Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: mica on October 08, 2019, 04:07:51 PM
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At midnight on 10-9-19 much of Santa Rosa (and northern California) will experience the first Public Safety Power Shutoff, some 800,000 PG&E customers to be impacted. This is in response to the current weather conditions, hot dry winds much like the ones that pushed the 2017 fires to the extreme. While at the moment the map indicates that Alembic is just outside the zone that will be losing power, there is no guarantee. Also about half of our staff live in an area that will be affected. I'll update here as things progress, but the people in power tell us to prepare for as much as 5 days to restore power in some areas.
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It has finally started raining here after a long dry spell (and pretty warm for September and October). Hope you get some relief soon.
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Hope conditions improve soon.
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Facing the same situation here in the Oakland Hills except we seem to definitely be in "the zone." So far no real wind and it wasn't excessively hot today either.
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It has finally started raining here after a long dry spell (and pretty warm for September and October). Hope you get some relief soon.
Here too Dave... we were starting to get antsy up here. Burn bans already in place. I dumped a 1/4" out of the rain gauge at work this morning, and it's been drizzling all day.
Hoping the best for our California pals. I heard about the sweeping shutdowns this morning on the radio and wondered if Santa Rosa would be affected.
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I have several large capacity UPS units ( uninterruptible power supply) for all my IT and computer needs . As well I now have a generator and also a commercial grade charger / inverter capable to handle several large batteries . I am also working on an off grid Solar array project that is not yet complete but a work in progress .
My Inverter / Charger is a TRIPP-LITE UT2012UL
PowerVerter 120V 2000W Utility Work Truck 12VDC Inverter Charger 2 NEMA 5 15R GFCI (UT2012UL) | Tripp Lite (https://www.tripplite.com/powerverter-120v-2000w-utility-work-truck-12vdc-inverter-charger-2-nema-5-15r-gfci~UT2012UL)
I currently only have one large 12-volt Deep Cycle Battery connected however I will soon be getting more wired in parallel . My off grid solar system will be a discrete independent redundant power system .
Be safe everyone and I hope that you are all able to get through this OK .
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Geez, I hope you guys make out all right. Dumb Question: Why can't Pacific Gas and Eccentric just fix their lines? Are they THAT lawyered up ? ?
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There's lots going on - hopefully they're just being overly cautious and there won't be any fires - apparently the conditions over the next couple of days are going to be similar to the Tubbs fire two years ago. It's kind of a weird disaster before the fact - the preventative measures could have massive impact - is the power really going to go out all over the SF Bay Area? Will traffic lights be off? Will we have hot water? How long will it last? Sounds like Wolf has the right idea!
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Stupid question from the other side of the pond. How does switching off the power grid avert a natural disaster?
Graeme.
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The winds on the western U.S. coasts are vicious this time of year, and with the extraordinarily dry conditions, a downed power line means an instant wildfire. It could literally burn square miles, entire towns.
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As Greg said, during these Santa Ana wind events the place gets so hot, dry and windy that the grass catches fire if you look at it the wrong way. Your car's exhaust pipe will start a fire if you pull off the road into the grass. Any kind of spark leads to big trouble.
PG&E were in fact found liable for several fires over the past few years, though not the largest ones. So many that the utility has gone through bankruptcy proceedings. You can imagine the hundreds (thousands?) of miles of powerlines they are expected to maintain. All it takes is one cable break or tree fall in these wind events to bring down a live wire and you've got a runaway brush fire.
So instead of spending the rest of the year - and all of their money - hardening, insulating, burying, and clearing trees from their lines ... they have chosen to "err on the cautious side" by becoming an unreliable supplier... I understand why they're doing it but I don't think that makes it right. They're pushing the responsibility onto the customer to find their own backup power supplies. I suppose it might help proliferate on-site solar installations but it feels a bit like a 3rd world approach by what is meant to be a reliable public utility.
Best of luck up there.
Jimmy J
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So instead of spending the rest of the year - and all of their money - hardening, insulating, burying, and clearing trees from their lines ... they have chosen to "err on the cautious side" by becoming an unreliable supplier... I understand why they're doing it but I don't think that makes it right. They're pushing the responsibility onto the customer to find their own backup power supplies. I suppose it might help proliferate on-site solar installations but it feels a bit like a 3rd world approach by what is meant to be a reliable public utility.
Totally agree!
PG&E has spent a lot of time and money in our neighborhood this year clearing and trimming trees. In some cases they seem to be making the property owners do so in tandem with the Oakland Fire Department. We are in the current situation due to years of negligence by PG&E. Between the gas line explosions that killed many people and destroyed homes and the fires that were caused by PG&E lines coming down they have faced lots of fines and lawsuits. Everyone would like to feel safe but in a lot of ways the way this is being handled starts to feel like a giant FU to their customers.
