California wildfires rage on, killing 2 and sparking widespread evacuations of 100,000 residents
A California man has died of cardiac arrest as wildfires continue to rage out of control Friday in the Los Angeles area, officials say, forcing the mandatory evacuations of people in more than 20,000 homes.
Read in Fox News: California wildfires rage on, killing 2 and sparking widespread evacuations of 100,000 residents
Guess the shutdown reduces the number of fire incidents.
Not really. If enough fuel is allowed to accumulate something will eventually ignite it. The shutdowns only ensure that the ignition source isn’t a PG&E line. But it will be something else - that is inevitable.
Lines go down everywhere and sometimes start small fires. Having those small fires turn into raging infernos is a California thing. I now live in a far more flammable area - the largest stand of Ponderosa Pine in the world. Summer monsoons cause thunderheads to form, sucking in winds at speeds of up to 60mpg and then blowing them out in the reverse direction when they violently collapse. Lines go down, transformers explode. But town-swallowing infernos are rare and we certainly don’t turn off the power because of wind.
California politicians blammed PG&E for their complete and utter failure to manage CA’s wildlands. The citizenry ate it up like trained dogs. Now people are reaping what they sowed. A bankrupt utility, power outages, and no action to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic fires. Coming soon - massive rate increases.
They shut off electricity for people who had no wind whatsoever. Shutting off power should happen only when there is a real possibility of fire, not when they feel like kicking around their customers.
Or maybe they should just shut off power permanently if they can’t judge real risk from low-risk.
What does it take to get our own solar with battery? I understand there are additional requirements to be able to cut yourself off from the grid, especially with battery causing additional risk.
Many neighborhoods in Santa Cruz are not affected by shutdown at all. Reasons could be they are near the Pacific Ocean and lagoons/ lakes.
Some of the areas inland were shut down despite having no wind.
Finally got power on my farm. PGE is
a terrorist organization.
How windy was it at your farm?
I didn’t know you even had a farm.
Very light wind in Cameron Park near my farm.
During this supposed wind event the forest service had a controlled burn near Kirkwood. It got out of hand but was controlled. Again light wind was assumed. PGE is just trying to punish the public because it lost the law suit. They should not be allowed to work under the PUC. Another company like SMUD should take over.
I looked into these. They’re a joke. Only enough juice banked to run a household for such a short period that you wouldn’t need to worry anyhow. Would need three or four for it to be practical and at that point you may as well just get a decent propane or natural gas generator.
My tenant at the farm has a small gas generator mainly for the refrigerator and lights. A propane generator fully automatic costs about $6k. I figure a serious battery backup costs about $20k and solar about $20k for a 10kw system . My neighbor puts in commercial solar power plants. I am hoping he will help design my system. I figure to keep connected to the grid to keep the county happy and have solar to keep the cost down and have backup for PGE fuckups.
Solar can make sense if you use lots of power but you still need to account for the depreciation of the inverters, panels and batteries. Having sufficient space to avoid using rooftops helps by at least getting rid of the cost and hassle of removing and re-installing the panels any time roof work needs to be done. And I suppose if you’re my age or older you may be depreciating faster than the stuff you buy 
Depreciation for solar power
25 years for solar panels
10 years for batteries and inverters.
Most solar panels pay off in 5-7 years.
Pay off for batteries is probably longer than their life span. Generators make more sense but propane fuel is expensive and can run dry
In case of earth quake, I’d want to be off the grid. I think I’d rather have a battery bank than a gas bank.
Do you remember how long you thought they’d last? In case of power outage, I’m fine with low-power, but want something for the freezer (full, it might have around $1K of food in it). If it’d run a heater, that’d be lovely, but I suspect that’s asking too much.
It does not take a lot of power to run a freezer or forced air furnace. The problem is you have everything hard wired or have to run extension cords everywhere
So +1 to solar and batteries being the best solution.
RVs have freezers that can run on 12V, 110V and… propane. How can a flame burning propane keep things cold? It’s amazing, the fridge on propane uses next to nothing and I put in some cans of coke, checked back 2 hours later to see how warm they had gotten; to my surprise, the cans were frozen solid. That was with the fridge set to “3” on a scale of “1-7”.
Talking about generators… the RV has a propane powered generator as well, maybe 2500W?.. it’s rather quiet compared to the 6000+W workhorses.
There you go. Park an RV in your driveway and you are all set. Plus you can leave town when the neighborhood burns up.
A full freezer is good for at least 3 days without power if you’re careful about opening it. Same for the fridge if it is loaded or kept loaded with dead weight e.g. water jugs.
You can find the capacity of those powerwalls on the net fairly easily. If you’re running heat and a fridge they may be good for 16 hours or so. For communications comps and modems can be backed up for many hours with a $150 back-up battery. It might be possible to charge a laptop off your car’s accessory plug but I’ve never looked into the power requirements. The draw might be too great. You can certainly re-charge double AA’s in the car and these days those can run lots of stuff.