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Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

• spiritplumber 6y ago
  Wasn't this the B plot of the second Batman movie from the early 90s?
• nimbius 6y ago
  as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote monitoring capability beyond whats detected at the line. Operators tend to baby these stations intentionally as their failure could spark massive outages across the grid (again, due to older design considerations) Now this part might get a little political, but these substations/transfer depots/etc... arent just old because the outage would hit a lot of customers at once, but because NIMBY groups frequently oppose building or augmenting existing substations. Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict.
  • Scoundreller 6y ago
    Not just substations, but the conductors themselves. The more current you run through a line on a hot, non-breezy and sunny day, the more it sags. Which leads to more resistance, which leads to hotter lines, more sagging. It’s a positive feedback cycle.
    • ISL 6y ago
      How does line-sag lead to increased resistance? My understanding is that the mean-free-path of conduction electrons in even OFHC copper is quite short -- scattering on impurities is the dominant loss mechanism, not the boundaries of the conductor. Is the theory advanced above that the morphology of the wire matters, or is there another mechanism at work?
      • etimberg 6y ago
        The resistance is not constant and is in fact a function of temperature [0]. Line sag is a proxy measurement for line temperature, since things expand as they heat up. From [1], most materials have positive alpha coefficients so the resistance increases with temperature. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conuctivity#Temperature_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con... 1. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-12/temperature-coefficient-resistance/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chp...
        • ISL 6y ago
          The statement referred to heating driving sagging, which increased resistance. The increase of resistance with temperature is well-known -- I was curious if there is some effect that is directly related to the wire sag (changing morphology, somehow-altered surface area/skin-depth, changing kinks at the connections, some subtlety with increased length (cross-sectional area also increases), etc..).
          • Scoundreller 6y ago
            My thought is that after each expansion/contraction cycle, contraction is never exactly back to its previous state. Like bending a piece of metal back and forth, it weakens each time.
          • hanniabu 6y ago
            Theoretically I would thing the sag itself should increase resistance since resistance increases with both length and smaller wire diameter. When the line lengthens the diameter should decrease (similar to stretching a piece of gum or putty).
            • leni536 6y ago
              I don't think it should. Heat expansion should slightly increase the diameter.
  • aleksandrm 6y ago
    > its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.
    • genericone 6y ago
      Plenty of businesses are still open, and AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Maybe not at human comfort levels, but they still need to run them for the whole building.
      • war1025 6y ago
        > AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Serious question: How was this handled in pre-AC times? Is it just an issue because buildings are much better sealed than they used to be, or is there more to it than that?
        • genericone 6y ago
          Building design has changed tremendously since the introduction of AC, the number of usable windows and ceiling overhead has drastically decreased in those regions traditionally needing them.
        • nanomonkey 6y ago
          Older, less insulated buildings, breathe better. The more your home "breathes" the more it transfers heat and humidity to the outside, which defeats most insulation, unless the breathing is done though a heat exchange.
          • nanomonkey 6y ago
            As an update, as I'm getting a bunch of down votes for some reason (please comment!). Newer homes and buildings have a vapor barrier beneath the outside cladding. This article on the Perfect Wall [0], explains the benefits and options. Older houses, like the Victorian that I live in, didn't have modern insulation, which can deteriorate if it gets wet, so they were made to breathe, so that any moisture that got into the wall could be removed through air movement. Not to mention that fireplaces required a constant stream of new air to replace that which is pulled up through the chimney. [0][https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-the-perfect-wall https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...]
  • dtwatljfk 6y ago
    > but because NIMBY groups frequently oppose building or augmenting existing substations. Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Can you elaborate? A substation is about to start construction just across the (narrow) street from my child's elementary school.
    • eggsnbacon1 6y ago
      the em waves produced by substations induce fear of decreasing home values via an unknown mechanism.
    • EdwardDiego 6y ago
      I used to work in the contact centre for my country's radio spectrum regulators, we'd get numerous phone calls from people who were terrified of or complaining about the "radiation" part of "electromagnetic radiation" from power equipment or celltowers or radio transmitters. I'd say 1/3 were reassured by my explanation of why non-ionising radiation isn't going to harm your unborn child/give you cancer[1], 1/3 decided I was a lying tool of the Establishment and They Knew The Truth, and the last 1/3 had a genuine mental illness - "No you don't understand, the Prime Minister has authorised the Police to monitor my TV viewing using radio waves and it's giving my family cancer". [1]Unless you're climbing a transmitter tower and exposing your womb to a focused microwave beam at a very close range for a substantial period, then the heating effect probably isn't going to be doing good things.
      • giantrobot 6y ago
        > Unless you're climbing a transmitter tower and exposing your womb to a focused microwave beam at a very close range for a substantial period, then the heating effect probably isn't going to be doing good things. That's exactly what I'd expect from a lying tool of the Establishment.
