Evidence used to convict PG&E of the 2018 Camp Fire shows the company knew old parts needed replacing, but tried to show they could last longer.
Money, I guess. The people who originally installed these hooks are probably dead of natural causes by now (even if they were quite young) so I imagine they’d be well-past service life of the parts too.
EDIT: Age of one of the broken hooks seems to be 97 years, costed 56 cents (not in modern money), and also:
According to a February 1987 engineering evaluation, the company ordered the tests of two worn hooks that were found on a transmission line in Contra Costa county – hooks that look chillingly similar to ones taken from the nearly 100-year-old transmission line blamed for the fire that left 85 dead.
This. It’s the fundamental reason natural monopolies like utilities are problematic to privatize. Democratic governments have an incentive to prioritize residents and citizens interests. The only interests private companies incentivize are shareholders, who increasingly do not care if their profits result in destruction, death, and disaster because they don’t know or care about the people being harmed. They don’t live in the places that are burning, so why would they reduce their take just to ensure the safety of the communities the company serves. As long as the losses they take from lawsuits and the cost of paying governments to limit their liability, are less than the cost of maintaining the lines then 100 year old hardware seems “Good Enough” to them.
Can you regulate them to the moon and back to prevent that? Sure. By the time you’ve finished building that bureaucracy, it would have cost you a fraction of price just to have a government department do it.
The search term is
PG&E hooks. For example, a breakdown on hackaday.Why?
Money, I guess. The people who originally installed these hooks are probably dead of natural causes by now (even if they were quite young) so I imagine they’d be well-past service life of the parts too.
EDIT: Age of one of the broken hooks seems to be 97 years, costed 56 cents (not in modern money), and also:
This. It’s the fundamental reason natural monopolies like utilities are problematic to privatize. Democratic governments have an incentive to prioritize residents and citizens interests. The only interests private companies incentivize are shareholders, who increasingly do not care if their profits result in destruction, death, and disaster because they don’t know or care about the people being harmed. They don’t live in the places that are burning, so why would they reduce their take just to ensure the safety of the communities the company serves. As long as the losses they take from lawsuits and the cost of paying governments to limit their liability, are less than the cost of maintaining the lines then 100 year old hardware seems “Good Enough” to them.
Can you regulate them to the moon and back to prevent that? Sure. By the time you’ve finished building that bureaucracy, it would have cost you a fraction of price just to have a government department do it.