18 ms·

California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

125 points by stx 6y ago

lisper 6y ago
The entire U.S. is feeling more and more like a third-world country. Corrupt government. Unreliable and deteriorating infrastructure. Extreme poverty (I recently learned that 30% of houses on Indian reservations don't have running water). Marginalization or even outright vilification of intellectuals. 75 years ago we saved the world from fascism. Who is going to save us from ourselves? :-(
- vmception 6y ago
  Starting? Either that was an attempt to not bruise the egos of patriots, or you just haven't been paying attention. Here is how these conversations go: Someone will make comparisons to the worst countries in the world to rationalize why America is number 1 in a race nobody even entered into. Instead of comparing it to 21st century developed nations. Rinse, repeat. Follow by: Could those developed countries have made those advances without the US subsidizing and helping de-risk the cost of their defense? Shrug Does it makes sense for the US to allocate budget towards said defense while its domestic infrastructure flails? Shrug Does the structure of the US contribute to this separation of foreign policy and domestic policy? With the broke states responsible for and failing at handling their own affairs, with the well funded Federal Government maintaining consensus by not getting into state affairs, forcing it to use its budget abroad on pet projects? Shrug Does an actual budget really matter when the world has an infinite demand for dollars meaning that the US really could fund any domestic project and its external hegemony? Shrug Are those developed countries' taxes really that high in comparison to what everyone in the US pays for anyway? Which country specifically? In many cases where high populations of Americans actually live, no it is very equivalent and Americans get the short end of the stick. Shrug.
  - lisper 6y ago
    > Starting? Fixed.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Amen
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The issue here isn't that the California power grid has deteriorated, but that there's an extraordinary heat wave. I don't think it's fair to tie this into a grand decline narrative.
  - Majromax 6y ago
    A robust infrastructure should be able to handle surge loads. This isn't an extraordinary heat wave after some other natural disaster has directly damaged the power grid; it's that the grid as designed and built can't handle this load. It's hardly conclusive for a "grand decline" narrative, of course, since this is just one anecdote for an entire society.
    - khuey 6y ago
      Do we really need to pay for an electric grid that can handle a once every 20 year load?
      - pwarner 6y ago
        That's the real question. Even 1 in 10 year load, do you build for it or just live with it? It's just a $ decision.
      - manquer 6y ago
        Grid yes , maybe not the power plants themselves. Typically in robust networks you have good interconnects to neighbours you can purchase power from . Also robust grid which enables selling back to the grid would have helped, such extreme hot weather goes in hand with solar generation
        khuey 6y ago
        The problem is not lack of grid capacity. California is capable of importing upwards of 11 GW[0] but there was only around 8 GW[1] available yesterday because it's hot in neighboring states like Oregon too. The load shedding occurred around 8-10pm after the sun has gone down (but while it's still quite hot) so more solar wouldn't help much. [0] http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx and select 9/13/2019 [1] Same as above but select 8/14/2020.
- deleted 6y ago
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- refurb 6y ago
  That's just your human brain succumbing to its recency bias. As someone who has been around for way too many decades, it was like this in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's. And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt). And your "save the world from fascism" happened at the same time most of the US was segregated.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    And inequality is up since the 70's, as are housing, health care and cost of living expenses, while wages have remained stagnant for nearly 50 years.
    - refurb 6y ago
      Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn’t tell you anything. My point was, the US is not falling apart. Or if it is, it’s always been falling apart. The current situation is not unique.
      - heavyset_go 6y ago
        > Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn’t tell you anything. I'm curious what this is supposed to tell you, then: > And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt).
        refurb 6y ago
        That was a counterpoint to the OPs concern about corruption today in an attempt to convey that it’s not all that different now, not to argue it’s better now.
      - scarface74 6y ago
- bhupy 6y ago
  s/US/California. The US is decentralized (especially as it relates to electricity). Most of the rest of the Union is doing just fine.
- cobookman 6y ago
  You do realize that most 1st world countries have experienced a rolling black of some sort in the same time period. 1 rolling black out every 20 years isn't all that crazy. Would you rather we spend billions/trillions on infrastructure used for 3 days every 20 years?
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    > You do realize that most 1st world countries have experienced a rolling black of some sort in the same time period. Do you have some numbers for that? The only load shedding I remember in Europe was done through turning off large consumers and they would typically do this on their side.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - mpweiher 6y ago
    > most 1st world countries have experienced a rolling black out Name one? I've never experienced (or heard) of one in Germany, for example, during my lifetime. And of course it's not "rolling blackout", but "rolling blackouts", plural.
    - khuey 6y ago
      I don't know about most but it's certainly not unheard of in places with similar climates. https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/rolling-blackouts-ordered-as-adelaide-swelters-in-heatwave/news-story/13394f19db1ee94a59f4036fccdc1ba7 https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/rolling-bla...
    - baskire 6y ago
      Here’s two examples of power grid failures in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-raises-questions-over-germanys-power-grid/a-47730394 https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-raises-questions-over-...
- deleted 6y ago
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- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > The entire U.S. is feeling more and more like a third-world country. Corrupt government. Unreliable and deteriorating infrastructure. Extreme poverty (I recently learned that 30% of houses on Indian reservations don't have running water). Marginalization or even outright vilification of intellectuals. Americans have been saying this about their own country for decades. Many people see the worst in their own. And if anything I think the outlook was more pessimistic than now in the 80s, and even more than that in the 70s. Realistically, for all its faults, the US is still where I'd aspire to live for best opportunity and quality of life if I couldn't live in my home country for some reason.
  - moojd 6y ago
    It's a manifestation of our inner American Exceptionalism. We only have the ability to see our country as "exceptionally good" or "exceptionally bad"
  - vmception 6y ago
    > if I couldn't live in my home country for some reason. Which is why America is populated by extremes. Almost everyone here was either kicked out of or lacked consensus with the prevailing, fairly benign version of whatever was practiced where they came from.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  > 75 years ago we saved the world from fascism. Who is going to save us from ourselves? :-( It was mainly Russia who did that. The US effort may well have saved Europe from Communism though.
  - encom 6y ago
    Thanks for that, btw.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Russia saved the world from fascism and replaced it with another authoritative system. Not sure I’d call that “saved”.
  - reddog 6y ago
    Ask your friends from the Czech Republic or Hungary or Lithuania about how they were “saved” by Russia.
  - api 6y ago
    The USSR saved the world from the Nazis and then the US saved the world from the USSR. I like that. Now who will save the world from the lawless international corporatist panopticon birthed from America? Aliens? History seems like "she swallowed a spider to eat the fly..."
  - ghufran_syed 6y ago
    The Russians may have had a little help: "Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said after the end of WWII. "We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with." https://www.rbth.com/defence/2016/03/14/lend-lease-how-american-supplies-aided-the-ussr-in-its-darkest-hour_575559 https://www.rbth.com/defence/2016/03/14/lend-lease-how-ameri...
- TedShiller 6y ago
  The Indian reservation part is true. Most Americans have never set foot in one. If you want to see what it's like, I recommend driving through the South Dakota reservations. But be prepared for a shock of sadness. They feel like different countries entirely. It has been great to see the support in recent months for equality among all races in the US. But I wish we would also see more explicit support for Native Americans, for their suffering and their genocide. They are a group that has been exploited, victimized, and stolen from as much as any other group in America.
