PG&E launched a new weather website with forecasts for possible power shutoffs.
The website at www.pge.com/weather predicts the potential for the power shutoffs for the upcoming week in various regions of its service area.
Shutoff potential is ranked on the site according to four categories: Not Expected, Elevated, Public Safety Power Shutoff Watch, and Public Safety Power Shutoff Warning.
The website also displays detailed information about weather conditions in Northern and Central California, according to the utility.
PG&E announced earlier this year that it was starting the public safety power shutoff program as a precautionary measure during windy and dry conditions. The utility has faced harsh scrutiny for its role in the devastating wildfires in Northern California in the last two years.
You’re right. Getting a generator is what it boils down to, unless there’s somewhere you and your husband can stay temporarily that isn’t affected by the outage. I’ve just looked at PG&E’s website. It says, “If we need to turn off an electric line for safety, all
customers who receive power from that line will be
affected, including Medical Baseline program customers.
Critical facilities such as hospitals and fire and police
stations typically use generators to remain open.”
Years ago, my mother in law was dependent on an oxygen concentrator. My sister in law called PGE. They told her that they would prioritize their area in restoring electricity.
We had a 6 hour outage in June. We ended up throwing some food away. We bought a standby generator the next week, enough to run the refrigerator, chest freezer, a couple of fans and the TV. We have LED lanterns for lights.
We need is a provider that can provide service under any circumstances. How come there isn’t another vendor that understands maintaining equipment so that it can provide service is more important than profits?
PG&E will tell you to get a battery backup pack for the device…….. But they won’t tell you how hard they are to find or how expensive they are….. Good Luck to You….
No one should be surprised at PG&E’s decision to cut power when the danger of a fire caused by its equipment increases. I worked to regulate PG&E (and other energy producers) for 20+ years, and was actually told by a PG&E attorney that the company always weighed the cost of a safety repair or improvement over the loss from any lawsuits. They have now decided they prefer to forego the sale of energy (lost revenue) over performing the repair or replacement work, and I’m guessing their analysis showed it was the cheaper option. Unfortunately for the consumer, it means we will have no power for hours or days because this rogue company has a monopoly on a critical necessity. The CPUC should order PG&E to perform all the required repair and replacement work needed to ensure customers have uninterrupted power (except in the most dire of natural calamities) and further that it’s shareholders pay for these efforts, as consumers already paid for transmission improvements that were never made.
Well, we could have paid for the maintenance in our monthly bills over the last 30 years (which we didn’t) or play catch-up, which is what we will be doing.
The fires were caused by conditions that were freak and unpredictable, fierce easterly winds and an unusually dry November. Also the town happened to be west of the fire’s origin.
I hit enter on my post and saw John P’s just ahead of mine. His seems to point to facts where mine was purely speculation.
It’s been some years since I was in the game but I recall a figure around $150 million as what consumers paid for improvements that were never made. It may even be higher, but I didn’t really track their malfeasance once I retired. A friend landed a lighting job with them soon after and lasted about 8 months before the corporate cultural showed him how evil management was. His parting shot was to write HUBRIS! in big bold print on his ink board on the way out.
My neighbor works there……and says you’re both correct.
UNDERGROUND all power, phone, etc. lines!!! Beautify our neighborhoods and eliminate the possibility of power lines coming into contact with flammable materials!!
You won’t be able to afford it.
Mimi,
The cost to underground power lines is prohibitively expensive – for transmission lines, it’s on the order of $2 million or so PER MILE. Trenching, rerouting of other utilities (water, sewer, etc) and environmental/CPUC approvals and repaving, etc…. The undergrounding of distribution primary and secondary lines is cheaper – but you’re still talking maybe $250k or so per mile. Those are just the installed costs.
Maintenance of UG cables is also more expensive, as the insulation degrades over time. Failure of an UG cable isn’t anywhere near as eat as replacing OH conductors… meaning the ongoing maintenance cost is higher.
With undergrounding the lines, that means new terminals and structures/ equipment have to be installed at the substations.
Sure, it sounds “simple “ – but to underground every line in/around Concord would cost (very VERY roughly) maybe $5 to $10 BILLION and would probably take 15-29 years – assuming you could get the required approvals from the CPUC, the CEC, the CAISO, FERC and any other involved local, state and federal agencies. Now expand that to the rest of Northern and Central CA and you’re talking hundreds of billions +….
Who pays for it ? The ratepayer. You may not like it, but those are the facts. Check it out; the rough costs are all available on the internet.
Have fun.
Underground works and looks great. But…..your power supply comes from some central feed somewhere and when it gets shut down during nasty winds, yours will be down also.
I got a old military diesel generator with out a muffler, it was cheaper.
The Air Board will declare a Spare the Air day and you will be prevented from operating it.
Having lived for a couple years in a country (Nigeria) with lots of power outages and millions (literally) of generators I don’t recommend this as a solution. 1) there were constant stories of people being killed by poorly installed generators by electrocution. 2) also the need for fuel at homes was a problem causing fires and deaths. 3) the pollution was horrible.
I know in America we all think we can take care of ourselves and be independent and all. But that’s just a fantasy from Disney movies about the days of Davy Crockett Grow up and understand that we are in this together. Thanks.
The website has a video showing how to manually open an electric garage door in the event of a power outage. Though I’d mention that, as the topic has come up on Claycord.
That’s a good reminder Mary Fouts. And it reminded me of a news story I saw down in San Jose I think, burglars were punching garage windows and unlatching people’s garage doors with some kinda homemade tool grabbing that little rope on the that releases the door from the drive mechanism. Or I saw it on Law and Order, I don’t remember.
Yes Mary…I think they are making it mandatory for all new homes to have battery back-up for garage doors by a certain year because of some people that couldn’t get their doors open during the CAMP fire. Was just talking about that with the wife last night. I said that at that point I would get in the car and punch it. That darn door would lose and I would be outta there. Well at lease I would hope.
@Simonpure – I posted about just that topic earlier this summer. If you can’t get the garage door open and you need to leave to save your life, put the car in reverse and floor it. You’ll get out.
My distracted mother backed through at least 2 garage doors when I was a young kid.
Go mama go!
If you have the old fashioned plywood door, your car could probably smash it, but if you have a metal segamented door, it’s gonna bend and not break and you might have to charge the door several times to rip out the roller bolts or mount brackets. If you make it out at all, your car will be a mess. If you’re not tall enough to reach the T-handle, keep a garden rake nearby.
PG&E installed new utility poles in my neighborhood, and left the old poles. The cut the top of the poles off where their cables were. Now I have two poles in front of my house. One for power and one with the cable, fiber etc. It looks really crappy.
I have a question…..? Who pays for the out time? Do they just bill us as usual. 2 hours no power, 6 hours no power, 2 days no power. Do the estimate on an average use per day? How does that work?? Interesting.
In theory without both voltage and current there is no kilowatt and therefore no kilowatt hour. But since we’re talking about PG&E, there’ll be charges if they can get away with it. I have an absolutely empty house where nothing is plugged in at all and still get a bill for $43 a month.