proposals for new substations and safer power generation and book them as assets as soon as they break ground. They can use their better ratio of assets to liabilities to sell their high interest debt off to some companies they start for the purpose of buying their debt, these companies would have even better ratios so they will get better rates. Then they can take this public and tell the employees that they can convert their retirements into stock for a sweet sweet deal because PGE is going places.
The problem is they will need a CEO smart enough to do this. It appears both Skilling and Fastow are out of prison. They cant serve as officers but maybe call it chief executive chief and we can get this enron a rolling.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 30 2019, @05:15PM
YOU are scaring me... you've done this before, haven't you Mr. Ponzi?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 30 2019, @05:57PM
Solar reducing profits? Raise rates.
Electrical grid causing fires? Raise rates.
Exec's want a raise? Raise rates.
It's the same shit SDG&E does.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday January 30 2019, @08:25PM
What will happen there? Who foots this bill; that'll take a few pennies more than your average corporate tanking is about.