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I thought energy generation is still regional in practice -- loosely, the further it goes, the more expensive -- and private co's deciding to cheap out on weath

I thought energy generation is still regional in practice -- loosely, the further it goes, the more expensive -- and private co's deciding to cheap out on weather protections showed the king has no clothes in this case? grid sounds nice and platform-y, but when you zoom in, similar to us telcos: not quite as stable and abundant as the lobbyists advertise for any given region when you look. as an intuition, a solar panel farm in some isolated arizona desert doesn't help folks in maine. conversely, as neither region has that many local suppliers, a few private businesses making rational personal $ decisions to not supply in critical scenarios will put all citizens at risk when those scenarios happebs. (written as someone living through periodic wildfires allowed through similar market optimism.)

rayiner 6y ago
> thought energy generation is still regional in practice -- ERCOT serves over 26 million customers in Texas. That's more than large enough to have a highly functioning market. > and private co's decided to cheap out on weather protections? What on earth makes anyone think that government-owned power generators in Texas would have invested in weather protections? The sewer systems around the country are publicly owned, yet the public utilities "cheap out" on capacity and routinely dump massive amounts of raw sewage into local waterways during big rain storms that happen every year or two. People are attributing to the structure of the market a failure that's more about the inability of entities in general (public or private) to deal with black swan events.
- lmeyerov 6y ago
  RE:market size, esp. proportional to texas land mass, that's not obvious to me. But I'm writing that as a not-an-energy person, just someone who spent an afternoon googling years ago to understand why energy operations people viewed things like solar/wind/etc. as local, not national. Finance and other non-operational people can certainly work more abstractly. RE:Weather, when gov-funded climate change scientists collectively predicted adverse weather phenomena would continue accelerating in accordance to global warming, and a lot of communities have been living through it? I started hearing about that 10-20 years ago, it's not news. Next you'll tell me that continued beachfront erosion merits gov bailouts of insurance companies because we couldn't predict that either..
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Big rainstorms are not news, yet most public sewer systems are totally unequipped to deal with them. Hot days in summer are not news and yet Amtrak is unequipped to deal with them (http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/06/heat-restrictions http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/06/heat-restrictions). Around the country, there is a $4.5 trillion infrastructure backlog. https://www.asce.org/templates/press-release-detail.aspx?id=24013 https://www.asce.org/templates/press-release-detail.aspx?id=.... Almost all of that backlog is on the plate of public entities (road works, sewer works, bridges, etc.) Where do you live that the government has actually addressed crises that it faces in the present and has time to pro-actively address stuff scientists are talking about happening years in the future? Yeah, maybe competent and pro-active bureaucrats at a government power utility would have avoided this problem. It also could have been avoided by running power plants on unicorn manure, which I hear has natural anti-freeze properties.
    - lmeyerov 6y ago
      This feels like rapidly shifting goalposts from my statement about energy being local and the local private energy companies cheaping out because they could Yes, a lot of people live in denial. In security-related areas of all kinds where the ROI is largely unobservable loss prevention, that's why leadership-level people know to ask for budget immediately after any incident... because important stuff doesn't get funded or enforced otherwise. And agreed, I'm not a superfan of Amtrak. There's a wide spectrum on how to do things. The more I learn about any individual one, the more I learn that most things appear broken from the inside, so I am both consistently awed things work in the daily case, and know that left alone, they won't in the edge cases.
      - rayiner 6y ago
        > This feels like rapidly shifting goalposts from my statement about energy being local and the local private energy companies cheaping out because they could It's not shifting the goal posts. A company that feeds into a market with 26 million customers is not so "local" that a free market can't work. That's bigger than most countries. And you've offered no evidence that a public utility would not have "cheaped out" on weatherization. > Yes, a lot of people live in denial. In security-related areas of all kinds where the ROI is largely unobservable loss prevention, that's why leadership-level people know to ask for budget immediately after any incident... because important stuff doesn't get funded otherwise. Disaster after disaster happens, and important stuff still doesn't get funded in the public sector. There is a $100 billion shortfall in water system funding: https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_water https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_w.... Did the Flint water crises have any effect on that? No. Because political entities that are accountable to voters for water rate increases aren't any more willing to invest in risk mitigation than private companies. > And agreed, I'm not a superfan of Amtrak. There's a wide spectrum on how to do things. Most public infrastructure in the United States is run like Amtrak. The D.C. Metro had to shut down automated train control (self-driving), which was a feature built into the system in the 1970s, because they had let the track sensors deteriorate so much. We had to shut down the subway in D.C. for weeks at a time a couple of years ago because it was literally killing people. New York's subway system is in the same sorry state: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/11/15949284/new-york-subway-crisis https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/11/15949284/n...
tzs 6y ago
I don't see why solar in Arizona would not help Maine. If Maine has a shortage, they aren't going to get power directly from Arizona, but couldn't they get power from New Hampshire? If New Hampshire doesn't have any spare capacity, couldn't they still supply Maine and get some from Massachusetts to cover for what they send to Maine? And if Massachusetts doesn't have any spare, can't they similarly go ahead and supply New Hampshire, making it up with power from whoever is next west of them, ultimately ending up with Arizona's extra solar power allowing Maine to get through a shortfall?
- rayiner 6y ago
  The transmission grids aren’t connected like that.
  - curryst 6y ago
    Is it only because there's US East and US West? I.e. Maine and New Hampshire can share power generation, and Arizona and New Mexico can share power, we just can't share across the East/West divide, wherever that is?
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Correct, because the east and west grids are not synchronized you can’t really transfer power between them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss... > The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection are the largest. Three other regions include the Texas Interconnection, the Quebec Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection. Each region delivers power at a nominal 60 Hz frequency. The regions are not usually directly connected or synchronized to each other, but there are some HVDC Interconnectors.
- pm24601 6y ago
  Side note: > I don't see why solar in Arizona would not help Maine Arizona power companies have essentially made home solar system uneconomical. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/solar-arizona-net-metering_n_4164731 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/solar-arizona-net-metering_n_...