    • amluto 6y ago
      If I were in your position, I would ask (privately, to avoid unnecessarily freaking everyone out) what their limits on stray voltage and stray current are outside the substation and what they do to control and monitor it. 60 Hz radiation doesn’t seem like a credible risk at all to me. 60 Hz conducted emissions, on the other hand, can very easily kill you — imagine crawling in hands and knees two feet from a downed powerline. I would like to imagine that regulators and utilities have this under control, but making some effort to verify this could be reasonable. (49 states permit utilities utilities to ground a current carrying overhead wire at utility poles, resulting in parallel currents in the ground. I’m not aware of this being a documented hazard to people, but it’s a documented problem for cattle. CA is the exception.)
  • pc86 6y ago
    > Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level. Serious question, why is the answer to this not a slightly-but-not-much-more-polite version of "That's ridiculous, be quiet." and moving forward?
    • toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Because the representatives with authority will get voted out by these folks. You have to dance around them, or find technical mitigations to the silliness (substation facades, suboptimal siting, more expensive underground transmission, etc). It's why you're seeing a rapid uptake in battery storage by consumers in California; it's a hack around regulatory and utility failures (and you get a federal tax credit if it charges primarily from your rooftop solar, which is mandatory on new CA residential construction). It is ridiculous, and people who are ridiculous must be negotiated with (unfortunately!). I don't know what the solution is besides applying constant pressure in the appropriate direction. Disclosure: This information comes from my own research, as well as first hand accounts from electrical linemen friends in NorCal upgrading infrastructure.
      • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        At what point is it ok to throw in the towel and say "this is just a city/state reaping what they sow". Sure there's people who want to do things right but as evidenced by a result they're a small enough minority that their voice doesn't matter. It's not like there's lobbyists from BigWildfire(TM) distorting things. The purpose of a system is what it does.
        • toomuchtodo 6y ago
          Every time I think we’re there, it turns out we’re not yet there. I don’t know.
    • floatingatoll 6y ago
      The US legal system allows a great many delaying tactics if you can afford filing fees and base your case on statements that cannot be proven with certainty. The legal system is often set up to require either certain proof or expensive multi-year reviews to overcome such objections, and they are used with great success by coordinated groups of NIMBY folks. Laws could be passed to sidestep all of this and support infrastructure growth, but those laws would trigger the same attacks from coordinated groups NIMBY, who happen to often be wealthy single-family homeowners, and thus more often than their competition have captive lawmakers to resist any effort they disapprove of.
  • jessaustin 6y ago
    Plausible, but then why is it happening in California and not in similarly NIMBYist states? Electromagnetism obsessives live all over the nation.
    • creato 6y ago
      My impression is that california uniquely empowers individuals to obstruct projects with myriad legal mechanisms that are easy to initiate but expensive to fight.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • war1025 6y ago
      Rumblings I heard had to do with too-aggressively retiring traditional power plants in favor of renewables, resulting in a lack of adequate baseload power. But I have looked into it exactly zero.
    • holycrapwhodat 6y ago
      CEQA - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quality_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Environmental_Quali... Ever since it was passed, NIMBYs and other types of individualists have found more and more ways to use its provisions to block anything from happening that they don't want to happen.
  • meroes 6y ago
    I am a technician for xfinity in the bay area and NIMBYism a huge part too I would say. Huge portions of Mill Valley especially on and around Mt Tam had such bad poles and vegetation. Only the last 3 fire years did anything. But literally nothing gets approved besides exact replacement. Nothing gets put underground, or rerouted because (as I understand it) mostly NIMBY groups. And I believe ATT ultimately owns most of the poles, PGE maintains them + leases, and the rest (comcast, sonic, etc) just lease. Marin has the reputation in Xfinity as the worst maintained in the 9 bay area locales they work in.
    • paloaltokid 6y ago
      Oh god...Marin NIMBYism is really crazy when it comes to that stuff. And there's a lot of conspiracy theory / 5G type stuff that goes on as well. Strange to think that many of the folks who live there are in charge of a lot of the companies on HN (or are senior execs there).
      • davisr 6y ago
        Well, they're not entirely wrong about the 5G. I understand many in this forum won't agree with me. From https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no... > We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe > The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found “clear evidence” that two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats and damaged DNA in rats and mice of both sexes. The Ramazzini Institute in Italy replicated the key finding of the NTP using a different carrier frequency and much weaker exposure to cell phone radiation over the life of the rats. > Since 5G is a new technology, there is no research on health effects, so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research. Meanwhile, we are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation. These increases are consistent with results from case-control studies of tumor risk in heavy cell phone users. About the author: > Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, is director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been translating and disseminating the research on wireless radiation health effects since 2009 after he and his colleagues published a review paper that found long-term cell phone users were at greater risk of brain tumors. His Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website has had more than two million page views since 2013. He is an unpaid advisor to the International EMF Scientist Appeal and Physicians for Safe Technology.
  • shortandsweet 6y ago
    I'm curious about how you became an apprentice then decided it wasn't for you? These are not easy to get into I've heard. What made you consider it and what made you leave?
