from the pass-the-cost-of-wildfires-back-and-you'll-have dept.
PG&E will spend at least $15 billion burying power lines:
Pacific Gas & Electric plans to bury 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) of its power lines in an effort to prevent its fraying grid from sparking wildfires when electrical equipment collides with millions of trees and other vegetation across drought-stricken California.
The daunting project announced Wednesday aims to bury about 10% of PG&E’s distribution and transmission lines at a projected cost of $15 billion to as much as $30 billion, based on how much the process currently costs. The utility believes it will find ways to keep the final bill at the lower end of those estimates. Most of the costs will likely be shouldered by PG&E customers, whose electricity rates are already among the highest in the U.S.
PG&E stepped up its safety commitment just days after informing regulators a 70-foot (23-meter) pine tree that toppled on one of its power lines ignited a major fire in Butte County, the same rural area about 145 miles (233 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco where another fire sparked by its equipment in 2018 killed more than 80 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
Since it started July 13 in a remote area of Butte County, the Dixie Fire has churned northeast through the Sierra Nevada. By Wednesday, the fire spanned a 133-square-mile (344-square-kilometer) area, forcing the Plumas County sheriff on Wednesday to order evacuations along the west shore of popular Lake Almanor.
The backlash to PG&E’s potential liability for the Dixie Fire prompted the company’s recently hired CEO, Patricia “Patti” Poppe, to unveil the plan for underground lines several months earlier than she said she planned.
[...] But Poppe told reporters on Wednesday that she quickly realized after she joined PG&E in January that moving lines underground is the best way to protect both the utility and the 16 million people who rely on it for power.
“It’s too expensive not to do it. Lives are on the line,” Poppe told reporters.
]...] However, getting the job done within the next decade will require a quantum leap. In the few areas where PG&E has already been burying power lines, it has been completing about 70 miles (123 kilometers) annually.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday July 23 2021, @09:47AM (4 children)
Translation: overhauling the infrastructure wasn't necessary before, so PG&E poured money into lobbying and lawyers because it was cheaper. Now the infrastructure needs rebuilding and it's unavoidable, so we may as well spend a little more to look like the good guys and deflect costlier future lawsuits.
Or said another way: don't believe for one minute that they're doing this out of concern for the community. It's all about money.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Friday July 23 2021, @10:08AM (1 child)
And a very clever move at that. 2021: Look, we're doing something, we're burying power lines. 2030: We're still doing something, still burying power lines. 2040: Look, we said it'd take awhile, right? 2050: Still burying, still burying. 2060: ...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @07:22PM
Wouldn't it be cheaper to just bury the evidence?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Friday July 23 2021, @10:19AM
Let me refine that translation. They poured money into lawyers, and it's not working - they're getting sued. Instead of making sure there are no tall trees around their powerlines, which costs money, they are announcing a concerned effort to keep the people safe. They now have a reason to charge the customers for that safety effort, where the liability lawsuits and fines came out of their own pocket.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pge-lawsuit-2019-kincade-fire-damages/581721/ [utilitydive.com]
what did they do when faced with $30bil in damages? they for chapter 11. they then used that as leverage against the 70,000 people suing them - hey, we'll go out of business and you'll get nothing - to get a settlement for half that.
were they really that broke? nah, they have the highest energy cost of any other company. they were broke because instead of saving some profits, they were pulling the cash out of the company. strange how I need savings in case my car breaks down or I get canned, but they can raise prices for a monopoly they were granted by the people, or threaten to not pay.
what needs to be done here is getting rid of this half way between government owned and private owned bullshit. There should not be a private corporation granted a monopoly, for anything. A private company running lines on public land would need to rent that land. Instead we give them taxpayer dollars to do it. See, if it's government owned, it can't declare bankruptcy. If people don't like it, they can vote for lawmakers that change it. Now, they vote for lawmakers who do what the company wants and lies to the public, because the company pays them.
Or a better idea. Public executions. When individuals granted power by the people abuse those people, you string them up, and leave their body rotting in the town square. That used to work very well - don't know why we stopped.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @07:48PM
> Or said another way: don't believe for one minute that they're doing this out of concern for the community. It's all about money.