- jazzyjackson 6y ago
  People like to dismiss this by pointing to the shiny parts of America, but every city in the world has good and bad neighborhoods. The surprising thing about corrupt countries is the wealth inequality -- the political class is full of grifters who pocket the contracting fees and the citizens who are supposed to be recipients of government services are wondering why the highway has been under construction for the last 5 years. Or the bullet train in California. Billions of dollars are disappearing with barely a track bed to show for it. I'll quote this NYT piece. "“Approximately two dozen other countries have found H.S.R. feasible, including Uzbekistan,” she said, referring to high-speed rail. “And there is no reason it can’t be done here.”" The government collects and spends trillions of dollars, and most of that is wealth transfer to contractors, much less value reaches the ground, where much of the country is dotted with emptied out farm towns and improvised shelters. If you don't believe America looks the way some see it, take a cross country train, you go through everybody's back yard that way. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-28/california-redirects-funds-high-speed-rail-project https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-28/californ...
  - DuskStar 6y ago
    Funnily enough, the biggest obstacle to HSR in the US is all the restrictions we've put in place to protect people from corrupt or otherwise authoritarian officials. Uzbekistan doesn't have to worry about environmental impact reports or people complaining that the rail line will hurt their property values...
- blhack 6y ago
  I would highly encourage you to reassess where you are getting your information about the world if you genuinely believe this. I’m seeing this sentiment expressed more and more, and it seriously concerns me. If you look at the data, almost any data which compares the US to other countries, you’ll see that the US is at or near the top. This isn’t blind patriotism. Seriously if you are feeling like the US is becoming a “3rd world country” see if you can quantify it in some way. What is deteriorating, and how does that compare to other places in the world?
  - lisper 6y ago
    > I would highly encourage you to reassess where you are getting your information about the world if you genuinely believe this. I have traveled extensively throughout the world and my assessment was based on my personal experience. But... > If you look at the data, almost any data which compares the US to other countries, you’ll see that the US is at or near the top. Not so. The U.S. is a peer to Serbia in infant mortality [1]. It is behind India and Lithuania in terms political freedom and civil liberties (as rated by freedomhouse [2] [3]) and a peer to Chile in terms of economic freedom [4] and government corruption [5]. The U.S. ranks 38th in math and 24th in science education. And an anecdotal but IMHO significant data point: I have lived in the U.S. for fifty years. I have NEVER had a piece of U.S. mail go missing, until this year, when I have had THREE checks vanish into the cosmic void. (The fact that paper checks are even still a thing here is a testament to how far behind we have fallen.) --- [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mortality-rate-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mo... [2] https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=asc&order=Political%20Rights https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort... [3] https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=asc&order=Civil%20Liberties https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_... [5] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank [6] https://parentology.com/stem-education-statistics-2019-how-the-u-s-ranks/ https://parentology.com/stem-education-statistics-2019-how-t...
    - 6y ago
- jrobn 6y ago
  America as an ideal has failed and anyone who wants to come here should think twice. Every country has their problems, but years of neglect and backwards thinking on social, civic, and cultural “brick work” has led to this. The civil rights movement was never carried through. The Cold War mentality of military spending on the ever present “boggieman” wasted tens of trillions of dollars of GDP. The vilification of taxes, civic and social programs while also the decades long trend of funneling money to the top. The dirty politics of special interests, limited access, lobbying and un-checked money in politics. The widening wealth gap in both fiscal and quality of living. The gutting and simplification of the educational system to focus on math and sciences instead of raising well-rounded emotionally intelligent young humans. The belief that shoehorning everyone into a college education and the crippling debt that comes with it. The complete lack of national infrastructural investment since the 1950s. All of this leads to disillusionment. Especially when generations have grown up being fed this believe of “not in america”. Disillusionment leads to desperation, leads to anger, and hate, and scapegoating, to fake “christian” mega churches were people are scamed out of not only their money but the last tatters of their divinity. Technology like the internet mixed with stunted critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence, and compassion form into a deadly cocktail that breeds and spreads conspiracy theories and delusions fed to us by our enemies directly into our living rooms, on cable television, on our computers, and into our cellphones. Very little of it vetted or touched by anyone. To be shared and re-shared on Facebook in fear to our friends. And all of this wasted human potential at the cost of the only thing we all share. The Earth. Donald Trump isn’t the problem. He’s a symptom.
- trizic 6y ago
  Maybe it just isn't possible with such a large population. On the other hand, US gives you the opportunity to become filthy rich and it probably helps that you have such a large population to use to your advantage (whether it be labor or customers).
- dmode 6y ago
  Indian reservations are truly in horrific condition. I have spent many days in Navajo nation during my time in Arizona and it reminds of developing countries
cipher_system 6y ago
I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  Agreed. Instead of using cheap money to drive up asset prices it would be nice if it actually got used for something useful.
  - roughly 6y ago
    This is because one of our two political parties doesn’t believe that government spending should exist, and is iffy about the concept of government overall. Because of that, the only body able to respond to crises is the Federal Reserve, and the only lever they have is the money supply. We’ve had multiple trillion dollars worth of infrastructure repairs we need to do and nearly sub-zero borrowing rates for the last decade, but the GOP has effectively blocked any efforts to enact any kind of actual fiscal policy. If any business out there’s leadership refused to take sub-zero rate loans to perform critical maintenance on their capital stock, they’d rightly be fired and probably sued.
    - donw 6y ago
      The GOP has no power in California, though, and that’s been true for over a decade.
      - mperham 6y ago
        California can't print more money, the Fed can.
        CWuestefeld 6y ago
        The GOP has no power over the Fed, either.
0x402DF854 6y ago
Obligatory book recommendation: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33369264-blackout https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33369264-blackout This terrifying novel describes fragility of our society and its absolute dependence on power grids. Must read in my books
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  The more terrifying fact is that the scenario described in the novel has already partially happened in the real world. * New Clues Show How Russia’s Grid Hackers Aimed for Physical Destruction > Russian hackers planted a unique specimen of malware in the network of Ukraine's national grid operator, Ukrenergo. Just before midnight, they used it to open every circuit breaker in a transmission station north of Kyiv. The result was one of the most dramatic attacks in Russia's years-long cyberwar against its western neighbor. https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ukraine-cyberattack-power-grid-blackout-destruction/ https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ukraine-cyberattack-power...
- bpfrh 6y ago
  I read that book, it is good, there is a good presentation about how difficult it would be to do that in reality, based on the same source that the book used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjingj2473Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjingj2473Y The original is in german, the linked video is the english translation.
pwarner 6y ago
Isn't this just a $ decision? Do you build a power point that runs only for 4 hours every 10 years? Batteries may pencil out?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Even if you had the plants I'm not sure how you'd run them - it's not exactly an unskilled task.
edge17 6y ago
Strange reporting that people were "believed" to have been blacked out. We lost power yesterday in Sunnyvale from 5-9pm. Very interested in more info on the "hundreds of thousands" because it seems like the cuts were fairly limited. There was enough power to keep the fridge running but thats about it.
