Possible power outage for next two days

Kex

La Cañada-Flintridge. Not much for $1M here...

Used to live in Santa Monica, and hated I-405 the whole time I was there 😂

P.S. we moved for the school district!

BlueFox

Well, it is 8:10 PM, and power is still on here. While 500K people have lost power up North, there is no wind here. Hopefully we will bypass this mess.

nooshinjohn

Kex wrote: »

La Cañada-Flintridge. Not much for $1M here...

Used to live in Santa Monica, and hated I-405 the whole time I was there 😂

P.S. we moved for the school district!

Not even a 1000sf condo... Sister in Law and her hubby bought a condo in Pasadena near Caltech and it set them back 700k!

You are welcome to drop by here anytime man... that is if you don't mind slummin' it in Woodland Hills.

Kex

Sounds like you might have got lucky if there is no wind! Check your wind forecast for tomorrow...

Kex

Pasadena is one of my favorite places... go there for the restaurants all the time. Great walking city (unlike La Cañada-Flintridge) but the schools here are all 10/10 from elementary through HS. Didn’t want to have to deal with the snobs at the private schools (nor the exorbitant & unpredictable fees).

P.S. Thank you very much for the gracious invitation, and I don’t think I’ve ever been to Woodland Hills. You’d like Mrs. Kex: George Shultz, who worked for your favorite president, was her sponsor for Georgetown, and hired her too. She’s not really into audio that much, but she humors me most of the time.

sucks2beme

Utility issues are becoming common all over.
Local power company asked for a modest rate hike to fix the grid again.
And it was voted down by city council again.
Every time it rains, power goes out all over.
None of the lines are buried, and trees hit the lines all the time.
We have a LOT of big trees. And they are all next to utility poles.
They did come out and finally trim back stuff last fall in my area and
my subdivision doesn't have as many issues since.

mhardy6647

I am kind of amused by the news reports about this.
"Hundreds of thousands of people", against the population of the suburban sprawl of 'metropolitan areas' of California, is basically in the background noise level.

Now, if, say, the whole Bay Area went dark for a few days -- that'd be interesting.


Heck, even the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake's effect on the south bay was fairly limited. I flew to Chicago from SJC the next morning. The first wave of flights out was cancelled (because the planes didn't arrive the night before), but the second wave (planes that flew in from elsewhere in the morning) were all on-time.

When I got to Chicago, my colleagues were surprised to see me. They assumed I'd be staying home to take care of the disaster they perceived had befallen the area. There certainly was disaster (particularly the collapse of the freeway bridge in Oakland) but most of us were basically unscathed.

Kex

From the interwebs:

• Can a homeowner with solar panels just use their own power?

In many cases, no. Almost all home solar systems are tied into the local power company’s power grid, so customers can feed solar back into the system and get compensated for the electricity their solar panels produce. 
These systems are designed to turn off when utility power is out. This is for the safety of electrical workers who may be working on the grid near a home during an outage. Having power flowing into the system could kill them.
To be able to access your solar power in a shutoff, you would need to have a solar inverter installed as part of your system. “These inverters are quite common today,” said Lior Handelsman, vice president of marketing for SolarEdge.

• So if you’ve got solar panels, it doesn’t do you any good when the power’s out?

It does if you have a home battery attached to your solar energy system. Then you can keep the lights on during a utility blackout. The solar energy powers the home during the day and any excess energy is used to charge the battery. The battery can then be used at night, or when the grid goes down. 
For example, Sunrun, a San Francisco-based solar company, sells the Brightbox battery, which provides backup power to four circuit breakers for approximately 8 to 12 hours at night. Most customers connect it to their refrigerator, several rooms of lights and devices such as WiFi and their garage door openers, the company said.

tonyb

I dunno man, every other state has transmission lines up in the air, separated and secure enough to withstand some real gusty winds. Here around the Chicago area, you see them all over, and never have I heard of them blowing down, and we get some pretty gusty winds from storms in the 60-70mph range. Trees fall over before the lines do....so that tells me it can be done even in California.

Maybe, the environmentalists don't want to see big towers dotting the landscape like in other states. I get it...but, you have to put the needs of the people first, not just the few.

