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Large scale telco, cable and mobile service outages follow California power cuts

1 November 2019 by Steve Blum
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Cell site outages 28oct2019

Hundreds of thousands of Californians lost their wireline broadband and phone service over the past week, as the state’s major electric utilities cut off power to millions of people in an attempt to prevent wildfires from breaking out. Mobile broadband and telephone subscribers were equally hard hit, with one county – Marin – losing more than half of its cell sites at one point.

The Federal Communications Commission has been tracking wireline and mobile service outages since last Friday, when the power cuts were hitting hard in Pacific Gas and Electric’s northern California territory, and public safety power shutoffs were beginning to bite in the southern California service areas of San Diego Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison.… More

Contrasts of competence as California assesses power cuts and utility pole route management

14 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Pge outages 9oct2019

California’s privately-owned electric utilities and their regulators have a long and difficult job ahead as they try to figure out what was good and what was bad about last week’s massive wildfire prevention power cuts. Their eventual conclusions will have a significant impact on how utility pole routes are managed in California, including possible new, and more costly, design standards, and budgets for maintenance and wildfire prevention. Those costs will ultimately be shared with telecommunications companies that also use those poles.… More

Broadband deployment will be more rigorous and costly in California, following U.S. supreme court ruling

9 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Southern California Gas and Electric can’t pass on wildfire costs to ratepayers. The federal supreme court declined to hear SDG&E’s appeal of a California Public Utilities Commission decision that put some of the burden of a 2007 series of wildfires on company shareholders. California’s strict “inverse condemnation” law requires utilities to bear the full cost of any damage when their pole routes, or other equipment in the right of way, is even partially to blame. Monday’s decision lets that principle stand.… More

Fewer complaints, so far, as California utilities cut power to reduce wildfire risk

25 September 2019 by Steve Blum
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Update: PG&E shut off power this morning, as previously announced. As of this evening, it had restored power in north Bay Area counties, and some of the affected Sierra foothill communities. SCE turned power back on for the Riverside County homes affected by Tuesday’s cuts. Public reaction to PG&E de-energisation moves remained as relatively muted as it did on Tuesday. The San Francisco Chronicle spoke to one upset Sonoma County supervisor, but on the whole there was very little NIMBY outrage.… More

Rural broadband gaps are life and death issues, California wildfire study says

24 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Paicines pole route

Ageing, inadequate infrastructure contributed to the destruction during last year’s Camp Fire in Butte County that killed 86 people and did billions of dollars worth of damage. Congested roads were a big part of the problem, but so was a lack of telecommunications service, either because it was knocked out by the fires or, in many cases, not there in the first place, according to a report by a “strike force” commissioned by California governor Gavin Newsom…

In a matter of hours, 52,000 people from rural Paradise and surrounding communities evacuated onto roads built for a fraction of that capacity and converged on Chico, overwhelming the recovery system.

… More

Wildfires burn in northern California, but proactive power cuts might have limited the damage

10 June 2019 by Steve Blum
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Thomas fire 2018 utility lines 300

Pacific Gas and Electric did two rounds of proactive cuts over the weekend, in response to warnings of high fire danger due to weather conditions. It was no false alarm. Cal Fire’s online map shows more than a dozen wildfires in PG&E’s territory, including the Sand Fire in Yolo County that’s grown to at least 2,200 acres. There’s no basis to speculate why any of those fires began – that’s a question for later.

However, there is reason to suspect that it might have been worse if PG&E hadn’t cut off electricity to approximately 23,000 customers in Butte, Napa, Solano, Yolo (but not where the Sand Fire began) and Yuba counties.… More

Utilities shouldn’t bear damage costs alone, California wildfire report recommends

16 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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California governor Gavin Newsom’s wildfire “strike force” published its findings on Friday. The report offers suggestions for preventing, or at least reducing, catastrophic wildfires, and for paying for the damage when they do happen. The short answer is spread the costs around.

One of the central concepts floated by the report is to change California’s strict liability standard, which requires electric and telecoms utilities to pay for all wildfire damages if their equipment is involved in starting a fire, whether or not they did something wrong.… More

PG&E plans faster, wider power cuts during high fire threats in 2019

7 February 2019 by Steve Blum
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Pacific Gas and Electric will cut off electricity more automatically, more thoroughly and over a wider area when “extreme fire risk conditions” are present. That’s one of the wildfire risk mitigation measures it promises to implement this year.

Along with five other privately owned Californian electric utilities, PG&E submitted its wildfire prevention plan to the California Public Utilities Commission yesterday. It says it will inspect more lines, cut down more trees and harden more equipment in the coming months and years, as well as aggressively turning off power when the threat of wildfires is high.… More

SCE asks court to extend wildfire liability to cities and counties, too

22 January 2019 by Steve Blum
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santa barbara county flood map

If a local government allows homes to be built in high risk communities and doesn’t build or manage infrastructure in a way that mitigates that risk, could it be as responsible for disasters as an electric company that similarly installs and operates electric lines to serve those areas? That question was handed to a Los Angeles County superior court judge on Friday by Southern California Edison.

SCE’s wildfire liability problem isn’t as apocalyptic as Pacific Gas and Electric’s, but by any other measure it’s bad.… More

Stark contrast between PG&E, SCE decisions and SDG&E’s wildfire prevention actions

8 December 2018 by Steve Blum
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Sdge berg electric

Turning off electric power lines in dry, windy conditions is one way to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. The California Public Utilities Commission is about to start the wheels turning on an investigation into how and when that should be done. Optimistically, the draft order instituting rulemaking predicts that it’ll be wrapped up sometime next summer.

Last summer, the CPUC allowed Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and a handful of smaller “investor owned” electric utilities to do the same kind of proactive de-energisation that San Diego Gas and Electric has been allowed to do since 2008.… More