Transcripts For SFGTV BOS Budget And Finance 12215 20151208

Working for the city and county of San Francisco will immerse you in a vibrate and dynamic city on sfroert of the art and social change weve been on the edge after all were at the meeting of land and sea worldclass style it is the burn of blew jeans where the rock holds court over the harbor the citys Information Technology xoflz work on the rulers project for free wifi and developing projects and insuring patient state of at San Francisco General Hospital our it professionals make guilty or innocent available and support the house Senate Regional wearout system your our employees joy excessive salaries but working for the city and county of San Francisco give us employees the unities to contribute their ideas and energy and commitment to shape the citys future but for considering a career with the city and county of San Francisco not able to provide a support letter. But she will provide a letter of support. Supervisor david campos my understanding is that supervisor breed is in support of that as well. As laid out a number of conditions and specific for karoake places to protect the health and safety of people and prevent crime or prostitution. Are you aware, are you understanding all of these different conditions . Yes, definitely. Yes. It sounds like there is at least one other karoake place nearby. Yes. One couple doors down from you. So maybe it will become a more karoake center place in japantown in the fillmore area. Okay. I dont see any other questions from colleagues. Lets open up for Public Comment. Is there any additional Public Comment . Seeing none, Public Comment is closed. I just revealed that i like karoake and aware of different places. Good luck with the business. Colleagues can we have a motion on this application. Its been moved and seconded. Can we do that without objection, colleagues . Thank you. We want to thank jim smith and larson from sf govtv for televising us today. Next item. Hearing on measures to ensure Public Safety around pacific gas and Electric Company transformers citywide and requests the Fire Department support. Supervisor david campos thank you. I want to thank all who have supported us and i want to thank pg e as well as the San Francisco planning commission. On saturday, a transformer exploded on vernal heights. This is something that seriously injured two people. Mr. Robert antinelly and mr. Cruz. Mr. Cruz who was standing over the grade that covered the transformer was hurled into the street when that happened. Both men were treated and released from San Francisco General Hospital and we are grateful to San Francisco General Hospital for the great treatment that they provided them. Since then, several neighbors in vernal heights have rightly raised concerns about other explosions and the overall safety of pg es electrical utilities specifically transformers. The purpose of this hearing is to have a better understanding of what happened on september 27th, in Bernal Heights. We also want to get a better per on how transformers work, their safety, citywide, how many are there, how are they maintained. Are transformers in any parts of the city in this neighborhood nearing the end of their useful life . Most importantly for me, not only as a resident of vernal heights who worries about a possible explosion of a transformer near my house or as im walking down the neighborhood, i want to find out what Safety Measures are in place or could be put in place to ensure the safety of our residents to make sure there is no harm that comes to any member of the public not only in vernal heights but any neighborhood in the county of San Francisco. We have asked representatives from pg e to come and represent. Weve been also working with the California Public Utilities Commission that is responsible for regulating this equipment and weve also asked the members of the San Francisco Fire Department which respond to fire and electrical incidents to present today. Before i turn it over to pg e i want some people to share their thoughts who could not be here today. This is from valerie. She said hi, i cannot attend this hearing but i hope someone mentions this transformer was smoking and having electrical parts emitted. It was real scary and a real fire hazard. Luckily we have an electrician who lives on the nearby and could respond. This adds a danger of transformers to Bernal Heights neighborhood. Another one. Living next door i was told by a neighbor that a technician was stricken and black face and taken to hospital. Our power was out. A technician at the site told me it was likely old equipment allowing water seepage. I saw a gaping hole out of the unit. And it was decided it was safe hours later. This is a real danger and a deaffection and program. A smooth metal was for years a treasure treacherous pedestrian habit. I fell once and had to remember to walk around it after that. Other people slipped as well and it was painted with nonslip coating. This is from brian we have wind failure every month and this happens every time with that let me allow pg e to present. Mr. On the ontario smith who is the senior representative for pg e. Thank you very much to you and your staff for your responsiveness. I also understand that Berry Anderson advice operations is here. Presenter thank you. Im going to turn it to bearey anderson who is in charge of emergency operations. Hes been with us for 30 years and our licensee engineer and the lifelong council for private partnership that focuses on emergency preparedness. Barry will give remarks and provide the answers that we want. Thank you. Presenter thank you for inviting us to this important hearing. Your constituents are also our customers and like you we take the incident that occurred in Bernal Heights very seriously. Thats why we welcome the opportunity to work with you as partners to make sure that we are doing Everything Possible to safe guard san franciscans and continue the upgrades we are making to our system to make it the safest and most reliable power system within the nation. Towards exactly that end, pg e is spending billions of dollars investing in the safety and reliability of our system. We are working to rebuild infrastructure at a rapid pace to have safe infrastructure in the country. The customers we serve and our employees. We are spending more than 1. 