The Burlingame Voice

Moss Landing battery fire: don't waste a good crisis?

With all of the focus on CO2 it's easy to forget there are a lot of other, way more dangerous pollutants being released during emergencies.  The Moss Landing lithium-ion fire adds hydrogen fluoride to the list.  Where's my college chemistry book when I need it?  The various wildfires over the last four years have spewed mega tons of particulate matter ("smoke") and who knows what else from burning cars, houses and businesses.  But all the Sacramento and local government focus has been on our cars, stove tops, BBQs and water heaters.

Only now is our camera hound governor is calling for an investigation into the massive Moss Landing battery plant fire even though it is either the fourth or fifth fire there in the last four years.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A fire at the world’s largest battery storage plant in Northern California smoldered Friday after sending plumes of toxic smoke into the atmosphere, leading to the evacuation of up to 1,500 people. The blaze also shook up the young battery storage industry.

The fire at the Vistra Energy lithium battery plant in Moss Landing generated huge flames and significant amounts of smoke Thursday but had diminished significantly by Friday, Fire Chief Joel Mendoza of the North County Fire Protection District of Monterey County said.

Brad Watson, Vistra’s senior director of community affairs, said two “overheating events” happened at the battery plant in 2021 and 2022 because the batteries got wet. A third incident happened in 2022 in the neighboring Elkhorn battery plant that is owned by PG&E, he said.

I'm all for huge, grid-based battery storage.  We need it if we have any hope for stability

California was an early adopter of battery storage and leads the nation with more than 11 gigawatts of utility-scale storage online, which can meet nearly half of the demand on the state’s main grid for four hours per day.

But like first-generation EV chargers that fail regularly, the devil is in the details.  As Rahm Emanuel said "you never want a good crisis go to waste".  That's the order of the day.

 

  

EV Charging: Fixing the Lot Y chargers

The Lot Y parking lot on Chula Vista near B'way has had a shaky history of EV charging reliability.  We reported on the initial low usage four years ago here.  It may have gotten more usage in the intervening four years, but back then one and a half charging sessions per day per unit was not a good use of city parking slots.  Part of the problem has been that the chargers themselves are wonky.  Sometimes it's the credit card readers.  Sometimes other things, but the owners, EVGo, have thrown in the towel on their first-generation units and torn all of them out.

Replacements are on their way and reportedly will be re-installed by the end of the month.  Let's hope at least some parts of the dead units are recyclable.  In the meantime, the gas guzzler meters that are behind the construction fencing are offering free parking in those spaces (since you can't get to the meter).  Park on!  Let's hope the new chargers last more than five years and we get the upgraded ones at the Walgreen's installation.

Friends with 3 million e-Benefits

Back in May, just before the new fiscal year started, the AP reported that

Newsom announced on Friday a $26.7 billion deficit, but it’s really closer to $45 billion. That’s because Newsom didn’t include roughly $17.3 billion worth of actions he and lawmakers already agreed on. Those included a cut of $3.6 billion in primarily one-time funding to some school, welfare and climate programs. The plan also delays and defers about $5.2 billion in spending for various programs, including $1 billion to fund rail and public transit systems.

So how do you manage a massive deficit?  The same way you eat an elephant.  One bite at a time.  Here's an easy morsel from the city e-newsletter this week.

The California E-Bike Incentive Project application window is officially open.

During this application period, the program will award up to 1500 vouchers to income-qualified residents for incentives up to $2000 that can be redeemed at numerous participating E-Bike retailers. Additional application windows with more incentives will become available later in 2025.

1500 x $2000 = $3 million.  It's a good thing more "incentive$" are coming.  Perhaps the only way to get quickly through the Broadway interchange in 2026 will be on an e-bike.  In the meantime, what is Spin's incentive to haul away deserted e-bikes? (hat tip:  regular reader)

Broadway: New cost estimate, same old story

The song remains the same on the grade separation at Broadway only a lot more off-key than before.  I wrote this five years ago here:

One of the common questions I hear in town is "When are they going to fix the rest of Broadway?" meaning now that the bridge has been replaced, what about the rail crossing?  My standard response is "There isn't nearly enough money socked away to even start".

That refrain got even worse this week as the DJ reports:

The grade separation — designated as a top priority at last year’s city goal-setting — would separate the train tracks from the road to mitigate traffic, increase public safety and allow more than one train at the Broadway station. At the beginning of 2024, project costs were estimated at $325 million.

Now, however, Caltrain recently informed the city about significant increases to project costs, raising totals to $500 to $600 million for construction alone, Public Works Director Syed Murtuza said.