- chaostheory 6y ago
  Lost power in the north peninsula from 9pm-12am. A warning would have been nice. We signed up for notifications via text, and we didn’t receive any.
  - edge17 6y ago
    Yup, same. No warning. I left the house in my AC car and went out for ice cream
    - jonny_eh 6y ago
      Discounted ice cream due to the power loss?
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    PG&E isn't going to notify you because they aren't making the call. If you want notifications, install the CAISO mobile app, "ISO Today" on iOS. I got notifications from that app yesterday hours in advance of the outage.
- lumost 6y ago
  I find it strange that a town with multiple high-tech fortune 500's can't power itself. This begs several questions on adequate management of taxation at the local level, and corporate interest in their own community's ability to support them.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    US towns are generally not in the power business. In the Bay Area, areas are served by PG&E. One city (I believe Cupertino) has a competing utility. Note that both prioritize emergency services like hospitals over residential circuits or DCs. I live in the area, and I don't see a big deal over annual mid-summer blackouts. Though you should be able to get an SMS so you know when to leave your fridge and freezer closed.
edge17 6y ago
Where is all the load coming from? Aren't most of the office building (in the Bay Area) empty rightnow due to Covid?
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  There's a heat wave up and down the entire western US. Everyone from San Diego to Seattle is at home running their A/C if they're lucky enough to have one.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    Not yet in Seattle, but maybe tomorrow? It is supposed to reach 97F.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  As with other impacts of shutdown and quarantine, shifts in demand and consumption patterns can mean that infrastructure isn't able to supply electricity to where it's specifically needed. It's been pointed out that electricity is not storable --- it's less an energy store as with fuel and far more energy distribution as with a transmission or driveshaft, but with far more connections. Not only must the Grid make power available when it is needed, but it must do so where. Peak daytime demands in urban cores, offices, and factories is different from peak demands in residential exurbs, purely on distribution, even if quantity is comparable.
  - Steltek 6y ago
    Residential solar once posed the opposite problem: generating power during the day in suburbs where it wasn't being consumed nor could it be transported to areas of high demand. If our current problem is higher daytime residential demand, maybe power companies can stop fighting residential solar initiatives now?
pwarner 6y ago
https://mobile.twitter.com/california_iso https://mobile.twitter.com/california_iso gives heads up on grid issues, stage 2 = grid at capacity, stage 3 = lights start going out for someone.
- mmm_grayons 6y ago
  How is the decision made as to who loses power first? Coolest area?
p1mrx 6y ago
We're going to need lots of power grid upgrades over the next few decades, for all the new air conditioning (climate change), and the electrification of heat and transportation (trying to avoid climate change.) Are these upgrades even in the planning phase? People will be hesitant to migrate away from fossil fuels if they can't trust the alternative.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
- 3000000001 6y ago
  In a word, yes. There are plenty of smart people thinking about distribution management systems to control loads, manage local generation (household PV) and even use electric vehicles as an energy store to power the during periods of peak demand. Supply authorities in my corner of the world (Australia) are planning this shift, but I can’t speak to the situation in other regions. https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/06/future-grid-for-distributed-energy.pdf https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/06/future-grid-for-distribu...
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Are these upgrades even in the planning phase? I'm sure there are plenty of plans: the question is whether the general public is willing to deal with the cost. PG&E (allegedly) delays upgrades: * https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-31/pge-rebuts-wall-street-journal-story-about-power-line-upgrades https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-31/pge-rebuts... But this was supposedly allowed by (elected) regulators because they didn't want blowback from the electorate about larger bills: * https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-caused-over-400-fires-in-2018-where-were-the-regulators-11575834385 https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-caused-over-400-fires-in-2...
- pstuart 6y ago
  Air conditioning should be powered on site when possible. In a different timeline we would have programs for zero interest loans for solar power installations with payments managed through the power company (trading paying for power to paying for the loan to generate the power).
scarface74 6y ago
Why is this only happening in California?
- nemo44x 6y ago
  It’s a huge state with a lot of people with a massive heatwave covering a lot of it. It’s easy to rag on California lately but it’s still American’s living there and I feel bad for them.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    What makes California different than Texas? I don’t have a dog in the fight, I live on the east coast.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Texas generates more power than it needs (which is good because I seem to recall they also aren't tied to grids of neighboring states?). California doesn't. California banks on the probability that it can import power from Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona, and that all those states won't have one big correlated, synchronized demand peak, which of course is just stochastic. Sometimes you get the worst case.
      - CWuestefeld 6y ago
        Texas generates more power than it needs And despite whatever stereotypes you might have about Texas, it produces more power from renewable sources (beside hydro) than any other state in America, by a pretty fair margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...
        nemo44x 6y ago
        Texas seems to get hate for some reason but everyone I know that lives there (and many have moved from California) love it. I’ve been many times and I haven’t found much to dislike other than I prefer the structure of East Coast cities and towns, which is a personal preference. Texas is affordable, welcoming, and plays to its strengths. It seems like the land of opportunity today and it makes sense it is growing so fast. It seems like I hear jealousy about it in terms of it being a moderate to slightly conservative state overall.
tibbydudeza 6y ago
We been having load shedding for a few years now in South Africa due to tender corruption , aging and badly maintained coal fired fleet and the late commissioning of new power stations. Outages are at least planned and last about 2 and half hours every day for each area so we learned to cope plan our lives around it. Solar power hot water/gas cooking appliance/DC battery backup system for the Fibre OTN box and Wireless router and wireless AP and I can continue to work.
fanf2 6y ago
Don't last year's blackouts count? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/pge-rebuked-over-imposing-blackouts-in-california-to-reduce-fire-risk.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/pge-rebuked-over-imposing-bl...
- apsec112 6y ago
  Those were for fire safety, not because of excess load on the electrical grid.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    They were a tactic in a political battle. Saying they were "for fire safety" is stretching things.
    - cj 6y ago
      Wikipedia attributes the outages to fire prevention: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_California_power_shutoffs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_California_power_shutof... Can you provide a source for your viewpoint?
  - LeoPanthera 6y ago
    They were also exclusive to PG&E, and not statewide.
aaomidi 6y ago
Lol and I made fun of my country when this happened in Iran. Good job America.
- emilsedgh 6y ago
  When we didn't have power in Iran for 2 hours I used to think it's such an atrocity. It never happened for more than 5-6 hours though. I had power outage in LA for ~17 hours last month.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Yep! Same here. This is hilariously bad for a state like California. I wonder why I got downvoted.
    - electriclove 6y ago
      Tribes.. everything is red/blue, white/black, us/them.. you can't say anything without really pissing off some group.. so disappointing
- dmode 6y ago
  I don’t know what’s the big deal is. A couple hours of outage for a few households for once a decade event is not reflection of anything
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    It's not a big deal that we're getting less stable in electricity?
eigenvector 6y ago
