LASAR is without power and internet for 5 days (10/9)

[Hank]

3 minutes ago, Sandman993 said:

I would think heads are gonna roll after this... people are pissed! 

There's always hope . . . .

[Stephen]

10 hours ago, Hank said:

There's always hope . . . .

I think that board level and senior management positions *may* be exposed, but at the end of the day we need our power companies, so rank & file systems, structure and culture stay . Consider if government shuts down  time.to chaos is probably days or weeks....maybe

... if the power company shuts down time to complete mayhem is probably measured in  seconds (and not many). So, litigation notwithstanding, we are all in the same boat. I think the best bang for the buck may be mitigation by verry aggresive removal of incindiary materials (vegitarion etc) from potential ignition sourses.

Just my $.02 not a CA resident. 

[Sandman993]

California voters...they could wake up someday couldn’t they? Or just go the way they’re going and pile on that. Pun intended.

[Mark89114]

2 hours ago, Sandman993 said:

California voters...they could wake up someday couldn’t they? Or just go the way they’re going and pile on that. Pun intended.

The problem is they are voting with their feet and moving....spreading their idiocy eveywhere.

[N201MKTurbo]

Just now, Mark89114 said:

The problem is they are voting with their feet and moving....spreading their idiocy eveywhere.

Yea, they are all coming here!

Silicon Valley is rapidly relocating to south Chandler. They can operate here for 50 cents on the dollar. 

I love having the businesses here, but they are turning us blue.

[RobertGary1]

The fact is that if PG&E is going to be held liable for billions in damages if any one of their thousands of miles of rural lines starts a fire, they're going to have to shut off power. We don't have the technology to perfectly deliver power to remote areas through dry brush, etc with zero risk of fire. Its a simple risk/reward calculation.

Remember it was the National Weather Service who issued the red flag warning for high winds and dry air. Imagine being the PG&E official on the stand of a civil trial explaining why you left the power on during a federal red flag warning?

-Robert

[bonal]

2 minutes ago, RobertGary1 said:

The fact is that if PG&E is going to be held liable for billions in damages if any one of their thousands of miles of rural lines starts a fire, they're going to have to shut off power. We don't have the technology to perfectly deliver power to remote areas through dry brush, etc with zero risk of fire. Its a simple risk/reward calculation.

Remember it was the National Weather Service who issued the red flag warning for high winds and dry air. Imagine being the PG&E official on the stand of a civil trial explaining why you left the power on during a federal red flag warning?

-Robert

100% correct.  And let's not forget in almost every case PGE equipment did not fail on its own but was damaged by a tree that is not owned by PGE but they always go for the deep pockets. 

[carusoam]

Focus on the future...

Actively Avoiding the challenges is the way to go.

Got any technical people that like to solve technical challenges out that way?

Shutting the system off, sounds like we handed the problem to my mom...

Best regards,

-a-

[GeeBee]

Baloney. We delivered power for decades through area of dry brush in all areas of the West. My father was a lineman for Idaho power at one time and later for a contacting electrical services firm in CA. CA has totally mismanaged the grid to create third world conditions. First you clear the woods and brush around the lines! It requires regular maintenance which cost money (more on that later). Second it requires a belief that trimming and clearing the brush is a necessary ingredient to a 21st century existence and not listening to the watermelons. Third, in creating a buy back program for solar, the cost of grid maintenance is not being allocated to the solar users, only to the users of utility wattage. It does not take a genius to see the more solar buyback, the more the grid maint budget will be starved, while inferior allocation in the form of solar expands. The CA PUC has botched this so badly it is beyond anything I could imagine when I lived there. This is America, we don't have planned electrical outages like Venezuela. We fix the problem so we don't have to have them, not accept the line of baloney being delivered.

[Yetti]

I would say something like remember the good old days when the CA government forced the the sale of Generation Assets so the market could be deregulated, but then my cover of who I used to work for would be blown

[bonal]

1 hour ago, GeeBee said:

Baloney. We delivered power for decades through area of dry brush in all areas of the West. My father was a lineman for Idaho power at one time and later for a contacting electrical services firm in CA. CA has totally mismanaged the grid to create third world conditions. First you clear the woods and brush around the lines! It requires regular maintenance which cost money (more on that later). Second it requires a belief that trimming and clearing the brush is a necessary ingredient to a 21st century existence and not listening to the watermelons. Third, in creating a buy back program for solar, the cost of grid maintenance is not being allocated to the solar users, only to the users of utility wattage. It does not take a genius to see the more solar buyback, the more the grid maint budget will be starved, while inferior allocation in the form of solar expands. The CA PUC has botched this so badly it is beyond anything I could imagine when I lived there. This is America, we don't have planned electrical outages like Venezuela. We fix the problem so we don't have to have them, not accept the line of baloney being delivered.

