Sacramento Owns the Blackouts

“Can 40 million suffer third-world electric reliability without a political upheaval?” asks Holman Jenkins, 29oct19 WSJ

George Rebane

Northern Californians have now suffered multiple power blackouts in recent weeks and we are told by many that from here on this may become the new norm for our state – in other words, prepare your life to adopt the daily routines of third world countries where electric power is a sometime thing.  As opposed to all the now usual causes for these outages, ranging from climate change to a rapacious PG&E, I’d like to focus here on these blackouts as political events, and examine the new norm of power outages from that perspective.

I’m writing this while the power is still out in our part of western Nevada County.  This is the fourth day of our third ‘safety blackout’ in the last two weeks.  Most of northern California now knows a bit what it’s like to live in a third world country with sporadic and unpredictable electrical service.  But let me start this record with the strong statement that people who believe that PG&E is a regular for-profit private enterprise, and not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sacramento, can be ascribed as certifiable idiots whose impact continues to be disastrous for our state.

The actual centralized command structure that oversees and controls PG&E operations starts with decades of California’s one-party government that appoints members to the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) which is supposed to oversee PG&E, its rate structure and directed expenditures.  Within this ‘management’ structure, PG&E operates like a corporatist monopoly that embodies every inevitable corruption of a large bureaucracy that for years has considered its customers only as minimally-served and powerless herd of cash cows.

Starting in the latter half of the 19^th century, California was a blessed land that had everything except people.  Its commerce-oriented citizens and entrepreneurs emplaced state governments that shared their vision for the state’s future which focused on attracting Americans from the east.  And for over a century the people came by the millions to enjoy the state’s climate, scenery, and rapidly expanding and diverse economy.  It was hard to resist the promotional materials that blanketed the east showing palm trees under blue skies, orange groves backed by beautiful mountains, and cities filled with smiling tanned Californians enjoying the beach in January. If you were willing to work at literally anything, California had a job and a place to live for you.  (In 1957 the Rebanes were part of that grand migration from the Midwest, attracted by California’s burgeoning aerospace industry.)

The premature end to this glorious age started about fifty years ago around 1970.   The causes for California’s slide are many and not all home-grown; the entire nation was then reeling from the turbulent 60s that included massive civil rights and anti-war activism abetted by an incompetent federal government that promoted ‘guns and butter’ policies which were carried out in Vietnam and with the launch of the Great Society programs.  The most significant outcome of those years was that the country’s Left was finally able to take control of America’s public schools.

At that time California had the nation’s best performing schools that ranged from kindergarten through world class university systems that led the nation in producing and attracting STEM graduates who were naturally drawn to entrepreneurial enterprises in a business friendly state.  California’s dominance in the entertainment and aerospace industries served as a natural launch pad for the new and expanded multi-media Hollywood and, of course, Silicon Valley.  As post-Vietnam aerospace pulled back, entertainment and computer-based technology companies became the state’s major wealth producers.  More wealth was produced by an ever-shrinking share of Californians.

Since that transition the large body of Californians have “tended to mistake the success of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, whose economic hinterland, talent base, and revenue source are the world for (a) California being well-run. … It’s not. Any such illusion is belied by its homeless and poverty problems, its Nimby-driven housing costs, the black hole of its bullet train, the decampment of families and businesses to Texas, North Carolina and Tennessee.” (more here)

Today, with two generations of public schooled Californians taught a revisionist history of America as the world’s most deplorable country dripping with capitalist greed, the wealth-consuming collectivists have discovered how ‘democracy’ enables them to vote their largess from other people’s pockets.  And many of the remainder have been indoctrinated so thoroughly in Marxist dogma that they view minimally regulated markets and capitalism as society’s source of all evils.  Today more than half of Millennials decry capitalism as the organizing principle for an economy, 70% are likely to vote socialist, more than 1 of 5 want private property abolished,  and more than a third of them approve of communism – talk about the arrival of our dumbest and most dangerous generation. (more here)

