I just got a call from my kid’s school that PG&E may or may not be shutting of power to them this week.
If that happens, I am going to dedicate the next phase of my life to nationalizing PG&E and having its board members incarcerated. Enough is enough.
@tek Assuming PG&E were nationalised, do you have reason to expect that the grid would have fewer problems?
@rah Yes. These problems at this scale are basically unique to PG&E. Other utilities manage to maintain their infrastructure without rolling blackouts.
@tek How do you know the problems are solely due to PG&E and that there aren't problems specific to that region which a non-PG&E organisation would also encounter?
@rah The problem is literally that they’ve been neglecting to maintain their power lines. Last year their lack of maintenance started massive fires that destroyed many homes and killed several people. PG&E is famous for sucking at this.
For more info: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/18/business/pge-california-wildfires.html
@tek OK but the question I'm asking is: how do you know that some other organisation wouldn't also neglect the power lines if they took over from PG&E? How do you know the problem is specific to PG&E and that there isn't some inherent problem in the region and the economics of delivering power there? Like for example some part of the grid which is abnormally costly to maintain and prevents adequate investment elsewhere.
@tek OK, so to rephrase the question: why do you expect that a replacement would not be grossly negligent? :-) Have you looked around at the world lately? Have you considered the possibility that PG&E is the best that humans in that area of the planet are able to achieve?
@rah If I thought for a moment that was true, I would abandon ship and move to the antipodes. No, these people are famously bad at it. They’re probably decent at generating shareholder value, aka privatizing the profits, but suck at doing their notional jobs.
@rah I suppose their replacement could also be grossly negligent.
The rolling blackouts they’re proposing are in the middle of Oakland and other East Bay cities, not like out in the middle of nowhere. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s no harder to trim a tree in El Cerrito than it is in any other metro area, but PG&E didn’t do it.