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It's very difficult to come to simple conclusions that are accurate in the case of California power generation. One of the reasons it's so complicated is that

It's very difficult to come to simple conclusions that are accurate in the case of California power generation. One of the reasons it's so complicated is that the State in California intervenes in the market in so many (sometimes contradictory) ways. The incentives are often perverse and exactly the opposite of what you would expect. In attempting to protect consumers, California in the long run has created a market with almost the highest prices in the nation. Simultaneously, and surprisingly, those high prices have not translated into some kind of futuristic or resilient grid. California has not had power outages not because California is better than Texas in terms of technology ... rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn't really suffer state-wide extremes. As bad as California's public schools are, I think within twenty years we will realize that the thing Sacramento politicians fucked up the most was not the schools ... it was the power grid. Talk to anyone that runs a power intensive manufacturing enterprise in CA. They have already moved their facilities to another state or they already have a plan to do so. California imports from other states all the energy-intensive inputs and exports its pollution and smugly pats itself on the back. All while taxing its citizens with some of the highest residential power pricing too.

7thaccount 2y ago
They export heavily when the sun is in abundance and import heavily when it isn't. Their move to an electricity market instead of just having regulated utilities was one of the first in the nation and most of the early ones all had big issues as the experience just wasn't there in the design of the market. Now, each market region has a market monitor that looks for the things than Enron did (example: physical withholding to make prices rise). My belief is now that you should never be a first mover on those kinds of things.
supportengineer 2y ago
Another reason we haven't had those blackouts is that electrical efficiency is increasing, even as we increase demand. For example imagine all the CRT screens, street lights, and incandescent bulbs that were all replaced with LCDs.
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  this is physically impossible. You can't have more demand in terms of kw-h, joules, amps, watts or whatever yet also not have more demand. The device could have 0.0001% efficiency or 99.99%. If demand goes up, demand goes up. What the device does with that power is not relevant.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > You can't have more demand in terms of kw-h, joules, amps, watts or whatever yet also not have more demand. You can have a demand for more lumens of lighting power... but if you previously used incandescent bulbs and now go for LED, you can expend less electrical energy than you did with the old bulbs.
  - gibolt 2y ago
    Imagine the increase in demand without the efficiency improvements. Improving everything that pulls power significantly decreases the growth curve, meaning more time to increase available capacity.
  - quickthrowman 2y ago
    An LED lamp puts out more lumens per watt than a fluorescent or incandescent lamp. Similarly, an induction motor controlled by a variable frequency drive can use much less energy by varying its speed instead of using a fixed speed motor starter. VFDs typically get signals from building automation or process control systems and adjust the motor speed accordingly. An arbitrary example would be a fan running at 50% speed generating 50% airflow but using only 25% of the electricity needed to run at 100%. https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/articles/adjustable-speed-drive-part-load-efficiency https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/articles/adjustable-speed-dr...
- giantrobot 2y ago
  New construction is also often tied to more generation and higher efficiency. Even a brand new McMansion uses less power than a 40 year old house that's half the size. There's also even odds that new McMansion was mandated to have solar.
jeffbee 2y ago
> rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn't really suffer state-wide extremes. No the reason that California doesn't have capacity outages is because we've executed steadily on the most ambitious battery energy storage project in the nation, and now have over 8GW of said batteries. And because the CPUC regime despite the vocal whining of a few impacted industries has also walked a fine line giving us a huge installed base of rooftop solar.
- hollerith 2y ago
  Yes, but not having capacity outages is a very low bar in the developed world, whereas the prices Californians pay for electricity is much higher than most places.
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    Two separate problems. PG&E is guaranteed a return on capital, so the prices are just going to be what they are until the state unwinds that bad deal. It doesn't have much to do with anything else.
    - hollerith 2y ago
      The two "problems" are related in that California's not having capacity outages does very little to offset the fact that whoever decided how to provide electricity for Calfornia did a bad job.
- vel0city 2y ago
  Texas has 6.3GW of battery capacity installed largely in the last three years and is on track for another ~15GW (a bit over 20GW total) by the end of 2024. There's 141GW of battery projects in the queue for connection to ERCOT, with a large chunk of that coming online in 2025 and 2026. If 8GW over several is the most ambitious, what's 160GW in five years? https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2024/04/22/5%20CEO%20Update.pdf https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2024/04/22/5%20CEO%20Update... Meanwhile rates in Texas have risen a good bit...to $0.14-15/kWh.
mistrial9 2y ago
no, not really accurate.. more outrage than details. fifty years+ ago, PG&E operated an engineering marvel, built and managed by engineers with a mission and expanding economy post-WWII. Decisions were made with reliability in mind, great feats of large scale building were accomplished and made stable. Then, things changed inside PG&E regarding upper management and their goals. Engineers retired or elbowed out by business-oriented Cxx level. The lure of continuous income coupled with a de-facto alignment with ultra-conservative political forces, castling up against the tides of 1970s-80s politics. Supervision by regulators was compromised repeatedly. Insider politics entered at all levels but not "the politicians" it was multi-stakeholder command and control making alliances and payoffs over time. All of this was moving along as a juggernaut when de-regulation entered. Instead of a democratic market for competing providers, in came Enron. As genuine panic spread due to the first ever blackouts, legal actions were taken that drew back the curtain from the insider deals. PG&E management had found loopholes to use company money to buy out of state assets for profit. Cost-cutting ruled over safety (tree trimming, long haul line insulators). After emergency maneuvers to regain the grid and Enron was rendered harmless, then some of the rant above applies, yes. Recent events (death and destruction) are out of the control of any faction or individual. New rate increases are evidence of Big State politics tied with Homeland Security and budget creep and a thousand other factors. With all that said, yes this is a political problem by definition, agree. source: attorney on the Enron case for California; book Scorched Worth by Joel Engel; public news
toast0 2y ago
> California has not had power outages not because California is better than Texas in terms of technology ... rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn't really suffer state-wide extremes. This is a consequence of California's grid being in the Western Interconnection, so there's a lot of capacity to import/export to other states. Texas's grid is mostly isolated in order to preempt federal regulations; they have very limited ability to import/export power. The page on interties [1] is awfully hard to read, but I think it says socal can get ~ 4 GW from norcal via Path 26 (which can get 4.8 GW from oregon via Path 66), and socal can also get 11 GW from the east via path 46, and 3 GW from Washington via path 65. Tres Amigas was cancelled, but was proposed to have 5 GW from each of the three grids (Western, Eastern, Texas), to the other two. I can't find a list of capacity for active ties between Texas and other grids. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WECC_Intertie_Paths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WECC_Intertie_Paths
chaostheory 2y ago
> California has not had power outages not because California is better than Texas in terms of technology California has had frequent power outages over the last 10 years due to a combination of old infrastructure and wildfires. https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2023/09/05/california-power-outage-hours-increase-trend-upward https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2023/09/05/califor... https://www.bloomenergy.com/bloom-energy-outage-map/ https://www.bloomenergy.com/bloom-energy-outage-map/
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Yeah, not only have we had unplanned outages, but PG&E has preemptively shut off power in large urban areas during weeks of high fire risk. Happened multiple times, but I specifically remember the 2020 rolling blackouts.
akira2501 2y ago
> rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn't really suffer state-wide extremes. I think people who say this forget how large California is or have never been to the imperial valley.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  The comment said "state-wide extremes"
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hot_gril 2y ago
The CA home solar subsidies read to me like we've given up on fixing our utilities. Like it's our job to generate our own power from our roofs now, not a power company with access to dedicated facilities that can be far more efficient. Some of my coworkers in the Bay Area even invested in whole-home UPS like Tesla Powerwall because they've been hit by too many blackouts, as if it's not the utility's job anymore to provide reliable power.