In the meantime, drawing down the account of its golden years, California is still looked upon as the nation’s leader in progressivist programs and all things socialist.  One of the most celebrated myths among the Left is the over-promotion of all things locally self-sufficient.  In their brave new world we will depend less on ‘the grid’ and make/grow what we need in our villages or learn to do without.  No one seems to understand any longer what scaling means in production, and the massive QoL improvements such economies of scale have brought to hundreds of millions (billions) all across the world.  Our (especially local) Left promotes lifestyles that call for compact living, less travel, reduced consumption of all things, altruistic volunteering, shared property, and the establishment of commons in every possible sphere of activity and need.

To promote centralized control by the correct-thinking elites, California’s Left is leading the nation in all things ‘green’.  And this includes mandating that its utilities use their revenues to support various cash-hungry green initiatives that Sacramento regularly rolls out.  Here is a short litany of how such leftwing policies continue to impact PG&E –

• PUC is in charge of enforcing state safety laws and regulations. PG&E has received no fines related to the mismanagement of its power grid.  PUC instead is focused on enforcing Sacramento’s climate mandates.
• Sacramento has mandated that utilities obtain 33% of electricity generated from renewables by 2020, and 60% by 2030, thus skewing spending on infrastructure maintenance.
• PG&E, along with other utilities, must spend hundreds of millions annually to reduce the cost of green energy for low-income (loyally Democrat) households.
• In 2018 PG&E had to spend $509M on discounts to low-income customers.
• In 2018 PG&E had to spend $125M for no-cost weatherization and efficiency upgrades for disadvantaged communities.
• Since 2012 PG&E has had to divert $7.5B of cap-and-trade allowances for various “ratepayer benefits” that reduce carbon emissions.
• PG&E spent the lion’s share of state mandated $100M for solar systems in low-income communities, and $2.2B in customer rebates for rooftop solar installations, and then rebates on electric bills under the state’s net-metering program.
• In 2018 PG&E invested more than $150M in battery storage and other “sustainable technologies”, funded by a special charge on its customers.
• Over the next three years PG&E must spend $130M to install 7,500 electric-car charging stations, and also offer participating drivers an $800 “clean fuel” rebate.

All of this has been imposed by Sacramento Democrats to advance their climate change agenda, ostensibly without raising taxes.  Instead the state’s legions of light thinkers quietly accept paying twice as much as Oregon and Washington for their electricity.  In doing so, the utility has redirected its revenues from maintaining/upgrading its grid and paying for the needed tree-trimming around its power transmission and distribution lines.  In short, “PG&E has prioritized political obeisance over safety.”

In the meantime, Democrats make hay by accusing PG&E of putting profits over safety despite the fact that the PUC approves the utility’s return on equity at a level needed to attract private investment.  And that investment doesn’t come from high return seeking hedge funds or other greedy capitalists; it comes mostly from pension funds and elderly private investors seeking moderate but safe streams of retirement income.

The alert reader can relate all of this obvious malfeasance to a conglomerate of government bureaucracies that operate independently from their customers’ feedback, customers that such government monopolists view as vassals of the state.  This explains “California’s return to the dark ages (as) a direct result of the Democratic political monopoly in Sacramento.”  So how do we go forward from this mess years in the making? (more here)

America was built by people willing to take risks for the promise of profit.  And the country continues to thrive from the efforts of those who still expose themselves to risk in the hope of commensurate returns.  But in the interval, the public has been taught that all risk is bad, a social failure (injustice?) to be avoided and eliminated at all costs.  And that this will be possible only through the beneficial workings of an all-encompassing government through its growing slate of programs all commissioned for the greater good.  In the meantime, PG&E CEO Bill Johnson dispenses supportive pabulum for ongoing blackouts, stating that “We must have zero risk of a spark, we will very likely have to make this kind of decision again in the future.”

