Sun Oct 13, 2019, 03:45 PM
ansible (755 posts)
Unprecedented Blackouts And $6 Gasoline: California's Energy Crisis
Millions of Californians may have just suffered an unprecedented, induced blackout by the state's largest (and bankrupt) utility, PG&E 1., just so it isn't blamed for starting even more fires 2. causing it to go even more bankrupt... but at least the price of gas is soaring 3..
1. PG&E and EBMUD (and SMUD?) followed the rule imposed by the state PUC. The same rule SoCal Edison, LAL&P, EBMUD, and SMUD all have to follow. And unlike DU-Moron
ansible, I know what those acronyms stand for without using Google.
2. California and Montana are unique among US states in requiring electric utilities to pay for all the costs of fires that might have been sparked by their equipment. The burden of proof is low, it includes fires started by equipment shot up by drunken morons or damaged by saboteurs, it includes damages exacerbated by courts restricting PG&E tree trimming and cutting and by forest and grassland mismanaged by the state.
3. This past Saturday I got premium gas at Costco for ~$4.19 a gallon. Costco is a low-price seller, but that's just 40 cents a gallon higher than I paid a couple of weeks ago for mid-grade at a local station that is pretty typical of the prices at stations in my neighborhood.
DU-grade Progs need PG&E to be the bogeyman in this because reality points to their beloved government and enviros as culprits.
* Fall has been fire season in CA longer than I've been alive (and I have faint memories of the Kennedy-Nixon debates). This was true long before PG&E because of the weather patterns in parts of CA - high winds, low humidity, and lightning - and dry fuel on the ground (dry grasses, leaves, needles, dead brush and trees).
* Enviros have gotten courts and regulatory agencies to severely restrict utilities ability to cut down and trim back trees near power lines. Government and enviros changed the environment in which PG&E operates - decades after power lines were built. The changed happened quite a few years ago, and the number of trees that would otherwise have been but down or seriously cut back has multiplied.
* Enviros have gotten the State of California to change how it manages its lands. The fuel of the sort I listed above is no longer cleared out. Further, enviros have gotten courts and regulatory agencies to severely restrict property owners' rights to clear fuel off their lands.
* Government and enviros have driven many lumber companies out of California, companies that cleared fuel out of the forests they managed as part of their normal operations.
Notice that while DUpipo are diligently bogeymanizing PG&E, they have no alternative solution. PG&E supplies power to 2/3-3/4 of California. DUpipo want to kill PG&E, but suggest no alternatives. The Prog-natural default is state take-over, but if they think the State of California will do as well or better than PG&E, they need to drive California highways a lot, long enough for the bumping and jarring and (not good) vibrations to get through their thick skulls what state maintenance accomplishes.