7thaccount 2y ago

They export heavily when the sun is in abundance and import heavily when it isn't. Their move to an electricity market instead of just having regulated utilities was one of the first in the nation and most of the early ones all had big issues as the experience just wasn't there in the design of the market. Now, each market region has a market monitor that looks for the things than Enron did (example: physical withholding to make prices rise). My belief is now that you should never be a first mover on those kinds of things.

supportengineer 2y ago

Another reason we haven't had those blackouts is that electrical efficiency is increasing, even as we increase demand. For example imagine all the CRT screens, street lights, and incandescent bulbs that were all replaced with LCDs.

sidewndr46 2y ago
this is physically impossible. You can't have more demand in terms of kw-h, joules, amps, watts or whatever yet also not have more demand. The device could have 0.0001% efficiency or 99.99%. If demand goes up, demand goes up. What the device does with that power is not relevant.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > You can't have more demand in terms of kw-h, joules, amps, watts or whatever yet also not have more demand. You can have a demand for more lumens of lighting power... but if you previously used incandescent bulbs and now go for LED, you can expend less electrical energy than you did with the old bulbs.
- gibolt 2y ago
  Imagine the increase in demand without the efficiency improvements. Improving everything that pulls power significantly decreases the growth curve, meaning more time to increase available capacity.
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  An LED lamp puts out more lumens per watt than a fluorescent or incandescent lamp. Similarly, an induction motor controlled by a variable frequency drive can use much less energy by varying its speed instead of using a fixed speed motor starter. VFDs typically get signals from building automation or process control systems and adjust the motor speed accordingly. An arbitrary example would be a fan running at 50% speed generating 50% airflow but using only 25% of the electricity needed to run at 100%. https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/articles/adjustable-speed-drive-part-load-efficiency https://www.energy.gov/eere/amo/articles/adjustable-speed-dr...
giantrobot 2y ago
New construction is also often tied to more generation and higher efficiency. Even a brand new McMansion uses less power than a 40 year old house that's half the size. There's also even odds that new McMansion was mandated to have solar.