You make several good points, especially about how solar reduces revenue and puts a greater financial load on maintaining the system. I don't know what the laws are in Idaho but i can tell you that in CA there are people that would just as soon shoot you as let you touch their trees. And PGE has no legal authority to force them to permit trimming.  One big fire that happened in Butte country that was blamed on PGE a few years ago was started by a broken tree top that was over a hundred feet from the wires and the high wind blew it into the wires.  When is tree trimming and clearing going to be considered far enough to say PGE is not to blame.

my opinions are not based on an indirect assembly of information I worked for PG&E for 35 years in both the line and engineering departments retirement just last year. During part of that time I was the tree trimming coordinator in the Oakland east Bay Area overseeing our tree trimming contractors for that region.

[RobertGary1]

2 hours ago, GeeBee said:

Baloney. We delivered power for decades through area of dry brush in all areas of the West. My father was a lineman for Idaho power at one time and later for a contacting electrical services firm in CA. CA has totally mismanaged the grid to create third world conditions. First you clear the woods and brush around the lines! It requires regular maintenance which cost money (more on that later). Second it requires a belief that trimming and clearing the brush is a necessary ingredient to a 21st century existence and not listening to the watermelons. Third, in creating a buy back program for solar, the cost of grid maintenance is not being allocated to the solar users, only to the users of utility wattage. It does not take a genius to see the more solar buyback, the more the grid maint budget will be starved, while inferior allocation in the form of solar expands. The CA PUC has botched this so badly it is beyond anything I could imagine when I lived there. This is America, we don't have planned electrical outages like Venezuela. We fix the problem so we don't have to have them, not accept the line of baloney being delivered.

The difference was that the power company wasn't liable for more than their entire net worth if a fire broke out.

A lot of people are calling for the state to take over the power grid and I think this is an means to that end. You can make it impossible for a company to do it.

-Robert

[Yooper Rocketman]

1 hour ago, bonal said:

You make several good points, especially about how solar reduces revenue and puts a greater financial load on maintaining the system. I don't know what the laws are in Idaho but i can tell you that in CA there are people that would just as soon shoot you as let you touch their trees. And PGE has no legal authority to force them to permit trimming.  One big fire that happened in Butte country that was blamed on PGE a few years ago was started by a broken tree top that was over a hundred feet from the wires and the high wind blew it into the wires.  When is tree trimming and clearing going to be considered far enough to say PGE is not to blame.

my opinions are not based on an indirect assembly of information I worked for PG&E for 35 years in both the line and engineering departments retirement just last year. During part of that time I was the tree trimming coordinator in the Oakland east Bay Area overseeing our tree trimming contractors for that region.

Bonal,

Do you have to muddy this up with FACTS?

LOL

Tom

[EricJ]

I think in most places the utilities have right-of-way or easements for maintaining lines.    We have a place in South Dakota where our very tall spruce trees along the road pre-date the power line installations, so the transmission poles (which aren't huge, this is a very rural area) go through the middle of our front yard.   A few times they've just showed up and chopped off the tops of trees on our property that were growing under or near the lines.   It's just how it is there, and we've never complained about it.

Several years ago they chopped the dead top off of a drought-and-beetle-stressed spruce that was still alive below the lines.    We'd been trying to figure out what to do with it when they solved the problem for us, free of charge, and now there's a new top growing on that tree. 

So maybe the CA is just how the access was set up, or not set up, when the lines were run?

 

[bonal]

Lots of variables regarding easements right of way and franchise space. In the urban areas the lines exist in the franchise and PGE pays millions every year for the right to occupy this space. Tree trimming is not an access or permission issue here as govt agency does not in most cases prevent trimming. The problem occurs in the rural areas that are heavily treed and often the line may only serve a single property but that property may be hundreds of acres and there is no easement or ROW that has any tree trimming provisions in place. When a new line is installed a 30 foot corridor must be cleared by the customer before the pole line is installed. Once the line is energized it then becomes PGE responsible for keeping the line clear of trees. It is in these cases where they encounter refusals to allow trimming. The other common rights are when the lines pre exist before a large property is subdivided this is called prescriptive rights and even though PGE has the right to remain in place there are no provisions  for forcing the property owner to permit trimming. PG&E service territory is probably one of the most diverse geographical economic political environmental areas on the planet.

