I have every sympathy for the folks who lost homes here in California last year; it could easily have been my house. But what a lot of discussions miss regarding SCE's role in the Altadena fire is that SCE is a public utility, and California's Public Utilities Commission has not been allowing SCE (or other utilities, like PG&E) to charge rates that would allow them to do the required maintenance to prevent fires. In another case, some years ago, I understand that a fire in Northern California started next to a PG&E substation; the brush had not been trimmed, so I'm told, because environmental regulation didn't allow it.
From where I sit, this is not simply a "power company bad" situation; the state has played a significant role.
Doesn't California already have some of the highest electricity costs in the country? Is there really not enough money coming in for SCE, PG&E etc to do necessary maintenance? That's shocking.
EDIT: Looking further, PG&E's net profit every year for the past few years seems to have been extremely large, so I don't know that I buy it...
I have every sympathy for the folks who lost homes here in California last year; it could easily have been my house. But what a lot of discussions miss regarding SCE's role in the Altadena fire is that SCE is a public utility, and California's Public Utilities Commission has not been allowing SCE (or other utilities, like PG&E) to charge rates that would allow them to do the required maintenance to prevent fires. In another case, some years ago, I understand that a fire in Northern California started next to a PG&E substation; the brush had not been trimmed, so I'm told, because environmental regulation didn't allow it.
From where I sit, this is not simply a "power company bad" situation; the state has played a significant role.
Doesn't California already have some of the highest electricity costs in the country? Is there really not enough money coming in for SCE, PG&E etc to do necessary maintenance? That's shocking.
EDIT: Looking further, PG&E's net profit every year for the past few years seems to have been extremely large, so I don't know that I buy it...
I have two hundred pages of details that do not conform to this line of thinking