“The transparency and the accountability that residents see because their local government is operating the system is much stronger,…”
Gag me with a spoon. SO glad I don’t live there.
Luckily I’m going on vacation.
Make sure you empty out your refrigerator first.
Thanks for reminder.
Someone will be home, just not me 
.
Who in here is affected? very fortunately both of mine are not
but i’m still looking to buy a generator, anyone have recommendation? enough for 2 refrigerator, maybe for some tv internet as well? how much do i need?
If you do it, get one that runs off your natural gas line. I have one. It automatically knows when the house loses power and kicks on. It looks like a small car engine inside a metal box that sits outside. It even has a car oil filter and needs oil changes. You need a second circuit breaker panel installed though.
Does it have backup gas supply? either a tank or something? in case both power and gas lines are disrupted (e.g. in the event of a natural disaster)
It doesn’t, but I’m sure one could be added. For here, the issue is power lines are above ground. The trees are far taller than them. One down tree and the grid goes down. The gas lines are under ground, so they don’t get interrupted. If disaster took out both, then that’d be an issue.
PGE is a terrorist organization. They are terrorists attacking the rest of us with unnecessary power shut offs. Newsom needs to show leadership and stand up to these terrorists. Otherwise he should be impeached. Grey Davis was impeached last time PGE made fools of Californians.
I’m not sure I get it…we’ve had massive forest fires the past two years that have put them into bankruptcy. As a pseudo–public company they have a responsibility to manage their liability and clearly risks are very high given recent history/current weather patterns. They need to take action to reduce liability.
I think a lot of this stems from PG&Es status as a too-big-to-fail monopoly. They have neither competition pressuring them to make improvements to their grid nor liability protection from the State during fire season. Shutting down parts of the grid is tough on consumers but it the correct business decision.
Every coin has 2 sides.
As a few here may know, I grew up in Germany. I remember when I was 5 or 6, in ~1970, my parents were forced to pay a small sum to convert their house to underground power. The power used to come into the house in my bedroom, and as a toddler, I had been scared about the black service box under my room’s ceiling. That was the last time I saw above ground power, except when vacationing in Spain or certain parts of Italy. Back in the late 70ies, people could speak their mind. I recall a comment from geography class, “if Spain was attached to North Africa, it would be labelled 3rd world, but it’s attached to France, so…”
Anyways. I had seen above ground power when vacationing in Florida/ Missouri during the early 90ies, but those neighborhoods… well… it was not a surprise.
Late 90ies, I moved (supposedly temporarily, 3-5 yrs) to California. I was in shock. Every house still had above ground power. Was I in Mexico? Nope, San Diego.
You can see, I’m sticking my nose up here, and it’s easy to laugh about how backwards this place is. As it happens, I have a guest from Tyrol/ Austria stay with us this week. I was quite embarrassed to explain the situation to her.
Now, as I said, there are 2 sides to every coin.
The upside is that homeowners in the US have more freedom. I’m sure in China, they will have 100% underground power long before California. They may already have it today, I don’t know. In Germany, some government entity had the power in 1970 to “just do it” and convert to underground.
They’re saying that soon China will be #1 greenest country in the world. Being a dictatorship increases efficiencies. Here in California, building departments can only force you to get underground electric service if you build a new house. If you do an addition, not really.
Maybe in 50 years, every old house on our street has been torn down and replaced with a new underground service. When the very last old cottage is gone, then the power poles can be removed.
So, I don’t like to look at the ugly power poles, but I see it as a price of freedom.
As for the actual outage, I recommend this product:
I bought mine at Costco for ~$1200. I keep it plugged into an outlet 365 days a year. Right now, my computer is hooked into it. If the power goes out, the computer will still have juice. I would shut the computer down then, and plug the fridge in it. Plus some lights. No noise and fumes. It has enough capacity to feed a very big fridge for 2-3 days.
Many parts of Santa Cruz is not affected by the shutdown.
I live in South Lake Tahoe, No PGE. San Francisco is PGE headquarters and has its own power company. Same with Palo Alto and SMUD. Time to get rid of PGE. They have been completely fucked up since the 70s. Their rates are near the highest in the nation. Service is the worst. I worked for PGE in the 70s. They are rotten to the core. Underground will be expensive. But PGE should have been upgrading their systems and they haven’t.
Instead of wasting money on underground with its estimated cost of $60k per household prorated plus billions for commercial districts and massive road traffic disruptions, I think the money should be spent on solar with batteries.
I estimated it would cost $50k for my farm for a 10k system with batteries and generator backup. Most houses only need 3k so maybe only $35k including batteries and a natural gas generator. Musk should head up a task force to estimate the cost comparisons. But underground utilities are the past not the future.
PGE could then be declared obsolete
Underground costs $5m per mile according to PGE plus $10k per house to go from the street to your house. Figure 100 houses per mile in dense cities. 50 houses per mile in suburbs. 5 houses in rural areas
So $60/ house min, plus the billions needed for underground for major transmission lines and commercial areas. Plus much higher costs per house in rural areas that have less than 5 houses per mile. Even it PGE could get cost down to 30k per house solar and battery backup would better. No electrical bills. PGE charges most customers .28 per kWh. Liberty is $.14 kWh. Pacific Graft and Extortion must go.
http://www.pgecurrents.com/2017/10/31/facts-about-undergrounding-electric-lines/
BTW for all you underground fans, power is often lost due to flooding. In the Tahoe Keys we loose power often when it rains.
PG&E is shutting down power because of its poor maintenance of its equipment, not because of anything else. SDG&E controls this area and they only shut down a fraction of what PG&E shuts down. They sent out notices to 30,000 customers telling them they may lose power this time around, not that they will lose it. As of early this morning no one has lost power. The difference is they are diligent about tree trimming and keeping up with replacing old equipment, including replacing older wooden utility poles with steel poles.
Those numbers are all over the place. Here they say it’s $1m per mile:
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/pge-underground-power-lines-cost-14503808.php
those $10k are inflated for sure.
Last project, I paid $8k (to PG&E) for the electric AND gas to get connected. That’s for their engineering, installing gas line and pulling wires through their conduit. The digging of the trench was not included, but how much do you think it cost to dig a 20’ long, ~3’ deep trench? Hand digging… 1 day… bobcat excavator… a few hours.
If I would do it myself, without permits etc… I know I could run the power from the top of the pole to conduit on my property, then in a private trench to the house, remove the riser on the roof, patch the roof, have a riser come up from my private trench… $500 material, $1500 labor. The number obviously can vary depending on field conditions (asphalt? trees with roots? soil?)
$2k real cost, $8k overhead to PG&E, yeah, sounds about right.
Underground wires in flood zones… I never heard of problems with that.
As I said, it’s just a matter of time that those poles will disappear. The structures here are not built to last forever… most are replaced after 50 years, at that time there will be underground service installed.
I paid $10k in 2003, and I had to pay PGEs taxes for the gift I gave them. $30k per house plus billions for the big transmission lines and commercial. That money should be spent on solar not on an underground system that will be obsolete in 50years
BTW PGE is bankrupt, they are not spending a dime on underground. It is time cities allow people to go off the grid.
They have 100,000 miles of wires. Times $5m
That’s $500 billion. Nobody has that kind of money
from your link the cost is $4.6m/mile in cities to underground ten times the cost of overhead lines. I will stick with my $60k per house number. Plus commercial. $1trillion.
PGE will never go underground…
As a 2017 San Francisco Chronicle story notes, it costs about $1.16 million per mile to install underground distribution lines. In cities, that number is much higher; work in San Jose cost $4.6 million per mile. Overhead lines cost about $448,800 per mile in comparison.