comparemela.com

Latest Breaking News On - Quinn nakayama - Page 1 : comparemela.com

PG&E Plans Utility-Owned Remote Grids for Isolated Communities

The threat of power-grid-sparked wildfires is forcing California utilities to invest billions of dollars in hardening and monitoring their grids and to institute grid blackouts affecting up to hundreds of thousands of customers to reduce the risk of live wires causing conflagrations.  In some isolated cases, the cost of making remote power lines safe from fires may not be worth it if the customers served by them could make do with an on-site power option instead.  That’s the idea behind Pacific Gas & Electric’s Remote Grid Initiative. It’s one of a long series of microgrid enablement plans being proposed by the Northern California utility, which is under tight scrutiny for its neglect of grid maintenance that led to the state’s deadliest wildfire to date and its subsequent bankruptcy. PG&E has also engaged in the most widespread power outages to prevent more fires over the past two years.  

California Faces Big Challenges to Microgrid Plans for Wildfires and Outages

California regulators and utilities want to build microgrids for communities most at threat from the state’s increasingly deadly wildfires, and the widespread public safety power shutoff (PSPS) grid outages meant to prevent them.  But despite policies to fund and enable these microgrids, California is still far from finding effective ways to get them in place for next year’s fire season.  Even Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility most affected by wildfires and fire-prevention blackouts, is struggling to find solutions to replace the hundreds of megawatts worth of mobile diesel generators it’s secured to back up Northern California communities facing power outages. 

© 2024 Vimarsana

vimarsana © 2020. All Rights Reserved.