9 ms·
CA grid: real-time status
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dividefuel 4y agoIf I'm interpreting this correctly, tomorrow's expected peak demand of 51,000 MW would set the new record for CA, passing the old record of 50,200 MW from July 2006.
- missedthecue 4y agoGenuinely shocked the previous record is that old.
- dividefuel 4y agoMe too. I would have thought that Labor Day 2017 (106 F in San Francisco) would've been higher, but it was only a very close second.
- inferiorhuman 4y agohttps://news.yahoo.com/california-declares-grid-emergency-power-233507043.html https://news.yahoo.com/california-declares-grid-emergency-po... Yahoo claims the last record was set in 2017.
- dividefuel 4y agoHere's my source on the record being from 2006: https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory.pdf https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...
- jeffbee 4y agoMandatory efficiency programs work.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoAlso, grid demand doesn't include home solar, which shows up as a reduction in "demand" which cuts the peak and shifts it later in time. That 2006 peak is hours earlier than the others too for the same reason.
- 41b696ef1113 4y agoHow much generation capacity has been shutdown since then? With the seemingly endless installation of solar panels, I am surprised of the generation warnings.
- bombcar 4y agoIt’s on the site but apparently the amount of capacity has been “about the same” since 2011 or earlier. So all new solar etc coming on line is barely replacing capacity lost. And California has been growing.
- secabeen 4y agoCalifornia is also using less. LED lighting, more efficient HVAC systems, individual and corporate conservation, it's all helping to reduce the amount of power we need per person.
- krasin 4y agoNote that California (and the rest of the world) is about to start using more electricity due to transition to electric cars and trucks.
- inferiorhuman 4y agoNote that California leads the nation in EV adoption and still has an enviably low per-capita electric habit. And before you start jumping up and down that the map shows an increase in consumption from 2019 to 2020, keep in mind that the whole southwest is grey in large part because of the warmer summers. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49036
- krasin 4y agoYep. No disagreement here; I was just trying to say that when the per-capita electricity consumption in California will go up, it's not because policies don't work, but because of EVs. And we will see drastic reductions of CO2 emissions per capita in California as a result.
- bob1029 4y agoMeanwhile, the Texas grid is cruising along at ~59GW right now [0]. Our all-time demand record was set 2 months ago @ ~76GW [1]. [0] https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_conditions.html https://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/html/real_time_system_cond... [1] https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2022/07/20/ERCOT%20Monthly%20Operational%20Overview%20June%202022.pdf https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2022/07/20/ERCOT%20Monthly%...
- scioto 4y agoMore TX graphs: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
- collegeburner 4y agoI like to ping my CA friends when I hear about rolling blackouts or grid strain. It's pretty fair after all their "hurr durr deregulation bad Texas has shit power" talk they sometimes send.
- tims33 4y agoWhere are the CA blackouts?
- pwarner 4y ago2020 was the last one, but before that was long before. https://www.energy.ca.gov/news/2021-01/caiso-cpuc-cec-issue-final-report-causes-august-2020-rotating-outages https://www.energy.ca.gov/news/2021-01/caiso-cpuc-cec-issue-...
- secabeen 4y agoAnd even the 2020 blackouts were pretty mild. Affecting only a small percentage of californians, and for about an hour, and about 10 minutes on the two recorded occasions in 2020.
- 4y ago
- CoastalCoder 4y agoIn headlines, is there some trick to knowing when "CA" means California vs. Canada?
- zibby8 4y agoMany Canadian websites end in .ca. This website ends in .com. Not a foolproof method, but likely better than a random guess.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DaiPlusPlus 4y agoOr even where is Ontario, CA?
- kelp 4y agoOntario CA happens to be a major shipping hub with tons of warehouses. So it often shows up in UPS or FedEx tracking if you order a lot of stuff online.
- avisser 4y agoI think you missed the joke. Ontario CA can be both a city inland from Los Angeles or the province Ontario in Canada.