What happened? The power grid must not only have sufficient generation capacity to match load, it needs some extra - called spinning or operating reserve. This ensures security - the characteristic where the grid is resilient to any single failure. Because load is not normally controlled (i.e. people can turn loads on and off without permission from the system operator), the system needs to be able to respond to that as well as contingencies like a line or generator trip. Imagine, for instance, that you're fully maxed out on generation with no reserve, and one generator trips offline. You will now need to trigger emergency load shedding very, very rapidly (within seconds) to arrest frequency decline and a cascading, wide-area outage. So you carry a margin of operating or spinning reserve, essentially generation that is available to very quickly ramp its output up or down in response to system conditions. When that margin starts to get eaten away by lack of capacity, you can do controlled load shedding, where you remove loads that have been already marked as low-priority to get some of your margin back. By doing this, you can avoid uncontrolled load shedding, which would have worse consequences. Official notice from CAISO: ---------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: 202002424 POSTED: 2020-08-14 18:38:00 ---------------------------------------------------------------- CAISO Grid STAGE 3 System Emergency Notice [202002424] The California ISO hereby issues a CAISO Grid Stage 3 System Emergency Notice effective 08/14/2020 at 18:36 through 08/14/2020 at 23:59. Reason: California ISO is Reserve Deficient. Refer to the ISO System Emergency Fact Sheet (http://www.caiso.com/Documents/SystemAlertsWarningsandEmergenciesFactSheet.pdf http://www.caiso.com/Documents/SystemAlertsWarningsandEmerge...) for additional detail. The ISO requires load curtailments, use of Interruptible Loads* and requests Out-of-Market (OOM) and Emergency Energy from all available sources. Maximum conservation efforts are requested. Spinning Reserves have depleted or are forecast to deplete to levels below minimum requirements. Load curtailments are required and will continue until such time as sufficient Spinning Reserves are available. Monitor system conditions on Today's Outlook (http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx) and check with local electric utilities for additional information. http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/AWENoticeLog.aspx http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/AWENoticeL...
malchow 6y ago
The grid is slowly being decentralized using grid-agnostic solar and storage. (I.e., solar power that stays going even when the grid drops off.) A computer network -- not a large infrastructure project -- is likely to be the solution.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Almost nobody has solar power that can serve through a grid outage, so emphasis on "slowly".
  - malchow 6y ago
    That's true. But grid-forming tech began shipping this summer: https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/07/enphase-begins-shipping-encharge-storage-systems-to-u-s-customers/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/07/enphase-begins...
- dehrmann 6y ago
  The only solution is having enough generation and storage capacity for p999 or p9999 events. The grid ends up being beneficial because you can pool resources rather than balkanizing them. Your Tesla Powerwall can probably keep your AC running for a couple of hours, but it costs $7,600. We're better off using economies of scale to our advantage.
perfunctory 6y ago
This is only going to get worse. Better get used to it. Also, go fix the climate crisis.
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  Build some nuclear power stations and you'll fix both. While you're at it build a breeder reactor and feed it with stored nuclear waste to both produce new fuel for other stations and reduce the amount of radioactive waste which needs to be stored as well as the period for which it needs to be stored.
  - perfunctory 6y ago
    I am building a breeder reactor in my backyard right now.
    - Yetanfou 6y ago
      Aren't you mistaking your compost heap for what I described here?
bradly 6y ago
This my be a dumb question, but if I have solar (no power wall or batteries) will I still have power during a rolling blackout?
- jedberg 6y ago
  It depends on how your system is hooked up. Some will cut out when the line power drops off, as a way of protecting line workers who might be working on what they think is a unenergized line, so they aren't surprised by the power your system puts on the line. Others are designed with an automatic shunt that will still allow you to draw power as long as you are generating it. And some require you to manually flip a switch.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  You'd know if you had it, because it's an expensive design option that's very rare. If you didn't ask for and pay for it, you don't have it.
- guerby 6y ago
  Some solar inverters can do it without batteries. But if a cloud passes over your panels you might get near zero watt.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Considering that yesterday's outage began at ~18:45, rooftop solar would have been generating 0-20% of its nameplate capacity.
jeffbee 6y ago
The article doesn't give a lot of details. The grid shed ~1000 MW of load and delivered ~46000 MW, so the outage was in proportion about 2%. Not great but it puts events in perspective. If you're concerned about this, don't charge your Tesla before 10pm.
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  I lost power but don’t have a Tesla. Your tip doesn’t help me.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    If you had one, your individual choice would not prevent your particular electric service from going out, so no big deal. It would be neat if the utilities had the ability to selectively shed car chargers, clothes dryers, and suchlike loads. I imagine they have to make the choice at a much more coarse level, like at a distribution substation.
    - mperham 6y ago
      V2G is very much designed for this scenario: electric cars effectively become a very large battery farm for the grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid
    - khuey 6y ago
      Residential air conditioners are usually the largest "peaky" electrical demand and most utilities have a program where they'll give you discounts in exchange for being able to remotely turn off your air conditioner occasionally.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > It would be neat if the utilities had the ability to selectively shed car chargers, clothes dryers, and suchlike They have the capacity, though it's only used for AC reduction AFAIK: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy-money/savings-solutions-and-rebates/smart-ac/smart-ac.page?WT.mc_id=Vanity_smartac https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy-money/savi...
dmode 6y ago
I live in a suburb of the Bay Area where temperatures are usually in 70s and 80s. Suddenly it is going to be 100 for 5 day straight. I have never seen anything like this
- jlmorton 6y ago
  What? This happens every year - always.
  - dmode 6y ago
    100 for this long ? Last year the highest we got was 90s for a couple of days. I have never experienced 100 degree weather here on 12 years of living here. And that too for days
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - gdubs 6y ago
      Which part of the bay? We lived in Los Altos for 6 years and when we first arrived old-timers said the heat was unusual. Every summer after had crazy heatwaves. A couple were so bad I was concerned about my infant, in our old house with no central air and terrible insulation.
- diogenescynic 6y ago
  Get a window air conditioner or portable air conditioner... makes life much bearable for those days.
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    That hardly works if there is no power :)
- moultano 6y ago
  And what's worse is that all the buildings are built assuming highs in the 80s that were typical 40 years ago, and zoning and permitting makes them uneconomical to replace.
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strangeloops85 6y ago
Worth noting: This does not affect many of the major municipal utilities, including SMUD in Sacramento, LADWP in LA, and Silicon Valley Power in Santa Clara because many have their own generating capacity and are also in alternate distribution arrangements. The investor-owned utilities don't have much direct generating capacity anymore and rely on CAISO, and well, that has its limits. Also pretty sure that customers of the municipal utilities pay less than PGE/ SCE customers. For example, this is why Santa Clara has so many data centers (municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power). Really unclear what value investor-owned utilities provide us - the municipal utilities in general seem way better.
- chaostheory 6y ago
  I’m guessing it shields local government from lawsuits. You’re right though, better alternatives to an investor owned utility would be a co-op or non-profit.
rasz 6y ago
Richest state of the richest country (by GDP) on the planet folks!
- iaw 6y ago
  Infrastructure is 50+ year investment and everywhere in the country has been slacking in development. Given the growth of the bay area and the increase in hot weather due to global climate change the system gets exacerbated because it's going out of spec. The fact that it has been as robust (in delivery, not hazard) as it has for the last 20 years is a testament to its strength.
sunstone 6y ago
The (small) silver lining is that these blackouts are happening in the evening which suggests that solar is holding up the grid during the day when air conditioners are at max. In the evening though AC is still on but solar is absent. Tesla's megapack batteries might have found a niche market.

