130,600 PG&E customers without power as storm drenches Bay Area | Hacker News Reader

130,600 PG&E customers without power as storm drenches Bay Area

sfgate.com

22 pointsMilnerRoute16 comments

In related news, California just passed AB-1346, banning the sale of small backup generators starting in 2024.

The law includes a provision that the ban will go into effect only if there is suitable zero emission replacement. The goal is to incentivize some cleaner alternatives to be developed. And even then previous purchased generators are grandfathered.

So by last count my family and I have been without power 9 times in the last 3 months. Today the lights flickered on and off a number of times but stayed on, well until around 7pm. I am sitting on the patio listing to the rain in darkness (my old friend in PG&E land) again. The rain while hard is not really that bad in comparison to the storms of my childhood on the east coast, yet the power is out. The fact of the matter is the power grid in CA has been mismanaged and neglected for years, with the power companies focused 100% on profit. Power is an essential need. I am generally against government run industry however at this point I very much believe that we would be better served by having PG&E taken over. It should be run as a nonprofit with the goal of insuring power and safety. The leadership that runs it should limited to a group of people that have science and engineering degrees. Also title here needs to be updated…..over 320K without power now.

Quite a few go-arounds at SFO today due to weather along with pilots reporting their wind shear alarms activating during taxi to runway, maybe most inconvenient was Aeromexico having to divert to FAT (Fresno) after two go-arounds:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AMX668/history/20211024/...

It's the biggest Bay Area storm in 26 years, according to the article -- and the third-strongest storm of the last 61 years.

I wonder how they measure that. At least where I am, there has been steady medium rain since yesterday, but no drenching cloudbursts or powerful winds.

https://www.ggweather.com/basi.htm

Seems like every fall/winter the "atmospheric river" and "major storm" news article get published. I guess it's just how it works in a place that gets very little rain or severe weather.

Since no one else seems to be asking, why is the infrastructure so bad in SF?

Don't other parts of the state get power outages during major storms? Didn't Texas go through a major power failure this year due to winter storm?

Yes but when the failure occurred in Texas, infrastructure was a focal point for weeks. It hasn’t even been mentioned for SF.

As someone who has lost track of drought info. Is this still a net-positive for the region?

Unless there's catastrophic flooding, it has to be good.

If the drought is still ongoing this will surely end it at least for everywhere north of San Jose. Idk if it will be enough for them to catch up to where they should be for rainfall.

The trick is to capture all that water instead of letting it just run off.

I think reservoirs are still below capacity but we are early in the season. The graphs are updated on a daily basis. But any water still helps. Also its good to have heavy snowfall in the sierras to spread the water flow over the seasons. You don't want everything coming at once.

https://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/products/rescond.pdf

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