- kelp 4y agoNo I got the joke. My in-laws happen to live near Ontario and I kept having to think of the province in Canada to remember the name at first. But I also knew about it because of tracking info.
- bombcar 4y agoIt has an airport roughly as large as LAX that services mostly cargo planes. Should be possible to get a flight from Ontario, CA to Ontario, CA.
- Hansenq 4y agoIf people want to see some prettier graphs, CA ISO has a more dynamic page available here: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/index.html https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/index.html
- elicash 4y agoOne genuine question: part of the issue, as I understood it, that TX had is that they were on their own grid. But CA isn't. They're part of the Western Interconnection. And while I learned from a google search that California has "Independent System Operators" -- shouldn't being connected to half the United States give them more stability here? Anyway, we clearly need to make grid improvements.
- pwarner 4y agoLook at temperatures in the greater West...
- msandford 4y agoThat was the same problem in Texas. Everyone went on and on about how dumb these dumb Texans are for being so stupid to not be connected to one of the national grids like smart adults are. But there were big problems in OK and KS because the weather doesn't end at the grid boundary and the grid doesn't have an infinite carrying capacity. Just because there might be extra generation available somewhere doesn't mean that the lines between generation and consumption have the capacity to carry it.
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- elicash 4y agoI certainly never implied Texans were "dumb." It is the case that Texas' unique situation makes them LESS connected, and therefore less stable, right? As far as everybody else, I think the calls for updating the grid for everyone have been around for a while and that's why Congress set aside a bunch of money for it? Because it was needed and everybody agrees? No need to make this partisan. I think everybody favors a more robust grid, even folks who voted against the legislation for other reasons.
- 404mm 4y ago
- pwarner 4y agoIf I read it right, they are asking commercial customers to reduce load, or switch to generators if they can. http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/NoticeLog.aspx http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/NoticeLog.... The heat is widespread, and there isn't enough capacity.
- jeffbee 4y agoYou can clearly see the hitch in the demand data where some demand-response loads got turned off due to the level 1 emergency at 16h00.
- pwarner 4y agoAnd larger drop as they went into stage 2. It's going to go to stage 3 tomorrow if not today. What a great wave. I'm sending this from across the country now, but I lost power in 2020 last time it was almost this hot in CA.
- secabeen 4y agoWe'll see. The day-ahead estimates have been high all week, and the temperature is dropping tomorrow. I put it about a 50/50 chance that we break 50GW tomorrow.
- pwarner 4y agoHopefully Seems today may pass okay unless something breaks?
- happyopossum 4y ago> the temperature is dropping tomorrow Maybe in parts of the state, but all over northern CA there are places forecasting a few degrees warmer. Plus the overnight will be high enough that buildings won’t lose as much retained heat, and will start out slightly warmer.
- 4y ago
- sand500 4y agoAnother opportunity to point out the duck curve. I think there is profit to be made if you have a battery that you charge with solar, then feed it back to the grid in the evening when demand is highest. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-how-address-over-generation-solar-energy https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-... Also with these flex alerts, PG&E was willing to pay us $2 a kwh below normal usage between 4-9pm https://energyupgradeca.org/flex-alert?utm_source=aw&utm_medium=paid-search&utm_campaign=2022-fa-al&utm_term=gm-en-all-ca&utm_content=fa-tips https://energyupgradeca.org/flex-alert?utm_source=aw&utm_med...
- hedora 4y agoThat's really frustrating. I'm currently selling power on to the grid, but it's capped at the rate my solar panels produce, probably by policy. So, even if I was eligible for this rate, it wouldn't give me any meangful credit. They need a rate that is proportional to marginal carbon emissions. Then, I could set my battery to that. It could look at the forecast for tomorrow, and make a killing by doing the obvious thing. Grr. The legislation around here is decades behind the technology.
- tims33 4y agoSafe to assume you’re getting net meetering? That is likely more valuable.