Aside from the usual, completely predictable, extreme increases in the cost of labor and materials, now we get to add the fact that with electrification of Caltrain we have to de-electrify the lines to do the construction for four hours at night.  Less construction time equals more project time equals higher costs.  Rinse and repeat.

Pleas from the city to complete the grade separation before Caltrain electrification went unanswered, Murtuza said. “It’s just utterly poor management and mismanagement on the part of the organization, and we saw it directly,” (Donna Colson) said.  She urged the city to realistically communicate with residents about the realities of the long-awaited project moving forward.

"Realistic" is our middle name here at the Voice.  No shovels will be hitting dirt in the foreseeable future, so we need to make lemonade.  Is it AI like noted here?  Is it just an underpass?  Do we try to get a reprieve from the state on our RHNA numbers so we can stop building giant residential cell blocks on Rollins that will change the traffic grade on the intersection from an "F" to an "F--"?   Just kidding, not "realistic", but a nice fantasy.  There are timing tweaks to the various signals that could make marginal improvements.  All we can really do is better traffic enforcement and hope the accident and fatality rates don't climb.

Scenes of destruction from LA

At this moment I'm sitting in West Maui, in the Kahana-Napili area, looking out at Molokai and Lanai while watching some video of the Pacific Palisades devastation.  A one-minute driving clip on X is eerily reminiscent of a clip from a local friend who was authorized to drive through Lahaina after the August 8, 2023 fire that killed 101 people.  A year and a half later one still cannot go into the center of Lahaina--Front Street.  Another friend got close this week and saw that some rubble is just now being bulldozed and hauled away.  In January of 2025.  Hazmat.  Insurance.  Cell service.  Coastal restrictions.  Equipment.  Cost.  All will be in play in LA, too.

Oakland 1991 comes to mind.  Paradise, CA.  Chico.  Several more in remote parts of the Sierra.  It's on-going and fully predictable.  Joe Rogan relayed an LA firefighter predicting the exact magnitude of the Palisades fire his podcast last July!  I'm really hoping this old Voice post doesn't end up being another predictable concern come true.

And of course there is the air pollution of each blaze.  The Merc notes:

Massive plumes from multiple fires in Los Angeles County are choking the region’s skies and sending air quality to dangerous levels. Thursday morning Los Angeles had an AQI of 182, considered “unhealthy,” and currently among the worst in the world. The smoke was so dense that it was captured in satellite photos.

Current forecasts through Saturday show most of the smoke from the wildfires wafting out into the ocean and making a weak return back to the coast as far north as Monterey.

Tell me again how ripping out a high-efficiency furnace/water heater and a gas stovetop that gets a half hour of use most weeks is really important, but actually planning and executing wildfire prevention just never seems to rise to the top of Big Politicians priority list?

Pain plugging in: Electric rates burn holes in wallets

The Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) is out with details regarding something we all know from paying PG&E every month.  Costs are up, up, up.  Specifically:

California’s electricity rates are among the highest in the country,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office reported. On average, residential electricity rates in California are close to double those in the rest of the nation.  Average residential electricity rates in California have grown faster than inflation in recent years, rising by about 47% over the four-year period from 2019 through 2023 compared to overall growth in prices of about 18%,” according to the report.  Only Hawaii has higher electricity rates than California, the report determined.

The LAO pins this on:

• Increasing stringency of greenhouse gas emission reduction laws for the electricity grid.
• Accommodating more electricity demand from electrification.
• Growing demand for funding to support state climate policies. 
• Wildfire-related costs.

One of the preeminent energy economists in the world, Bjorn Lomborg, who we profiled here is also back with an update in the WSJ titled "Green energy costs a bundle" that notes a study of 70 countries' costs shows:

In a country with little or no solar and wind, the average electricity cost is about 12 cents a kilowatt-hour (in today’s money). For every 10% increase in solar and wind share, the electricity cost increases by more than 5 cents a kilowatt-hour. This isn’t an outlier; these results are substantially similar to 2019, before the effects of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Germany has installed so much solar and wind that, on sunny and windy days, renewable energy satisfies close to 70% of Germany’s needs—a fact the press eagerly reports. But the press hardly mentions dark and still days, when these renewables deliver almost nothing. Twice in the past two months, when it was cloudy and nearly windless, solar and wind delivered less than 4% of the daily power Germany needed.  Current battery technology is insufficient. Germany’s entire battery storage runs out in about 20 minutes.

The SF Chronicle looked at the other side of the story last week as new buy-back rates from PG&E et al take a bite out of green ambitions in California:

In late 2022, state regulators voted to slash the level of that payment by around 75% to bring it closer to market prices. With the electricity they produce worth far less, rooftop panels suddenly didn’t make as much financial sense.