    • bonestamp2 6y ago
      I can't speak for OP, but one of my coworkers used to be a lineman. He saw the old guys in the job and didn't want to end up like them and also got sick of working outside in extreme weather and became a programmer.
  • kryogen1c 6y ago
    > Wild claims related to electromagnetism what follows is speculation, so you can grab your pitchforks if you want but it will be a hollow victory. I've always been suspicious of the claim that EM fields have zero effect on human beings, especially near high-volts lines. It doesnt seem possible. Our bodies function based on electrical signals and many cellular mechanisms are mediated with ions. do we have a list of all electrically-sensitive bodily processes? could we guess what would happen if their simultaneous activation changed by 5%? what about 45% or more? So much of the human body is not exhaustively understood in the general case, and certainly not in the individual case. idk, i dont wanna go all tinfoil hat here. it just seems like circumstances are aligned for there to be large holes in our public understanding (accidentally or otherwise). note: for whatever its worth, ive spent some time around the 8MW generators on Nimitz-class aircraft carriers[0]. [0]: https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cvn-68.htm https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cvn-68.htm
    • rbanffy 6y ago
      Wouldn't we see those effects on the animals and plants that live around the power lines?
      • kryogen1c 6y ago
        observational studies like this would be hard to craft. we'd have to be doing the studies, first. second, we'd have to know what we're looking for. if the effects were subtle, generational, or multiple and confounding, it would be hard to see even if we were looking. also, im sure the sample size is small. not a lot of people/animals spend years 10 feet from high-volts lines. also, people are generally pretty change-averse. if there were proof that our current way of life was harmful, not a lot of people would be interested in discovering, spreading, or changing due to this news, least of all the companies with a profit motive. saving the turtles is fine if all you have to do is use a metal straw instead of plastic, but ask people to inconvenience themselves (less TV, less air-conditioning, less hot water, etc) and you've got a different response.
      • emmelaich 6y ago
        I've seen that claimed. And then attributed to chemicals used around and in the building of power lines. Sorry no link found right now.
  • reaperducer 6y ago
    Operators tend to baby these stations intentionally as their failure could spark massive outages across the grid You certainly know more about this topic than I do, but according to the article, it wasn't the operators that decided to cut back on power, it was ordered by the Independent System Operator. From what I read, Edison, PG&E and SDG&E just did what they were told, and for some reason the ISO told them to cut back earlier than was previously necessary. That's why the experts are "stumped." If I'm missing something, please let me know.
  • a-dub 6y ago
    > its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. ahh yes, seems like the "looking for toilet paper in all the wrong places" phenomenon where there's no lack of supply, but the existing supply lines head to the wrong places. (all the industrial/office stuff is idled, while rural locations are blasting AC in ways they've never seen before)
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > as someone who apprenticed as a lineman briefly, this isnt at all unexpected. Just because you have generating capacity, does not always mean you have capacity in the duty cycle for your transmission infrastructure. That's a nice story, except as the article notes it wasn't distribution but generation that was the problem. Not a shortage of installed capacity, but shutdown of four (one wind apparently due to conditions, and three natural gas apparently voluntarily by the operators) plants.
  • thedracle 6y ago
    I would imagine with the amount of financial exposure these power companies have now regarding wild fires, it's not exactly in their best interests to try to push their infrastructure either.
• java-man 6y ago
  The sooner we switch to solar and grid battery storage, the better. There should be no excuse whatsoever not to do that now. What reasoning is holding us up?
  • jjoonathan 6y ago
    Time and money.
    • java-man 6y ago
      I doubt it: Musk installed 129MWh battery plant in Australia that already saved the consumers over $100M. There must be another reason. [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8082841/Elon-Musks-Tesla-battery-farm-saved-South-Australia-116-MILLION.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8082841/Elon...
      • novok 6y ago
        Time, money & NIMBY. :p
      • akvadrako 6y ago
        That plant can only store a few minutes of power. It's not a solution to blackouts, just stabilising the grid while reliable sources come online.
      • dehrmann 6y ago
        MW is a funny unit in this context. Apparently Daily Mail meant MWh. > It provides a total of 129 megawatt-hours (460 GJ) of storage capable of discharge at 100 megawatts (130,000 hp) into the power grid, which is contractually divided into two parts:[20][needs update] > - 70 MW running for 10 minutes (11.7 MWh) is contracted to the government to provide stability to the grid (grid services)[21] and prevent load-shedding blackouts[13][22] while other generators are started in the event of sudden drops in wind or other network issues. This service has reduced the cost of grid services to the Australian Energy Market Operator by 90%.[23] > - 30 MW for 3 hours (90 MWh) is used by Neoen for load management to store energy when prices are low and sell it when de https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve
• YarickR2 6y ago
  I wonder what would Tesla owners do during fire-induced blackouts. With wrong combination of returning from long drive to homes without power, and fire hazard warnings, people owning only electrical cars could become trapped really bad. Unfortunately, Teslas are a part of a problem for now, being power hogs .
