Pacific Gas and Electric Co (PG&E) has imposed unprecedented shutoffs leaving millions without power.
The shutdowns are safety precaution to prevent wildfires. California Governor Gavin Newsom said the widespread electricity shutdown is “unacceptable.”
“We’re seeing a scale and scope of something that no state in the 21st century should experience,” Newsom said. “What’s happened is unacceptable and it’s happened because of neglect.”
The remarks were the most pointed comments Newsom has directed at PG&E since the outages began early on Wednesday. Among the questions he raised was whether the utility is too large, with a service area covering more than 40 counties.
He also faulted PG&E for putting what he called “greed” ahead of investments.
PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January 2019, citing potential civil liabilities in excess of $30 billion from major wildfires linked to its transmission wires and other equipment.
PG&E Chief Executive Bill Johnson acknowledged that his company had left “millions of people” without a “fundamental service” they expect and deserve.
“This is not how we want to serve you,” he told a media briefing in San Francisco, adding that PG&E “was not adequately prepared” for such a large power outage.
“Northern California is not a Third World country,” the San Jose Mercury Statesman said in an editorial. “It’s unacceptable that the region is being forced to endure this level of disruption as the long-term strategy for dealing with the threat of wildfires.”
Red Flag Alert
The National Weather Service has a “Red Flag Fire Alert” for the hot dry “Diablo Winds” that seasonally occur this time of year.
Food spoilage will be massive due to the shutdowns.
Fire in 2017 killed scores of people and the now bankrupt PG&E does not want a repeat.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
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PG&E is simpley unloading the costs of running a grid on the customers. (externalities)
How come we never have this stuff in Europe, where power is orders of magnitude more dependable than in the USA? I am tempted to say that it’s because the grid and energy utilites are not privatized companies, except they are nowadays.
It must be that the wind is more dependable …
It is because: As bad as socialist five year planners are at allocating resources; they are still far better at it than the ambulance chasers and welfare-by-way-of-asset-pumping leeches given free rain over the resources on this side of the Atlantic.
An aging infrastructure supporting all that green energy and just when the wind farms can produce the most power, they have to shut down operations to prevent fires in corridors they have allowed to over grow for years.
California is the worst. That’s why 40 million people live here. Please stay away.
Our 80 degree January weather is too much to handle for most people.
It can also be very confusing having to choose between going to the beach, mountains, desert or world-class cities like LA and San Diego on any day of the year without giving a thought to the weather.
California is just utter crap. Why did I ever move here 30 years ago? Most miserable 30 years of my life, and I lived for 20 in that paradise called New Jersey!
Adam Carolla has compared California to a beautiful woman. Because she gets attention for her looks she doesn’t bother to develop a personality, or an intellect.
“The shutdowns are safety precaution to prevent wildfires. California Governor Gavin Newsom said the widespread electricity shutdown is “unacceptable.””
I’m thinking that last year it was unacceptable for a live downed PG&E power line to burn down the town of Paradise.
Pleasure
Mostly money related im sure. If they were raking it in, didnt have lawsuits etc theyd gladly burn the entire state down. Not that I would care lol. I guess I shouldn’t say that there’s a lot of good people in CA but they are beholden to an idotic, bankrupt govt. Like anywhere, politicians will drive everyone off a cliff to keep the paycheck rolling in.
These flyoverlander tantrums are hilarious!
Here in Western North Carolina, Duke Plower has the same contempt for the consumer. They refuse to trim their monopoly “right of way”, and just let the tree limbs fall, and then repair them (WAY more profitable!).
Then they tell the consumers on their text messages :
“The power outage was caused by tree limbs falling on the lines”. Right
In eastern NC Duke is clearing under power lines, exposing people’s back yards to the neighboring road. That pisses everybody off, too. Also, they are regulated by the state, that limits their income and ability to invest in infrastructure. Also, the NIMBYs prevent new rights of way and power grid improvements. It is more than greed that created these problems.
Same here the difference is the 45 inches of rain we receive Here falls during the winter months. Stops in may. Sunshine and low humidity drys everything out. Last yr the black oaks looked wilted. It not just power lines. Trailer chains/mufflers on grass/ bbq. Just about anything will start a fire. .
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If California declared independence it would become the 5th largest economy in the world. It seems to me that for this state of affairs to happen there must be monumental management incompetence in play. Whoever is in charge, both politicians and company management should be sacked for being culpably incompetent.
5th largest economy is the world. Specifically because it is the number one or two recipient of Fed welfare in the US (New York being the other.)
Not to talk bad about welfare recipients, but it doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable that some of them may suffer from occasional bouts of management incompetence.
Have you got figures to back up your first paragraph? I would not be at all calm if I were subject to this occasional bout of incompetence. Yet the Californians seem to be taking it on the chin. A bit supine isn’t it?
