Here’s why Stanford can’t get its power back on & More news

Stanford has been able to turn on some power. It’s using a few hundred diesel generators for key services, Jacobson said.

PG&E has also been able to send some power to campus, though not enough for the university to fully reopen. Two transmission lines feed the campus, and PG&E said it had de-energized one due to the fire.

Cal Fire is not currently permitting PG&E to access equipment near the fire where repairs are needed, the utility said, but as soon as those restrictions are lifted workers will go in.

“We understand how disruptive it is to be without power and are using every tool at our disposal to restore power as quickly as possible,” PG&E said.

Stanford spokesperson E.J. Miranda said that as of midafternoon Thursday, the university had not received an estimated time for full power restoration from PG&E.

Besides the Stanford campus, only a small number of homes or businesses remained without power as of 3 p.m. Thursday — nine in Woodside, three in Redwood City and one in Belmont.

Fixing a transmission line is “delicate work,” noted Michael Wara, an energy expert with Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment. “The standards are very precise for how things have to be done, so it takes time.”

Wara said he would have been even more concerned had damage to the PG&E substation on the edge of the fire occurred, since substation parts can be hard to replace.

In a filing to the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E said that Cal Fire had collected equipment from one of its distribution circuits near the Edgewood Incident fire.

“PG&E’s most important responsibility is the safety of our customers and the hometowns we serve,” the utility said in a statement, adding that it was grateful to first responders.

Wara said that the era of wildfires shows the importance of new thinking about the grid — especially how to get power to somewhere via multiple routes, and also self-sufficiency, though that can be expensive.

Jacobson said that the prolonged outage shows the need for more batteries to store power — and microgrids that can stay powered using the batteries when the main grid is not functioning. Some plans are in the works at Stanford, but he said he believes things should proceed more quickly.

“The university should be a shining example of how to go to entirely clean, renewable energy,” Jacobson said. “We really need to do that today. These climate emergencies are happening faster and faster.”