  • shiftpgdn 6y ago
    Most Tesla owners I know keep their cars at 80-90% charge every single day since they have a charger at home. That's enough range to get you 4-5 hours away from any would be wildfires.
    • redis_mlc 6y ago
      Towns in fire areas should have egress plans with a bus fleet available. The traffic jams at Camp (twice) and Berkeley were silly, yet fatal.
  • fortran77 6y ago
    Most tesla owners have a couple hundred miles of range. I'd be worried about LEAF owners with 65 mile ranges. The LEAF people at my former company complained that Teslas shouldn't be allowed to plug in in the limited chargnig spots because they need to be able to plug in to get home! Fortunately, the company said "tough. First come first served."
  • rconti 6y ago
    Keep your car(s) topped up during impending emergencies, regardless of fuel type.
  • kelnos 6y ago
    I would expect people who live in wildfire zones to have a getaway plan. If they're relying on a Tesla and aren't keeping the batteries topped up at all times -- or an ICE car with the tank topped up at all times -- that's just irresponsible.
  • floatrock 6y ago
• robomartin 6y ago
  I think I can say that our entire neighborhood is up in arms about what's going on with SCE in general. In the last few months people have received bills that amount to 10 to 20 times their usual bill. In our case, with a 13 kW solar array, our usual bill is in the order of $15 per month and has been so for years. Last month our bill was $350 and the prior month $184. We have been sending excess energy to SCE for years. I built a larger system than normal in preparation for electric vehicles. Which means that, at times, we send as much as 6 kW or so back. None of that mattered. What complicates everything is that we were auto-magically signed-up for CPA (Clean Power Alliance). Which is, as far as I am concerned, a government run scam (sorry if this offends anyone). By "we" I mean, most of our neighborhood and town. What makes this a mess is that SCE can't talk about CPA rates and CPA can't talk about SCE billing. One, in theory, provides the electricity and the other charges you for the transport and some fees. If you have ever tried to make sense out of one of these bills you know exactly what I am talking about. I have spent hours on the phone will SCE billing people and they can't tell me how some of it is actually calculated, even managers don't know. https://cleanpoweralliance.org/ https://cleanpoweralliance.org/ What makes it even worse is that the rate comparison tools and calculators available before the transition to CPA+SCE evaporated after the transition. The SCE website has been a mess for about two years and not having access to rate comparison tools makes it even worse. Billing and data clarity is obfuscated, to say the least. Some of us are now in the process of opting out of CPA just to that we can talk to a single point of contact and actually discuss the bill. With CPA in the loop it is impossible because CPA and SCE point fingers at each other and consumers are left in the middle wondering what the heck happened. Even beyond that, SCE told everyone that they had "grandfathered rates". This are the TOU-D-A and TOU-D-B rates from a few years ago. One of the things that changed radically with respect to that time is that some of the costs per kWh have more than tripled. When inquiring about how this could happen with "grandfathered rates" we were told that the rate schedule was grandfathered not the cost per kWh. In other words, the demarcation times between "On peak", "Off peak" and "Super off peak" remain fixed but your cost per kWh changes. This is the most dishonest use of the term "grandfathered" I have seen in my life. This might not make sense to readers outside of the US. Here, the term refers to a condition being protected from future changes. Anyone who heard that term pretty much assumed their costs were locked in, not just the times for each rate. From my perspective this was a swindle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause Frankly, this is about as anti-consumer as one can get. The average person isn't equipped to run through even the simplest electrical power calculations, they just don't understand. Add to this the complexities of tiered and time-of-day systems, varying rates and costs of transport, energy vs. power calculations, area under the power curve (which is what you pay for), difficulty in understanding energy utilization, etc. and you have the makings for a public that is powerless against this complexity. I am quite comfortable with mathematics and complex financial modelling and still had to devote hours to getting enough answers from SCE to attempt to create a model in Excel in order to understand what happened during the last few months, not just for us but also our neighbors. Even with that, the decision had to be made to opt-out of CPA because the math is simply too complex and nebulous. Not to mention that I have better things to do with my life. The decisions people like myself made a few years back --in my case the 13 kW system-- were based on promises made --a contract-- with SCE. Never in my life I would have thought that a system of this size would result in us having to pay for electricity. And so here we are. If this continues the ROI will be negative forever and the size of the system would either have to increase by 50% or more or batteries will have to be added in order to manage consumption at lower rate-per-kWh times of the day (which can change at the will of SCE). I am literally working on this as we speak, so the pain and aggravation is fresh and real. At some point legal action might become the only recourse, I don't know. My neighbors are absolutely livid, unlike me (I engineered, bought and installed my own system), they ended-up with a range of leasing and other arrangements from a number of different vendors. The typical systems these vendors install are based on the rate structure at the time of system installation and only seek to achieve a baseline cost structure between lease payments and electricity purchase beyond generation. As rates and billing complexity changed, some of these folks are finding out that their 3.5 kW system is now almost useless and their electricity costs are going off the rails. The trouble is, they will have to pay on these leases for years and years. This is a mess.