Look for total size of combined FIRE sectors. Throwing the fruits of others’ labor on the FIRE, is what The Fed does, after all.
So is it welfare for the poor or welfare for the rich that makes California the5th largest economy in the world?
Not welfare in and of itself, for intrastate subgroups in the abstract. But, instead, where the funding for all that welfare comes from: From people performing work in states which the Fed engineered transfers transfer wealth from.
Printing money does not increase real wealth. Neither does moving printed money from the Fed to privileged actors in the FIRE sectors. Nor does those privileged actors using their freshly unearned freshprint to bid up prices for “assets”, such that those owning said “assets” then get nominally wealthier. And can hence engage in more economic activity. Hence rank as a “bigger” economy, if measured by activity measures like GDP.
That whole process creates no new real wealth. Yet, it is obvious that someone whose house just “went up” by $3million, is wealthier than before. Even in real terms, as those $3million can be used to lay claim to real goods and services.
So, the sum total of real wealth is the same as before. While the wealth of those in high “asset” concentration states are higher. What must then, per simple arithmetic, be the effect on some in less “asset” concentrated states?
Then, on top of that, you have broker and other middlemen commissions, as well as the “squabble-over-who-owns-the-rights-to-all-the-freshprint-and-the-assets-they-make-more-valuable” legal operators etc. None of whom create any real value, and whose sole (often outsized and getting ever more so as the printing progresses) source of earnings, is driven by the zero-value-add printing itself.
Those “jobs” are also more concentrated in some states than in others.
Add the two up (asset appreciation + the rake collected by FIRE and legal), and it adds up to real money. Again, without any net new creation of real economic value. Hence pure wealth transfers. To some states, quite obviously. Hence, again, by arithmetic necessity, from other states. Hence de facto welfare. Or transfer payments. Or whatever it is PC to refer to it as hese days.
It is very common in “liberal” states for the customers and the government to beat up on the electric company. The public utilities commission sets rates, profit margins and approves or disapproves capital improvement projects. I’d be quite sure that PGE has been capital starved for many years, and now the price for low rates and poor maintenance is being paid. Not that the management of PGE hasn’t been a bunch of rat bastards, too.
I don’t blame PG&E. It’s asinine to blame the fires on them. Everyone in California that had their house burn knew it was a risk. Yet they chose to live their. Where I live, if the power goes out after a big storm, everyone blames the power company. And they also complain about the way their tree looks after the power company guts it because someone decided it was a good idea to plant a tree under the power lines.
PG&E should permanently shut down the power until they can be exempted from blame for fires.
Looks like Caiiornia has joined the tyranny of the National Weather Service. People in Florida and the GoM have long been victimized by meteorologists and their forecasts. Hurricane Dorian was forecast to devastate Florida so people had to prepare. In the event it never touched Florida but vacations were cancelled, stores boarded up and evacuations begun. Hurricanes can’t be fought but a billion or so dollars spent on more fire fighting equipment to stop them before they get out of control might be a better solution that turning off the power statewide.
Re Dorian–When was the last time you saw a category 5 hurricane make a 90 degree turn 100 miles offshore of Florida? When have you seen a category 5 hurricane stop over the turning point for 36 hours? The NWS made a pretty accurate call on both those items. A swing to the west by a pretty small amount (in the scale of things) would have devastated that part of Florida.
Remember that the head meteorologist POTUS said that the hurricane was heading for Alabama (through Florida).
Btw it’s not unreasonable that power is shutoff in a high wind environment. Power gets shutoff routinely before ice storms and hurricanes elsewhere in America. Truthfully the terrain of California cant support old power lines in high winds anymore. Fires,floods, tornadoes and hurricanes are the natural part of the earth renewing itself.
Cities should start running their own power companies. My city between the outage zones didnt lose power because the city manages it’s own power generation. It costs about 30% less per kwh than PG&E and lines are buried.
MISH better move out of Sillinois before people leaving Taxifornia buy the house he wants.
High crime rate, terrible healthcare and now scheduled power outages. The US is turning into a sh*thole country.
Sounds exactly like South Africa
Just left out the corrupt socialist government
yes …and with the US being mostly ‘ahead of the curve’ this might be the way of things to come in Europe too ! The recent developments in the ME will only speed up up things….
Lights out in the US and in Europe means lights out for the world. But at least we can feel good about all the diversity we allowed to flourish in our countries.
More laughs from California
Thousands of morons… um Californians… are learning that their solar panels are useless when the grid goes down. They wired their solar panels into the grid (to save on power bills), but not into battery banks (which if made by Tesla tend to burst into flames faster than a PGE power line anyway).
