As a small WISP operator in Northern California and well into the urban interface we fell victim to the PSPS this year. Thousands was spent on upgrading battery plants that would normally hold during a short outage and generator purchases, whether it be small inverter style generators for small sites to permanent standby site generators for those sites that are larger or a PITA to get to. We still have more work to do and hope to be better prepared for next summers rounds of shut offs. I am currently developing a portable trailer mounted solar/battery plant to replace the portable generators just for fuel cost savings since I spent just about $500/week in generator fuel alone for the largest outage.

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 9:59 AM Michael Thomas <mike@mtcc.com> wrote:

On 12/26/19 7:51 AM, Mike Bolitho wrote:
> I'm pretty sure political bickering is well beyond the scope of the
> mailing list. Is anyone moderating this?

It certainly wasn't my intent or desire to have this turn political, and
shame on the person who did. This is a serious networking related issue
for California *right* *now*. It may become a serious networking related
issue for a lot of other places too -- California is hardly unique in
its wildland - urban interface issues, and lots of places burn just like
California. And definitely lots of places have a 100+ years of fire
suppression which is a policy thing, not a political thing.

The question is what are network operators going to do? If the answer is
"nothing", don't be surprised to get legislation shoved down your
throats. Don't expect the bay area of all places to passively put up
with all of this. If your network fails because of power going out and I
can't call 911, you've got a big, big problem.

Mike