Readers know that as a lifelong capitalist and entrepreneur, I am a proponent of prudent risk taking that promises an acceptable expected return.  Without having successfully taken myriads of risks, humans would still be living their short and brutish lives in caves or on the open savannah.  The well-read individual knows there is no way that we can have “zero risk” in any endeavor, especially those endeavors that provide us value.  We know that the cost is immeasurable in the attempt to eliminate the last vestiges of risk.

Also, when we consider what is required to move past these promised regular blackouts, we can take a lesson from nature about large scale systems such as our all-controlling government/corporatist utilities conglomerate.  Nature has no such large-scale systems.  Its resilient and magnificent complexity is made up of an evolving and layered configuration of smaller systems always operating with the most amount of local control and information which enables them to survive in a competitive ecosystem.

In this spirit and for starters, I offer the following shortlist of Rebane Doctrine tenets for a post-blackout epoch of habitation in what today are considered California's high fire-danger regions -

1. Large power generating utilities should be broken up into smaller for-profit competing utilities that transmit and distribute power over government (state, county, local) owned transmission and distribution lines (like roads and highways). Customers contract with individual utilities for their power.
2. Power and energy utilities’ charter is to provide reliable, low-cost electricity to the customers using existing, available sources and technologies, and not be subjected to government mandates for promoting other energy related agendas.
3. Enable and encourage movement toward a distributed production of power.
4. Encourage timber harvesting to build a sequence of effective fire breaks, and return sparsely populated forest areas to their pre-inhabited copses configuration (thus localizing lightning started fires).
5. Pass legislation to enable the state to plan and carry out prescribed burns without liability from accidental collateral damage.
6. Insurance companies can charge premiums based on their assessment of risk.
7. Consumers do their own trade-off of risk vs the return (profit) of living in a scenic area.
8. No one has a right to live in a fire danger area at another’s expense.

Since all such proposals can benefit from and be improved upon by the participation of other good-willed and similarly motivated people, I invite interested RR readers to contribute their own edits, corrections, and thoughts to what I have outlined above.

"Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining."  Teddy Roosevelt

Comments

[George Rebane]

Education related comments under the proper commentary please, or see them disappear.

[Gregory]

Punchy 307pm

I hate when you lie, Punch.

This is a blog emanating from a Purple county, despite your delusions to the contrary.

You didn't answer my earlier question... what happens to the Democrats in California when we have a really cold and wet winter? What if that winter is this coming one?

The high taxes on fuels, the high taxes in general, are to prepare the state for the reality of global warming. What happens when that falls apart?

[Paul Emery]

In my view global warming is real Gregory so your request from me to answer your question is irrelevant. Now I might answer you question if you word it "What happens IF that falls apart?

[Paul Emery]

Gregory

Even our host considers Nevada County to be blue. He jokingly refers to it as the "Blue Pimple" in the otherwise solid red northern California.

[Bill Tozer]

The tale of two companies: Go woke, go broke. Kinda on topic.

“What should we learn from PG&E and WeWork? When you encounter leaders of a company who think profit and shareholder values are dirty words, are more interested in spending resources on popular liberal causes such as identity politics and trumped-up environmental concerns than providing the best products and services to customers, run away from them as fast as you can and take your money with you. The more woke they are, the more likely they will go broke.”.....

The Journal also reports that Neumann’s wife, Rebekah, who was WeWork’s chief brand officer, caused a delay in the IPO process by insisting the IPO document be printed on recycled paper but then rejected the copies as “low quality.”

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/01/how-going-woke-makes-companies-like-california-utilities-and-wework-quickly-go-broke/

[Walt]

Emery. There is more proof that Bigfoot is real than your myth of AGW.
And here is another nutcase "view".
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/11/01/gov-cuomo-we-didnt-have-hurricanes-superstorms-tornadoes-before-climate-change/
"We see these weather patterns that we never had before. We didn’t have hurricanes. We didn’t have superstorms. We didn’t have tornadoes. This is a storm that came up just overnight, dropped about five inches of rain, and it was literally a matter of life or death for people.”