Millions of $$$ spent on political grand standing, and it doesn’t even help them when the power goes out. Typical California
Gasoline prices have gone above $5/gallon around LA, as thousands of Maxine Waters supporters buy gas for generators
And naturally, with their home state in the dark — in more ways than one — Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters are focused like laser beams on causing problems for the rest of the country
Well just got power back. Not to bad. Glad to have the freezer up. I hear pge reported good profits for yrs. my observation lots of unmaintained lines is how they did it. Leaning trees branches etc.
funny my weather app has the red flag warning (gust 25 to 40) temps low humidty etc. then the regular forcast was like 75 with 5-10 mph wind. Humidty did drop into the teens for a bit today. They shut the next county over down a few weeks ago. Same same. Seem pretty calm.
Pge gets sued for leaving the power on and ive seen commercials wanting to sue for cutting it off.
I wonder was this a non event, practice for the real deal, or is pge trying to so is they have by the short and curlies. Rates are up. Remember this is the state where they were exporting power only to import it back at a profit.
I will be upset if fri temps are higher winds are the same and there is no red flag and we have power.
CA has got homelessness, garbage, rats, used needles, and medieval diseases…
CA has debts up over its head, corrupt politicians, and an endless stream of illegal aliens who’s first act upon entering the country was by definition: breaking the law
CA relies on other states to provide water, electricity and crude oil / energy. CA makes its money from IPOs; selling money losing companies as though they were viable. CA relies on massive federal subsidies from military bases and military contractors
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and floats like a duck… CA is a third world country
Haha you could probably say that for every state in the union. Ca has its problems just like everywhere else.
You have more homelessness per capita than any other state.
You have more used needles. More crime (not just the political kind). More uncollected garbage.
You have the most taxes and yet also more muni debt
CA has the most light pollution of any state, no doubt a badge of honor for enviro-terrorists.
And the electrical power you bring in from other states? That’s because other states generate a surplus DUH!!! Guess logic isn’t taught at educational centers like Berkley or Stanford
Illinois and NY state have plenty of problems, but at least they are not California!!!!
Yeah i agree with with you on the debt and taxes. As far as homeless goes. Think a good bit of that has to do with climate. I lived in wyoming for a bunch of years. No homeless prob there butt cold. As far a light polution goes. Of course. Its like looking at the east coast from ga to maryland. Bout the same. Whats your home state.
You didn’t even mention we have the second highest gasoline tax in the country. Give credit where it’s due. Fortunately, tens of billions of those hard-earned dollars is being spent on a high speed train to an almond orchard north of Bakersfield.
California’s High Gasoline Prices Are No Accident
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2019/10/10/californias-high-gasoline-prices-are-no-accident/#43e878f8518b
California is a net contributor to the Federal budget, which includes Federal expenditures in California on military bases and defense contractors. Why does the rest of the United States need financial support from a “third world country”? As for selling “money losing companies as if they were viable,” I can only ask why is anyone in other states or countries dumb enough to invest in them? A fool and his money….
California’s problems are vast, starting with its government, but many places here are still much more pleasant than the rest of the country.
“California’s problems are vast, starting with its government, but many places here are still much more pleasant than the rest of the country.”
Absolutely! You are not going to beat southern California especially the beach communities! The government(s) will stab it with their steely knives, but will never kill that beast.
You’re right. I can hike a mile into the hills behind my house and look at the Pacific. The schools and roads here are great. Even with high rates, the weather is so temperate I pay less than $200 per month on average for electricity and natural gas for a home that’s 2,800 square feet. That includes charging one electric car. No polar vortexes, hurricanes, tornadoes, or even snow here, but I can ski in a couple hour drive. The rest of the country can mock it, I’ll enjoy the sunset.
Best of all, HOARDS of Tarantulas and creepy crawlies are bursting out of the ground in the affected areas. They are hungry, like to eat people and pets, and LOVE to hunt in the DARK! Sweet Dreams!
The Tarantula stories are grossly exaggerated; you seldom see one big enough to eat a beagle…
There are two main causes of the fires here: 1.An extended drought that has killed millions of trees. 2.An extended period of planning idiocy which has resulted in the building of entire towns, like Paradise which burned, in ancient firestorm paths. For countless millions of years, the fires cleared underbrush when the hot, dry Santa Ana winds blew. Now, the winds drive fires that clear million dollar homes. Newsome, our idiot leftist governor fresh out of San Francisco, has a cosmic scale need for a scapegoat and he has found it in PG&E, one of the two main utilities here.
The real mystery to me is why anyone is stupid enough to buy a California utility’s stock or bond, or why the tens of thousands of honest, hardworking employees continue to work there.
The ambulance chasers have discovered that, when 70 mph winds drive brush into 200,000 volt power lines, fires result. The utilities have discovered that turning off the power to millions when the winds kick up saves them from bankruptcy, but still generates a hell of a lot of heat.
And you thought Chicago was full of idiots, Mish…not even close.