As for the comment about "saving lives" with this planned power outage, maybe we should get rid of cars too for periods of time, save thousands of lives. Oh, we need cars you say ? We need electricity too.

Again, this is something that can be done, and the state needs to assist the power company in finding a solution other than cutting power on windy days. It's not hard, we have the know how, just help them fund the solution instead of funding other B.S. stuff. We grown ups like to call that prioritizing, or is that not acceptable anymore.

mhardy6647

It gets a little drier and hotter in (much of) California than it does in Chicago.

Kex

It is my understanding that the lines don’t have to fall over to create sparks.

PG&E (which serves 16 million customers) have been caught with their pants down after they basically killed 86 people last year and went bankrupt because of it. Deferred maintenance might well have been a significant factor (an insulator that came loose or something, IIRC). But when you have warm 50 mph desert winds driving a wildfire in very steep mountainous valleys like Paradise, there is no technology known to man that will stop the advance of the fire.

The article below has some interesting information on what the (much smaller) San Diego utility has done after the Witch fire in 2007, including local micro-grids, burying or insulating lines:

PG&E’s Power Grid

tonyb

mhardy6647 wrote: »

It gets a little drier and hotter in (much of) California than it does in Chicago.

Doesn't matter Doc, it's the wind that supposedly is knocking down the wires onto the dry ground. Since we can't control the weather, we can control how stable we built towers to hold those lines. Make sense ?

If you bury the lines, yeah it's gonna cost more, but you still have earthquakes to contend with....and they get a few from time to time.

Kex

P.S. BlueFox was on earlier, so he must not be doing too badly yet... unless he was using cellular

mhardy6647

tonyb wrote: »

mhardy6647 wrote: »

It gets a little drier and hotter in (much of) California than it does in Chicago.

Doesn't matter Doc, it's the wind that supposedly is knocking down the wires onto the dry ground. Since we can't control the weather, we can control how stable we built towers to hold those lines. Make sense ?

If you bury the lines, yeah it's gonna cost more, but you still have earthquakes to contend with....and they get a few from time to time.

And the whole point -- dry ground in CA is not like dry ground in IL.

BlueFox

As originally posted, I am right on the edge of the planned cutoff area. Last night power was shutoff around me, but, fortunately, not my neighborhood. At least so far. However, people are really upset at PG&E’s new preemptive strategy. I suspect they adopted this strategy as a way to force concessions since they are being sued for all the deaths they have caused over the last few years from the fires their equipment has started.

mhardy6647

Well, in other parts of the country, the local power companies will institute rolling blackouts during periods of peak demand

PVs/wind plus a Tesla PowerWall looks better and better all the time.

Our 5.4 ish kW worth of PVs are, unfortunately, useless to us if the grid's out.

EndersShadow

BlueFox wrote: »

As originally posted, I am right on the edge of the planned cutoff area. Last night power was shutoff around me, but, fortunately, not my neighborhood. At least so far. However, people are really upset at PG&E’s new preemptive strategy. I suspect they adopted this strategy as a way to force concessions since they are being sued for all the deaths they have caused over the last few years from the fires their equipment has started.

I'd be angry to, however as someone in the horrible insurance field, I'd say you hit it on the nose.

They are trying to negate their future risks, and given past history, likely a smart move on their part. It also has a bonus of making people actually feel the consequences of the changes that are having to be made as a result of the lawsuits, rather than just talk about them in the abstract.

Individual speaking aloud: Its horrible 86 people lost their lives, that company should go under...... WAIT A MINUTE, what do you mean I wont have power for 5 days, thats inconcieveable...how dare they.......

For them (as a company, ignoring the human factor), its a win-win.

I'd be surprised if other electric companies in CA dont follow their example in the near future.

And again, I'm speaking solely from the "business/risk management" perspective.

Mikey081057

I read somewhere that standby generators aren't allowed in CA... Is that BS?

Kex

Yes, that’s B.S.

mhardy6647

Mikey081057 wrote: »

I read somewhere that standby generators aren't allowed in CA... Is that BS?

They have to be CARB [CA Air Resources Board] compliant, but they exist & are available.

