Can't cut down foliage near power lines, so it limits how much power can be sent and prevents upgrades. Can only work on the lines when a forest fire takes out the foliage naturally. Clown World type shit.
Add to that some nice price controls to restrict the money available to reinvest.
In the '90s, you could not clear any brush on your own private property because of the Kangaroo mouse. Over decades, tumbleweeds stacked up along fence lines -- in particular, Malabu.
One hot summer, fires, pushed by the Santa Ana winds, swept through all the high-dollar estates -- burning down nearly all the homes...along with the Kangaroo mouse. There was so much undergrowth the mice didn't stand a chance.
Oh, the homes and people didn't fair any better.
California has been in a steady state of stupid for many, many decades.
It gets worse, then you sue the power company for not shutting power off and starting a fire.... and if the power company does shut power off, you sue them for shutting power off and not being able to get your life saving medical devices to work because they shut the power off.
I guess if you have enough fires you won't need to be afraid of the Sierra Club anymore. Won't need to trim the trees and brush because it's all be burned up in catastrophic fires. Good thing we avoided making a decision or having a conflict. phew.
It’s a good thing the US is a federation so California can experiment with their ridiculous energy policy themselves without having to bully the whole country into them. And let’s thank the Founding Fathers for the Electoral College!
Wasn't invasion. Planted in purpose by railroad company for cheap fast-growing wood. Didn't realize it is split so easily and was worthless for tracks.
part of the reason. the main issue is how they explode during already started fires, basically they help the fire progress much faster. but again its part of the reason.
Yeah so either you do preventative burning like the aboriginals have done for years where they lived. Or you wait till nature takes care of it in one big home destroying, life taking Forest Fire every few decades.
Every utility has price controls. That financial problems of the utilities is because of all the lawsuits from forest fires, and the expensive regulatory requirements
The seeds have fuck all to do with it. They drop their seeds AFTER a fire sweeps through, the seeds don't cause fires. They're oily trees, their leaves are highly combustible, and they're trash trees that drop a lot of bark and branches, so the ground around them is littered with dried tinder - and weeds and undergrowth, because they allow more light through them, unlike oak, or firs, which are indigenous to the region.
The Berkeley/Oakland fires are the best example of how dangerous eucalyptus are, they literally explode when on fire, and the trash they drop spreads it further. The crowns of the trees explode, and it has nothing to do with the seeds.
When my parents lived in CA, I spent many hours ripping them out of our property, it took about one season of cleaning up after them for my dad to get rid of them, and replant other trees. I fucking hate eucalyptus trees, they're trash trees. My hands would smell like eucalyptus for days after clearing them, you get covered in sticky oil - and you can't burn the wood, because it's so oily. We just stacked it in a corner of the lot and would take a truckload to the dump once in a while.
One of my friends who works at Edison was saying how they don't want the transformers exploding because the constant load wasn't giving the infrastructure a break, I told him if Arizona can handle it, then it clearly can be designed to handle the load.
He is quite MAGA too, but I guess working for a power company gives one certain biases.
Texas had a roughly month long triple-digit heatwave in August. That's pretty much the norm every year (sometimes we have multi-month triple-digit heatwaves), and we never have issues with overload.
California gets those temperatures for months too, used to handle it too.
Though to be fair, this past weekend most inland places in Southern California were over 115. My place was 118, and normally we might get a day or two over 110, but usually in the high 90's and low 100's.
I love this state. We have our own power grid, water and ability to grow food. In fact, we don't need any part of the US if shit ever fell apart. It's an independent country in and unto itself. If we took a couple weeks to clean up Austin, this state could survive anything.
As an electrical engineer myself I think what he's referring to is that electrical grids cant carry as much current in hot weather because the air cannot cool the lines and equipment like it can in colder weather. This isn't a problem in a properly invested in electrical grid as it would be designed for the worst case scenario with plenty of spare capacity on the lines and transformers. What is sounds like California is doing is pushing their grid to the limit so that it is failing on hot days because it can't carry all of the current needed without overheating. When lines overheat they also droop down which is how fires are started if brush isnt being maintained. Proper maintenance of power lines means cutting brush and the environmentalist wackos in California don't like that. Instead they then have to resort to shedding load, aka shutting off peoples power. If they didn't do that there would be lines drooping into trees or cascading blackouts like the northeast one in 2003.