Beyond the impact on customers’ pocketbooks, the change devastated California’s solar industry when it went into effect in April 2023, prompting a huge drop in home and business panel installations, wiping out thousands of jobs, and forcing local installers to shrink or close up shop altogether.

That would be 17,000 vaporized jobs to be more specific.  Competing studies assert that non-solar customers are subsidizing solar customers--or vice versa.  What is undeniable is that a bunch of people who would have plunked down tens of thousands of dollars of their own money to contribute to green energy generation have changed their minds.  I would attribute it to the Law of Unintended Consequences, but it was so obvious that it has to be intentional.  Does anyone in Sacramento care to listen to the LAO? 

New Year: Same El Camino...or worse

The calendar has turned over to 2025, but things are not improving on El Camino.  I just happened to make the round-trip from the southern edge of B'game to the northern edge and it's a mess.  Due to the New Year's mid-week holiday, the delivery trucks (Amazon, UPS, FedEx, Sysco, etc) are clogging up the traffic flow by taking the right lane away.  Nothing new there.

What is new is how many new potholes have appeared.  Some blame the rains.  Some blame the prior poor patch jobs.  SamTrans buses pounding the pavement?  How about all of the above.  My less-than-scientific wild guess is there are about 400 potholes on our section of the King's Road.  The King should be ashamed of himself.  Maybe Caltrans is thinking why fix anything when we are planning to tear it all up anyway, but the section just south of B'game in San Mateo isn't any better.  Here's a reminder that somewhere on ca.gov you can ask for money to repair damage to your car from the road.  I've never tried it, but I hear it is possible.  In the meantime, we all suffer with the Peasant's Road.  Here is the new emblem of ECR that replaces the Mission bells.

 

Boxes of news or... of nothing

I love the hardcopy Daily Journal and Daily Post.  I search them out so much that my wife makes fun of me for it.  In B'game the DJ is easy to find, the Post not so much.  I won't reveal the few boxes in town where the Post can often be found.  Down in Palo Alto, the powers that be want to get rid of newspaper boxes on University Ave. in an effort to "beautify" the main shopping district.  The Post runs the ad below highlighting the threat to the First Amendment.

The ad notes that Palo Alto already has a municipal code allowing the removal of unused boxes and there in is the rub in Palo Alto; and here in B'game.  I don't know if we have a similar code on the books, but I do know it's not being enforced.  Check out the line-up of boxes on Primrose.  A couple Epoch Times' boxes around town occasionally have the paper, but not this one that has no coin slot.  The beat-up maroon one next to it never has anything but trash and a lonely phone book or two.  It has siblings all over town in the same condition.  The red one might have been an SF Examiner box at one point, but Examiner boxes all over town have been empty for years.  This DJ box is filled daily as are all of them in B'game.  Thank you, guys, gold star!  This Post box hardly ever gets filled.  And there are other Post boxes in B'game that never get papers.  I don't think the City should be responsible for removing them--the companies should, unless they are out of business.  Then the City should take them to the trash heap.  Let's beautify B'game, one boxectomy at a time.  Candidates clutter the sidewalks across from Mints & Honey, in front of the Capuchino post office, along California Dr., and Mollie's sidewalk.  I could go on.

P.S.  How funny is it to have three mailboxes lined up literally across the street from our sad little post office?  I bet they are a vestige of when we had the beautiful post office on Park Rd.  Let's yank two of those as well.

Total Cost of Homeownership: Not just the cost of the house

For all the talk about our "housing crisis", there is little media or politician discussion about what makes housing expensive here or many, many other places.  The build-our-way-out of it people, like the YIMBYs, just focus on the four walls.  As the letter writer below noted, it's tiresome.  It's also myopic.  The WSJ chimes in today with a piece titled "Insurance and Taxes Now Cost More Than Mortgages for Many Homeowners: Ballooning expenses rewrite the math of homeownership".  The piece zeroes in on home insurance, flood/fire insurance, property taxes and home repair costs and shows

These ballooning expenses are rewriting the math of homeownership. In September, 32% of the average single-family mortgage payment went to property taxes and home insurance, the highest rate ever for data going back to 2014, according to Intercontinental Exchange.  For a small but increasing share of households, the burden is far more significant. In five major metro areas—Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y.; Omaha, Neb.; New Orleans and Miami—at least a quarter of borrowers spend more than half their monthly mortgage payment on taxes and insurance, according to ICE. 