Or another way: thank you, that's an improvement, I'll stop complaining for 5 seconds.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @10:25AM (11 children)
"after informing regulators a 70-foot (23-meter) pine tree that toppled on one of its power lines ignited a major fire"
CA forests are in sad shape from years of 'save the forest' help. Crispy dried big fuel load, just waiting for an ignition source.
To say it was PG&E that happened to be the trigger is true, but kind of misses the problem.
Burying the lines might prevent the fires from hurting them, but it won't stop the fires.
The only way to do that is to reduce the fuel load, or hope for rain.
Perhaps a better way might be to keep the right of way's clear and use them as fire breaks?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by crafoo on Friday July 23 2021, @02:27PM (2 children)
The road to fire and doom is paved with arrogant idiots demanding short-sighted policy that makes them _feel_ good but actually makes everything worse. Emotional thinkers. Narcissists. Don't worry though. They'll never accept responsibility or assume blame. There is always a HUEWHAIITE MAAAN nearby for that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Friday July 23 2021, @05:50PM (1 child)
The voices telling you that profit from your outrage.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @07:50PM
When the rages dies down... NEED ANOTHER FIX!!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Friday July 23 2021, @05:02PM (3 children)
I owned property partly under a 500 kV line once.
The electric company worked with me regularly and carefully to make certain none of my trees got too close. It can be done.
Not in CA though.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @03:40AM
Here in the Northern Wastes, every summer the power co-op sends around the trimming truck, casts a suspicious eye on the numerous trees, and removes any vegetation that might contact power lines. Doesn't matter if it's my tree or not. No extra charge. They tell me this is cheaper than repairing damaged lines, let alone worse.
Down in California, Edison informed me that if a tree fell on my line, that was my fault and I'd be billed for it.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Saturday July 24 2021, @03:44AM (1 child)
I also live where there are lot of trees, certainly more than I remember in California, but that's not the point.
Here, they regularly manage them around power lines, and I don't recall ever having forest fires from the trees. But we also have water here.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @02:06PM
In my end of the Northern Wastes, we have dry forests with power lines running through 'em, but funny thing, no forest fires from power lines. (From lightning strikes and stupid campers, yeah, but not from power lines.)
Of course, until the past couple decades we also logged out our surplus trees (we're starting to pay for that neglect), instead of letting 'em pack in tight til they all die from too much competition for scarce water, like California does. And we don't stop the power company from doing needed maintenance because of counterproductive regulations, like California does, either on the lines or keeping the right-of-way cleared.
Ya know, "like California does" is a pretty good warning sign!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @05:41PM
The PG&E official response is:
"We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 24 2021, @06:18AM (1 child)
You're not wrong, and I'm not disagreeing with you - but I think you're only focusing on half the picture.
I've always believed that power lines should be buried. Just think of all the millions of highways, with obstructions standing every couple hundred feet for motorists to drive into. Just think of all the deaths that have happened when a storm or falling tree dropped live wires on the ground - and on the people nearby. Power outages aren't as gruesome as the death tolls already mentioned - but they are a helluvan inconvenience for all of us. And, that makes no mention of the forests cut down regularly to replace old, rotted out telephone poles.
Put it all underground, where it can't hurt people. Overbuild it the first time, so it won't have to be done again in 50 or 100 years.
Electric lines should not be the fire hazard that they are in California, or anywhere else.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @01:58PM
The falling-lines argument isn't enough of a regular hazard to have any impact until there's a major fire.
But I think it would have made more sense to encourage buried cable to be run everywhere that highways are, so it's all one right-of-way and easy to access, and make that the cheap option instead of (as California did) making it the prohibitively and perpetually expensive option (because underground lines are taxed as real property, while overhead are not. If it's comparable to the taxes on a long narrow strip of trash ground that I used to own down there, it'd be something like $600 per mile per year, assuming the cable isn't taxed as an "improvement". Which adds up.)
