California regulators question utility's safety commitment

My yearly PSA/RANT on electricity and utilities like PH&E.

I completely disagree with the sentiment expressed here. Consider the amount of power lines PG&E manages and the amount fires they could potentially have caused over their operating life. The value would fall close to zero and well under a statistically acceptable risk of fire (and the damage/deaths caused). People do not understand how electricity works. Lets assume electricity caused this fire.Thaat means the power lines created heat in excess of 1000 degrees to for more than an instantaneous time it would take for a an electric spark to safely discharge through the ground. Electricity always flows through the power-line because wood doesn't conduct electricity. If electricity could do that why don't all lightning bolts with there insanely large (entire orders of magnitude indeed) amounts of Voltage and Current create fires? Electricty is well studied and extremely well regulated that death from accidental electrocution never has been a genuine concern (dispite the lethal amounts of current that are flowing through your toaster, TV, Fridge, every wall socket, switch, and every light bulb. Why then are there not fires caused by wayward electricity all the time? Power distribution systems don't cause fires the way you may think if you haven't really studied the material.

For example, Transformers don't "explode" in reality. It may have happened in a movie, but in reality every power line in America is connected together. The power is dissipated over literally millions of miles of wire. A transformer would only create "Arcing" if the Voltage that the house generates and mirrors back to the power line (think 'every action has an equal but opposite reaction' or that an electrical motor is an electrical generator if wound the other way and using mechanical energy instead of electricity to spin the actuator.). It is very uin likely that you create any voltage near the amount required to cause arcing in a powerline transformer. And if you did the transformer can be switched off instantly as a function of the voltagfe through it, like a how a fuse will disconnect aq circuit before it causers damage to you by physically destroying itself by causing the wire to deform at a rate unequal to the deformation through the fuses insulation due to heat being generated if current exceeding a safe amount flows through it.There are a million miread ways a powerline can be made completely safe by isolating the power lines with a transformer and supporting them using wood that does not conduct and by using specific materials that conduct little heat even with high-voltage, the wires are wound together so that current only flows in your electronic devices and not the wires themselves. Power lines creating a sizable current would cost the Utility company so much more than your TV ever could simply because of its size (that is, a net as large as North America.

Lastly, Smokey the bear has informed us all that humans are the cause and primary preventors of forest fires. Houses that burned are required to have fire insurance and insurance companies are required by law to distribute the Payments covering all damage from wild fires (not arson) almost instantly. surely within the same week as the ending of the fire. Possessions come and go. By bringing lawsuits against the utility all you are doing is raising the cost of running the Utility to an unneccessary amount that you yourself will be forced to pay when the utility simply raises it's price for electricty to offset the cost of litigation. That is to say, you filing a lawsuit will cost you money, if you win those fees are paid by the utility, and where does the utility get it';s money from? YOU. So lawsuits against a utility are not just financially non-nonsensical, but academically illogical from the perspective of the Electricity, as well as greedy/litigious/vindictive/and also the easiest way for you to release your frustrations while seeking sympathy from your friends. Blame the giant faceless corporation. Especially the monopoly that surely must be charging you way too much for messily electricity, Actually the amount of electricity you consume is the equivalent of 6,000 Lithium Ion AA batteries which would cost you around $10,000 a year based off cheapest prices on amazon, most efficent batteries, not accounting for the waste produced by 35 pounds of dead batteries and the equivalent space they would take up in your house and eventually the soil when thrown away poisoning the earth. Actually AC current from the power lines is not only 10x cheaper, more efficient, safer, less damaging to the environment, consistent and able to provide massive amounts of power or the very high voltages needed to simply run your Computer, your TV, and certainly your microwave. Actually you pay very little for electricity when you consider just how wildly infused with electronics your life is more and more becoming. Then think about the cost of running a utility. PG&E isn't a monopoly due to it's business practices. If it was their would be anti-trust lawsuits. PG&E is a monopoly because the return on investment, that is the revenue recieved over the cost spent to develop the massive systems and research to implement the power grid safely and effectively is so large that the government simply cannot pay for that (nor would I want them to have more reason to raise my taxes). And then think about the power industry as the most heavily regulated, most anger and hysteria inducing, most powerful yet most completely misunderstood commodity. No other thing that you pay for do you use more and in turn do you need more than electricity. So at least think before sewing PG&E, Or ask an electrician about electricity. PG&E may very well deserve the large fines it incurred for it supposed implication with starting last years wild-fires. Its a thankless industry that you can't set the porice of your main product, but you are tasked with providing so much of it that you may be Severly damaging the environment in som,e noticeable, but incalculable way.