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Yep, It sure has worked purfectly for fire control and electrical distribution in California! Just saying!

Mind’s definitely a little foggy on this, but didn’t California deregulate the power companies back in the glory days of Republican rule in the 90s? Seem to remember that’s how Enron was able to scam them. And, being the good ol’ USA*, I don’t think there have been serious re-application of regulations to completely hinder PG&E from protecting capital returns over reliability and safety.

*Once we make a colossal blunder, we like to go through a very long period of recovery:
Step 1) Deny anything bad or untold happened (a good 30% never move beyond this step);
2) admit something bad happened, but no one could have prevented it;
3) Admit it was preventable, but at too high a cost;
4) Admit that it was both avoidable and the mitigation was affordable, but no one could have predicted it would actually occur;
5) Concede that some did predict the exact occurrence, but they are such loons, no one ever takes them seriously;
6) Aver the need to move on and avoid placing blame while doing nothing to protect against the next disaster;
7) Make a few minor adjustments at the margin and scream SOCIALISM if anyone should be stupid enough to propose a comprehensive, intelligent, sustainable and just solution. **

**With my apologies to Sir Humphrey.

I cant argue with that list. The problem with power in California is that they cant keep the power lines powered, when the fire risk is high. They cannot afford to replace the lines underground or make them otherwise fire resistant. The resulting unreliable power grid, with brown outs etc, makes a viable electronic based industry UN-sustainable long term.

I dont see a way out of it so California will have to change, but I dont see how. Home fire insurance will be increasingly costly or unavailable as building and rebuilding in fire prone areas continue. They called it Paradise, very sad!

As someone who is actually a California electric utility ratepayer, I have to tell you it's nowhere near Texas Fiasco-style. Power companies have to get rate increases approved well in advance by the Public Utility Commission, so there are zero "1000%+ rate surprise increases" like they just had in Texas.

They do have to shut down some transmission lines in very windy places, when there are high winds. But they will not shut down power to high fire risk areas, like my property. We do have blackouts, like everywhere on Earth, when some idiot cuts an underground power line, crashes a plane into high voltage transmission lines, etc. Or on a more local scale, runs their car into a utility pole.

Most places actually have more than one set of lines coming from different directions. That's why it's called a grid! We can also import power from the entire Western grid, if we need to. And a large number of us have backyard or rooftop solar, so we feed power into the grid when the sun shines. I just looked up my inverter management webpage and I produced 30.35 KWHours yesterday. That's a lot more than I use. SDG&E currently owes me about $98, and that's coming out of winter!

why not bury power lines?

Cannot resist. My electricity is transferred to me from Grand Coulee Dam almost 500 miles away. They also transfer electricity from there all the way down to California. That being said the lines that transfer the power rarely have any problems, winter or summer, because they were set up, and maintained, properly. Now, however, dams are being attacked all the time to save the salmon. This, in spite of the simple fact that salmon cannons can transfer salmon over dams with little cost (salmon cannon are long tubes of plastic with water in them). Where I live they actually took out a dam. They figured it would cost a couple of million to do the job. They spent something like a billion before they were done AND IT WAS UNNECESSARY!

Anyway, if we get rid of dams then we will really need to have some small nuclear reactors to make electricity. They have been working on these for a long time. In theory they can build a factory to make them and deliver them by truck. They are also flat out safe (they cannot melt down, for instance) and they can be buried as well. In theory they will need to be dug up and replaced about every 20 years or so. Other than that they just sit and produce electricity wherever its needed (they can also create . These reactors are now being investigated and built by the United States, Canada, South Africa, Russia, India, UK, Argentina, etc. If this ever happens it will be the end of transferring electricity hundreds of miles as you can have one in your own town to provide power. You can google "small nuclear reactor" for info on this. https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/small-modular-nuclear-reactors. There is also talk that solar might be cheaper. This, of course, depends of getting sunlight. Where I live we have sun in the summer, not so much in the winter. Small nuclear reactors can also be used for desalinization and making hydrogen.

I am not, incidentally, for the giant windmills. They are expensive to maintain, not always reliable, kill a LOT of birds, and almost took out the entire Grand Coulee Dam electrical grid as windmill power is not always steady or smooth.

Just saying...........

Not all dams or dam removals are created equal.

It’s not just (or even mostly) the physical hinder to travel that is the problem with dams; the destruction of egg-laying habitat is huge.

Most of the dams that people are seriously talking about removing are inactive power generators (think Elwa) or never really generated power so much as facilitated shipping and irrigation (think Lower Snake River).

Any kid who grew up in the NW can name the tributaries of the Columbia, but only by playing this tune in their heads, to bring back the lyrics, just like the alphabet! It was particularly prominent in Oregon grade-schools in 1959 celebrating the Centennial.
Any out of town visitors got a tour of the Columbia river valley up to Dalles and the Bonneville dam. There were many interesting things to do including watching the Salmon climb the fish ladders, visit the hatchery, and pet the gigantic Sturgeons on the viewing ponds.
This particular Dam was well planned,at the time, as the Salmon run is a religious event for natives and newcomers. There were also concerns about river ship navigation, but this was resolved by the concept: Lock them up!

TAT

Roll on Columbia

As a kid, I recall the amazing salmons runs in the rivers and creeks of the upper Salmon River watershed. It would look like you could walk across on their backs, there were so many. 900 miles from the mouth of the Columbia. We spent hours one day watching those magnificent creatures jumping and swimming up Dagger Falls on the Middle Fork (my dream vision is that it was 20' high - they would try over and over again, finally leaping from the whitewater churn below the falls into a thread of solid water extending down eight or ten feet before it disintegrating into more whitewater (full of air).

Perhaps ten years later, the Idaho Fish and Game dynamited the falls to make passage easier for the dwindling numbers of fish, exhausted and emaciated (they don't eat after they leave the ocean) from the swim that now took many times longer due to the god dam obstacles that we humans had put in their way for our unthinking convenience and greed.

Cheap and clean electricity, MY ASS!! Fish cannons, what a delusional joke...

(Now I'm pissed off, need to find some kittens puppies babies to drown...)

We backpacked that area, from Mt Adams, back to Mt Saint Helens, when there was still a YMCA camp on Spirit Lake! Dam Volcanoes! It makes you feel a bit old when mountains you camped on disappear during your lifetime!

TAT