Proper investment and maintenance would prevent all of this. Electrical grids have worked fine in hot temperatures for decades. Texas has a well maintained modern grid, at least in the areas I've worked in.
and tbh all this always boils down to information. most people would vote differently if they had this information, but instead they're blasted 24/7 with white ppl must die, nature good don't touch it, and other similar shit
I looked at the outage map and they cut power to the rural areas (which I've lived).
The landscape of Arizona and the parts of California that have been cut is drastically different. Arizona is arid and dry with little foliage. California the lines are around tons of dry foliage ready to light up and can spread much easier.
Also, the way power lines are distributed in neighborhoods in the rural California areas from the main lines - I believe it becomes a weird issue of "is this the property owners responsibility or PG&E's". For example, it cost 10k per pole I recall to get power from the main lines to a ranch house.
You know, during the Brazilian military regime the guys at government wanted to experiment a proof of concept for DC transmission. So they built both 750 kV AC and a 500 kV DC lines from Itaipu (at the time and for many years largest hydro) to São Paulo region (the load center). The DC has a return by the earth (SWER) and still in operation.
Of course there is a catch. In Brazil there is only one national system operator who manages all of the country's power lines, and not competing state transmission companies. So it's guaranteed that those lines will be loaded 100% of the time, specially because Itaipu technically does not have a reservoir, it outputs as much as it collects from rain.
For the many legit reasons we can raise criticism over our military regime over here and the overall "central planning" ethos that came with it, at the very least the military had a technocratic "no bullshit" approach and didn't had to appease deranged treehuggers.
About 10 times more and in Cali climate you'd need to have refrigerated ducts since wind won't cool it when charged (and it will need isolation to not, you know, dissipate...).
Underground and underwater transmission lines are a thing but they have several problems. The cost is around 10x as high, so they're only really used in and around cities. They couple to the ground capacitatively if they're not HVDC, which means that if they are long enough, power will go into charging up the capacitor of the cable + ground surrounding the cable, and it will never reach the user; it can't be as long as overhead cables.
California NIMBYs have to be the worst of any in the country. I live in a city with zero zoning laws, and you know what? Sometimes you end up with a high rise in your backyard, but overall it lets the city organically optimize locations for important things. Like roads and power stations.
Was not an issue before they shut reliable plants in favor of the solar/wind fantasy.
Solar/wind fantasy requires power to be transported big distances, instead of produced by local plants. Hence, the infrastructure cannot handle it. That is still the fault of the solar/wind fiasco.
It's like requiring all goods enter the US through Florida, and then saying the interstate highways cannot handle the truck traffic. Is the problem really the roads, or the fact you restricted all cargo to coming in through Florida?
Solar/wind fantasy requires power to be transported big distances, instead of produced by local plants.
Exactly, that is the worst part, the corruption of the idea. Solar and wind were thought of as DECENTRALIZED means of generation (on the monicker of "distributed generation") which would REDUCE THE NEED FOR LONG-DISTANCE TRANSMISSION and not increase it (people would generate at their homes where they consume it). They stupidly took solar and wind for what it was not meant to be and made it a business-large, industrialized and concentrated thing. Well guess what if you want to go big then location starts to matter and transmission gets worse.
they say it's the capacity of the power distribution network, not the capacity of the power stations
Yes, the outdated third world grid is the major issue.
Can't cut down foliage near power lines, so it limits how much power can be sent and prevents upgrades. Can only work on the lines when a forest fire takes out the foliage naturally. Clown World type shit.
Add to that some nice price controls to restrict the money available to reinvest.
The consequences of Dem Rule.
Wait they can only work on the lines if a forest fire clears the trees?
Oh look, the whole state is on fire!
In the '90s, you could not clear any brush on your own private property because of the Kangaroo mouse. Over decades, tumbleweeds stacked up along fence lines -- in particular, Malabu.
One hot summer, fires, pushed by the Santa Ana winds, swept through all the high-dollar estates -- burning down nearly all the homes...along with the Kangaroo mouse. There was so much undergrowth the mice didn't stand a chance.
