sunwarriors
Active Member
Looks like this article answers my questions...
'It's extremely frustrating': Thousands waiting for PG&E to fix power outages
Customers without power received a message indicating crews would arrive by January 10.www.kcra.com
Estimated time to get power restored for people is January 10?! This is definitely not normal, and the preparation people have to anticipate this seems inadequate across the board.
The worst part is there are no standard solutions for people. PG&E just tells people to check with "211". There are no emergency centers for people to try and get warm, and no structured program for guide people into finding alternate housing. It really is just 50,000 families trying to figure things out on their own.
As always, PG&E has no one accountable or responsible. They just need billions more money. Right.
I've never felt there was a ROI on batteries, but I went with energy storage because it really just boiled down to me not trusting the utility, any utility to fix stuff affecting you as their #1 priority. I'm sure PG&E is busy and it's the holidays and I'm sure the crews rather not be out in a freezing blizzard and rather stay home and with family, but since it's not 'their' problem, it's just not a priority currently (all my opinion). They probably have hundreds of other thousands without power, but almost 2 weeks is really long in this day and age.
This is also my stance AGAINST mass scale, supposedly lower cost energy storage at the IOU level that a lot of people like to tout. They still need transmission lines so having energy generated/used at a site/home just makes sense. It's just impossible for a utility to care about your individual situation and I suppose it's selfish, but I see it more as independence (like these customers are depending on PG&E to come out on Jan 10th). Like someone else posted, maybe they should have gone with larger generators, solar/batteries and more knowing they get power outages 3-5 days at a time, do more things to protect against it..
Since we simply can't choose another power companies vs. a store to shop at, restaurant to eat at, etc...we're just all putting all our eggs in PG&E (or whatever IOU to do their best efforts). I'd rather not bet on that horse.
At the end of the day, I guess it's just $$ and we all choose to spend however we choose to spend in preparation for these seemingly monthly 'once in a lifetime' weather events. Heard there was snow in Seattle just recently. I'm waiting to see if Texas has another 'once in a lifetime' global freeze in Jan-Feb 2022.