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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

For a more visual idea of what happened, here is a user-contributed "street view" close to the very spot that PG&E mentions in their filing. You can see what the relationship is between this terrain, the forest, and the power lines.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.83185,-121.4410804,3a,75y,50...

Personally I feel like burying this is a waste of money. The entire Feather River Project generates less than 1% of California's peak power demands, and it doesn't generate it in the late summer when we actually need it. California replaces this amount of generating capacity with new rooftop solar every 10 months at current pace, or with individual utility-scale PV plants that are being completed regularly. It's not worth the fires. We can afford to turn it off.

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That photo shows a transmission line (230 kV according to OpenInfraMap[1]). The line that started the fire was a 12kV distribution line[2].

I think this is one of the poles on this distribution line:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B052'31.2%22N+121%C2...

The fire was started somewhere uphill from that pole.

[1] https://openinframap.org/#17.9/39.83185/-121.44108

[2] https://s1.q4cdn.com/880135780/files/doc_downloads/wildfire_...

Bucks Creek 1101 follows Storrie Rd on the north/west side of the Feather, right? There doesn't seem to be a way to deep link to the map, but this PG&E map shows that line:

https://www.pge.com/b2b/distribution-resource-planning/integ...

I'm trying to reckon the spot based on the recent court order. The transcript says the troubleman could see the problem from Cresta Dam, it was uphill from him (as is everything from that point), it was on the other side of the river (the north/west side, if he was on the CA-70 side), and he had to cross the river and drive a rough road to get there (consistent with Pulga Rd) and there was a "Road Closed" sign somewhere in Butte County, which is consistent with this photo:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.8285968,-121.4181878,3a,75y,...

I don't know if there is an available photo that will get us closer to events.

Here's street view from the Cresta Dam:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.8762603,-121.3726288,3a,50.4...

You can see the Bucks Creek 1101 line in the background crossing the river and then going uphill.

I agree. Burying existing lines at $2M per mile seems like outdated thinking now that $2M buys you around 3MW of solar. Or, around 6MWh of battery storage if the Tesla Megapack is to be believed. Plus, this is capacity that doesn't require nearly as much maintenance.

Just thinking out loud, but I wonder the best answer isn't just to forget about these older transmission lines altogether. Build smaller mini-grids and use the existing hydro infrastructure for on-site carbon capture.

A small system risks isolation. Texas demonstrated the vulnerabilities there.

Agree with this.

State should be investing heavily in solar for everyone.

The future of firefighting should be heavily invested in.

Have there been YC proposals for novel firefighting tech?

If not then why not? Obviously a field ripe for disruption.

Because often the best fire fighting technique with wild fires is not to.

Not every problem has a technological solution. Not everything should or needs to be disrupted.

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

Yes to better forest management. Of course we have to do that.

The state will burn down without intervention. That is painstakingly clear.

What makes it ripe for disruption? My understanding is that the most effective response to wildfires is simply to not build flammable structures too close to forests.

The forests will die without intervention. Unless you want California to become 100% desert lands.

Sequoias on the Western Sierra slopes are the last in the world. And from the looks of it they don't have much time. Would you like us to clear the 3000 year old trees too?

Temps are rising. We are engineers who talk of terraforming mars.

Why can we not talk of doing the same thing in our own back yard?

> The forests will die without intervention

That's a bold statement.

We live in bold times. Doesn't look like the old guard is working.

Kind of like what happened with Space. It needed to be disrupted.

Those pylons are really short, why aren't the lines way above the trees?

Cost

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