125 points by stx 6y ago

The entire U.S. is feeling more and more like a third-world country. Corrupt government. Unreliable and deteriorating infrastructure. Extreme poverty (I recently learned that 30% of houses on Indian reservations don't have running water). Marginalization or even outright vilification of intellectuals. 75 years ago we saved the world from fascism. Who is going to save us from ourselves? :-(

vmception 6y ago
Starting? Either that was an attempt to not bruise the egos of patriots, or you just haven't been paying attention. Here is how these conversations go: Someone will make comparisons to the worst countries in the world to rationalize why America is number 1 in a race nobody even entered into. Instead of comparing it to 21st century developed nations. Rinse, repeat. Follow by: Could those developed countries have made those advances without the US subsidizing and helping de-risk the cost of their defense? Shrug Does it makes sense for the US to allocate budget towards said defense while its domestic infrastructure flails? Shrug Does the structure of the US contribute to this separation of foreign policy and domestic policy? With the broke states responsible for and failing at handling their own affairs, with the well funded Federal Government maintaining consensus by not getting into state affairs, forcing it to use its budget abroad on pet projects? Shrug Does an actual budget really matter when the world has an infinite demand for dollars meaning that the US really could fund any domestic project and its external hegemony? Shrug Are those developed countries' taxes really that high in comparison to what everyone in the US pays for anyway? Which country specifically? In many cases where high populations of Americans actually live, no it is very equivalent and Americans get the short end of the stick. Shrug.
- lisper 6y ago
  > Starting? Fixed.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Amen
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The issue here isn't that the California power grid has deteriorated, but that there's an extraordinary heat wave. I don't think it's fair to tie this into a grand decline narrative.
- Majromax 6y ago
  A robust infrastructure should be able to handle surge loads. This isn't an extraordinary heat wave after some other natural disaster has directly damaged the power grid; it's that the grid as designed and built can't handle this load. It's hardly conclusive for a "grand decline" narrative, of course, since this is just one anecdote for an entire society.
  - khuey 6y ago
    Do we really need to pay for an electric grid that can handle a once every 20 year load?
    - pwarner 6y ago
      That's the real question. Even 1 in 10 year load, do you build for it or just live with it? It's just a $ decision.
    - manquer 6y ago
      Grid yes , maybe not the power plants themselves. Typically in robust networks you have good interconnects to neighbours you can purchase power from . Also robust grid which enables selling back to the grid would have helped, such extreme hot weather goes in hand with solar generation
      - khuey 6y ago
        The problem is not lack of grid capacity. California is capable of importing upwards of 11 GW[0] but there was only around 8 GW[1] available yesterday because it's hot in neighboring states like Oregon too. The load shedding occurred around 8-10pm after the sun has gone down (but while it's still quite hot) so more solar wouldn't help much. [0] http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx and select 9/13/2019 [1] Same as above but select 8/14/2020.
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refurb 6y ago
That's just your human brain succumbing to its recency bias. As someone who has been around for way too many decades, it was like this in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's. And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt). And your "save the world from fascism" happened at the same time most of the US was segregated.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  And inequality is up since the 70's, as are housing, health care and cost of living expenses, while wages have remained stagnant for nearly 50 years.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn’t tell you anything. My point was, the US is not falling apart. Or if it is, it’s always been falling apart. The current situation is not unique.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      > Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn’t tell you anything. I'm curious what this is supposed to tell you, then: > And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt).
      - refurb 6y ago
        That was a counterpoint to the OPs concern about corruption today in an attempt to convey that it’s not all that different now, not to argue it’s better now.
    - scarface74 6y ago
bhupy 6y ago
s/US/California. The US is decentralized (especially as it relates to electricity). Most of the rest of the Union is doing just fine.
cobookman 6y ago
You do realize that most 1st world countries have experienced a rolling black of some sort in the same time period. 1 rolling black out every 20 years isn't all that crazy. Would you rather we spend billions/trillions on infrastructure used for 3 days every 20 years?
- the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
  > You do realize that most 1st world countries have experienced a rolling black of some sort in the same time period. Do you have some numbers for that? The only load shedding I remember in Europe was done through turning off large consumers and they would typically do this on their side.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mpweiher 6y ago
  > most 1st world countries have experienced a rolling black out Name one? I've never experienced (or heard) of one in Germany, for example, during my lifetime. And of course it's not "rolling blackout", but "rolling blackouts", plural.
  - khuey 6y ago
    I don't know about most but it's certainly not unheard of in places with similar climates. https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/rolling-blackouts-ordered-as-adelaide-swelters-in-heatwave/news-story/13394f19db1ee94a59f4036fccdc1ba7 https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/rolling-bla...
  - baskire 6y ago
    Here’s two examples of power grid failures in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-raises-questions-over-germanys-power-grid/a-47730394 https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-raises-questions-over-...
deleted 6y ago
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chrisseaton 6y ago
> The entire U.S. is feeling more and more like a third-world country. Corrupt government. Unreliable and deteriorating infrastructure. Extreme poverty (I recently learned that 30% of houses on Indian reservations don't have running water). Marginalization or even outright vilification of intellectuals. Americans have been saying this about their own country for decades. Many people see the worst in their own. And if anything I think the outlook was more pessimistic than now in the 80s, and even more than that in the 70s. Realistically, for all its faults, the US is still where I'd aspire to live for best opportunity and quality of life if I couldn't live in my home country for some reason.
- moojd 6y ago
  It's a manifestation of our inner American Exceptionalism. We only have the ability to see our country as "exceptionally good" or "exceptionally bad"
- vmception 6y ago
  > if I couldn't live in my home country for some reason. Which is why America is populated by extremes. Almost everyone here was either kicked out of or lacked consensus with the prevailing, fairly benign version of whatever was practiced where they came from.
lostlogin 6y ago
> 75 years ago we saved the world from fascism. Who is going to save us from ourselves? :-( It was mainly Russia who did that. The US effort may well have saved Europe from Communism though.
- encom 6y ago
  Thanks for that, btw.
- refurb 6y ago
  Russia saved the world from fascism and replaced it with another authoritative system. Not sure I’d call that “saved”.
- reddog 6y ago
  Ask your friends from the Czech Republic or Hungary or Lithuania about how they were “saved” by Russia.
- api 6y ago
  The USSR saved the world from the Nazis and then the US saved the world from the USSR. I like that. Now who will save the world from the lawless international corporatist panopticon birthed from America? Aliens? History seems like "she swallowed a spider to eat the fly..."
- ghufran_syed 6y ago
  The Russians may have had a little help: "Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said after the end of WWII. "We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with." https://www.rbth.com/defence/2016/03/14/lend-lease-how-american-supplies-aided-the-ussr-in-its-darkest-hour_575559 https://www.rbth.com/defence/2016/03/14/lend-lease-how-ameri...
TedShiller 6y ago
The Indian reservation part is true. Most Americans have never set foot in one. If you want to see what it's like, I recommend driving through the South Dakota reservations. But be prepared for a shock of sadness. They feel like different countries entirely. It has been great to see the support in recent months for equality among all races in the US. But I wish we would also see more explicit support for Native Americans, for their suffering and their genocide. They are a group that has been exploited, victimized, and stolen from as much as any other group in America.
jazzyjackson 6y ago
People like to dismiss this by pointing to the shiny parts of America, but every city in the world has good and bad neighborhoods. The surprising thing about corrupt countries is the wealth inequality -- the political class is full of grifters who pocket the contracting fees and the citizens who are supposed to be recipients of government services are wondering why the highway has been under construction for the last 5 years. Or the bullet train in California. Billions of dollars are disappearing with barely a track bed to show for it. I'll quote this NYT piece. "“Approximately two dozen other countries have found H.S.R. feasible, including Uzbekistan,” she said, referring to high-speed rail. “And there is no reason it can’t be done here.”" The government collects and spends trillions of dollars, and most of that is wealth transfer to contractors, much less value reaches the ground, where much of the country is dotted with emptied out farm towns and improvised shelters. If you don't believe America looks the way some see it, take a cross country train, you go through everybody's back yard that way. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-28/california-redirects-funds-high-speed-rail-project https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-28/californ...
- DuskStar 6y ago
  Funnily enough, the biggest obstacle to HSR in the US is all the restrictions we've put in place to protect people from corrupt or otherwise authoritarian officials. Uzbekistan doesn't have to worry about environmental impact reports or people complaining that the rail line will hurt their property values...
blhack 6y ago
I would highly encourage you to reassess where you are getting your information about the world if you genuinely believe this. I’m seeing this sentiment expressed more and more, and it seriously concerns me. If you look at the data, almost any data which compares the US to other countries, you’ll see that the US is at or near the top. This isn’t blind patriotism. Seriously if you are feeling like the US is becoming a “3rd world country” see if you can quantify it in some way. What is deteriorating, and how does that compare to other places in the world?
- lisper 6y ago
  > I would highly encourage you to reassess where you are getting your information about the world if you genuinely believe this. I have traveled extensively throughout the world and my assessment was based on my personal experience. But... > If you look at the data, almost any data which compares the US to other countries, you’ll see that the US is at or near the top. Not so. The U.S. is a peer to Serbia in infant mortality [1]. It is behind India and Lithuania in terms political freedom and civil liberties (as rated by freedomhouse [2] [3]) and a peer to Chile in terms of economic freedom [4] and government corruption [5]. The U.S. ranks 38th in math and 24th in science education. And an anecdotal but IMHO significant data point: I have lived in the U.S. for fifty years. I have NEVER had a piece of U.S. mail go missing, until this year, when I have had THREE checks vanish into the cosmic void. (The fact that paper checks are even still a thing here is a testament to how far behind we have fallen.) --- [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mortality-rate-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mo... [2] https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=asc&order=Political%20Rights https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort... [3] https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=asc&order=Civil%20Liberties https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_... [5] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-rank [6] https://parentology.com/stem-education-statistics-2019-how-the-u-s-ranks/ https://parentology.com/stem-education-statistics-2019-how-t...
  - 6y ago
jrobn 6y ago
America as an ideal has failed and anyone who wants to come here should think twice. Every country has their problems, but years of neglect and backwards thinking on social, civic, and cultural “brick work” has led to this. The civil rights movement was never carried through. The Cold War mentality of military spending on the ever present “boggieman” wasted tens of trillions of dollars of GDP. The vilification of taxes, civic and social programs while also the decades long trend of funneling money to the top. The dirty politics of special interests, limited access, lobbying and un-checked money in politics. The widening wealth gap in both fiscal and quality of living. The gutting and simplification of the educational system to focus on math and sciences instead of raising well-rounded emotionally intelligent young humans. The belief that shoehorning everyone into a college education and the crippling debt that comes with it. The complete lack of national infrastructural investment since the 1950s. All of this leads to disillusionment. Especially when generations have grown up being fed this believe of “not in america”. Disillusionment leads to desperation, leads to anger, and hate, and scapegoating, to fake “christian” mega churches were people are scamed out of not only their money but the last tatters of their divinity. Technology like the internet mixed with stunted critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence, and compassion form into a deadly cocktail that breeds and spreads conspiracy theories and delusions fed to us by our enemies directly into our living rooms, on cable television, on our computers, and into our cellphones. Very little of it vetted or touched by anyone. To be shared and re-shared on Facebook in fear to our friends. And all of this wasted human potential at the cost of the only thing we all share. The Earth. Donald Trump isn’t the problem. He’s a symptom.
trizic 6y ago
Maybe it just isn't possible with such a large population. On the other hand, US gives you the opportunity to become filthy rich and it probably helps that you have such a large population to use to your advantage (whether it be labor or customers).
dmode 6y ago
Indian reservations are truly in horrific condition. I have spent many days in Navajo nation during my time in Arizona and it reminds of developing countries

