No. of Recommendations: 3
To quote my own post* from six weeks or so ago: "
Greg Abel in responding to a question regarding Pacific Power and the Oregon 2020 wildfire suits: "The first thing we have to recognize is that there’s now going to be situations where we prioritize de energizing the assets, and that’s completely different than we’ve operated those assets, as I’ve highlighted, for 100 plus years. So we start with the culture. We had to change that. The second thing is we’ve now changed our operating systems so that we can turn off the power very quickly. If there’s a fire that’s increasing, approaching, we will turn off our systems now and we’ll go, the minute the conditions are safe again, we’ll reenergize it." "
and
"suddenly cutting power to the grid as a precaution "only" because of a red flag warning would not be a popular move. Hospitals, fire stations, and other public safety facilities have backup generators, bit that's not the norm for most nursing homes, or the coolers and freezers at the local grocery stores, much less (almost all) homes... So, my conclusions are:
- Pacific Power is between a rock and a hard place: liable for starting fires, but presumably also liable for casualties/property damage if they're retrospectively judged for having cut the power unnecessarily
- I need to up my backup generator game"
Update:
- a form letter from Pacific Power arrived yesterday: "...we are taking additional safety precautions...protective devices will deenergize power lines when there is a fault detected...if an outage occurs during the 2024 wildfire season, you may experience a longer-than-typical outage"
- but, first they cut power for a half hour or so a week ago, presumably due to a small, quickly contained wildfire around eight miles away
- (and I've accepted a bid for a backup, backup generator (long story) to be installed just after the 4th)
-- sutton
also noting the local snow-covered peak that always melted sometime in mid-late July is now bare
*
https://www.shrewdm.com/MB?pid=563541205 