Ca. residents...any of you affected?

[kadee79]

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) announced Monday it may shut off power this week in nearly 30 northern California counties in response to strong and dry winds posing a fire threat.



"We would encourage residents and businesses to prepare for being without power for potentially as long as seven days," San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a press conference Monday night.



Nearly 2 million people could be affected if there is a shutdown Wednesday, Liccardo said, as well as about 67 schools.



The public safety power shutoff would span across northern, central, coastal and Bay Area counties, the utility company said. PG&E has previously said it's "probable" that its equipment started the 2018 Camp Fire -- California's deadliest and most destructive blaze -- when a power line touched nearby trees.



An investigation by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection found the company responsible for the fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed thousands of structures.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/millions-in-california-may-be-in-the-dark-for-a-week-if-pgande-shuts-off-power-due-to-fire-potential-san-jose-mayor-says/ar-AAIr2Gu?li=BBnb7Kz

Would be lots of things that wouldn't work without power...like water pumps, gas pumps, cash registers, refrigeration...etc.!

[NastyWoman]

It turned out to be a little less bad than expected. Still there were hundreds of thousands affected. And not a few of them less than 5 miles south of where I live (though most of them are north). As of last night close to 600,000 people were still waiting for the power to be turned back on.

Part of the problem is that PG&E for an exceedingly long time has done little to nothing to update their network and they are not able to turn off the power to smaller areas only → so many of the people that lost power were not even in a danger zone. Let's just say that they are not happy campers! I wouldn't have been either in their shoes.  Maybe this will finally lead to the PUC demanding that the utilities use the rate increases for what they are approved for and not for dividends, bonuses, and useless advertising campaigns telling us how hard they work to keep the public safe.

Every day I am happier that my city has its own, not for profit, utility.

[TheOtherMe]

That's astounding and sad that PG&E is so behind the times.

My small rural co-op can shut off my neighborhood remotely and I can watch online to see when it is supposed to come back online.  Thankfully, that has only happened once in 10 years.  

I was surprised at the detail of their website.  It shows individual farms.  

My sister has the same co-op and she says they are excellent about getting them back online if a tree is knocked out in a storm.

My neighborhood is usually pretty safe during storms because our lines are underground.  However, the transmitter got hit with lightning and that affects lines either above or below ground.

The other half of my town has a different power provider and they were without power over 15 hours.  

[NastyWoman]

Oct 11, 2019 14:51:59 GMT -5 TheOtherMe said:

That's astounding and sad that PG&E is so behind the times.

My small rural co-op can shut off my neighborhood remotely and I can watch online to see when it is supposed to come back online.  Thankfully, that has only happened once in 10 years.  

I was surprised at the detail of their website.  It shows individual farms.  

My sister has the same co-op and she says they are excellent about getting them back online if a tree is knocked out in a storm.

My neighborhood is usually pretty safe during storms because our lines are underground.  However, the transmitter got hit with lightning and that affects lines either above or below ground.

The other half of my town has a different power provider and they were without power over 15 hours.  

Oh, they can shut off areas here too. It is just that what PG&E has considered a neighborhood covers a humongous area with a great number of people in it. So, if you want to keep the people up in the hills safe since there will be high winds (good thing), those tens of miles away in the valley who are at no danger in any way from this, are SOL (very bad thing)

[TheOtherMe]

Very bad thing.  I understand about the fires, but .....

[countrygirl2]

We can go to a website and see all the outages here too.  And if its off we get text messages to the point it gets to be overkill.  But they do keep you informed.  On the outage map you can see how many and why its off, pretty neat actually.

[toomuchreality]

My daughter doesn't live, or work in CA, but she works for a solar company and most(?) of their work is in CA. The power outage has had a huge impact on the company.

They can't do installs, get inspections done, get things scheduled, etc.

Those kind of things never occurred to me.

I hope everyone is well and safe!

[kadee79]

Oct 11, 2019 14:51:59 GMT -5 TheOtherMe said:

That's astounding and sad that PG&E is so behind the times.

My small rural co-op can shut off my neighborhood remotely and I can watch online to see when it is supposed to come back online.  Thankfully, that has only happened once in 10 years.  

I was surprised at the detail of their website.  It shows individual farms.  

My sister has the same co-op and she says they are excellent about getting them back online if a tree is knocked out in a storm.

My neighborhood is usually pretty safe during storms because our lines are underground.  However, the transmitter got hit with lightning and that affects lines either above or below ground.

The other half of my town has a different power provider and they were without power over 15 hours.  

We are also members of a rural coop.  It's great!  When one of the hurricanes went thru here, we were without power for 8 hrs. while the folks in town on Ga. power were down for 3 days!
Ours can shut off small grids too if needed.  My DH ran into one of those "on the ground" transformers that sits in our yard...wiped it out with his truck bumper...they had it replaced & the neighborhood back up in about 2 hrs. time.  And a couple of those cables inside that thing are bigger around than my upper leg.

PG&E has been pathetic for a long time.  They should have shortened the distances between poles & replaced wooden poles with concrete long ago.  Looks like they are going to have more problems too with all that is being thrown at them now.

[TheOtherMe]

Our co-op is in the process of building fiber optic internet.  Since I live in town, I was one of the first to be able to get it.  Sister's farm is now in the area where they are putting in the fiber optic lines.  Once that's done, she can have fast internet for the first time ever on the farm.  

Farmers use the internet while in their tractors now.  Rural America needs high speed internet.  They have satellite internet now and it isn't all that speedy but it's much faster than their other choice--dial up.

[Iggy aka IG]

Yes, I spoke with my long time friend the evening before the shut down.  She couldn't figure out a few things such as: Why didn't they shut down the power 2 weeks prior when they had 40 MPH winds, and why did they choose the 2nd anniversary of the horrific fires for this one? 

[tractor]

As an electric cooperative employee, all I can say is it’s nice to hear such positive things from around the country about how member oriented the cooperatives are. IOU’s like PG&E have set themselves up for failure by taking profits for years at the expense of delayed maintenance.

[Iggy aka IG]

DH and I wish the coop would service our area instead of Xcel!

[NastyWoman]

Oct 15, 2019 14:53:27 GMT -5 Iggy aka IG said:

Yes, I spoke with my long time friend the evening before the shut down.  She couldn't figure out a few things such as: Why didn't they shut down the power 2 weeks prior when they had 40 MPH winds, and why did they choose the 2nd anniversary of the horrific fires for this one? 

That I actually can answer:it wasn't just the winds, though there was a forecast of windgusts of more than 40mph. The real problem was the humidity, or rather the lack thereof. The areas most at risk due to wind had a relative humidity of only 8% -> making the situation as bad as it could possibly get. 

The anniversary was coincidental