5 billion. At the same time San Francisco possess its unique chances based on density and unique geography. The investigation is being conducted. Pg e responded to an outage 5 blocks away. Thankfully crews were able to respond quickly including local firefighters and local police. Our thoughts continue to go out to the people who were injured and we continue to support them. We are grateful to the San Francisco Fire Department for their Swift Response and help with this unfortunate sdinlt. Incident. Pg e conducted an electrical control in july and nothing found and another one in 2013. Our records show prior to the incident there were no main outages on this circuit. There was a serious issue occurred october 27th. The investigation will hopely be able to definitively answer what happened on that date and the failure. We are not waiting until that date to make sure we increase our efforts. We took swift action and will do the following. First we conducted inspections above and beyond our internal requirements in Bernal Heights and completed in october. We inspected the 125 underground transformers in Bernal Heights area. As part of this, pg e used the most modern technology. We did not identify any Hazardous Conditions to this inspection and we took the strength and reliability of this area. Second, we replaced the same transformer on the 27. Throughout the entire city of San Francisco there are seven transformers of the same manufacture. We are pro actively replacing the same transformers and expect the work to be completed at the end of this month. Third, we are asking the question as to whether and what can be done to improving the sidewalk and enclosures. The design in place is currently in line with industry standards. The lid is invented to keep the transformer cool under normal operating conditions. However we are looking for improved designs. Four, we want to follow the recommendation of the third party report that immediately was considered after the report. There was a mechanical failure to the internal transformers. The final report will inform us on the matter more quickly. We look forward to further improvement. We will also be working with the San Francisco Fire Department and regulate oris to ensure we are following industry practices and going far and beyond the current regulations continually improve our performance. This is in addition to the on going efforts which we said early include 1. 5 billion investment in infrastructure and safety upgrades in San Francisco. Thank you again for inviting us today and for being our partner and for safety and reliability in San Francisco. Im available for questions. Thank you, i have a few questions. Thank you for that t how much has pg e managed throughout the city and county in San Francisco. Its approximately 15,000 transformers you messaged mentioned you were replacing several transformers. How many types are there . There are different types of transformers. Some are called the single face transformers that serve the residents and others are very large that serve our under part of the ground and there are several voltages. Why is it that you decided to replace the seven transformers . Those seven transformers is really out of abundance of caution. They are made by the same manufacturer malone in Bernal Heights that failed. Did you have any problems with other transformers in the past snt city . The one i would like to talk to you about is the one you mention in your comments. It was a piece of equipment, a switch gear transformer that failed in Bernal Heights that include in the operation. In that circumstance there was the switch gear had a low amount of oil that when an arc was created that equipment failed. Our crew wears protective equipment when that happens, however one of our members was burned during that. We take these incidents very serious and we learn from them and in this particular case we added a protective device on the switch stick. If that happened in the future, our employee would be protected. Can i ask you with that switch gear transformer did you replace it or leave it . No that transformer was replaced. How many of that type of transformer do you have of the 15,000 of that same type . Of the malone . Yes. We have seven to replace. Did. There is a total of nine. How many transformer explosion from pg e . The one i know happened on october 27th and none that happened in 2014 and 2013. How about going back 5 years . Im not sure on the number that failed. I can tell you when we do inspections of these transformers we do 1 3 of them each year which is the reason why the transformer in Bernal Heights was looked at in 2013. The plan was to have a full inspection in 2016. What our full