Pacific Gas & Electric has generated confusion – even outrage – with its power grid shutdowns. The situation continues for a second day in 34 California counties. On social media and phone calls to Forum, people throughout PG&âs service area have asked how and why the investor-owned utility took this step. KQED reporters have some answers.
Why Is PG&E Turning The Power Off? Is This PG&Eâs Fault?
Bottom line, PG&E doesnât want to risk having its power lines start another fire, so it is pre-emptively turning the power off during this weekâs dry, windy weather. The company made the decision based on information from its wildfire center, where meteorologists keep watch on fire conditions.
PG&Eâs power lines have sparked many catastrophic wildfires in California, including last yearâs Camp Fire in Butte County that caused 86 deaths and burned 153,336 acres and 18,804 structures.
It was the deadliest U.S. wildfire in 100 years. PG&E lines started more than a dozen fires in 2017.
Less than a month ago, the company agreed to shell out $11 billion in a settlement with victims of the recent fires.
The shutoffs are part of its wildfire mitigation plan, mandated by the state and agreed to by the California Public Utilities Commission, the stateâs top power regulator. — Kevin Stark
Who Made This Decision? When Did They Make It?Â
If past practice tells us anything, PG&E has been making and remaking this decision, with the help of its meteorological team, over several days. The utility says it considers weather conditions, fuel conditions, other observations, and the need for notice by state and local parties when it sets shutoffs. As weâve seen over the last few days, shutoff times can shift as these factors do.
There’s nothing new about turning off power lines when conditions get risky: San Diego Gas and Electric requested authority to do so more than a decade ago, and with the permission of the CPUC, has done it to mitigate fire risk since 2012. What is new are the guidelines PG&E filed just a year ago for its public safety power shutoff procedures.
For the last couple of years, the CPUC has required investor-owned utilities to describe their processes for arriving at decisions like the one affecting nearly three dozen California counties right now. PG&E shut off power twice last year; the last time PG&E called a public safety power shutoff, for two days in June, it affected about 22,000 customers in the North Bay and the Sierra foothills, including Butte County and Paradise. — Molly Peterson
This Is Intolerable. Why Canât PG&E Just Bury The Lines?
For new construction, PG&E places most power lines underground, so its main issue is dealing with 81,000 miles of existing overhead lines.
Thatâs no small feat. A little back-of-the-envelope math: strung together, the lines could extend there and back from San Francisco to Buenos Aires about four times. Burying lines is very expensive. On its website, PG&E estimates it would cost $3 million per mile to underground its lines ($3 million x 81,000 miles = $243 billion. That’s bigger than Californiaâs entire 2019 budget).
One report suggests that burying lines in urban places can be even more expensive — up to $5 million a mile.
Still, consumer safety advocates argue that leaders in Sacramento should require the utility to bury lines in heavily populated, high-risk fire areas. — Kevin Stark
Why Canât The State Take Over PG&E And Solve This Mess?
Itâs not beyond the realm of possibility, though thereâs no real model for a state taking over a publicly traded utility of this size. We also havenât seen any political will to do this (although that could, of course, change). One reason is that taxpayers would have to take on the financial responsibility that just bankrupted PG&E — liability for its aging, unsafe electrical grid.
If there were a way to untangle PG&Eâs many stakeholders and its various functions — donât forget, itâs a gas company, too — other challenges would emerge: For one, figuring out how to value PG&Eâs massive assets and sorting out how the state would foot the bill for them, especially since ratepayers have already been paying for that system. Also, the main wildfire problems of aging, poorly maintained electrical transmission lines in rural, fire-prone areas, and climate change causing more severe weather, are not going away no matter who is in charge.
Of course, public power does exist in California — Sacramento and Los Angeles both have it, and San Francisco is offering to buy PG&Eâs assets within city limits. But thatâs different than completely ending PG&E as we know it and making it a public, state-run power company. And, itâs worth mentioning that PG&E workers largely oppose this option.
In short, making PG&E a truly public company is theoretically possible and could become more politically palatable if these sorts of shutoffs continue, but there are a lot of unanswered questions about how the state could take over a company traded on Wall Street, and whether it would really be the best thing for ratepayers and taxpayers.
One idea that has been floated? Breaking up PG&E into smaller companies. –Marisa Lagos
Will These Power Shutoffs Work?
Weâll have to wait and see. There are many other ways fires can start: discarded cigarette butts, overheated cars idling over dry vegetation, chains dragging on the ground and sparking. — Danielle Venton
Why Are These Winds So Dangerous?
These are known as âDiablo winds,â although theyâre not necessarily hot. They are, however, pretty typical for this time of year. The speed and dryness of these winds make them especially good at fanning and spreading flames. That can turn a potentially manageable wildfire into an out-of-control inferno.
These winds that are so good at driving wildfires start out cold. Early autumnâs big cold air masses, brought by the jet stream, first move over Washington and Oregon then head to the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. This cold air is drier because it holds less moisture, and it has relatively higher pressure than the warmer air sitting over California. The meeting of these air currents propels the winds over the Sierra. As the winds move downslope, they speed up, the air compresses and warms, and the humidity plummets. This removes moisture from the landscape — and makes any spark more likely to start a wildfire.  — Danielle Venton
Will Any Good Come Of This Shutdown?
The outages are testing the regionâs emergency response system. They could expose weaknesses that can be fixed before the next major earthquake hits — for example, Caltrans administrators realized they needed to install a backup generator at the Caldecott Tunnel.
The shutoffs underscore another fact: PG&Eâs grid technology is outdated and clunky. The utility proactively shut off power on Wednesday morning, only to have people wake up to no electricity, less-than-gusty wind conditions, and warnings that the lights could remain off for days.
The disruption could serve as a focusing event for California to invest in local wind, solar, battery storage and other technology that would turn neighborhoods into small power islands, called microgrids, said Peter Asmus, a director at Navigant Research, a market research firm for the power sector.
âForecasts are often wrong,â he said. âIn an ideal situation, you would have the flexibility to make real-time adjustments.â
Puerto Ricans lived without electricity for months after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island in 2017. Now its main utility plans to divide the entire island into a series of microgrids that could offer resiliency and flexibility.
PG&E has not widely adopted that technology. But, Asmus suggested, âthe shutoffs are going to drive California to be the leader in microgrids in the U.S.â  — Kevin Stark
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