Potential Power Outages

this would all be solved if we just went out and raked the forest 

Ha ha, yes!

Power starting to be restored in Napa.

no power outage here but a lot of smoke from a forest fire that started as a control burn by the dept of forestery.   

I hope y’all come out unscathed...2,000,000,000.00$ in economic losses predicted...

PG&E is a joke.  The CEO claims that the shut off was to protect human life and that he disagrees with the $2b estimate.  IMO its is too late for PG&E to try to take the moral high ground.  If they were so concerned, why did San Bruno happen? why did Paradise happen?  Shutting off power to a million people does not fix the problem.  Fixing the infrastructure fixes the problem.

Went about 36 hrs w/o power. Went the same 36 hrs with zero wind.
Got outdoor chores done. Cut and split firewood.
Woke up and went in the motorhome for coffee, radio, heat and shower in the morning.
Used it in the evening to play games before bed.
Moved the stuff from the fridge inside to the motorhome as well.
Was ready to bug out somewhere that had full hookups if need be.
It was funny seeing how many people were filling up gas cans like it was Armageddon.

here in the Doon it was just another winter storm day, but without the storm.
We had some wind Wednesday night, power went off around 9pm.

I had fueled up and gotten groceries on Tuesday, and barely missed the rush at both stops. There was a feeling of anxiety out there, and Felton was really quiet on my drive home from work yesterday.

My generator worked perfectly, but the big hassle was that Comcast went down with PG&E power so no internet in the mountains. Still, not a big deal when we could still take hot showers and the refrigerator was working. We feel really fortunate and don't take it for granted!
Electricity and internet came back Thursday evening around 7pm here, but I can still hear generators so there must be some nearby areas still out.

Have to applaud the folks that planned ahead and were ready for it. Sounds like a lot of you. We had 3 or 400 people coming into my costco
 tuesday night asking for generators and expecting them to be sitting there waiting for them. We sold out Monday night. As did everyone else in town. Duracell had a good night though! Let's hope we don't have to deal with this again! 

My power was finally restored this afternoon.  During the entire outage, my personal weather station, an Ambient Weather WS-2000, recorded winds as;
Average 2.7mph
Gusts 3.4mph
Max gust 11.4mph

You can view my weather station here;
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/KCAELDOR116

No one within 10 miles of my place had any more than that either.  Weather Underground is where I post my info and many others in the area do too, so it's pretty easy to verify. 

Without doubt, PGE shut us down as a blanket outage and didn't base the outage on the actual facts for our area.  Once the shit started hitting the fan, PGE was much more surgical with their outages, especially in the north bay area where neighborhood by neighborhood were either spared or taken off line.  They were also restored first as well.  Much sooner than me, that's for sure.
As for danger with generators;
I loaned one of my gennys to my elder neighbor who lives alone.  Our wind weather pattern is from the West during daylight and switches to East at night as the winds come down off the mountains as the air cools.  This morning he fired up the genny to run his fridge after shutting down before going to bed.  He also opened a nearby bathroom window.  When the wind shifted from the East to the West, the genny's exhaust went in his window.  His carbon monoxide detector started going off but he is hard of hearing.  I happened to walk up to the mail box at this time, heard the alarm and went over to check.  He was able to answer the door, but wasn't well.  I suspect it was from the CO.  I called his son who came over and took him to the ER.  Could not call 911 as my home phone is with Comcast and they went down 4 hours into the outage and cell coverage was down shortly after when the cell tower went dead after 6 hours when their batteries ran down.  No phone, no internet, no TV, no cell.  It's NOT just no power.  Not that PGE gives a shit about anyone but their share holders. 

BTW, I have a Honda 7Kw inverter generator tied into the whole house, converted to propane and plumbed into my 500 gallon home propane tank.  No problem with power.  If Comcast and the local cell tower had been able to stay on line, I would have been just fine. 

My TV is on a UPS.  Not big, but enough to buffer any power fluctuations until I can power it down.  It will run the TV for about 30 minutes.  Plenty of time to fire up and cut over to generator power.  I also have a UPS on my cordless phones and comcast router that feeds the phone with dial tone off cable.  My garage door is also battery back up.  I also have several flashlights that plug into outlets throughout the house that light up when power at the outlet fails. 

My power was finally restored this afternoon.  During the entire outage, my personal weather station, an Ambient Weather WS-2000, recorded winds as ...

Very similar for us. The power came back this afternoon. The wife was not happy about slowness of Internet when using phone as hotspot after cable went out, but otherwise things went smoothly.

I’ve got a 7kw Briggs & Stratton standby generator with automatic transfer switch. It’s a nice setup but a little bit too noisy, so we always turn it off at night and usually it’s off when we go out too.

 
  Got home from work Thursday(Yesterday 10/10) morning and our Genny was singing the praise of power.  Great, no idea when power was shut off, (Sometime between Wed 17:30 hr and 0830hr Thursday) Friday afternoon when I got up power was restored.  I Fear now, that when PG&E hears a bat fart, creating a breeze there gonna kill power!  It's going to suck having to deal with power loss now every time wind blows!  Winter time we expect outages living in a redwood forest from natural occurrences IE trees falling, limbs taking lines down the occasional drunk taking out a pole etc.
  Now we have to contend with breezy day's?  How about, instead of awarding top PG&E execs with millions in bonuses,(For what I don't know) how about maybe updating transmission lines? infrastructure?
  Got nothing but respect for the linemen and the work they do. This isn't a bash against them.

Jerry,
On this 7 kw inverter gennie, are most of your appliances propane? Stove, water heater,  dryer? Are you using just 120 volt circuits?

My power was finally restored this afternoon.  During the entire outage, my personal weather station, an Ambient Weather WS-2000, recorded winds as ...

we always turn it off at night and usually it’s off when we go out too.

Ditto.  Off at bed time, back on when I get up and off any time we leave the house unattended. 
I know there have to be people who are not as cautious or even know they need to be.  PGE is gonna kill people who are just trying to make it through their bogus outages. 

Jerry,
On this 7 kw inverter gennie, are most of your appliances propane? Stove, water heater,  dryer? Are you using just 120 volt circuits?

Yes.  Propane heat, cooking, clothes drier and water heater.  The genny is a Honda EM7000is.  Not as quiet as the EU series.  I use 240 30A so the whole house gets powered.