jeffbee 2y ago

> rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn't really suffer state-wide extremes. No the reason that California doesn't have capacity outages is because we've executed steadily on the most ambitious battery energy storage project in the nation, and now have over 8GW of said batteries. And because the CPUC regime despite the vocal whining of a few impacted industries has also walked a fine line giving us a huge installed base of rooftop solar.

hollerith 2y ago
Yes, but not having capacity outages is a very low bar in the developed world, whereas the prices Californians pay for electricity is much higher than most places.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  Two separate problems. PG&E is guaranteed a return on capital, so the prices are just going to be what they are until the state unwinds that bad deal. It doesn't have much to do with anything else.
  - hollerith 2y ago
    The two "problems" are related in that California's not having capacity outages does very little to offset the fact that whoever decided how to provide electricity for Calfornia did a bad job.
vel0city 2y ago
Texas has 6.3GW of battery capacity installed largely in the last three years and is on track for another ~15GW (a bit over 20GW total) by the end of 2024. There's 141GW of battery projects in the queue for connection to ERCOT, with a large chunk of that coming online in 2025 and 2026. If 8GW over several is the most ambitious, what's 160GW in five years? https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2024/04/22/5%20CEO%20Update.pdf https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2024/04/22/5%20CEO%20Update... Meanwhile rates in Texas have risen a good bit...to $0.14-15/kWh.

mistrial9 2y ago

no, not really accurate.. more outrage than details. fifty years+ ago, PG&E operated an engineering marvel, built and managed by engineers with a mission and expanding economy post-WWII. Decisions were made with reliability in mind, great feats of large scale building were accomplished and made stable. Then, things changed inside PG&E regarding upper management and their goals. Engineers retired or elbowed out by business-oriented Cxx level. The lure of continuous income coupled with a de-facto alignment with ultra-conservative political forces, castling up against the tides of 1970s-80s politics. Supervision by regulators was compromised repeatedly. Insider politics entered at all levels but not "the politicians" it was multi-stakeholder command and control making alliances and payoffs over time. All of this was moving along as a juggernaut when de-regulation entered. Instead of a democratic market for competing providers, in came Enron. As genuine panic spread due to the first ever blackouts, legal actions were taken that drew back the curtain from the insider deals. PG&E management had found loopholes to use company money to buy out of state assets for profit. Cost-cutting ruled over safety (tree trimming, long haul line insulators). After emergency maneuvers to regain the grid and Enron was rendered harmless, then some of the rant above applies, yes. Recent events (death and destruction) are out of the control of any faction or individual. New rate increases are evidence of Big State politics tied with Homeland Security and budget creep and a thousand other factors. With all that said, yes this is a political problem by definition, agree. source: attorney on the Enron case for California; book Scorched Worth by Joel Engel; public news

toast0 2y ago

> California has not had power outages not because California is better than Texas in terms of technology ... rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn't really suffer state-wide extremes. This is a consequence of California's grid being in the Western Interconnection, so there's a lot of capacity to import/export to other states. Texas's grid is mostly isolated in order to preempt federal regulations; they have very limited ability to import/export power. The page on interties [1] is awfully hard to read, but I think it says socal can get ~ 4 GW from norcal via Path 26 (which can get 4.8 GW from oregon via Path 66), and socal can also get 11 GW from the east via path 46, and 3 GW from Washington via path 65. Tres Amigas was cancelled, but was proposed to have 5 GW from each of the three grids (Western, Eastern, Texas), to the other two. I can't find a list of capacity for active ties between Texas and other grids. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WECC_Intertie_Paths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WECC_Intertie_Paths

chaostheory 2y ago

> California has not had power outages not because California is better than Texas in terms of technology California has had frequent power outages over the last 10 years due to a combination of old infrastructure and wildfires. https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2023/09/05/california-power-outage-hours-increase-trend-upward https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2023/09/05/califor... https://www.bloomenergy.com/bloom-energy-outage-map/ https://www.bloomenergy.com/bloom-energy-outage-map/

hot_gril 2y ago
Yeah, not only have we had unplanned outages, but PG&E has preemptively shut off power in large urban areas during weeks of high fire risk. Happened multiple times, but I specifically remember the 2020 rolling blackouts.

akira2501 2y ago

> rather California is blessed with a climate that doesn't really suffer state-wide extremes. I think people who say this forget how large California is or have never been to the imperial valley.

hot_gril 2y ago
The comment said "state-wide extremes"

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hot_gril 2y ago

The CA home solar subsidies read to me like we've given up on fixing our utilities. Like it's our job to generate our own power from our roofs now, not a power company with access to dedicated facilities that can be far more efficient. Some of my coworkers in the Bay Area even invested in whole-home UPS like Tesla Powerwall because they've been hit by too many blackouts, as if it's not the utility's job anymore to provide reliable power.