inspection does is uses an infrared camera to look at the heat and transformer to see if its leaking oil or any other conditions that we look for it to cause a premature failure. What is the usual life of a transformer . Thats a good question. When transformers are built they have very few moving parts inside. So from an engineering perspective they are built for a kind of infinite type of life. What we find is that a transformer will fail if its operate negative an environment that its not supposed to. When its exposed to high heat and subject to greater loads than what its designed for. What the data shows is the transformer that would be installed today that was brand new doesnt have greater likelihood of is you are survival than one that is 30 years old. What was the range . They range brand new that were installed but on average about 35 years old. 35 years old. Do you know what the oldest transformer that you have is . No, i dont. My speculation would be 50 or 60 years old. So, 50, 60. I think it would be helpful for all of us first of all knowing that we have 15,000 of these throughout the city. What the age of the 15,000 is. I dont know if you have that information if you can provide us . We can provide a distribution of age with the mode, the range, the average. In terms of best practices is there a recommended time during which you should replace a transformer . You said it was probably indefinite, so no time . Thanks for that question. How we do it is through our inspection process so every year we inspect 1 3 of our ground transformers to make sure there are no leaks and secondly we use our infrared and look for hot spots. We look at our transformers at anyone given year to find if they are going to fail. We put in our Maintenance Plan in our work schedule to work. The Maintenance Plan requires what exactly for a transformer, ideal how often you are supposed to inspect it . We have some of the highest standards to meet within our industry. Our regulators have strict guidelines. We have patrol on an annual basis of all of our transformers and every 3 years we do a thorough what we call an investigation or inspection. Thats where we use the infrared equipment. Do you have the information for having done that for the 15,000 transformers in the city . Yes. How this is done, a compliance inspector pulls out a map of all the facilities. There is a record of what was decade last detected last time it was patrolled and a card signed off, a confirmation and a sticker goes on certifying it was checked. What i get asked by residents of Bernal Heights is, could Something Like this happen again . You said that we have 125 transformers in Bernal Heights alone. What do you say to residents who might be afraid that like myself actually that an explosion could happen again . Supervisor, i appreciate that question. I would say first of all our system is safe. We have high standards that perform inspections on our equipment and we have from an inspection practice. From my experience, i can tell you that failures wont happen. The producers of this equipment cant guarantee this wont happen 100 of the time. What we do after an incident like Bernal Heights we take swift action to do additional patrols, final potentially a failure of a certain type of transformer to take an aggressive action to remove it and at the same time look for other ways to make improvements. In this case the sidewalk vault for example, we recognize the explosion causes the high gases for it to come in and under the right conditions. Given we had the transformer explosion and given those that need to be replaced. Do you know where they are in the city . Are there anymore in Bernal Heights . Where are those . There are no more in Bernal Heights. There are three or four in fillmore district. One in russian hill, one in the castro. Thats the area. I could follow up what is your timeline . All to be done by december 30. Th. Im sure that supervisor and president breed want to know where they are located and is there any reason why you couldnt replace them sooner than december 30th . We are working hard to do it. What some of them require clearances to customers and as you take the transformer out you want to make sure you are sensitive to their needs as well. Making arrangements to have generators. We can certainly look at accelerating that schedule. All will not be complete on december 30th. Have you been cited by the puc on the issue of transformers before pg e . To my knowledge we havent. In this particular case, the puc has been working with us. They visited this site. They have been with us as our Third Party Investigator has been doing a Destructive Testing of the transformer. The final question to my colleagues who may have a question for you. In terms of the members of the public who may have a specific concern about a transformer, is there a particular number they should call if they want to report any concern or issue they have . They could call our 800 number. 1800 as the hearing proceeds, maybe you can give it to us so we can give it to the public. I know one is 1800 pg e for outage. Well follow up to make sure. Thank you very much. Colleagues, do you have any questions for pg e . Supervisor Julie Christensen i just have a quick one. Do i understand that it was an anomaly related to the location of the transformer in the Bernal Heights incident . Yeah. Somebody told me the Residential Development followed the location of the transformer . Yeah, i think supervisor the question of the location of the invented lid was ve