The big change is not that somehow PG&E is going to inspect every hook on every tower. It’s not like they can just climb the tower and check it out, as you say they inspect with helicopters and cameras. Probably many of these towers don’t have a clear means to even access them with heavy equipment.
Instead, the approach is they will simply shut off the power during these high risk days.
Interesting that they actually warned that they could shut off power in the days leading up to the fire, but never actually did. To me, those are the meetings to zero in on when it comes time to lay the blame. I wonder, what was the calculus to cutting power (which itself can have health & safety impacts to the populace) and how much of it was political?
PG&E has 100,000 miles of transmission lines, so perhaps about a million of these towers. To put that in perspective, historically they spend billions of dollars a year on maintenance and upgrade on the order of 100-200 miles of transmission lines per year.
Or, you could be responsible and say 'hey, we have no documentation for this power line and it's 90 years old. Our knowledge of materials science say this should have worn out. Let's be proactive and replace things'.
You don't need to physically inspect every item to be safe, here. You rely on precaution, standard shelf life, and operational procedures.
If that's difficult, so be it. That's the price people pay for choosing to live in the sticks. This should all be accounted for.
You think that hospitals inspect every item every 3 months? Hell no. A lot of things have lifecycles and it's just replaced because that's the tolerance, and it's safer in the long run. PG&E should be the same.
PGEs own linemen were concerned about wear on these towers. They sent samples from the field to labs for metallurgical analysis. PGEs own scientists estimated that the components would wear out in 100 years.
To be fair, first you would have build out a several hundred billion dollar state wide electrical grid, while allowing it to degrade in various ways over approximately a century.
I’m not sure a single person at any one time has ever knowingly caused this much damage through negligence. I mean ever in human history. Failures this large due to negligence tend to be systemic. But it would be a very interesting to hear an example.
The closest I can think of could be some of the famous bridge design failures, where people died, and people did go to jail, but not forever.
I'm sure what your point is. The worse the situation, the greater the responsibility. PG&E does not live up to the responsibility it should carry. If the towers are on average 68 years old that means they are supposed to put even more effort into maintenance than they already do.
So they better start maintaining them at a rate higher than 100-200 miles per year. They need to do 1000 miles per year to keep up with 100,000 miles of lines that have a 100 year life expectancy.
They’ve promised to spend $40 billion over the next five years on the grid, ~$8 billion of which is wildfire risk mitigation. It’s hard to say that will be in any way “sufficient”.
Because ensuring safety of the lines during very high risk days is impossible, a big part of the strategy was to add local generation redundancy so that they can switch off the transmission lines during high risk events but still keep the power on. These redundant stations would have to be natural-gas plants though, and CA has carbon-free mandates that prohibit them, so they have been prevented from implementing this strategy.
Frankly, it’s not clear that demand for this unreliable grid electricity can support the growth of the ratebase (the property being maintained).
At some point the ROI on switching to solar and batteries is net positive in the first month (based on financing the cost at a reasonable rate), and I’m not sure that point is much higher than $0.50/kWh for a household using 600kWh+ per month.
The more people that just opt-out of a grid connection entirely, the fewer people the ratebase is divided across, the higher rates must be set for those that remain.
Luckily the lithium-ion supply is fairly limited right now, but over the next 10-20 years that won’t remain the case.
PG&E currently has about $40 billion of debt, and recently issued $5 billion of debt at a B1 rating (junk). These issues also drive up their borrowing costs, which further shows up in the rates.
This is a good overview of the challenges they face;
I predict that in 10-15 years we could hear calls to outlaw or prohibitively tax any new battery/solar systems that take new houses in CA off-grid, because the grid will be in “solar death spiral”.
Instead, the approach is they will simply shut off the power during these high risk days.
Interesting that they actually warned that they could shut off power in the days leading up to the fire, but never actually did. To me, those are the meetings to zero in on when it comes time to lay the blame. I wonder, what was the calculus to cutting power (which itself can have health & safety impacts to the populace) and how much of it was political?
PG&E has 100,000 miles of transmission lines, so perhaps about a million of these towers. To put that in perspective, historically they spend billions of dollars a year on maintenance and upgrade on the order of 100-200 miles of transmission lines per year.