Oh, the homes and people didn't fair any better.
California has been in a steady state of stupid for many, many decades.
It gets worse, then you sue the power company for not shutting power off and starting a fire.... and if the power company does shut power off, you sue them for shutting power off and not being able to get your life saving medical devices to work because they shut the power off.
I guess if you have enough fires you won't need to be afraid of the Sierra Club anymore. Won't need to trim the trees and brush because it's all be burned up in catastrophic fires. Good thing we avoided making a decision or having a conflict. phew.
It’s a good thing the US is a federation so California can experiment with their ridiculous energy policy themselves without having to bully the whole country into them. And let’s thank the Founding Fathers for the Electoral College!
Eucalyptus is the reason for the fires. It's invasive from Australia. The wood is flammable because the fire activates the seeds.
Cali power is liable for fire. They shouldn't be.
Wasn't invasion. Planted in purpose by railroad company for cheap fast-growing wood. Didn't realize it is split so easily and was worthless for tracks.
part of the reason. the main issue is how they explode during already started fires, basically they help the fire progress much faster. but again its part of the reason.
Yeah so either you do preventative burning like the aboriginals have done for years where they lived. Or you wait till nature takes care of it in one big home destroying, life taking Forest Fire every few decades.
Every utility has price controls. That financial problems of the utilities is because of all the lawsuits from forest fires, and the expensive regulatory requirements
Eucalyptus trees are flammable even when they are alive. They naturally burn because the fire activates their seeds.
They are invasive from Australia. California needs to eradicate them before they get federal funding for anything else.
The seeds have fuck all to do with it. They drop their seeds AFTER a fire sweeps through, the seeds don't cause fires. They're oily trees, their leaves are highly combustible, and they're trash trees that drop a lot of bark and branches, so the ground around them is littered with dried tinder - and weeds and undergrowth, because they allow more light through them, unlike oak, or firs, which are indigenous to the region.
The Berkeley/Oakland fires are the best example of how dangerous eucalyptus are, they literally explode when on fire, and the trash they drop spreads it further. The crowns of the trees explode, and it has nothing to do with the seeds.
When my parents lived in CA, I spent many hours ripping them out of our property, it took about one season of cleaning up after them for my dad to get rid of them, and replant other trees. I fucking hate eucalyptus trees, they're trash trees. My hands would smell like eucalyptus for days after clearing them, you get covered in sticky oil - and you can't burn the wood, because it's so oily. We just stacked it in a corner of the lot and would take a truckload to the dump once in a while.
Those cheekie bastards.
Don’t forget the the hopeless state of California forests due to bark beetle infestation. Small fire and it all goes up like a tinderbox.
we have a thrid world infrastructure because enviroscum paid by china is preventing anything from being built
cant put a shovel in the ground without studying the local bug population for 20 years
What exactly happened to "Power to the People"?
Come mes in the form of lamp oil now
Whale Oil for the fUtUre! Oh wait...
liposuction. That's why we have fast food..
Whuh?...
Democrat Leadership: But that would be expensive to fix, its much easier to just put the blame on something that can be “fixed” cheaply.
One of my friends who works at Edison was saying how they don't want the transformers exploding because the constant load wasn't giving the infrastructure a break, I told him if Arizona can handle it, then it clearly can be designed to handle the load.
He is quite MAGA too, but I guess working for a power company gives one certain biases.
Texas had a roughly month long triple-digit heatwave in August. That's pretty much the norm every year (sometimes we have multi-month triple-digit heatwaves), and we never have issues with overload.
California gets those temperatures for months too, used to handle it too.
Though to be fair, this past weekend most inland places in Southern California were over 115. My place was 118, and normally we might get a day or two over 110, but usually in the high 90's and low 100's.
And Texas uses 44% more power than CA, mostly due to industrial customers including petrochemicals and refineries. It's good to have your own grid!
I love this state. We have our own power grid, water and ability to grow food. In fact, we don't need any part of the US if shit ever fell apart. It's an independent country in and unto itself. If we took a couple weeks to clean up Austin, this state could survive anything.