They still can't guarantee that the Caldicott Tunnel to the East Bay or the Tom Lantos Tunnel on Rt1 near Pacifica are going to stay open. Closure is still planned for the Caldicott as of noon today. BART is already experiencing delays and if they close the tunnel the commute is going to be a huge mess. PG&E is installing emergency generators at the tunnels but why weren't they in place long before this?
Meanwhile there is still basically zero wind in the Oakland Hills and no high wind forecast yet over the next four days... does anyone know if it is windy in the North Bay where they have already cut power?
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Here at the top of the East Bay Hills, they told us they were turning our power off at midnight, last night. I got the little generator out and laid out all the extension cords and power strips ready to quickly hook up the fridge, entertainment system, some lights, and wifi modem to the generator. The power never went off. Now some sources say we will be turned off at noon today, others say the shut down has been cancelled. The PG&E website has been down since yesterday.
Meanwhile, PG&E have been replacing the telephone poles up here for the past couple of weeks. They are putting a new pole right next to the old pole, except 4-5 feet taller. It seems inefficient to me that they would go to all the trouble of hauling and installing all new poles but only make them 4-5 feet taller. I would think the wires could be raised more to clear the trees.
Bill, tgo
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As of now, we still have power at Alembic. Like Bill mentioned, PG&E's website has been unreliable, but I have managed to get in on occasion. Funny how all the reported outages are "Cause Unknown" at this time. You just have to laugh. There are power outages all over the county, largely in the east and the hills.
Our version of the Santa Ana winds, the Diablo winds, are expected to kick in tonight (tomorrow really) at 2-5 am. But the wind is currently 7mph at home base. To see the surface winds (and lots of other cool weather and oceanic stuff), check out www.nullschool.net (https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-117.75,40.34,3000/loc=-122.741,38.443).
A NIXLE alert from the city of Rohnert Park a short time ago indicated there are no more planned outages for Sonoma County, but Sonoma County hasn't sent out any updates since yesterday.
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Looks like they got generators and back up power in place for the two tunnels. Still no sign of any wind here.
Bill, it would make the most sense for them to bury the electrical wires, end of problem. No idea why they are wasting money erecting new poles but guessing it is cheaper than a real fix.
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I agree, underground seems to be the safest solution. But if they are going to replace poles, one would think they would put in taller poles. As for wind, we've had some breeze this morning, but it's all still right now. Our power will be cut off in 6 minutes ... or it won't! Nobody knows and the PG&E site is still down. What we really need is decentralized solar collection, and maybe some of those evil windmills!
Bill, tgo
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Power is still on. Thinking about Y2K and Al Capone’s vault.
Bill, tgo
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We have similar problems with above ground electrical grids out here as well. The issue is no one wants to pay for it. In NC it costs about $70/ft to install above ground and $750/ft to go underground. That being said new subdivisions do run underground utilities but they are still fed by above ground poles so all it takes is a good thunderstorm or hurricane to knock power out for large groups of homes.
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Latest update of sorts I can find from PG&E...
Four Bay Area counties are included in the second phase of shut-offs, which was scheduled to start at noon and affect about 234,000 more customers. At 12:30 p.m., PG&E tweeted an update saying it would instead take place "later this afternoon and into early evening." The utility did not offer a more specific timeline, though Contra Costa County officials started sharing the news that shut-offs in their area were delayed to 8 p.m. Wednesday.
I read that cost is the main reason that they won't bury the power lines.
"As a 2017 San Francisco Chronicle story notes, it costs about $1.16 million per mile to install underground distribution lines. In cities, that number is much higher; work in San Jose cost $4.6 million per mile. Overhead lines cost about $448,800 per mile in comparison."
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Hmm. I know whose house we’re all going to after the zombie apocalypse. Uninterruptible power supplies, no less! Dude!
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8)
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After numerous deadlines came and went, our power finally went out a little before 11:00 (shortly after hearing a news report that power would go out at midnight). I feel like our whole community is on a giant camping trip! Sure glad I picked up a little generator.
Bill, tgo
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The rough part is now all the places with 4-way stops instead of traffic signals. Even if you're lucky enough to still have power, commuting and errands are a bit of a minefield, though last night around midnight there was NOBODY driving around Santa Rosa. We have been known to keep strange hours, but it was quite eerie to not see one other car in motion on the way way from work.
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Apparently power was shut off near where we live but not in our particular neighborhood. What a poorly run "test run" of their emergency system, though.
On the news last night they were showing a number of crashed cars in Napa from people failing to heed to the four-way full stop that you are supposed to make when confronted with a dead stop light.
