Maybe these kinds of things will push us more towards decentralized power generation like solar and wind, and bigger lab-wide or campus-wide battery battery backups?
Most electric utilities in most states aren't regularly given insane contradictory legal directives that can only be reconciled by cutting power. This is not normal.
PG&E is the poster child for regulatory capture. They're only in this mess because they've dragged their feet for so long on making critical upgrades and fixes.
The way I hear it they were required to make the critical upgrades and forbidden from charging high enough rates to pay for it. If this is true, then the people imposing those two constraints have only themselves to blame for the blackouts.
Regulatory capture is a thing that happens and is a problem, but this seems to be a case of bad regulation, not regulatory capture.
The way I hear it they were required to make the critical upgrades and forbidden from charging high enough rates to pay for it. If this is true, then the people imposing those two constraints have only themselves to blame for the blackouts.
Bullshit. PG&E redirected around $100 million from their safety budget and spent it on corporate bonuses instead. While hopefully not part of their safety budget, PG&E spends about $400 million annually on stock buybacks. PG&E has plenty of money to prevent this bullshit but is more concerned with executive compensation.
I mean, for fucks sake, Caltrans had to threaten to shut down the Hwy 1 and Hwy 24 tunnels before PG&E thought about bringing in generators (not even leaving enough time to install them before the power was cut).
Regulatory capture is a thing that happens and is a problem, but this seems to be a case of bad regulation, not regulatory capture.
Anything above 0% is atypical for a company in the financial position that PG&E claimed to be in. Paying dividends is something that profitable companies do.
Common refrain: let’s upgrade the systems. Ok! We charge users more. No, can’t do that, only the wealthy should pay for the changes. ... Nothing gets done
No, it's going to lead to even more regulation which in turn will constrain what PG&E can do even further. At this point, it should just become a state owned and operated enterprise and drop the dressing of being private.
Once it does that, we'll come to appreciate their service as much as we appreciate the schedulekeeping of the MUNI.
PG&E has a government-granted monopoly to provide its utilities to its coverage region. That makes it indistinguishable from a state-owner enterprise, except that there are probably even more people reducing efficiency by extracting value for themselves.
Extraction of value means increased efficiency is incentivized. Obvious caveats about cutting corners with brush removal but also the shared responsibility of homes built in dangerous places apply.
Where would that incentive come from? Not from the threat of competitors, because no competitors are allowed to exist. There would perhaps be some slight incentive due to the slight elasticity of demand for electricity (i.e. people can probably reduce their energy usage in response to higher prices), but I imagine that elasticity is quite low indeed.
It’s more likely that the more significant incentives would be other things, like, oh, not maintaining equipment and eventually causing wildfires.
This is interesting because if this happened in other states or countries, i might disagree with you...but considering it happened in California - where much innovation happens - i wonder how many existing and start-up firms will look to innovate on decentralized power generation even if only just for their own itch to scratch. I'm hoping that firms in California get pissed off enough to really increase the push for more decentralized modes of power...so instead of having engineers figure out how to invade our privacy or click online ads more, perhaps they can work on decentralized, reliable, and yes cheaper power generation.