Someone needs to read the history books from the days of the pioneers and early settlers.
They would say otherwise.

You DO realize your hero Mike Mann fabricated all is " evidence",,, right? Manipulation of data has been proven.
Yet you still want to believe.

[Paul Emery]

Walt

Have you argued your view on Global Warming to NID who are proposing that the Centinial Dam is necessary because of global warming. With that in hand I welcome your support in opposing the dam which in your view must not be unnecessary.

"The district doesn’t want to have to go begging like that again, said Nick Wilcox, a member of the district’s board of directors.

“We are being seriously impacted now by climate change, and will be more so in the future,” Wilcox said. “This is an attempt to create more mid-elevation storage to capture winter rains for use later in time. We need to control our own destiny.”

https://yubanet.com/regional/nid-says-climate-change-is-reason-for-new-dam-on-the-bear-river/

[Walt]

I don't give a shit what NID says. It's all about the free money. They are playing the same game you have been suckered into.
We need the storage. AGW or not. If it convinces suckers like you to get on the right side of water storage, so be it.

You want to continue to yap about supposed AGW, then eat the ridicule that goes with it. The claim is baseless. All the "predictions" have crapped out.

But DO give us a time when the climate DIDN'T change.
But blame the first cave man for taming fire, and HE was the cause of the first day of AGW.

[Walt]

So Emery will continue to believe fabricated "science" written by scamitists.

[Walt]

Who does Gavin Nuisance think he is?,, "O"??
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/california-seeks-quick-fix-to-utility-bankruptcy
"Governor threatens possible PG&E takeover if no plan is made"
"SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California's governor on Friday threatened a possible takeover of the troubled utility blamed for sparking deadly wildfires across the state with its outdated equipment unless it can emerge from bankruptcy ahead of next year's wildfire season with a plan focused on safety."

We saw how well LIBS in government could run healthcare, this should be a real interesting pooch screwing.

The state can't even build a railroad. Two tracks.. Side by side, from point A to point B.... Nope, could not even get that done.

Ang just who is going to pay for this insane idea?
GOD help us.....

[Bill Tozer]

Well, the population of CA has doubled since the great water projects in CA were built and the need for water has not remained static over the same time period. More people mean more flushing of toilets, more folks drinking water, and as the recent power outages revealed, the women folk miss their showers badly. Nothing wrong to prepare for years of feast and years of famine. The more water NID has, the more water it can sell to those flatlanders in need. And sale at a great profit.

[Gregory]

Paul... we are in the first year of a Maunderish solar minimum by Zharkova 2019. Record galactic cosmic rays are bombarding our atmosphere.

You'll keep that in mind going forward, won't you?

[Barry Pruett]

Newsom took money from PGE (over $200k) and now wants to intervene in PGE bankruptcy to make sure “we” get a good deal. Bullshit. Quit pro quo coming right up. https://www.abc10.com/mobile/article/news/politics/newsom-pge-broker-bankruptcy-deal/103-eab02ef6-d2c2-4977-b335-10461b0beea7

[scenes]

re: NID and global warming.

Obviously, they'll do/say whatever it takes to expand their writ. Moar and moar people, arguably the real cause of any anthropocene climate change (along with habitat destruction and a hundred kinds of poisoning) need water, so who can blame them? In a Blue State, the ever-caring voters want to bring in millions of third worlders to help make more 1st world pollution, so it's probably best to just sit back and watch the show.

You do have to consider these charts (the first showing lots and lots of 'global warming' in the 1920's):

http://www.thestormking.com/Weather/Sierra_Snowfall/sierra_snowfall.html
http://www.laalmanac.com/images/chart_rainfall_LA_1887_2018.jpg

I suppose there's a trend there somewhere. Somewhere.