rayiner 6y ago

> thought energy generation is still regional in practice -- ERCOT serves over 26 million customers in Texas. That's more than large enough to have a highly functioning market. > and private co's decided to cheap out on weather protections? What on earth makes anyone think that government-owned power generators in Texas would have invested in weather protections? The sewer systems around the country are publicly owned, yet the public utilities "cheap out" on capacity and routinely dump massive amounts of raw sewage into local waterways during big rain storms that happen every year or two. People are attributing to the structure of the market a failure that's more about the inability of entities in general (public or private) to deal with black swan events.

lmeyerov 6y ago
RE:market size, esp. proportional to texas land mass, that's not obvious to me. But I'm writing that as a not-an-energy person, just someone who spent an afternoon googling years ago to understand why energy operations people viewed things like solar/wind/etc. as local, not national. Finance and other non-operational people can certainly work more abstractly. RE:Weather, when gov-funded climate change scientists collectively predicted adverse weather phenomena would continue accelerating in accordance to global warming, and a lot of communities have been living through it? I started hearing about that 10-20 years ago, it's not news. Next you'll tell me that continued beachfront erosion merits gov bailouts of insurance companies because we couldn't predict that either..
- rayiner 6y ago
  Big rainstorms are not news, yet most public sewer systems are totally unequipped to deal with them. Hot days in summer are not news and yet Amtrak is unequipped to deal with them (http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/06/heat-restrictions http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/06/heat-restrictions). Around the country, there is a $4.5 trillion infrastructure backlog. https://www.asce.org/templates/press-release-detail.aspx?id=24013 https://www.asce.org/templates/press-release-detail.aspx?id=.... Almost all of that backlog is on the plate of public entities (road works, sewer works, bridges, etc.) Where do you live that the government has actually addressed crises that it faces in the present and has time to pro-actively address stuff scientists are talking about happening years in the future? Yeah, maybe competent and pro-active bureaucrats at a government power utility would have avoided this problem. It also could have been avoided by running power plants on unicorn manure, which I hear has natural anti-freeze properties.
  - lmeyerov 6y ago
    This feels like rapidly shifting goalposts from my statement about energy being local and the local private energy companies cheaping out because they could Yes, a lot of people live in denial. In security-related areas of all kinds where the ROI is largely unobservable loss prevention, that's why leadership-level people know to ask for budget immediately after any incident... because important stuff doesn't get funded or enforced otherwise. And agreed, I'm not a superfan of Amtrak. There's a wide spectrum on how to do things. The more I learn about any individual one, the more I learn that most things appear broken from the inside, so I am both consistently awed things work in the daily case, and know that left alone, they won't in the edge cases.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      > This feels like rapidly shifting goalposts from my statement about energy being local and the local private energy companies cheaping out because they could It's not shifting the goal posts. A company that feeds into a market with 26 million customers is not so "local" that a free market can't work. That's bigger than most countries. And you've offered no evidence that a public utility would not have "cheaped out" on weatherization. > Yes, a lot of people live in denial. In security-related areas of all kinds where the ROI is largely unobservable loss prevention, that's why leadership-level people know to ask for budget immediately after any incident... because important stuff doesn't get funded otherwise. Disaster after disaster happens, and important stuff still doesn't get funded in the public sector. There is a $100 billion shortfall in water system funding: https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_water https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_w.... Did the Flint water crises have any effect on that? No. Because political entities that are accountable to voters for water rate increases aren't any more willing to invest in risk mitigation than private companies. > And agreed, I'm not a superfan of Amtrak. There's a wide spectrum on how to do things. Most public infrastructure in the United States is run like Amtrak. The D.C. Metro had to shut down automated train control (self-driving), which was a feature built into the system in the 1970s, because they had let the track sensors deteriorate so much. We had to shut down the subway in D.C. for weeks at a time a couple of years ago because it was literally killing people. New York's subway system is in the same sorry state: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/11/15949284/new-york-subway-crisis https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/11/15949284/n...

tzs 6y ago

I don't see why solar in Arizona would not help Maine. If Maine has a shortage, they aren't going to get power directly from Arizona, but couldn't they get power from New Hampshire? If New Hampshire doesn't have any spare capacity, couldn't they still supply Maine and get some from Massachusetts to cover for what they send to Maine? And if Massachusetts doesn't have any spare, can't they similarly go ahead and supply New Hampshire, making it up with power from whoever is next west of them, ultimately ending up with Arizona's extra solar power allowing Maine to get through a shortfall?

rayiner 6y ago
The transmission grids aren’t connected like that.
- curryst 6y ago
  Is it only because there's US East and US West? I.e. Maine and New Hampshire can share power generation, and Arizona and New Mexico can share power, we just can't share across the East/West divide, wherever that is?
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Correct, because the east and west grids are not synchronized you can’t really transfer power between them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss... > The Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection are the largest. Three other regions include the Texas Interconnection, the Quebec Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection. Each region delivers power at a nominal 60 Hz frequency. The regions are not usually directly connected or synchronized to each other, but there are some HVDC Interconnectors.
pm24601 6y ago
Side note: > I don't see why solar in Arizona would not help Maine Arizona power companies have essentially made home solar system uneconomical. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/solar-arizona-net-metering_n_4164731 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/solar-arizona-net-metering_n_...