Edited October 17, 2019 by bonal

[Hank]

1 hour ago, bonal said:

Lots of variables regarding easements right of way and franchise space. In the urban areas the lines exist in the franchise and PGE pays millions every year for the right to occupy this space. Tree trimming is not an access or permission issue here as govt agency does not in most cases prevent trimming. The problem occurs in the rural areas that are heavily treed and often the line may only serve a single property but that property may be hundreds of acres and there is no easement or ROW that has any tree trimming provisions in place. When a new line is installed a 30 foot corridor must be cleared by the customer before the pole line is installed. Once the line is energized it then becomes PGE responsible for keeping the line clear of trees. It is in these cases where they encounter refusals to allow trimming. The other common rights are when the lines pre exist before a large property is subdivided this is called prescriptive rights and even though PGE has the right to remain in place there are no provisions  for forcing the property owner to permit trimming. PG&E service territory is probably one of the most diverse geographical economic political environmental areas on the planet.

In that case, since the owner won't permit maintenance, the line should be shut off until the corridor is cleared again. Then the utility will keep it clear.

[JohnB]

On 10/9/2019 at 9:22 PM, kortopates said:

I got this email from LASAR today, 10-9, just posting since many of us order parts from them.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Due to the PG&E power shutoffs for wildfire prevention, LASAR has lost all phone, internet, and computer operations in the hangar/office. 

We will have limited access to emails (from our cell phones!). All phone messages, P&A requests, and parts orders will be addressed when power gets restored (They are saying up to 5 days).

Thank you for your patience during this time.

For more information on the power shutoffs in our area, as well as projected times of reenergization (unknown as of now) please visit:  https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/public-safety-power-shutoff-faq.page

 

 

I'm particularly following this info, as my airplane Trillian is up there right now getting her annual!

[JohnB]

I heard that from their LARGE fire that Lakeport had a few years ago, that winds were high, and the power was NOT shut off, and it is thought that a downed power line due to the winds was a major culprit to the start of those fires which burned hundreds of acres. SO if being out of power will help prevent a MAJOR fire disaster, I'm all for it. And maybe LASAR will get a generator or two to continue electricity during any power outages imposed to prevent a fire? (hint hint)

[Steve W]

23 minutes ago, Hank said:

In that case, since the owner won't permit maintenance, the line should be shut off until the corridor is cleared again. Then the utility will keep it clear.

Alternatively, the owner doesn't want the trees trimmed, the property owner can pay to have the lines put underground. 

Admittedly, this would require some actual laws with teeth which is unlikely in the land of NIMBY.

Edited October 17, 2019 by Steve W

[bonal]

1 hour ago, Hank said:

In that case, since the owner won't permit maintenance, the line should be shut off until the corridor is cleared again. Then the utility will keep it clear.

Under rule two description of service PGE cannot discontinue service for any reason other than non payment and there are no requirements to force a customer to allow trimming. Once the line is energized only qualified trimmers can work within the vicinity of the conductors. It's a real catch 22 California is not an easy place to do business in. 

[bonal]

1 hour ago, JohnB said:

I'm particularly following this info, as my airplane Trillian is up there right now getting her annual!

I'd be more worried about the up coming closure of Lampson for re surfacing the contractor is still trying to get the asphalt to pass FAA requirements and we can't get a solid date on when they are going to shut it down.

[bonal]

1 hour ago, JohnB said:

I heard that from their LARGE fire that Lakeport had a few years ago, that winds were high, and the power was NOT shut off, and it is thought that a downed power line due to the winds was a major culprit to the start of those fires which burned hundreds of acres. SO if being out of power will help prevent a MAJOR fire disaster, I'm all for it. And maybe LASAR will get a generator or two to continue electricity during any power outages imposed to prevent a fire? (hint hint)

After this latest power shut down there was over 100 locations documented where damaged equipment was found in the post inspections. No one knows for sure if they might have sparked a fire but the fact is there was no fire. However, Sothern cal Edison is being blamed for a fire from a transmission line that was not de energized during this same red flag event. I think that one hit 10,000 acres which sadly around these parts isn't that big.

[carusoam]

Great pireps, Bonal!

Amazing how much detail is involved.

Thanks for sharing them.

Best regards,

-a-

[bonal]

Thank you Anthony I know this isn't aviation related but seems like there is an interest by some of us and it's not often I can provide many bits of knowledge based on experience here on MS about aviating and being an instrument pilot and such so it's nice to be able to share something I actually have a lot of experience with.

 

[carusoam]

Half on topic.... half off topic...

The important MSC is out of service while these technical challenges are going on...

Use extra caution, as politics are strongly related to the service that effects so many people...

Thanks again,

-a-