These metro areas have high property taxes or pricey home insurance relative to typical home costs, or both.  Nationwide, taxes and insurance make up more than half of the monthly mortgage payment for 9% of single-family mortgages. That is up from less than 4% at the end of 2014. 

Left out of the equation because of how the study gathered data are the other costs--electricity, natural gas, garbage, sewer/water and bond measures for schools and anything else the politicians can dream up (looking at you Caltrain and sea level rise).  A major variable will always be interest rates, but all of these other factors just pile on and increases get waved through regularly.

One could even argue the YIMBY mentality will make it all worse.  More grid, more water, more sewage treatment, more classrooms, more, more, more.  Decarbonize your house in the next 10 years?  That won't be easy or cheap as we noted here.  Looking at all of the costs in total reveals the real story--not the faddish one.

Lot Why: Some parking spots are busier than others

The Broadway business district was humming this afternoon in spite of the overcast and drizzle.  Four days before Christmas and Hanukkah is "peak shopping time".  I made four stops that took about an hour including two trips back to my car, so the scene below wasn't just a single instance anomaly.  The gas guzzler spaces were packed.  You remember how tight the Lot Y lane is between the two parking rows next to Pick of the Litter when both sides are full.  Even in a mid-size sedan, backing out of a space is a two or three-cut process.  Maybe it is the rain, but my meter took my coins, flashed green, but failed to display how much time I just bought.  It's ticket roulette.

Many people were looking longingly at the EV spaces.  I didn't have the heart to look at each charger to see if they were operational--I sort of know the answer already based on this post two weeks ago.  As the "Daylighting" ordinance goes into effect with fines starting Jan 1, parking spots will get incrementally rarer.  Just wait until 19 spaces go EV-only in Lot K between Safeway and Walgreen's.  Perhaps Santa will bring the city a few shrouds to cover broken chargers that read "Open to all vehicles for free".  It's on my list.

The Conductor at work on ECR

Not only is today the Winter Solstice and thankfully the days start to get longer, but I heard on the radio that today is "National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day".  Somber times two one supposes.  It's a time and a season for contemplating one's year, one's home and family, one's accomplishments and how our community evolved this year.  So it was appropriate that I was able to snap this photo today amidst a cloudy, rainy, pothole ridden El Camino trip through town.

I call this guy "The Conductor" because he can be seen often standing on a podium made from a eucalyptus stump waving his arms as if the San Francisco Symphony were seated on the King's Road in front of him.  Only a baton and a tux are missing.  I have no idea if he's actually homeless, but I've heard he gets an occasional wellness check; and yet is still conducting regularly.  I wish him well.  I hope he has a place to get dry and warm and mostly I hope he accepts such an offer when made--if not, there are options.

Pushing back on the YIMBYs

From the "broken clock is right twice a day" file comes this Letter to the Editor of the SF Comicle.  Somehow the editors let this one slip through the cracks and into print.  I don't know the woman or the organization, but she hits pretty much every button right on the nose:

YIMBY housing fantasies won’t work in California. Here’s the reality

Regarding “There’s no protecting California values without building more housing” (Open Forum, SFChronicle.com, Dec 13): The steady drumbeat of op-ed pieces from SPUR and YIMBY housing advocates is tiresome. Many Californians disagree with them.  Urban density and infill housing are supposed to remedy suburban sprawl. But urban density, in practice, simply creates overcrowded streets, with motorists circling in search of rare parking.   Infill comes at the expense of historic buildings and districts, which are often demolished. A classic example is the enormous apartment buildings planned for the former California College of the Arts campus in Oakland.

Transit-oriented development? This fantasy assumes that public transportation is a fixed utility. Many bus lines that once served our communities have been cut.  How many voters will oppose a tax to support BART because of the agency’s plans to put apartments in its parking lots? How many people have quit taking BART because there is no secure place to park near the stations?

The SPUR and YIMBY people want Soviet-style apartment blocks wherever they can be crammed in, extinguishing every vestige of charm from neighborhoods.  It’s time for the state to stop forcing draconian “density bonus” and “builder’s remedy” laws on neighborhoods that want to retain some breathing room.

Amelia Marshall

Board member, Oakland Heritage Alliance

Amen, Amelia.  Look no further than our latest Cellblock at One Adrian Ct.  It may not extinguish any charm in the neighborhood since it sits next to a Public Storage business, but you can bet it will raise traffic thru the Worst Intersection in the State and put pressure on all sorts of public services.  Did the grid get any major upgrade?  School capacity?  Did we hire another police officer for traffic enforcement?  Anything thing else listed here?  Keep up the good work, Ms. Marshall.  You are far from alone.