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Burying megawatt transmission lines is a bad idea. I grew up in hurricane country, and if a bunch of us redneck Texans could figure out how to keep them up in the air in 100+ mph winds, I'd think PG+Egg on their Face could do it too. Although this is really a lawyer problem, as an engineering problem, it's certainly do-able. To me it's unconscionable that a so-called 'Public Utility' could violate the public trust in this way.
It's amazing that I don't live there but this bothers me as much as it does. Probably it's one more case of 'the older I get, the less I understand this world anymore'. Happens a lot . . . . . . .
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All over Europe you will find such electric transmission lines underground . It seems to work out OK in the cold and snowy Scandinavian Climate . :) When my parents came to America in the mid 1950s they were amazed that the Americans had most of the transmission lines over head on poles everywhere . :) . " Why do they do that ? " they spoke !
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I’m a bit dumbfounded by all this. I’m in SoCal right now planning my visit to the Bay Area. Probably best to just bypass the whole mess. Get to the motel and find the power off? It seems like the utility is punishing the ratepayers for the lawsuits from the fires.
Our local transit authority was called out a few years ago when a bond measure failed and they canceled many of the most-traveled bus routes to affect the most people while the mostly empty rural routes went unaffected. PG&E needs a serious brooming.
Next they will announce the logic of throwing the baby out with the bath water....
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Friday morning and our power is still off. To add insult to injury, Xfinity (wifi, TV, and phone) has been down for the last 24 hours, too. I have limited SLOW internet access through my phone. Glad we never sold off our DVD collection - watched a bunch of old movies and Twilight Zones yesterday. Three cheers for the generator!
Bill, tgo
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Power is back! Heat! Yea!
Bill, tgo
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Never thought to ask Bill, but you do have an acoustic guitar or two around to play, yes?
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Oh, yea, and unplugged electric, too. Also used the time to order a Bridge Doctor from Stewmac to try and deal with some belly bulge on an old Daion D-18 copy I’ve been meaning to spend some time on.
Bill, tgo
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As I like to look on the positive side of things, power outages are great for seeing the sky as our ancestors did. With all of the light pollution no matter where you are today it is near impossible to see just how big our universe is. Once you do you can see why they were in such awe of the night sky.
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To add more insult to injury, it was overcast last night. No stars.
Bill, tgo
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Keith that is a brilliant... no light pollution.
Bill that is a sad reality.
It is humbling to look into the night sky and see the swath of the Milky Way, the planets, and constellations and then reflect on how we place ‘importance’ on our daily activities when in reality we are insignificant in the eyes of the universe.
My brother put it something like this:
We are surviving on an onion skin of an environment that is wrapped around a rock that is hurling around a giant fireball that surrounded by an infinite number of galaxies.
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I’ve always thought of our solar system as a single molecule in the corner of a giant ashtray in a room in a giant mansion in a large city in a large country on a really big planet, etc.
Bill, tgo
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... or the Arquillian galaxy on Orion's belt.
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I’ve always thought of our solar system as a single molecule in the corner of a giant ashtray in a room in a giant mansion in a large city in a large country on a really big planet, etc.
Bill, tgo
Well, I guess what Bill's passion (besides law & guitar) is, eh?
Peter (who's always gone with the "molecule in the leg of a table" line of thought)
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We got our power back on Thursday night, but still no internet/tv. Not such a big deal, but I don't NEED it for work, I can always check email on my cell phone and use internet at the temple office. For someone that works from home I can see it being more than just an inconvenience - for many people it was a real financial hardship. One person even died!
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Ok....here's a scenario maybe a local can explain.....Home wind / solar power generation. Don't those folks feed their excess power back into the grid? So, PG&E cut their power off to prevent their wobbly outdated transmission lines from breaking starting a fire.....aren't those lines still energized from consumers that generate their own power? From a legal-team standpoint......We cut Our power.....that fire started from Rate-payer generated electricity.
I ended up bypassing the Bay Area / Napa Valley on this current road trip....Not going to reserve a room only to find no power there....no gas pumps working.....
As someone mentioned up thread......Not All power lines break in a hurricane.......and Not clearing right-of-ways is an act of gross negligence.
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Ok....here's a scenario maybe a local can explain.....Home wind / solar power generation. Don't those folks feed their excess power back into the grid? So, PG&E cut their power off to prevent their wobbly outdated transmission lines from breaking starting a fire.....aren't those lines still energized from consumers that generate their own power? From a legal-team standpoint......We cut Our power.....that fire started from Rate-payer generated electricity.
I ended up bypassing the Bay Area / Napa Valley on this current road trip....Not going to reserve a room only to find no power there....no gas pumps working.....
As someone mentioned up thread......Not All power lines break in a hurricane.......and Not clearing right-of-ways is an act of gross negligence.
They shouldn't be. I can't say what the specific requirements are in CA but around here you are required to have a transfer switch and other safety measures that cuts the connection to the power company lines if there is no power on them.