Re: California public safety power shutdowns

[Mel Beckman <mel () beckman org>]

Electrical arcing happens around the country. The difference is that California, through years of unwise restrictions 
on vegetation control, has millions of acres of dry fuel near these powerlines.

In the early 1990s, a series of restrictions were placed on logging in the West to protect the Spotted Owl. As it 
turned out, nature was more complicated than expected, with owl numbers continuing to decline—even after the California 
timber harvest plummeted— reportedly due to predation from other raptors. It’s not easy to manipulate Mother Nature :)

In the meantime, tree harvests fell below the growth rate in the 1990s, to now one-tenth of what it was in 1988 on 
Federal lands. Thus the enormous spike in fuel, that is the primary driver behind the massive fires.

Those of us who operate data facilities, such as radio vaults, on California mountaintops, have dealt with this problem 
as a growing threat over decades. I have antennas with melted radomes just from the radiant fire heat a half mile away. 
We’re constantly fighting the government to control vegetation overgrowth around our sites, and are often prevented 
from doing so.

 -mel

On Oct 10, 2019, at 12:07 AM, Radu-Adrian Feurdean <nanog () radu-adrian feurdean net<mailto:nanog () radu-adrian 
feurdean net>> wrote:

On Thu, Oct 10, 2019, at 08:02, Mel Beckman wrote:

The fire risk is from electrical transmission lines, not from end users
of electrical power. The underlying problem is that the State’s rules
for line separation were ill-considered, making it possible for
high-enough winds to cause “line slapping” and the resultant arcing
that ignite fires.

There is no reason to think that end users are of any particular risk,
and fuel delivery during a preemptive outage wouldn’t be impaired,

That looks like a situation that you don't often encounter elsewhere (where electricity - distribution, telecom and 
transport are not very far from one another).