VOA常速英语2019--加州电力公司竞相升级系统（在线收听）

California Power Companies Race to Upgrade Systems

The power was deliberately cut through large swaths of Northern California to prevent wildfires, leaving 700,000 businesses at homes temporarily in the dark.24,000 customers also had their power cut in Southern California because of hot windy conditions.“A large part of the problem is climate change, electricity lines have been starting fires for a century,but generally those fires were pretty small. What’s changed and we saw in a dramatic and horrible way in paralyzed California last year is that the same sort of electric, electric line failure can now start a massive conflagration, which in that case killed 85 people.” Pacific Gas and Electric, the Northern California company, whose equipment sparked that blaze, has again been criticized for its widespread precautionary power cuts.An expanding system of cameras and weather sensors provides real-time data, supplemented by images from space and human analysis, but they don’t catch all the problems.“In the last five years, about 50 to 60 percent of the fires that have started involving our system have been due to things flying into our lines,so there isn’t necessarily a failure of our system, it could be palm fronds, it could be other vegetation, it could be a critter.”Power providers work to reduce the risk, trimming trees and using insulated cables. They’re also rethinking procedures for precautionary power cuts.“The other which is being proposed is to have a committee rather than the utility make the shut-off decision, and the committee would include utility executives, but it would also include Public Safety officials and it would also include regulators and possibly politicians.”He says power companies in California are now liable for damages even when they’re not negligent, and that should be changed.Experts say new technologies help lower the risk, distributed power production could reduce the need for power lines in high-risk areas.“Together with local production of renewable electricity, like, for example, distributed solar and battery energy storage, those are also very important technologies for avoiding wildfires.”And fuel cell technology, the kind used in some new cars, allows for even more local power generation. They say the fire risk won’t go away but can be managed.

为了防止野火，加州北部大片地区特意切断了电力供应，致使70万家企业暂时处于黑暗中。南加州也有24000名用户因为大风天气而断电。“很大一部分问题在于气候变化，一个世纪以来，电线一直在起火，但一般来说，这些火灾规模都很小。去年，我们在瘫痪的加利福尼亚州看到了一个戏剧性而可怕的变化，就是同一种电力、电线故障现在可以引发一场大规模火灾，在那种情况下，造成了85人死亡。”北加州公司太平洋天然气和电力公司的设备引发了那场大火，它再次因其广泛的预防性断电而受到批评。一种不断扩大的摄像头和气象传感器系统可以提供实时数据，辅以来自太空和人类分析的图像，但它们并没有抓住全部问题。在过去的五年中，大约百分之五十至百分之六十因我们的电力系统引发的火灾是由于进入我们线路的东西引起的，所以我们的系统不一定有故障，可能是棕榈叶，可能是其他植物，可能是生物。”电力供应商致力于降低风险，修剪树木和使用绝缘电缆。他们也在重新考虑预防性断电的程序。“另一个提议是成立一个委员会，而不是由公用事业公司做出关闭决定，该委员会将包括公用事业公司管理人员，但也将包括公共安全官员，还将包括监管机构，也可能有政治家。他说，加州的电力公司现在有责任赔偿损失，即使他们不是疏忽大意，但这应该做出改变。专家表示，新技术有助于降低风险，分布式电力生产可以减少高风险地区输电线的需求。“与当地生产的可再生电力一起，例如分布式太阳能和电池储能，这些也是避免野火的非常重要的技术。”而在一些新车中使用的那种燃料电池技术能产生更多本地发电。他们说火灾风险不会消失，但可以控制。