The Absurdity of Life in Northern California Right Now

My electricity is provided by a municipal utility, not PG&E.  My power is not off.  I know of at least one teacher at school, though, who lives in PG&E-land and whose power is off.  My principal is living on a hair--10 houses away from his, the power is off.

Yes, PG&E's equipment was responsible for starting last year's big ole fire, but was PG&E solely to blame?

Politicians blame PG&E for the recent fires that have ravaged the state, but some of the blame redounds to the politicians. Wildfires in recent years have grown more deadly because timber harvesting and brush clearing were greatly curtailed due to myriad environmental restrictions. In the meantime, crucial infrastructure investment targeted at improving the reliability and safety of powerlines has taken the backseat to the state’s demands for a huge increase in renewable energy—some of which, ironically, has necessitated the need for more powerlines to connect remote wind farms with the urban centers.

Ah, that pesky uber-environmentalism in California. How bad is it?  Truly Kafka-esque.  Imagine these four intersecting issues:

1.  California likes electric cars.  When the wind blows and over a million people are without electricity, where are they supposed to charge their electric cars?
2.  California requires all new houses to have solar power starting next year.  Solar power that's produced feeds back into the grid, "running their electric meters backward" and lowering the homeowner's electric bill.  However, when the power is off, the meter isn't running.  The power isn't fed into the grid because the power is off.  Thus, no useful electricity is being generated!
3.  It gets worse.  Unless people choose to live off the grid, and have their solar system charge a bank of expensive batteries in their house, the system is specifically set up to send the produced electricity back into the grid.  But as I said, when the power's off, no electricity is fed into the grid.  However, since most people aren't set up to run their own house off the electricity they're producing, they paid tens of thousands of dollars for a solar system and still won't have any electricity at their own house when the grid is down!
4.  The wind is blowing--you'd think wind power would be a silver lining in this dark fiasco, but think again!  First off, electricity created by wind power is no different from electricity created by fossil fuels--it can spark and start a fire just as easily.  Thus, wind power is of no use to people in the affected areas (of course, neither is nuclear power, but that's a different blog post altogether).  Besides, if the wind is too strong, the wind turbines can't handle the load and they have to be shut down!  Think about that for a minute; if the wind is too strong, we cannot generate electricity from the wind, whether the electric grid is working or not.  The upper safety limit is 55 mph, and I myself have seen wind farms left entirely idle when winds are significantly below that limit.

You'd think these days-long blackouts would cause California's environmental house of cards to crumble, but no, not yet.  Perhaps the prevailing philosophy is, "It's not really a problem until it happens to me."

Nothing I've written here is hyperbole.  It's verifiable fact.  When you hear how awesome and advanced and "progressive" California is, remember this:

Northern California’s electric company turned the power off for hundreds of thousands of customers Wednesday – and then back on for some – during a dramatic day that caused confusion and angry reactions from both the public and public officials.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. shut down power to more than 500,000 homes and businesses, an estimated 2-million-plus Northern California residents, creating the largest blackout in state history.

Two million people are without electricity because the wind is blowing.