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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

So you blame a private company for sparking a wildfire which isn't really under their control. What do you expect them to do?

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Cleaning up accumulated kindling and fixing up their infrastructure is actually under their control. It's just they never gave priority to it. It's a pattern of behavior for them: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-E-diverted-safety-...

And why not? If they get hit with a lawsuit, they can just jack up the rates or if citizens get too noisy, just shut them off for a week or two and show them who's the boss here. It's not like the customers can go elsewhere, and they are guaranteed 10% return on the money by the state by ROE rate arrangements, whatever happens. How many other "private" companies do you know that are guaranteed to make money no matter what?

PG&E equipment is believed to have started multiple fires, including the Camp fire. I don't understand your usage of "under their control".

They were the proximate cause but not the ultimate cause. When the state is that dry, something is going to start a fire sooner or later, and when it does, it's going to be bad.

They are basically being penalized for being the straw that broke the camel's back.

Probably better maintenance would have helped some, but it's not like they bear all the blame for the destruction caused by the fire.

I would accept that argument if it happened once, but alas it didn't.

While anyone can start a wildfire, they are a large actor, which causes them. They make profit and could invest money to reduce their part in it, but as long that is an external cost, there is no economic motivation. That's not penalisation, it's economics.

I think implicit in PG&E's decision to neglect maintenance was that they weren't allowed to raise rates and it wouldn't actually be very economical to do maintenance to reduce wildfire risks, so shareholders preferred profits were returned to them rather than reinvestment into e.g. maintenance. So adding the "motivation" to reduce wildfires might've made them more likely.

I don't think anyone is claiming they bear "all" the blame. That would be an issue for a court to decide if it ever came to it.

Instead, the counterposition here seems to be that they should bear none of the blame, that any liability on their part is an injustice, and that refusing preventative maintenance and literally unplugging regions at risk is somehow an acceptable outcome. And that seems insane.

If they can't provide the service they're contracted to provide, they need to be regulated to be sure they do. The market has failed (and this isn't the first time PG&E got caught playing ridiculous games with regulators at the expense of customers, I was in California during the electricity crisis of 2000).

In the same way WWI was not really under the control of Franz Ferdinand’s assassin.

Given that a great deal of the risk is directly cause by maintenance that PG&E has chosen to defer for years... how is it not under their control?

I can accept that perhaps some other parties should share some of the liability, but it seems completely unsupportable to claim that PG&E has no control over these risks and should be absolved of all responsibility.

Well, they could start with actually trying to avoid starting fires rather than just not bothering with routine fire prevention tasks. They are not remotely close to a company that did everything they could to avoid starting any fires but did anyway because it was unavoidable.

I expect PG&E to find a way to deliver power without causing fires.

We shouldn't have to choose between having blackouts or having wildfires. I can't think of any other first-world country where that happens.

They could just put the lines underground and be done with it.

And your electric rates would reflect the multi billion dollar investment to do that.

Instead, the electric rates reflect the multibillion cost of the dividends PG&E paid while not safeguarding it's lines properly, either by burying or clearing trees, etc., around them. You are paying billions of dollars either way, the question is whether you are getting safer electrical infrastructure or richer power company shareholders out of it.

The cost while incalculable by me, I'd guess is likely north of 100b dollars to bury everything. It's probably 1b alone for just the environmental impact statements.

As part of some settlement PG&E buried the lines in my old neighborhood. Took three years. I heard some comments that at that rate they could underground all the lines in San Francisco in about 400 years.

I'm unsure but I think a lot of the issue is that feeder lines are often run through unfortunate areas. Fire prone, subject to high winds, and difficult to reach quickly. One suspects that under grounding is likely impossible. Instead they would need to reroute the lines. Then there are all the diffuse rural suburbs.

I figure it'd take 50 years, if everyone signed on and approved.

People expect them to properly take care of the lines and surrounding area which means spend money at the problem but hard to do if you are maximising profit over safety.

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