- hedora 4y agoI am, but I could make $40-60 in the next few hours by dumping the batteries' charge into the grid in the next three hours. That's much less than what I'd get normally. Basically, I want net metering to be proportional to carbon (and therefore peaker plant use). It's less about the amount of money I get back. In related news, my batteries aggressively charge themselves during the morning CO2 peak because power is cheap then. They should sell solar production into the grid during those hours and start charging at ~ 10 am.
- 4y ago
- keepquestioning 4y agoCan California buy eneergy from neighboring states?
- Shank 4y agoYeah, the various EEAs and emergency notices are basically opportunities for other participants on the grid to spin up generation capacity and help out. CAISO encompasses a wider region than just California -- this reflects the state of everything managed by the Western Energy Imbalance Market.
- keepquestioning 4y agoIs there any entity not connected to the grid? Besides Hawaii..
- Shank 4y agoTechnically speaking, the Western Interconnection is just a series of interconnected grids on the western-half of the continent. There are some operators that have capacity that can't be used or can't reasonably supply things. If you view the the price map (http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/prices.html http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/prices.html) and switch to real-time, you can easily spot where the grid doesn't have enough interconnect ties -- the prices will be wildly out-of-proportion with the rest of the system. The reasons for this are varied: in order to be able to adequately supply load you need physical lines connecting the grid together. One single line isn't enough to actually carry all of the electricity from A to B, because they're physical wires that have load limits (e.g., due to thermals). So while the western half of the US is widely connected, there are spots where more lines could be built to fix the imbalance. CAISO lately has been trying to onboard as many providers as are willing to, because it's a win-win (they get paid ridiculously high prices during events like this and the grid gets more stable).
- bombcar 4y agoThey can. But those neighboring states may also be undergoing power issues themselves due to temperatures. And by the time the demand in CA is high, the sun has set on many neighbors.
- dubyah 4y agoI really cannot understand how we went from having excess capacity as described in this article (https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fprojects%2Fla-fi-electricity-capacity%2F https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fproj...) to the current situation.
- Shank 4y agoThere are a lot of factors in-play that make realtime grid balancing harder. You can have more capacity on paper but have things trip offline due to faults, overloads, unexpected maintenance, etc. Just because you have the capacity on paper doesn't mean that you can always start that capacity up, route the power on enough transmission lines, etc. There are multiple wildfires and it's a very hot day right now, which can create adverse conditions. I definitely suggest Practical Engineering's power grid series for a better explanation about how this stuff works, but grid balancing is certainly nontrivial. Edit: You can actually see realtime transmission outage data via OASIS (http://oasis.caiso.com/mrioasis/logon.do http://oasis.caiso.com/mrioasis/logon.do), under the Transmission -> Transmission Outages tab. There are other tabs in OASIS that show related grid factors too.
- krasin 4y agothe article starts with "We're using less electricity. Some power plants have even shut down. So why do state officials keep approving new ones?" The authors do not seem to realize that transition to EVs will require to at least double the available electrical capacity.
- bombcar 4y agoMany people don’t get the vast amount of planning and slack inherent in these systems. If a power plant takes ten years from beginning to first megawatt, you need to be approving plants ten years before the one they’ll replace goes offline.
- happyopossum 4y agoThat article seems to have been written with a strong bias built in - at no point do they even acknowledge that peaks have to be accounted for, the rising electric vehicle demand, the planned closure of many older plants, or the fact that even in 2017 we were having problems meeting demand at times… They also don’t cite any credible sources for their claims that CA is headed to a power glut.
- macinjosh 4y agoSo why do they want to put every car on the grid too if they can’t even manage current demand? I hope most people realize policies like this mean a lower standard of living for the lower classes.
