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Not I. We live in the country, and our place is literally the last house on the line. There are not many places out here to begin with, and living here means you need to take care of yourself.
The people in East Palo Alto honestly felt that their power outage, and the length of the outage, was because of their income level. As if PG&E chose to prioritize repairs based on who had more money. I get that. It's probably not true. But I understand the feeling of being left out, or moved to the back of line. I can see how they think that all the people with more money got power restored first. When you have the lowest income in the county, it's like me being the poor kid in school.
Somehow the power went out twice at my house. Each outage lasted less than 3 minutes. Almost as if the utility company knew what would go wrong, and had someone standing by.
I suspect that being in a large city is why PG&E does a better job on my grid. PG&E did not have trucks and a crew standing by in Glue Guy's private driveway, to take care of whatever may go wrong. Is that fair? Is that a disparity? . Doesn't GlueGuy and his handful of neighbors deserve equal service? Or do we go down the conspiracy rabbit hole ?
The outage we had was not on our private road (9 houses). It was not on our section of Skyline (~~ 150 houses). It was on the branch that comes up from the valley near Page Mill Road (~~ 500 houses). So when they repaired that one break, it was service to 500 homes. I think the outage would have been longer if it was one of the first two.
I saw a guy from PG&E explaining their priorities. There are emergency services that get preferential treatment (hospitals, fire departments, assisted living, and so on). After the first tier, then they deal with outages that affect the highest number of homes & businesses. If you are the lone house somewhere, you need to have patience.
It's unique how PG&E responds to each situation. Nothing is set in stone about how they do something, or in which order. Each situation is unique. Disasters are fluid and dynamic. An atmospheric river is not the same as a wildfire or earthquake. It is literally impossible to give everyone the same service. It's unfortunate that everyone can't get their power restored ASAP.
In SF, there are substations all over. I believe that really makes a difference. Notice how Stanford University has a substation right next to Stanford Hospital? Electricity travels a much shorter distance from a substation to a home. Substation has trucks and staffing who are familiar with that part of the grid.
Of course, PG&E also has to deal with how complicated the job is. Easy when a wire blows down, and they just have to hang it back up. A lot harder when a utility pole goes down, and there's a transformer on fire.
Well, not surprising, the weather guessers got it wrong again. Four days of rain starting yesterday. However, today was sunny and clear. No rain in sight.
We're getting dumped on this morning (Tuesday). Monday was sunny and clear, if a bit cold. We've gotten an inch of rain so far (at ~~ 8:30 AM), and it appears as though it will keep going for a while. They predicted that the winds will kick up around 9AM, and continue for at least 12 hours.
Not raining at the moment. Looks like it might be done for the day. The scooter tech guy came by Monday, and said he would order another wheel on Tuesday as the place was already closed. He came around 3pm, so I am guessing the place is back east somewhere. Anyway, I am hoping it can get here this week so I can be mobile again. Contacted the body shop yesterday, and they said they ordered the windows and they should be here tomorrow, then they will take the car next door and have the alignment done, and an inspection of the oil pan. I can still drive the scooter, but since it shakes so bad, I am limiting myself to the Walmart Neighborhood market, and my church.
Yesterday finished with 3.29" of rain, and a maximum wind gust of 74 MPH. PG&E went out again just after noon, and we turned on the generator at 5PM. Ran the genny until 10:30 last night, and cranked it up again this morning. There is no ETR on PG&E, so I'll be heading to the Skywood Trading Post this afternoon to replenish generator fuel.
It was quite a storm. Freeways were effected everywhere. Sometimes I am just thankful that I didn't get hurt. Any one of us could be hit with a falling tree, power line, window, etc. Glad you guys are safe as well.
Welp. Grid was supposed to come back at 23:00 Wednesday. At 23:05, they changed it to 23:00 Friday. We shall see. The outage map still looks pretty scary this morning.
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