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There are a bunch of places in California where humans shouldn't live that PG&E is required to provide electricity to and then getting blamed for setting fires... which I suppose it did set those fires but much of the state is being required to subsidize these inhabited uninhabitable places either through paying for fire damage or paying the incredibly expensive process of burying power lines which doesn't fundamentally alter the risk or rate of wildfires.

One of the many questionable political situations in California.



Renewables could be used to power these remote locations, or at least allow utilities to abandon them (with some warning.)


If pigs had wings they could fly, but here and in a lot of California politics rational solutions aren't what is lacking.


Well isn't that defeatist. Politically impossible positions may become possible with enough outreach, especially if the position has economic advantages. Look at YIMBY.

Another intermediate possibility in California is distributed generation and storage to both reduce load on transmission and to allow transmission and distribution to be deenergized during times when fire risk is high. This could then gradually transition over into an entirely distributed system without transmission to some locations.




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