• makomk 6y ago
  Having looked at the graphs on the CAISO website, I think they had a supply problem and the New York Times is being a little disingenuous here. You can bring up the renewables graph for the 14th here (change the date): http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx At 6 PM, they had about 5.2 GW of solar still coming in. That rapidly and predictably dropped to zero over the next hour and a half. If my rough maths is correct that alone would be enough to wipe out almost the entire 12 percent operating reserve. There's also a really interesting graph of demand vs net demand minus solar and wind on the other page; you can see that total demand flattens out near the top, but net demand - which is what the grid operator has to find generating capacity to fill - continues to ramp up aggressively right up until the peak.
• lisper 6y ago
  Every year you hear about horrible heat waves and fires in California but I'm here to tell you from my first-hand experience that This Time It's Different. I've lived on the SF peninsula for 10 years. We bought a brand new spec house. It was built without air conditioning. The developer said we wouldn't need it. We installed it anyway because we came from LA and a house in California without A/C did not fit into our worldview. For the first few years, we rarely used the A/C. Then one year we had a Horrible Heat Wave that lasted two or three days. The A/C ran more or less continuously during that time, but managed to mostly keep up. And it always cooled off at night. In subsequent years we had period recurrences of 2-3 day heat events that caused our A/C to run quite a lot but still keep up. This latest heat event has seen the A/C running three days now with no relief forecast until Thursday. Worse, it's not cooling off much at night the way it always used to. For the first time in ten years we are having to run the A/C at night instead of opening windows in order to sleep. Frankly, the trend scares the living shit out of me. The speed at which these changes are manifesting themselves in our little microclimate is just mind-boggling.
  • tolbish 6y ago
    It would be wonderful if we had the ability to directly manipulate weather and a climate on a large scale. Imagine being able to affect weather patterns to cool down or turn the heat up on certain segments of the population.
  • rconti 6y ago
    My anecdote is the opposite. I lived in Santa Clara from 2002-2010, San Carlos 2010-2011, Belmont 2011-2014, Redwood City 2014-present. Never had AC on the Peninsula. We have heatwaves every year. This summer has been remarkably mild, low 70s most of July and August until now. We got our heatwave. A bit more humid than normal thanks to tropical storm remnants, 70f dewpoint and 95f on Sunday, 65f dewpoint and spiked to 105f Saturday briefly. It seems fractionally warmer than most heatwaves, and slightly longer, but doesn't 'feel' indicative of a trend. Still no A/C, and I guess I notice it more now that I'm home 24/7, but still totally do-able. Been running the house fan overnight to get the rooms down into the mid-high 70s.
• neonate 6y ago
  https://archive.is/wiAZQ https://archive.is/wiAZQ
• tln 6y ago
  The article ends with: “If there’s really a problem and not just the ISO jumping the gun, it’s going to manifest tomorrow,” Mr. Marcus said. “Tomorrow evening, the wolf arrives.” What is that referencing?
  • quickthrowman 6y ago
    Little Red Riding Hood or Three Little Pigs, would be my first two guesses.
  • ArtRichards 6y ago
    He's talking about crying wolf today with no emergency, and then the wolf actually showing up tomorrow.
  • fragmede 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf
• cheezerman 6y ago
  What's going to happen when they close Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant? [1] It currently provides 9% of the state's power (2256MW). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant
  • aaomidi 6y ago
    Percentage isn't the issue. Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant provides the base power usage, which isn't the issue that's causing the blackouts. Looking at raw percentage numbers for blackouts is wrong because this is an issue of not having enough capacity during peak, which nuclear doesn't solve.
    • khuey 6y ago
      You still have to replace that 9% with something that runs 24/7.
    • bugzz 6y ago
      But wouldn't losing 9% of production reduce peak capacity as well?
      • cma 6y ago
        Not by 9% though. It's 9% of total, not peak load.
    • newguy1234 6y ago
      The issue that is causing the problems is peak demand hits around 5:30 pm....exactly at the same time when solar supply is dropping rapidly. We need natural gas peaker plants that basically fire up to bridge the gap during the night. Every now and then we might get bailed out if wind is strong that day but that's not something you can build a reliable grid on.
      • bob1029 6y ago
        Ercot had this problem last year WRT to over-reliance on wind generation capacity. At one dire point we had 90 minutes of $9/KWh rates and the utility was looking to roll blackouts. I paid $200 for 1 day of electricity and I pulled my breaker about halfway through the worst part. I know people who got hit with nearly 4 figures for a single day of usage. I don't have problems with renewable energy in principle, but until we have practical storage capabilities or other alternatives, it seems like we need to keep most of the less desirable forms of generation capacity around. I do not think it is acceptable to roll blackouts until we have something like a tesla powerwall in every electricity consumers' premises. We should never compromise on grid quality in pursuit of environmental objectives. The 2nd order consequences of an unreliable grid could have even more grave environmental impact than driving the grid with a coal plant (i.e. every business & homeowner on earth starts buying carbon-intensive generators or lithium batteries due to grid stability problems). Decommissioning nuclear capacity seems like a massive mistake in general, but I understand the geology is potentially subpar in this specific case. Is it technologically infeasible to produce earthquake-proof nuclear power plants? Or, at least plants that would be guaranteed fail-safe under any seismic condition?