The main cause of fires@abend237-04 is that California gets most of its electricity from out of state, and the high tension power lines that bring in that electricity criss-cross the areas with lots of dry tinder.
Every time someone publishes a picture from space of the US west coast, we see too much light pollution coming from California.
5th wettest winter on record. Rain 1.5 two weeks ago. Its dry but the oak trees dont look to stressed like last yr.
This isn’t caused by extended drought. Their climate produces no rain for 6 months straight every year.
This sounds like the same morons who blame this on global warming. As if when you go 6 months with no rain, the temperature being a degree warmer is going to make the dead shrubs more flammable.
You’ve convinced me with the power of your logic; We need more drought here and building in the woods to get these fires under control.
It is the Bark Beetle that killed millions of trees, not drought.
Healthy trees can tolerate beetle infestation. Drought weakened trees cannot. Old trees that would have died off from natural fire years ago cannot.
Californuzuela.
““Northern California is not a Third World country,” the San Jose Mercury Statesman said in an editorial…”
San Jose may not be, but I’ve heard San Francisco sure looks like one!
I think most third world countries would be embarrassed to be compared to San Francisco.
Their both ran like third world countries, though. That’s the important takeaway, and why they don’t have power.
How will the Tesla owners be able to show how environmentally conscious they are?
“PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January 2019, citing potential civil liabilities in excess of $30 billion ….”
Na….. Who would have thought? Ambulance chasers shaking people down is the cultprit!!! What a surprise!!!
Heck, it’s California! Of course ensuring slimy ambulance chasers on the make, can get their hands on billions which other people had to work for, take precedence over something as irrelevant as letting people have electricity!
There is the little detail of 86 dead people and an entire town destroyed. But yes, it’s the lawyers’ fault.
In civilized, and literate, societies: If people burn to death unnecessarily, that just may be grounds for spending some more on firefighters and equipment. As well as allowing people to build more houses in areas less exposed, hence easing the need to build housing in high risk fire zones.
But not for shutting people’s electricity off, to facilitate handing ambulance chasers, who wouldn’t know what to do with a fire engine nor framing hammer if you showed both up their you-know-what, billions of dollars of unearned loot.
First, in bankruptcy court anything the lawyers get will be decided by the Court taking into account the impact on all parties.
On a larger scale, the Paradise fire highlights the incompetence of both PG&E and the government. You’re correct the government shouldn’t allow building in fire zones, but this nonsense happens all over the country. Building on flood plains, hurricane zones, etc. Disaster eventually comes to all of these places. I blame the residents to a lesser extent because most people can hardly manage getting through the day, much less assess disaster risk in a given area the government has stupidly allowed development.
As a private company, PG&E didn’t want to make the capital investment to ensure the safety of its lines. Until the lines are made safe, we endure blackouts. At least idiot Newsome is finally getting some political heat over the blackouts. However, the blackouts are primarily the result of long-term corruption and incompetence on the part of PG&E and its government enablers, not ambulance chasers.
“First, in bankruptcy court anything the lawyers get will be decided by the Court taking into account the impact on all parties.”
Meaning, it will be decided by a former classmate of the ambulance chasers. Who, by very virtue of having elected to go to, then sat through, law school, then having sharp elbowed his way into presiding over a sizable Court, will be, unusually even for people in this late stage well indoctrinated dystopia, predisposed to believe running around dragging people into court for profit, is an act with some kind of redeeming social merit.
Also: The government certainly should allow. The problem with totalitarian government, is never with what they allow. It’s with what they don’t allow: In this case, building whatever you darned well feel like, wherever you darned well feel like. Starting with an unbroken wall of 60 story towers along the coast from Cape Mendocino to Cabo San Lucas. Well out of any firezone.
The beach is where, going by housing prices, Californians WANT to live. That they don’t, is, primarily, because they are not allowed to build anything to live in there. If someone, given unlimited free choice, still chooses to break ground in the middle of a wildfire, well…. happy burning…
There is no such thing as “ensuring the safety of” anything. Noone who can count, falls for that anymore (Which should tell you something about the dysfunctional state of progressive so-called “legal” “systems…..) You can always make something safer, by throwing enough resources at it. Like NORAD, which is reasonably safe from even direct nuclear hits. Something PG&E’s power lines, I suppose, are not.
If someone specific at PG&E, who should have, didn’t follow known, “reasonable precautions” in an area of his, not some wishywashy “their”, contracted resposibility, that’s another matter. Throw him in jail (or hang him from a burnt out tree..),. After proving so to proper standards. Which is always: “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
It serves no benefit to suck more money away from, and increase the riskiness of, those who do produce and transport power; while leaving any individual shirkers off the hook personally, simply to provide an opportunity for a dysfunctional bunch of ambulance chasers to enrich themselves and grandstand.