So now that it's too late for the logical option, we're going to spend billions to bury cable in the worst possible environment for that, in the impossibly rough and steep terrain where the risk of major fires exists. It would probably be cheaper to go the long way around via existing roadways, but this being California, that would run into an even more prohibitive set of regulations, permits, and bureaucrats.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday July 24 2021, @11:42AM
Dyslexic? Falling trees don't cause fires unless they fall on electric transmission lines. Your "why bother, it's going to burn anyway" is incredibly ignorant and likely apathetic.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Friday July 23 2021, @03:36PM (3 children)
I've been trying to get my local city to bury the power lines behind my house. Unfortunately they don't cause fires...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @03:48AM (2 children)
California has weird laws about that. New lines must be buried. But buried lines are taxed as real property, while overhead lines are not. So in addition to costing about 4x as much to start with, buried cable has an ongoing tax expense that overhead lines don't. (At least this is how it was explained to me, when I wanted to know why power could not be run to certain properties.) Which discourages both new lines, and needless burying of old lines.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Saturday July 24 2021, @08:59PM (1 child)
I wished that amazed me.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @09:32PM
California is amazing, just sometimes in all the wrong ways...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @04:13PM (8 children)
By putting wind/solar and battery installations closer to where the power is needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @07:56PM
Or coat the power cables with solar panels. Solve both issues.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @03:44AM (6 children)
Greenies don't want vast seas of ugly black solar panels, nor dangerously hot mirror facilities, nor ugly windmills, polluting their perfect suburban yards. Such facilities should be confined to the wastelands, where they cannot be seen by their betters.
Having had the joy of living downwind from a new solar facility (which wrecked the local microclimate) I say anyone who wants "green" energy should be required to host their share of the facility.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday July 24 2021, @11:50AM (5 children)
Greenies don't want vast seas of ugly black solar panels, nor dangerously hot mirror facilities, nor ugly windmills, polluting their perfect suburban yards.
Trumpian nonsense. Who do you think are putting solar panels ON THEIR OWN ROOFS? I say "trumpian" because Trump is the one who called windmills "ugly". This [pinimg.com] is ugly and this [data] isn't??
You and your fellow Trumpians need to see an eye doctor.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @01:29PM (4 children)
Actually, it looks more like this:
https://goo.gl/maps/cHh6VsKQeTLZWrUg9 [goo.gl]
(Only about 20% of those windmills actually work.)
There used to be more trees, like across the road, but they were cleared for windmill construction. So much for what used to be raptor habitat.
And see all these dark rectangular blots? (zoom in and more will pop out at you.)
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.8096526,-118.4289161,19998m/data=!3m1!1e3 [google.com]
Those are solar panels. The southernmost of this bunch used to be an olive orchard. The rest used to be poppy fields (much better habitat than the Poppy Reserve) and toward the NE, cropland. (In fact all of the flat area that's cleared of Joshua trees used to be in row crops.) The westernmost one closest to 138 used to be a patch of the remaining native desert woodland (junipers and Joshuas). They make huge downwind hotspots (which no longer cool off at night, so everything that depends on condensation for water dies or leaves) and dustbowls that didn't exist before, and are scorched-earth on a fragile environment.
But hey, it's all out of sight of the greenies, out in that nasty ugly desert, so no worries!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday July 24 2021, @08:04PM (3 children)
If we don't stop burning fossil fuels it won't hurt me, I'll be dead before the raptors and a lot of people die from the rapidly changing climate. See those fires our west? Deadly floods in the south, in China, in Europe?
Your precious fossil fuels killed those people, plants, and animals by climate change, the rapidity of which has seldom happened in this planet's life. When those five or six events happened, a large percentage of Earth's life became extinct. Last time it was an asteroid, this time it's us.
You want Earth to become the new Venus?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @08:49PM (2 children)
Look up the Ideal Gas Law, and try again. The influence of CO2 is so small as to be statistical noise, and is well documented to follow, not lead, temperature changes. And green plants evolved in a period with CO2 ten times higher than it is today. What do you have against green plants, and for that matter, against breathing??
Current wildfires in the U.S. are at about 10% of the historical norm... at least if you bother to look back before Smokey the Bear. It's only increased compared to the most recent few decades, when it was at about 5% of the historical norm. Likewise, severe heat waves are far less frequent than they were in the first half of the 1900s (especially note the summer of 1936).
China, and the Mississippi basin, have had dramatic floods since time immemorial. (I will say people seem to be getting stupider about building in flood plains.)