• Animats 6y ago
  Too much solar to handle evening A/C load? Rarely does northern California have heavy A/C loads in the evening. Solar power output and heat load usually match well. But not this week. Usually, peak loads are around 2 PM, at air conditioning peak. This power restriction is for 3 PM to 10 PM, which presumably comes from evening A/C loads while buildings cool down. Wind is all over the place, up and down by a factor of 4, unrelated to time of day.
  • jeffbee 6y ago
    The peak systemic load occurs at about 3pm but the peak grid load doesn't happen until 6pm. The shift is caused by dispersed rooftop solar.
• hirundo 6y ago
  I talked to my brother in California yesterday during the blackout. He told me this joke that's going around there. Q. What did socialists light their homes with before candles? A. Electricity
• jeffbee 6y ago
  Would love to know what changes day-to-day. According to CAISO dashboard, they are currently delivering 45 GW, while yesterday they were shedding load before they hit 44 GW. So, what aspect of supply changed? We're importing the same amount but we're getting 5 GW more natural gas supply than yesterday. Are there ... are there nat. gas plants that only operate on weekdays?
  • khuey 6y ago
    The issue is time of day. Everything is fine while the sun is still up. Once the sun starts setting and the ~10GW of solar power California has goes away things get challenging.
    • dekhn 6y ago
      Hence the Pacific DC intertie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie "The Pacific Intertie takes advantage of differing power demand patterns between the northwestern and southwestern US. During winter, the northern region operates electrical heating devices while the southern portion uses relatively little electricity. In summer, the north uses little electricity while the south reaches peak demand due to air conditioning usage. Any time the Intertie demand lessens, the excess is distributed elsewhere on the western power grid (states west of the Great Plains, including Colorado and New Mexico).[3]" (that predates solar, boy do I wish we could store that daylight 12-16 hours)
    • jeffbee 6y ago
      Yes but the sun is up right now and they are already shedding loads (the dashboard is bouncing off a ceiling of 45 GW).
      • khuey 6y ago
        That is likely natural fluctuations in demand. The grid operator has not announced any load shedding (they have not even announced any imminent need to shed load) and there's still another 5GW of available capacity according to the dashboard.
• Lammy 6y ago
  The electricity might be off but the text message they sent to tell me about it calls it an “outage” and not a “blackout” so at least their priorities are in the right place :v
• vmception 6y ago
  Jeffrey Skilling is out of prison and working on a blockchain energy venture with Lou Pai Just check to make sure they arent holding California’s power for ransom pending payment to a random Bitcoin address
• artiagarwal 6y ago
  So now West Coast is coming at par with the developing world.
• scrumbledober 6y ago
  If the state could magically have enough battery capacity in every county to smooth out this curve, what scale of battery installation would that take?
  • azernik 6y ago
    I don't have a lot of information about the scale required; however, I will note that grid-attached energy storage is a big field that is not limited to batteries. Batteries are generally more energy-efficient, but relatively expensive per unit energy and power. Cheaper options tend to use physical phenomena (pumping water up a gravity gradient, compressing air in caves, &c).
• fredliu 6y ago
  I start to see tweets attributing the CA power outages to increased degree of renewable energies that are "inherently unreliable"(solar, wind), on the supply side of the equation. And of course the tweets are very politically charged, making it hard to judge how true those claims are. Anybody has more insights on these claims?
  • icedistilled 6y ago
    I read a Forbes article that made a ton of claims like that. The article was a bunch of statements along the lines of "the renewable push is the reason PGE has neglected maintenance!", without even attempting to explain the connections for any of their claims. Another claim was that Jerry Brown shut San Onofre Nuclear power station, SONGS, and they wrote that if Brown hadn't shut it then we would have avoided the latest brown outs. No explanation as to how they believe he'd managed to sabotage Mitsubishi Heavy Industries causing the problems at SONGS that led to billions of dollars and many years of NRC licensing hurdles and required repairs had they decided to do keep it up and running. And not only that, Jerry brown apparently also caused natural gas to be super price efficient, making it impossible for SCE to justify repairing and returning SONGS to full power. Nope, not a peep about those things or how they felt Jerry Brown caused them. Of course the agenda pusher writing for Forbes didn't explain how Jerry Brown did any of those things, they could just state that Jerry Brown closed it and most people would have to take it at face value. Why care about facts when you can push an agenda!