[Bill Tozer]

As someone who is actually familiar with the Bear-Yuba Project (hydropower division of NID) and as someone who was a fly on the wall when Duke Energy floated buying PG&E maybe twenty years ago, I will take Dr. Rebane’s advice from the 0ct. 31 Sandbox header.p:

“['In life it's important to know when to stop arguing with people, and simply let them be wrong.' - an old shibboleth with conditional wisdom. Doesn't deciding when to stop arguing also depend on who all are listening to the argument? gjr”

With that said, when Duke Energy explored buying PG&E, there was a 17 page list single line list from our PUC’s demands. Page after page. I glanced at one item on page two that required $600,000 for a homeless shelter in Modesto and that did not even scratch the surface. Just my eye skimming pages, stopping randomly to read a line here and there. Duke dropped its plans and went back home.

NID is a rate payer company, thus exempt from PUC. PG&E is a publicity owned company, and thus is one of the micromanaged utilities in the MOST micromanaged public utilities in the nation-brought to us via the CA Public UtilitiesCommission.

Yeah, Sacramento owns the blackouts.

[Gregory]

"In my view global warming is real Gregory so your request from me to answer your question is irrelevant."

Let's try this again... if people started to abandon your "view" in favor of my view, what would happen to the Blue Meanie hold on Sacramento?

We are in the first year of a Maunderish solar minimum, called by astrophysicist V. Zharkova in Nature Scientific Reports, a first rate peer reviewed journal.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45584-3

But weather will be fickle... the coming winter might be especially cool, but it might not. We shall see.

[Walt]

A little breakdown on what PG&E was dealing with.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/11/02/california-wildfires-blackouts/
“To whatever degree PG&E prioritized profits over maintenance, it can’t account for failure to fire-proof transmission and distribution network. It just wasn’t priority for anyone, including regulators and consumer groups,” Nordhaus noted in a Twitter thread Monday.

Regulators who control PG&E’s funding have focused on climate change and other things instead, he stated. (RELATED: Here’s What Wildfires Are Doing To California As Citizens Cope With Rolling Blackouts)

The company spent more than half a billion dollars in 2018 on electric discounts for low-income citizens and another $125 million for efficiency upgrades, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board noted in an Oct. 25 editorial. PG&E has also used $7.5 billion in allowances since 2012 to pay for reduced emissions.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference at the California State Capitol on March 13, 2019 in Sacramento, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference at the California State Capitol on March 13, 2019 in Sacramento, California. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

California lawmakers passed an ordinance in 2015 requiring utilities to pay $100 million annually on solar systems in low-income areas, The WSJ Editorial Board noted. That is in addition to the $2.2 billion in rebates the utilities must offer customers for rooftop solar installations. A ratepayer advocacy division within California’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is complicating matters.

CPUC’s Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA) argues against maintenance and safety expenditures to keep rates low for customers, according to an application PG&E made to CPUC in 2012 to increase rates. PG&E noted in the document that ORA’s other priorities are making it difficult to maintain current infrastructure.

PG&E, which is bankrupt as a result of costs accrued as a result of deadly fires in 2018, is meanwhile under pressure to keep the lights on while at the same time monitoring old transmission lines that are susceptible to fire. The investor-owned public utility is still providing campaign cash to multiple California politicians, Republican and Democrat alike.

Newsom and his allies, for instance, took $208,400 from PG&E during his run for governor in 2018, California’s ABC10 noted in a July investigation. PG&E gave the governor the maximum amount of $58,400 and gave another $150,000 to a political spending group supporting his candidacy.

PG&E also donated more than $800,000 directly to candidate campaigns and another $3 million to political groups, which ultimately went back into candidates’ war chests, according to ABC10’s investigation, which relied on state records.

[Bill Tozer]

Oh goodie. Gavin threatens to take over PG&E. Hope the State runs it better than the Brown Streak. Maybe another gas tax is in order.

https://www.oann.com/california-governor-threatens-to-take-over-pge/

[Bill Tozer]

Sacramento owns the blackouts.....

“As the saying goes, will the last person leaving the state please turn out the lights? Oh, wait…”

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66640-the-golden-brown-state-2019-11-07?