Here's an example, from good ol' Horrible Freight, no less

steveinaz

You can either use the timber to employ people, build things, properly clear land, OR you can let it become a wildfire from hell and no one benefits, people die, and lives are ruined. Which approach TRULY helps the environment? Cali will never learn, they're too busy being re-elected.

Kex

tonyb wrote: »

As for the comment about "saving lives" with this planned power outage, maybe we should get rid of cars too for periods of time, save thousands of lives. Oh, we need cars you say ? We need electricity too.

Car accidents happen. They are largely unpredictable, and usually they last no longer than 5 seconds from start to finish. Most of the time, nobody dies.

Solutions will no doubt be found for the future, just as the San Diego utility has tried to do. These forced outages will help to focus minds, but a power outage is still just an inconvenience. If you have to throw out everything in your refrigerator, it might cost $100 to replace. Life is irreplaceable.

Leaving women and children to burn to death in their vehicles is barbaric.

pitdogg2

mhardy6647 wrote: »

tonyb wrote: »

mhardy6647 wrote: »

It gets a little drier and hotter in (much of) California than it does in Chicago.

Doesn't matter Doc, it's the wind that supposedly is knocking down the wires onto the dry ground. Since we can't control the weather, we can control how stable we built towers to hold those lines. Make sense ?

If you bury the lines, yeah it's gonna cost more, but you still have earthquakes to contend with....and they get a few from time to time.

And the whole point -- dry ground in CA is not like dry ground in IL.

A hot dry wind could also cause "static" electricity blowing over the wires that could possibly cause an arc to go to ground by way of tree or brush I'm surmising here.

I mean after all it does it in warm moist air of a thunderstorm

Yea I'm not on the bandwagon that what they are doing is right or the correct way.

Nightfall

It's not a lot but we got our first snow. 80 degrees yesterday, 23 degrees right now.

Kex

It would seem that they are admitting that they just cannot guarantee the safety of their equipment, or the public in these Sierra Nevada communities with limited roads in and out in the short term. According to their website, PG&E oversees 106,681 circuit miles of electric distribution lines and 18,466 circuit miles of interconnected transmission lines.

“The utility recently told a federal judge it had completed only about 31% of the ambitious tree-trimming work it planned for 2019. The company said it had finished 760 miles out of the 2,455 miles of power lines that have vegetation around them. To finish the job, PG&E said it would need significantly more than the 4,500 workers it has dedicated to the work.

And that's only for stopgap measures. In a court filing, PG&E said a clear-cutting of all trees and plants around its power lines would cost somewhere between $75 billion and $150 billion and require hiring 650,000 workers.”

One can only assume that the 650K workers claim means to complete the work within a given timeframe...

afterburnt

Kex wrote: »

pitdogg2 wrote: »

Can you even bury high voltage power lines on those huge tower's ?

Apparently, it’s still under discussion for high risk areas, but who knows if it’s really feasible.

They just finished a 230kv underground transmission line last year. It's nothing new just expensive.

motorhead43026

PG&E is an investor owned utility. So you know what is of the most importance.

afterburnt

codycatalist wrote: »

Nightfall wrote: »

I've talked to people that moved here (Colorado) from California. See a lot of California license plates too. Hey, let's everyone move to Colorado and wreck their housing market and traffic too.

Lots of Californias moving here to AZ in troves as well. Same with Austin TX.

I am out of here in eight months or less. BTW Austin is California

Kex

EndersShadow wrote: »

I'd be surprised if other electric companies in CA dont follow their example in the near future.

SoCal Edison has followed suit in several areas close to L.A. affecting 173,000 customers. It’s not clear that any forced outages have actually occurred yet.

mrloren

Lot's of good points of view here.

I've lived in SoCal all my life, High Santa Anna winds are nothing new. The house I grew up in we had to board up the east windows at least twice a year so they wouldn't get blown out. So these wind event are nothing new but we never had big fires started by them till recently. What has changed?


I have friends that live in the back country of San Diego county. They have generators, as soon as the power goes out it auto goes on and runs off the propane tank. Like $5k for the setup but well worth it. Big problem they have had is getting permits to clear their land. Over 100' from the home requires a permit which is costly and hard to get. Most people do it anyway better to pay a fine then loose a home. 100' from the home is not enough for a wind driven fire.

A lot I can rant about but I don't want to be banned.