• WalterBright 6y ago
  One way to deal with this is to have variable electric rates - cheaper rates when plenty of power is available, and more expensive when less. This incentivizes consumers to time shift their usage. For example, evening A/C use can be time shifted to the day, by cooling the house more during the day, so less is needed in the evening. The thermal mass of a house has a lot of inertia (and can be increased by adding, say, a pile of rocks). The idea of a fixed 24/7 electricity rate is hopelessly obsolete.
  • gjs278 6y ago
    they already do this. nobody is going to understand or care or though. they’ll do it when they’re hot.
  • Drunk_Engineer 6y ago
    California already has variable pricing. It is the main driver for solar installations in the Central Valley.
    • WalterBright 6y ago
      If there are rolling blackouts in the evenings, the price differential is not large enough. It has to be large enough to motivate people to change their behavior, invest in variable thermostats, etc.
  • zbrozek 6y ago
    Making everything hopelessly complicated isn't really great either. Should water rates and gas rates do the same? Tolls already do this. It's a growing cognitive burden. I don't look forward to surge pricing for data usage. It feels inevitable.
    • Marsymars 6y ago
      Conveniently, you can get smart thermostats that effectively abstract away that particular cognitive burden: https://www.ecobee.com/en-ca/eco-plus/ https://www.ecobee.com/en-ca/eco-plus/ > Take advantage of time-of-use electricity rates in your area. eco+ intelligently precools or preheats the home at times of day when electricity prices are low.
• c3534l 6y ago
  I remember hearing about rolling blackouts in California as this mysterious problem that occurred after privatization, then after Enron broke, it was revealed that they'd been engineering blackouts in pump & dump schemes. Any chance there's a relationship between these blackouts and the older ones? Or are we sure this is some completely new phenomenon?
  • rconti 6y ago
    According to the news, this is the first rolling blackout since 2001, which, yeah, was bogus.
• rossdavidh 6y ago
  So, not saying this is the main driver here, but just wondering: with a lot of people working from home, rather than an office building, it becomes relevant which is more efficient to cool. I have to think that it is more efficient to cool a single, larger building than many smaller ones? Again, not saying it's the primary reason, just mentioning that it could be a contributing factor.
  • mdorazio 6y ago
    That's a good point, and it's probably worth digging into. It's actually going to depend on a few factors, though. Off the top of my head: are office buildings running HVAC systems at significantly higher temps than they would otherwise have been? How many people working from home actually have A/C? How much more efficient are large A/C systems in comparison to home units? I have a feeling that offices that are "empty" are still running their A/C systems and lighting at some level, and then you have some portion of WFH people also running those things at home, so overall demand is higher than it was when most office workers were actually in the office.
    • rossdavidh 6y ago
      I think also that, although the lighting may often be on in empty offices, the computers (and body heat) are lower, or missing entirely, so the offices aren't having to work very hard. However, all that load has shifted back to WFH, not gone away, so now the same amount of heat is being handled by less efficient A/Cs, in smaller buildings. All speculative, though, and probably not the main driver, I admit.
• stevespang 6y ago
  "As California ISO began taking its emergency actions on Saturday, electricity wholesale costs jumped on its energy market. The prices fluctuate based on how much electricity must pass through the wires. The more electricity that must get through a particular line, the higher the price, much like increased toll prices on a highway during traffic congestion. Prices in locations near the Tahoe area across the state line to Reno and Carson City, Nev., spiked into the thousands of dollars per megawatt-hour, far above the typical costs of under $100." I smell somebody making money off this scheme and likely "kickbacks" involved.
• rconti 6y ago
  Mr Powers is pushing an interesting conspiracy theory in this article, which I haven't seen discussed yet. I haven't seen anyone else backing it up in other sources, but of course it's still early in the reporting on this issue. >In particular, California ISO said two natural gas power plants shut down on Friday and, on Saturday, a wind farm and another gas plant stopped producing power. The state is currently reviewing proposals to extend the operation of old natural gas plants in Southern California. Environmentalists want the plants to remain closed because they use fossil fuels and are cooled using seawater, endangering marine life. “It makes for a compelling story” if you have blackouts because of a lack of power plants, Mr. Powers said. “We know there is no capacity problem,” he said. “Something odd happened.”
  • ghouse 6y ago
    > Environmentalists want the plants to remain closed because they use fossil fuels and are cooled using seawater, endangering marine life. They're currently running, but scheduled (from about a decade ago) to retire at the end of this calendar year. However recently (and prior to the rolling blackouts), several have had their retirement pushed out a year.
  • segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    To be fair, we've seen a conspiracy of deliberately pulling perfectly working power plants off the grid in the past, so it's not outside the realm of possibility. In the 2000s, Enron did it to financially manipulate the energy market, and it was directly responsible for California's last crisis [0]. It's probably where the idea of such a conspiracy is coming from. > These blackouts occurred as a result of a poorly designed market system that was manipulated by traders and marketers, as well as from poor state management and regulatory oversight. Subsequently, Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California's energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time. Of course, I'm not saying that the current blackout is a conspiracy, claiming it to be a fossil-fuel conspiracy takes the paranoia to another level, especially when there's no evidence to back it up (yet). I mentioned it just as a historical curiosity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#California's_deregulation_and_subsequent_energy_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#California's_deregulatio... --- > “They set it up like this is a historic event,” said Bill Powers, a San Diego engineer who provides expert testimony on utility matters before the state’s regulators. “This should not have triggered blackouts.” I just searched "Bill Powers", it seems that it's not a pseudonym given by the New York Times, it's real, sounds like a good name to work in the energy industry, haha... Seriously speaking, apparently this man, Bill Powers, is an activist in consumer protection and energy issues, who often tries to challenge multiple investigations on energy issues before the state’s regulators. I don't think it's wrong, we need people to show up during official investigations to make them more accountable, but it does reduce his credibility if there's no additional evidence to support his latest claim, e.g. * Energy Experts Question Scale of Blackout (2011) https://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/sep/09/energy-experts-question-scale-blackout/ https://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/sep/09/energy-experts-questio... > Energy experts are baffled at the scale of yesterday’s blackout which left five million people without power. > The blackout here was caused by a transmission failure in Arizona. But power-industry analyst Bill Powers says the grid is set up so that if there’s a sudden loss of supply, energy companies must immediately lower demand through a strategy of controlled blackouts. Powers said a San Diego Gas & Electric executive’s repeated assertion that the blackout was caused by human error in Arizona yesterday falls short. > “That doesn’t explain why SDG&E didn’t deploy its emergency procedure which is to selectively brownout and blackout portions of San Diego," Powers said. "It looks like something didn’t go right at SDG&E.” * Is the Porter Ranch blackout warning overblown? Yes, says one expert (2016) https://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2016/04/06/47787/energy-expert-argues-porter-ranch-blackout-warning/ https://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2016/04/06/47787/energ... > But Bill Powers, a frequent expert witness before the California Public Utilities Commission, isn't convinced by officials' claims, calling the blackout warning alarmist. He said that in at least the last decade, SoCal Gas has never hit its firm capacity during the summer peak in the L.A. basin. * State Senate To Hold Hearings On Phony Blackout Blackmail Report (2016) https://consumerwatchdog.org/blog/state-senate-hold-hearings-phony-blackout-blackmail-report https://consumerwatchdog.org/blog/state-senate-hold-hearings... > A report by engineer Bill Powers for Food and Water Watch found key mispresentations, omissions, and misstatements about demand and capacity. Will engineer Bill Powers will be able to present his opposition report and provide technical insight to the committee on a very technical issue? Both sides should be heard if the hearing is meant to shed light and not simply give energy regulators and So Cal Gas cover. * What will the next heavy winds bring? Assessing the great power shut-off of 2019 (2019) https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-15/pge-power-shutoff-aftermath-outlook https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-15/pge-powe... > “The utilities will oppose accelerating the deployment of behind-the-meter solar and batteries, even in areas that are subject to the shut-offs, because it’s just so diametrically opposed to their business model,” said Bill Powers, a San Diego electrical engineering consultant and consumer advocate.
• whiddershins 6y ago
  I wonder how much it matters that home ac is almost universally less efficient, by a huge margin, than office ac.
• plorg 6y ago
  The best I can make sense of this article, there may have been, overall, enough generating capacity on the grid, but not enough transmission capacity in particular locations. The closest anything in this article is the bizarre state statement that "no one says it was congestion". But spiking LMP's pretty much exactly indicate either congestion or insufficient generation in particular areas. In fact, in the case that, overall, there is sufficient generation, these conditions are the same. What it might mean is that there is some network condition, e.g. some generation or transmission out on scheduled maintenance, that puts the grid in a less-than secure state, such that higher than expected demand causes transmission in unexpected areas of the network.
• mcbishop 6y ago
  Here's a more nuanced (i.e. geekier) article on what caused these rolling blackouts, from a quality new-energy publication: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-californias-shift-from-natural-gas-to-solar-is-playing-a-role-in-rolling-blackouts https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-californias...
• google234123 6y ago
  Only in California do you have to pay twice as much as the average on electricity and also deal with these blackouts. Thanks environmentalists...
• briandear 6y ago
  Why does Texas not have these power problems? They have their own separate power grid and in my lifetime I can’t remember ever having rolling blackouts due to demand spikes. It seems like California suffers from policy problems rather than technological ones. Why doesn’t California embrace nuclear power? Traditionally most of France’s power has been nuclear and it has worked fine for decades. Interestingly the initiatives to switch to renewable energy specific excluded nuclear and hydro. Politics seem to get in the way of good policy. Rather than pleading to conserve power, why not generate more of it? When people are starving, the solution isn’t to tell everyone to eat less, but to produce more.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  The headline says it leaves experts stumped, the body of the article makes it clear that it was largely because three natural gas plants were shutdown in what seems to be an effort to build political support for extending the operating life of older natural gas plants.