As an electrical engineer myself I think what he's referring to is that electrical grids cant carry as much current in hot weather because the air cannot cool the lines and equipment like it can in colder weather. This isn't a problem in a properly invested in electrical grid as it would be designed for the worst case scenario with plenty of spare capacity on the lines and transformers. What is sounds like California is doing is pushing their grid to the limit so that it is failing on hot days because it can't carry all of the current needed without overheating. When lines overheat they also droop down which is how fires are started if brush isnt being maintained. Proper maintenance of power lines means cutting brush and the environmentalist wackos in California don't like that. Instead they then have to resort to shedding load, aka shutting off peoples power. If they didn't do that there would be lines drooping into trees or cascading blackouts like the northeast one in 2003.
Proper investment and maintenance would prevent all of this. Electrical grids have worked fine in hot temperatures for decades. Texas has a well maintained modern grid, at least in the areas I've worked in.
and tbh all this always boils down to information. most people would vote differently if they had this information, but instead they're blasted 24/7 with white ppl must die, nature good don't touch it, and other similar shit
You distilled it down almost perfectly.
I looked at the outage map and they cut power to the rural areas (which I've lived).
The landscape of Arizona and the parts of California that have been cut is drastically different. Arizona is arid and dry with little foliage. California the lines are around tons of dry foliage ready to light up and can spread much easier.
Also, the way power lines are distributed in neighborhoods in the rural California areas from the main lines - I believe it becomes a weird issue of "is this the property owners responsibility or PG&E's". For example, it cost 10k per pole I recall to get power from the main lines to a ranch house.
You know, during the Brazilian military regime the guys at government wanted to experiment a proof of concept for DC transmission. So they built both 750 kV AC and a 500 kV DC lines from Itaipu (at the time and for many years largest hydro) to São Paulo region (the load center). The DC has a return by the earth (SWER) and still in operation.
Of course there is a catch. In Brazil there is only one national system operator who manages all of the country's power lines, and not competing state transmission companies. So it's guaranteed that those lines will be loaded 100% of the time, specially because Itaipu technically does not have a reservoir, it outputs as much as it collects from rain.
For the many legit reasons we can raise criticism over our military regime over here and the overall "central planning" ethos that came with it, at the very least the military had a technocratic "no bullshit" approach and didn't had to appease deranged treehuggers.
Yeah, it costs a lot more to bury them, but, as you said, it's money well spent.
About 10 times more and in Cali climate you'd need to have refrigerated ducts since wind won't cool it when charged (and it will need isolation to not, you know, dissipate...).
The maintenance is a nightmare. When overhead lines fail it is no big deal, underground construction is a slow and painful process.
/industrial electrician
Underground and underwater transmission lines are a thing but they have several problems. The cost is around 10x as high, so they're only really used in and around cities. They couple to the ground capacitatively if they're not HVDC, which means that if they are long enough, power will go into charging up the capacitor of the cable + ground surrounding the cable, and it will never reach the user; it can't be as long as overhead cables.
California NIMBYs have to be the worst of any in the country. I live in a city with zero zoning laws, and you know what? Sometimes you end up with a high rise in your backyard, but overall it lets the city organically optimize locations for important things. Like roads and power stations.
PURPOSELY CREATED PROBLEM.
Marxism is good at doing this for critical lines of supply.
Was not an issue before they shut reliable plants in favor of the solar/wind fantasy.
Solar/wind fantasy requires power to be transported big distances, instead of produced by local plants. Hence, the infrastructure cannot handle it. That is still the fault of the solar/wind fiasco.
It's like requiring all goods enter the US through Florida, and then saying the interstate highways cannot handle the truck traffic. Is the problem really the roads, or the fact you restricted all cargo to coming in through Florida?
Exactly, that is the worst part, the corruption of the idea. Solar and wind were thought of as DECENTRALIZED means of generation (on the monicker of "distributed generation") which would REDUCE THE NEED FOR LONG-DISTANCE TRANSMISSION and not increase it (people would generate at their homes where they consume it). They stupidly took solar and wind for what it was not meant to be and made it a business-large, industrialized and concentrated thing. Well guess what if you want to go big then location starts to matter and transmission gets worse.