cipher_system 6y ago

I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.

spaetzleesser 6y ago
Agreed. Instead of using cheap money to drive up asset prices it would be nice if it actually got used for something useful.
- roughly 6y ago
  This is because one of our two political parties doesn’t believe that government spending should exist, and is iffy about the concept of government overall. Because of that, the only body able to respond to crises is the Federal Reserve, and the only lever they have is the money supply. We’ve had multiple trillion dollars worth of infrastructure repairs we need to do and nearly sub-zero borrowing rates for the last decade, but the GOP has effectively blocked any efforts to enact any kind of actual fiscal policy. If any business out there’s leadership refused to take sub-zero rate loans to perform critical maintenance on their capital stock, they’d rightly be fired and probably sued.
  - donw 6y ago
    The GOP has no power in California, though, and that’s been true for over a decade.
    - mperham 6y ago
      California can't print more money, the Fed can.
      - CWuestefeld 6y ago
        The GOP has no power over the Fed, either.

0x402DF854 6y ago

Obligatory book recommendation: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33369264-blackout https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33369264-blackout This terrifying novel describes fragility of our society and its absolute dependence on power grids. Must read in my books

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
The more terrifying fact is that the scenario described in the novel has already partially happened in the real world. * New Clues Show How Russia’s Grid Hackers Aimed for Physical Destruction > Russian hackers planted a unique specimen of malware in the network of Ukraine's national grid operator, Ukrenergo. Just before midnight, they used it to open every circuit breaker in a transmission station north of Kyiv. The result was one of the most dramatic attacks in Russia's years-long cyberwar against its western neighbor. https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ukraine-cyberattack-power-grid-blackout-destruction/ https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ukraine-cyberattack-power...
bpfrh 6y ago
I read that book, it is good, there is a good presentation about how difficult it would be to do that in reality, based on the same source that the book used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjingj2473Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjingj2473Y The original is in german, the linked video is the english translation.

pwarner 6y ago

Isn't this just a $ decision? Do you build a power point that runs only for 4 hours every 10 years? Batteries may pencil out?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Even if you had the plants I'm not sure how you'd run them - it's not exactly an unskilled task.

edge17 6y ago

Strange reporting that people were "believed" to have been blacked out. We lost power yesterday in Sunnyvale from 5-9pm. Very interested in more info on the "hundreds of thousands" because it seems like the cuts were fairly limited. There was enough power to keep the fridge running but thats about it.

chaostheory 6y ago
Lost power in the north peninsula from 9pm-12am. A warning would have been nice. We signed up for notifications via text, and we didn’t receive any.
- edge17 6y ago
  Yup, same. No warning. I left the house in my AC car and went out for ice cream
  - jonny_eh 6y ago
    Discounted ice cream due to the power loss?
- jeffbee 6y ago
  PG&E isn't going to notify you because they aren't making the call. If you want notifications, install the CAISO mobile app, "ISO Today" on iOS. I got notifications from that app yesterday hours in advance of the outage.
lumost 6y ago
I find it strange that a town with multiple high-tech fortune 500's can't power itself. This begs several questions on adequate management of taxation at the local level, and corporate interest in their own community's ability to support them.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  US towns are generally not in the power business. In the Bay Area, areas are served by PG&E. One city (I believe Cupertino) has a competing utility. Note that both prioritize emergency services like hospitals over residential circuits or DCs. I live in the area, and I don't see a big deal over annual mid-summer blackouts. Though you should be able to get an SMS so you know when to leave your fridge and freezer closed.

edge17 6y ago

Where is all the load coming from? Aren't most of the office building (in the Bay Area) empty rightnow due to Covid?