All the data that hasn't been "adjusted" says we're on our way into another Little Ice Age, and cold kills far more of everything than does heat.
And here in the Northern Wastes, some of us have noted that the growing season is averaging 30 days shorter than it was 50 years ago. Of course when we report that we had blizzard conditions (not just the normal late snow) the 3rd week of May, that's just weather, while your not-historically-unusual heat wave is climate.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday July 26 2021, @05:17PM (1 child)
I see you're a Trump voter who holds stock in coal and oil companies, or are stupid enough to believe right wing politicians before scientists.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Reziac on Monday July 26 2021, @06:20PM
I used to hold all the same beliefs that you do about this climate thing. After all, it sounded convincing, and "everyone agreed".
Then I began looking at the data for myself.
And changed my mind.
I pay very little attention to what's spewed by the news media or politicians (if anything, nowadays I assume it's discredited until proven otherwise). However, I do pay attention to Dr. Willie Soon, Dr. Patrick Moore (watch his interview, "A Dearth of Carbon"), Dr. Roy Spencer, and the like.
Tony Heller has been conveniently compiling historical reports and hard data that hasn't been "adjusted" or truncated for best effect, or shoehorned into "projections" that never match reality. Take a look for yourself; he has a YT channel. The most recent includes long-term wildfire and temperature records that contradict the current assertions of impending doom.
Oh, and I don't just dismiss folks like yourself as "stupid". But that seems to be the only argument you have.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @05:53PM (1 child)
I'm looking forward to this with caution, as there may be unintended consequences for me personally. I currently live in very affordable housing with a beautiful view obstructed by power lines. We are in a high fire hazard zone, one level down from the highest danger zone and I just heard that they may eventually bury our lines too.
On the one hand, fantastic news--safer neighborhood, property value going up due to enhanced view.
On the other hand, gentrification. Prop 13 limits how much my property taxes go up, but it doesn't limit the actual cost of housing. If other people get their lines buried before mine, and we still burn, then replacement housing here will be even more expensive.
There will be a short-term cost differential between areas that get their lines buried first, and those that are last on the list.
It could be a windfall or a problem for me. I'm just not sure. I love the view, but I don't $100k love it--if I could sell the view, move to the flats and walk away with a fat capital gain, I think I'd do that. Even if the lines aren't buried yet, property values may rise on speculation of impending work so that might be the best time to vamoose.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 23 2021, @07:59PM
Tell us about your relationship with your father.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday July 24 2021, @03:48AM (1 child)
"It’s too expensive not to do it"
That was true a decade ago, and the taxpayers are effectively bailing out PG&E for that. Now that check has come home and PG&E is grudgingly doing what it should have been doing. Better late than never I suppose.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 24 2021, @01:46PM
It would have been less expensive if PG&E could have done the maintenance they wanted to when they wanted to do it, lo that decade ago, but were prohibited from doing by California's tangle of regulations. Which does nothing but teach the company that it's better to let things slide and save the money. Maybe next time we should =encourage= proactive maintenance, eh??
Now waiting to see how they plan to bury lines across some of the more ...interesting... terrain. Most of the areas at risk of fire are exceedingly rough. It would probably be cheaper to move the entire right-of-way.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 24 2021, @04:00AM
OK, so they don't want to be sued for fires. Got it.
They're also not wild about being sued for having cut off power - besides, it's a bad look.
They're also not wild about more and more people going off-grid (regardless of what they say about it) because it means less leverage, lower load but unaltered coverage requirements, less money coming their way.
They're not wild about trees wrecking their stuff and having to rebuild.
They're not wild about the cost of buried lines.
It's worth remembering that a lot of this rural electrification stuff was done very fast, and poles are faster than digging - and mostly cheaper (some details apply). But even if lines are buried they're not always buried all the way (for reasons ranging from geology to maintenance requirements).
They haven't been saints, but I don't think that they've been total devils either and this has been a long time coming - bear in mind that a lot of people don't care for power company right-of-way digging going through their yards and farms and roads and everything either. No matter what they do, they'll be somebody's villain.
I do agree that in the long run buried lines are the way to go, but even then they're not perfect because trees falling on houses will do many of the same horrible things, because we're not burying houses and the northern end of California has many tall trees. A seventy-footer really isn't big.