Thursday, October 10, 2019

WIthout Question, The Biggest -- And Most Under-Reported -- Story Of The Week -- October 10, 2019

Updates

October 10, 2019: see first comment. Now it's personal generators that are causing forest fires.

Original Post 

With regard to energy, is California now a third-world country, or an emerging country? In this day and age it is simply impossible to reconcile what is going on in California compared to what is going on in Texas.

Did I hear on the radio just now (8:24 a.m. CT) that the blackout is scheduled for five days?

From yesterday over at twitter:


Link here.
The unprecedented power shutdown by California’s PG&E Corp. has spread deeper into densely populated cities near San Francisco, ensnaring millions of people and raising the prospect that much of a major metropolitan area could go without electricity for days.
The bankrupt utility said late Wednesday that it had begun a second round of power cuts that will bring the number of customers blacked out to around 750,000 homes and businesses in in cities including Berkeley and Oakland. The additional 243,000 customers in the latest advisory is part of the biggest blackout ever orchestrated to prevent strong winds from knocking down electrical lines and igniting fires. The utility is still considering a third round.
My hunch is that 99% of Californians do not understand how this all happened. And mainstream media will do its best to cover up the story.

Apparently there are already fires west of Oakland, CA, despite these precautions. 

PG&E Corporation (PCG) shares are down an incredible 30% in pre-market trading. A year ago this stock was trading at $50; today, under $8. No dividend. And they used to say utilities were for conservative investors.


More on this later. I'm on my way to start my Uber-granddaughter driving. Good luck to all. 

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2 comments:

  1. I listen to an aviation blogger who lives in the hills NE of Sacramento. He reported in the first PG&E fire danger blackout, a week or two ago, the wind never materialized and there were 5 or 6 fires started by generators. So much for unintended consequences. California is sounding like Russia when I was there in 1992, the first year out of the USSR, except California is going the other way into communism.

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    Replies
    1. Isn't that interesting .... all those generators out in the wilderness .... what a disaster waiting to happen. Very, very interesting. I assume folks are going to start doing that in urban areas, also. Amazing.

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