My question is if it's cheaper to fire-proof everyone's house, or to have everyone go and buy solar for their properties, or to just accept some people and properties are going to burn in a fiery inferno from time to time.
A quick Google shows that there were $7B in insurance claims for the Camp Fire. At $15K per install of solar, that's ~500k homes. Apparently fire-proofing a house has similar costs. There are something like 7M homes in California. Many of those are in urban areas, so let's say there are 2M in fire-prone areas.
It actually seems worthwhile to just pay for the upgrades.
You make a good point - deploying local generation on a per house basis (via renewables) would decentralize utility operations and remove the need for the remotely located transmission and pipeline infrastructure that could potentially ignite dry surroundings.
Even maintenance divisions that routinely trim trees and foliage growing up on high voltage lines must cover lots of ground because everything is so scattered (they sometimes even use helicopters wielding huge saws). Preventative measures like this consume labor and profit margins, and apparently aren't always sufficient (Camp Fire).
A neighborhood in a dry area equipped with its own energy storage and generation assets would likely never be completely vacant - at least one resident would always be present to sound the alarm in the event of a Powerwall or solar short prompted fire. Even so, smoke detectors are probably connected on the web or allocated emergency frequencies? Fire hydrants are legally required to be near homes. Fire stations shouldn't be far.
A decentralized grid fire outbreak wouldn't be up a dirt road in the mountains - paved road access to a neighborhood would diminish response time relative to what it would require to scramble expensive firefighting aircraft.
A residential transformer is bringing it down from nearly 14 kV...
do not build in the middle of the forest. simple, really. Well, not that simple since people spent their lifetime savings buying the land and building but nothing else works. You probably need 500-1000 yards cleared forest to avoid the fire (embers in the roof and all) and even then all the infrastructure will be melted.
PG&E is trying to hold the state hostage. Want us to pay for fires? Fine, we'll cut power to danger zones that weren't economically viable anyway.
It's 100 feet as long as you adopt smart building practices for the roof (use tile, composition, or metal instead of wood shingles; cover all vents with mesh; clear gutters and other accumulations of dead plant matter). Tile roofs do not generally catch fire from embers.
100 feet or roughly 30.5 meters. Maybe, if you are in around the middle of residential area, your house will escape. Meaning if your neighbor's tree or house burns, it will not ignite yours--if you do all that's required. Next to the forest? Not a chance. A little wind and you see how fast flames move.
Also in a community, not everyone (or maybe, very few) has a 100 feet room to clear and maintain.
Edit: Even if you do have 100 feet to maintain, go on a two week vacation and see how many leaves gather.
> Edit: Even if you do have 100 feet to maintain, go on a two week vacation and see how many leaves gather.
You don't need a 100-foot break to protect your house from burning leaves. The 100-foot break is to protect your house from the incinerating radiation of torching trees.
You can technically even have trees within the 100-foot break. The goal is to prevent a situation where individually burning trees accelerate combustion in a feedback loop. If they're burning more slowly they're radiating less energy and thus you don't need as much space to the house.
>>Sometimes, that channel of upward-flowing air can collapse in one small spot. Then the hot air in the atmosphere plummets through the weak point. “You get a very fast wind moving down toward the ground, and when it hits the ground, it spreads like jelly slopping across the floor,” Williams said. “It can also send white-hot air out in front of the flame, incinerating the landscape before the actual flame has arrived. It can cause forests to spontaneously combust without coming into contact with a flame.”
When this upward-moving air pattern stays strong, it creates other kinds of problems. It can loft burning wood high into the atmosphere, carrying it many miles away from the center of the fire. When this debris finally lands, it can start new fires. In 2011, Williams lived dozens of miles from the edge of the blaze, yet he remembers semi-burned sticks falling like drizzle in his backyard. “These were twigs that you hold in your hand and say, ‘Wow, this actually weighs something. This made it 35 miles in the air,’” he said."
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/californ...
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My question is if it's cheaper to fire-proof everyone's house, or to have everyone go and buy solar for their properties, or to just accept some people and properties are going to burn in a fiery inferno from time to time.
A quick Google shows that there were $7B in insurance claims for the Camp Fire. At $15K per install of solar, that's ~500k homes. Apparently fire-proofing a house has similar costs. There are something like 7M homes in California. Many of those are in urban areas, so let's say there are 2M in fire-prone areas.
It actually seems worthwhile to just pay for the upgrades.