- elicash 4y agoThe good news is that Congress appropriated money to update the grid so it can manage more demand. Are you really suggesting that, instead, we should ban appliances and other items like electric cars that use electricity? And why pretend not to know why CA favors electric cars? I'm pretty sure you're aware of the debate over climate change causing extreme weather events -- including events that cause strain on the grid. One can argue California is moving too quickly, I think. They in fact may end up pushing back their deadlines--I think that's likely. But to suggest electric cars are an unmanageable problem?
- teaearlgraycold 4y agoIf people had the right hardware at home CA could put electric cars to use as distributed power storage.
- epistasis 4y agoIt's only a short period of the day, 4-9, where there are constraints on these hot days. Other times of day there's ample capacity. And car charging is a great sort of grid demand, because it's easily shiftable to other time periods. Most cars are parked nearly all the time. And as car companies become more enlightened and allow vehicle to grid, scenarios like this will vanish. It wouldn't take a large fraction of cars in a V2G program to eliminate the problems here, especially since cars are so close to the load, which also helps with transmission and distribution. 1 million cars would be 5-10GW, completely eliminating any worries for this week. And this is without the many GW of grid storage that is due to go online, but temporarily delayed because of COVID pandemic related parts delays.
- secabeen 4y agoBecause the vast majority of those cars will charge at night, when the grid has tons of capacity. No one is suggesting that those cars will charge during the 4pm-9pm window. It's more expensive to do so, and there's little benefit to it.
- morepork 4y agoI wonder how much the peak could be reduced by intentionally cooling houses lower than normal (say to 18 C / 65 F) before the demand peak, e.g. from 3pm - 5:30pm so that you don't need to use as much AC right when you get home and solar is waning. Essentially using the thermal mass of your house as a battery
- mertd 4y agoMost CA houses have awful insulation thanks to the mild climate.
- inferiorhuman 4y agoMost of California is in Zone 3 and, at least as of 2019, the California codes meet or exceed those EnergyStar suggestions. https://www.energystar.gov/campaign/seal_insulate/identify_problems_you_want_fix/diy_checks_inspections/insulation_r_values https://www.energystar.gov/campaign/seal_insulate/identify_p... https://up.codes/viewer/california/ca-energy-code-2019/chapter/8/low-rise-residential-buildings-performance-and-prescriptive-compliance-approache#8 https://up.codes/viewer/california/ca-energy-code-2019/chapt...
- bombcar 4y agoBut what is the age of the average Californian house? I know the ones I’ve seen had have little or no insulation to speak of, and I don’t recall a double pane window.
- happyopossum 4y ago43 years… newer home or recently remodeled homes have really good insulation and windows, but yeah - your typical Cali home built in 1979 does not.
- inferiorhuman 4y agoDepends on the neighborhood. Most of the urban core of the Bay Area dates to somewhere between the 1920s and 50s. The suburban stuff (a.k.a. everything else) maybe thirty-odd years later, and there was another wave after shuttered military bases started getting redeveloped. In Oakland, the building I'm in was built in the early 2010s. In Marin, Hamilton AFB got a bunch of tract housing in the late 90s. Treasure Island and the BVHP Navy Yard in San Francisco are still under development. Per the wiki article (since I'm too lazy to go to the library), California was first in the nation with energy efficiency standards in 1974 and currently has the lowest energy consumption per capita in the United States. However lax things were in the early 80s in California, things were/are more lax in Texas.
- Shank 4y agoCAISO has a lot of awesome data available just waiting to be tapped. OASIS provides realtime price data, and you can see realtime outages. Everything is downloadable in CSV and XML format. Unfortunately, OASIS is a really crazy legacy-application, so linking to it is difficult. If you launch OASIS from the "outlook" page, you can click on "System Operating Messages" to get a realtime feed of different messages from the system, for example. See: http://oasis.caiso.com/mrioasis http://oasis.caiso.com/mrioasis
- seer-zig 4y agoHow does CA's grid compare to Texas's?
- throwaway742 4y agoWhy don't they have supply and demand on one graph? They seem like the most important things to compare.