0xffff2 6y ago
There's a heat wave up and down the entire western US. Everyone from San Diego to Seattle is at home running their A/C if they're lucky enough to have one.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  Not yet in Seattle, but maybe tomorrow? It is supposed to reach 97F.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 6y ago
As with other impacts of shutdown and quarantine, shifts in demand and consumption patterns can mean that infrastructure isn't able to supply electricity to where it's specifically needed. It's been pointed out that electricity is not storable --- it's less an energy store as with fuel and far more energy distribution as with a transmission or driveshaft, but with far more connections. Not only must the Grid make power available when it is needed, but it must do so where. Peak daytime demands in urban cores, offices, and factories is different from peak demands in residential exurbs, purely on distribution, even if quantity is comparable.
- Steltek 6y ago
  Residential solar once posed the opposite problem: generating power during the day in suburbs where it wasn't being consumed nor could it be transported to areas of high demand. If our current problem is higher daytime residential demand, maybe power companies can stop fighting residential solar initiatives now?

pwarner 6y ago

https://mobile.twitter.com/california_iso https://mobile.twitter.com/california_iso gives heads up on grid issues, stage 2 = grid at capacity, stage 3 = lights start going out for someone.

mmm_grayons 6y ago
How is the decision made as to who loses power first? Coolest area?

p1mrx 6y ago

We're going to need lots of power grid upgrades over the next few decades, for all the new air conditioning (climate change), and the electrification of heat and transportation (trying to avoid climate change.) Are these upgrades even in the planning phase? People will be hesitant to migrate away from fossil fuels if they can't trust the alternative.

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
3000000001 6y ago
In a word, yes. There are plenty of smart people thinking about distribution management systems to control loads, manage local generation (household PV) and even use electric vehicles as an energy store to power the during periods of peak demand. Supply authorities in my corner of the world (Australia) are planning this shift, but I can’t speak to the situation in other regions. https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/06/future-grid-for-distributed-energy.pdf https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/06/future-grid-for-distribu...
throw0101a 6y ago
> Are these upgrades even in the planning phase? I'm sure there are plenty of plans: the question is whether the general public is willing to deal with the cost. PG&E (allegedly) delays upgrades: * https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-31/pge-rebuts-wall-street-journal-story-about-power-line-upgrades https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-31/pge-rebuts... But this was supposedly allowed by (elected) regulators because they didn't want blowback from the electorate about larger bills: * https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-caused-over-400-fires-in-2018-where-were-the-regulators-11575834385 https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-caused-over-400-fires-in-2...
pstuart 6y ago
Air conditioning should be powered on site when possible. In a different timeline we would have programs for zero interest loans for solar power installations with payments managed through the power company (trading paying for power to paying for the loan to generate the power).

scarface74 6y ago

Why is this only happening in California?

nemo44x 6y ago
It’s a huge state with a lot of people with a massive heatwave covering a lot of it. It’s easy to rag on California lately but it’s still American’s living there and I feel bad for them.
- scarface74 6y ago
  What makes California different than Texas? I don’t have a dog in the fight, I live on the east coast.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Texas generates more power than it needs (which is good because I seem to recall they also aren't tied to grids of neighboring states?). California doesn't. California banks on the probability that it can import power from Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona, and that all those states won't have one big correlated, synchronized demand peak, which of course is just stochastic. Sometimes you get the worst case.
    - CWuestefeld 6y ago
      Texas generates more power than it needs And despite whatever stereotypes you might have about Texas, it produces more power from renewable sources (beside hydro) than any other state in America, by a pretty fair margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...
      - nemo44x 6y ago
        Texas seems to get hate for some reason but everyone I know that lives there (and many have moved from California) love it. I’ve been many times and I haven’t found much to dislike other than I prefer the structure of East Coast cities and towns, which is a personal preference. Texas is affordable, welcoming, and plays to its strengths. It seems like the land of opportunity today and it makes sense it is growing so fast. It seems like I hear jealousy about it in terms of it being a moderate to slightly conservative state overall.

tibbydudeza 6y ago

We been having load shedding for a few years now in South Africa due to tender corruption , aging and badly maintained coal fired fleet and the late commissioning of new power stations. Outages are at least planned and last about 2 and half hours every day for each area so we learned to cope plan our lives around it. Solar power hot water/gas cooking appliance/DC battery backup system for the Fibre OTN box and Wireless router and wireless AP and I can continue to work.

fanf2 6y ago

Don't last year's blackouts count? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/pge-rebuked-over-imposing-blackouts-in-california-to-reduce-fire-risk.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/pge-rebuked-over-imposing-bl...

apsec112 6y ago
Those were for fire safety, not because of excess load on the electrical grid.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  They were a tactic in a political battle. Saying they were "for fire safety" is stretching things.
  - cj 6y ago
    Wikipedia attributes the outages to fire prevention: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_California_power_shutoffs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_California_power_shutof... Can you provide a source for your viewpoint?
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  They were also exclusive to PG&E, and not statewide.

aaomidi 6y ago

Lol and I made fun of my country when this happened in Iran. Good job America.

emilsedgh 6y ago
When we didn't have power in Iran for 2 hours I used to think it's such an atrocity. It never happened for more than 5-6 hours though. I had power outage in LA for ~17 hours last month.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Yep! Same here. This is hilariously bad for a state like California. I wonder why I got downvoted.
  - electriclove 6y ago
    Tribes.. everything is red/blue, white/black, us/them.. you can't say anything without really pissing off some group.. so disappointing
dmode 6y ago
I don’t know what’s the big deal is. A couple hours of outage for a few households for once a decade event is not reflection of anything
- aaomidi 6y ago
  It's not a big deal that we're getting less stable in electricity?

