Letter: Controlling Power

Last weekend, Southern California Edison served notice that it was contemplating something that its has never done in Los Angeles County: it was going to turn off power to a city because the electric grid was too dangerous to operate in dangerous winds.

Make no mistake: SCE was acting in the public interest. The current power system in the hills above, and in, Malibu is not robust enough to withstand the fiercest Santa Ana winds. Despite $67 million in fines and repair costs assessed against SCE and other companies after the 2007 fires, SCE has run out of special replacement money and still has overloaded poles to replace.

Don’t forget: as a result of the settlements from the 2007 fires, we found out that 50 percent of the SCE poles in high fire risk areas are overloaded and in risk of failure.

In California, utilities are required to provide power that is both reliable and safe. The California Public Utilities Commission writes regulations to enforce those laws. 

And those regulations are actually written by the electric utilities, and the outmanned CPUC allows the utilities to largely self-enforce compliance. Nevertheless, there is a set of rules that require SCE to provide safe and reliable power. 

These rules are incredibly detailed, yet at the same time vague. For example, General Order 95 Table 18 line 15 requires that size 6 cables be at least .201 inches in diameter, with a minimum ultimate tensile strength of 1,204 pounds. 

But those rules are totally silent on some big issues. For example: can SCE turn the power off to Malibu, and under what circumstances?

SCE has never asked the state for such permission. When San Diego Gas and Electric asked permission to shut off mountain-area circuits, it was given CPUC permission. SCE made comments on that, but did not ask permission to do that up here.  Yet a spokeswoman for the CPUC says SCE can use the SDG&E language as precedent. 

Except the San Diego case is totally different. SDG&E maintains a network of wind gauges and has standards for when it switches off circuits. And it only blacks out isolated mountain ranches. SCE has no written policies. It relies on reports from the field, NWS forecasts, and local conditions. There is nothing wrong with that, except everything. And SCE wants to black out cities, not ranches. 

The CPUC exists to write rules to protect the public, and then enforce them. Handing over carte blanche decision-making to the regulated utility undercuts public oversight and review that is essential, in a way that will again lead to catastrophes like the $500 million 2007 fire in Malibu. That was another case of the CPUC letting the utilities regulate themselves.

Bottom line: SCE has this problem, it is required under state law to provide continuous power (Pub. Util Code section 451) and to maintain power lines that do not fail, ever (CPUC General Order 95 Rule 48.1). 

But it cannot meet those standards, it is impossible. So, it has decided—without CPUC permission—to black out Malibu when it gets windy, rather than upgrade its system to make it safe in storms.

And they are going to get away with it. 

Hans Laetz