81–90 of 357 posts
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…
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 .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My thought was that the gauge of the wire goes down as it sags. The same weight of wire across a longer distance. Maybe I’m wrong and this kind of wire stretching doesn’t impact resistance?
I think sag means voltage sag.
https://www.atcllc.com/blog/why-do-power-lines-sag-on-hot-da...
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 mo…
> 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?
Yes, stupid people can vote. This is the main vulnerability of democracy.
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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?
My thought was that the gauge of the wire goes down as it sags. The same weight of wire across a longer distance. Maybe I’m wrong and this kind of wire stretching doesn’t impact resistance?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not enough people are willing to spend time at city hall community hearings and make the voice of reason heard whereas these other people will show up to make demands. Same thing happened here when the city wanted to install free wifi in public parks for students, all the nuts flooded the meetings making ridiculous claims and demands but none of the people who would benefit bothered to show up so they canned the idea…
And the council members are so incapable of critical thought that they believe that the loud nutjobs who show up are representative of their constituents?
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 yea…
>"area under the power curve (which is what you pay for)..." What is this billing model exactly> I tried to look it up in the context of utility billing but wasn't able to find anything.
>"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."
Is this where SCE or another Edison has a third party leasing firm they partner with? I think these leases are for 30 years no? What happens when you sell a home with such a lease on it?
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?
Anti-fossil fuel mandates imposed by the California legislature is part of the reason there is a shortage of power in various areas. Rushing the transition without enough alternative supply in place is a recipe for further problems. https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-blackout-warning-11... https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/08/15...
Build 5,000 MW of natural gas peakers and this problem immediately goes away.
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…
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 t…
I've lived in SF since 2010, and there have been multiple weeks in the summer, during the past 5 or 6 years, where I've been unable to sleep due to heat. That sort of thing was rare in the 4 or 5 years prior. Just over this past weekend my inside temperature topped at just below 90F, with the outdoor daytime temperature getting as high as 98F. By the time I went to sleep, the indoor temperature was still in the low 80s, with windows open and fans on full.
If you don't require a/c at those temperatures in order to sleep well, lucky you, but then I wouldn't characterize you as typical.
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
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.
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.