eigenvector 6y ago

What happened? The power grid must not only have sufficient generation capacity to match load, it needs some extra - called spinning or operating reserve. This ensures security - the characteristic where the grid is resilient to any single failure. Because load is not normally controlled (i.e. people can turn loads on and off without permission from the system operator), the system needs to be able to respond to that as well as contingencies like a line or generator trip. Imagine, for instance, that you're fully maxed out on generation with no reserve, and one generator trips offline. You will now need to trigger emergency load shedding very, very rapidly (within seconds) to arrest frequency decline and a cascading, wide-area outage. So you carry a margin of operating or spinning reserve, essentially generation that is available to very quickly ramp its output up or down in response to system conditions. When that margin starts to get eaten away by lack of capacity, you can do controlled load shedding, where you remove loads that have been already marked as low-priority to get some of your margin back. By doing this, you can avoid uncontrolled load shedding, which would have worse consequences. Official notice from CAISO: ---------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: 202002424 POSTED: 2020-08-14 18:38:00 ---------------------------------------------------------------- CAISO Grid STAGE 3 System Emergency Notice [202002424] The California ISO hereby issues a CAISO Grid Stage 3 System Emergency Notice effective 08/14/2020 at 18:36 through 08/14/2020 at 23:59. Reason: California ISO is Reserve Deficient. Refer to the ISO System Emergency Fact Sheet (http://www.caiso.com/Documents/SystemAlertsWarningsandEmergenciesFactSheet.pdf http://www.caiso.com/Documents/SystemAlertsWarningsandEmerge...) for additional detail. The ISO requires load curtailments, use of Interruptible Loads* and requests Out-of-Market (OOM) and Emergency Energy from all available sources. Maximum conservation efforts are requested. Spinning Reserves have depleted or are forecast to deplete to levels below minimum requirements. Load curtailments are required and will continue until such time as sufficient Spinning Reserves are available. Monitor system conditions on Today's Outlook (http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx) and check with local electric utilities for additional information. http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/AWENoticeLog.aspx http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/AWENoticeL...

malchow 6y ago

The grid is slowly being decentralized using grid-agnostic solar and storage. (I.e., solar power that stays going even when the grid drops off.) A computer network -- not a large infrastructure project -- is likely to be the solution.

jeffbee 6y ago
Almost nobody has solar power that can serve through a grid outage, so emphasis on "slowly".
- malchow 6y ago
  That's true. But grid-forming tech began shipping this summer: https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/07/enphase-begins-shipping-encharge-storage-systems-to-u-s-customers/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/07/enphase-begins...
dehrmann 6y ago
The only solution is having enough generation and storage capacity for p999 or p9999 events. The grid ends up being beneficial because you can pool resources rather than balkanizing them. Your Tesla Powerwall can probably keep your AC running for a couple of hours, but it costs $7,600. We're better off using economies of scale to our advantage.

perfunctory 6y ago

This is only going to get worse. Better get used to it. Also, go fix the climate crisis.

Yetanfou 6y ago
Build some nuclear power stations and you'll fix both. While you're at it build a breeder reactor and feed it with stored nuclear waste to both produce new fuel for other stations and reduce the amount of radioactive waste which needs to be stored as well as the period for which it needs to be stored.
- perfunctory 6y ago
  I am building a breeder reactor in my backyard right now.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    Aren't you mistaking your compost heap for what I described here?

bradly 6y ago

This my be a dumb question, but if I have solar (no power wall or batteries) will I still have power during a rolling blackout?

jedberg 6y ago
It depends on how your system is hooked up. Some will cut out when the line power drops off, as a way of protecting line workers who might be working on what they think is a unenergized line, so they aren't surprised by the power your system puts on the line. Others are designed with an automatic shunt that will still allow you to draw power as long as you are generating it. And some require you to manually flip a switch.
jeffbee 6y ago
You'd know if you had it, because it's an expensive design option that's very rare. If you didn't ask for and pay for it, you don't have it.
guerby 6y ago
Some solar inverters can do it without batteries. But if a cloud passes over your panels you might get near zero watt.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Considering that yesterday's outage began at ~18:45, rooftop solar would have been generating 0-20% of its nameplate capacity.

jeffbee 6y ago

The article doesn't give a lot of details. The grid shed ~1000 MW of load and delivered ~46000 MW, so the outage was in proportion about 2%. Not great but it puts events in perspective. If you're concerned about this, don't charge your Tesla before 10pm.

jonny_eh 6y ago
I lost power but don’t have a Tesla. Your tip doesn’t help me.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  If you had one, your individual choice would not prevent your particular electric service from going out, so no big deal. It would be neat if the utilities had the ability to selectively shed car chargers, clothes dryers, and suchlike loads. I imagine they have to make the choice at a much more coarse level, like at a distribution substation.
  - mperham 6y ago
    V2G is very much designed for this scenario: electric cars effectively become a very large battery farm for the grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid
  - khuey 6y ago
    Residential air conditioners are usually the largest "peaky" electrical demand and most utilities have a program where they'll give you discounts in exchange for being able to remotely turn off your air conditioner occasionally.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > It would be neat if the utilities had the ability to selectively shed car chargers, clothes dryers, and suchlike They have the capacity, though it's only used for AC reduction AFAIK: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy-money/savings-solutions-and-rebates/smart-ac/smart-ac.page?WT.mc_id=Vanity_smartac https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy-money/savi...

dmode 6y ago

I live in a suburb of the Bay Area where temperatures are usually in 70s and 80s. Suddenly it is going to be 100 for 5 day straight. I have never seen anything like this

jlmorton 6y ago
What? This happens every year - always.
- dmode 6y ago
  100 for this long ? Last year the highest we got was 90s for a couple of days. I have never experienced 100 degree weather here on 12 years of living here. And that too for days
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - gdubs 6y ago
    Which part of the bay? We lived in Los Altos for 6 years and when we first arrived old-timers said the heat was unusual. Every summer after had crazy heatwaves. A couple were so bad I was concerned about my infant, in our old house with no central air and terrible insulation.
diogenescynic 6y ago
Get a window air conditioner or portable air conditioner... makes life much bearable for those days.
- rabidrat 6y ago
  That hardly works if there is no power :)
moultano 6y ago
And what's worse is that all the buildings are built assuming highs in the 80s that were typical 40 years ago, and zoning and permitting makes them uneconomical to replace.

deleted 6y ago

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strangeloops85 6y ago

Worth noting: This does not affect many of the major municipal utilities, including SMUD in Sacramento, LADWP in LA, and Silicon Valley Power in Santa Clara because many have their own generating capacity and are also in alternate distribution arrangements. The investor-owned utilities don't have much direct generating capacity anymore and rely on CAISO, and well, that has its limits. Also pretty sure that customers of the municipal utilities pay less than PGE/ SCE customers. For example, this is why Santa Clara has so many data centers (municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power). Really unclear what value investor-owned utilities provide us - the municipal utilities in general seem way better.

chaostheory 6y ago
I’m guessing it shields local government from lawsuits. You’re right though, better alternatives to an investor owned utility would be a co-op or non-profit.

rasz 6y ago

Richest state of the richest country (by GDP) on the planet folks!

iaw 6y ago
Infrastructure is 50+ year investment and everywhere in the country has been slacking in development. Given the growth of the bay area and the increase in hot weather due to global climate change the system gets exacerbated because it's going out of spec. The fact that it has been as robust (in delivery, not hazard) as it has for the last 20 years is a testament to its strength.

sunstone 6y ago

The (small) silver lining is that these blackouts are happening in the evening which suggests that solar is holding up the grid during the day when air conditioners are at max. In the evening though AC is still on but solar is absent. Tesla's megapack batteries might have found a niche market.