Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped • Hacker News Board

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#91

Post by notJim » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

qppo wrote: post #23

java-man wrote: post #4

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?

> What reasoning is holding us up? People turn their lights on when the sun goes down, and efficient energy storage is the holy grail. Also fun back of the napkin math with overestimates, if we have a totally efficient Li+ battery with 0.25 kWh/kg energy density, and converted all the world's 40 billion kg of lithium in the crust and oceans to batteries, we'd get roughly 10 TWh of energy storage capacity. Which is en…

Are you saying 19 full days of energy storage? Why do we need 19 days? Isn't it more like N hours per day, which can be recharged overnight and the following day? This seems like a very disingenuous presentation of this information.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#92

Post by kelnos » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

YarickR2 wrote: post #41

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 .

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.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#93

Post by dane-pgp » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #84

pc86 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because they can vote. Yes, stupid people can vote. This is the main vulnerability of democracy.

Stupid people can also become a monarch or a despot, which is one of the problems of monarchism and despotism.

I think that what you've found is a flaw with humanity, not with democracy.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#94

Post by acdha » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #79

hackermailman wrote: post #72

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?

The concern is more how many of those people will show up to vote against you in races which can have very small numbers of voters, and how much of a hassle they'll make for your office. If someone decides that you're part of the problem, you'll be getting lots of contacts, public records requests, etc. The things which circulate on neighborhood listserves, Facebook groups, etc. can be pretty absurd but they might break down into the 95% who don't care and ignore them and the 5% who care enough to put a lot of energy into obstruction.

None of that precludes doing the right thing, of course, but if it's not an issue you care strongly about you might decide not to fight it. The best countermeasure is for everyone else to tune out local politics less, which is an area people oddly ignore even though it has the most day to day impact on your life.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#95

Post by jjoonathan » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

newguy1234 wrote: post #88

drak0n1c wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

They retired base load power (nuclear) and didn't replace it with other power sources that can provide base load. Instead everyone pushed for renewable only and opposed the natural gas power stations. Build 5,000 MW of natural gas peakers and this problem immediately goes away.

So California has one-upped Germany: instead of replacing nuclear with coal, they're replacing nuclear with rolling blackouts. Ugh.

And to think, if we just hadn't stopped building nuclear, we would already be rid of CO2-intensive electricity. Instead, we've barely begun, and we've only begin through duck-curve denial. Facepalm.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#96

Post by f00zz » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #84

pc86 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because they can vote. Yes, stupid people can vote. This is the main vulnerability of democracy.

[edit: retracted]

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#97

Post by qes » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #47

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…

> For the first time in ten years

Had your coolant pressure checked lately? Heat exchanger fins clean, clear, and straight?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#98

Post by lisper » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #81

lisper wrote: post #47

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…

It's always odd to hear people complain about California weather.

Just for the record, I'm not actually complaining about the weather. I still would not trade our weather for anyplace else in the world. But the trend over the ten years I've been living here full time (and some shorter-term stints living here in the 80's) seems alarming to me.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#99

Post by amluto » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

dtwatljfk wrote: post #19

nimbius wrote: post #3

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…

> 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.

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.)

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#100

Post by chasd00 » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #47

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…

for me it's been the opposite, it has been unnervingly moderate as far as North Texas summers go the past 5 summers at least. I really feel for the coastal refugees that have moved to the area once a hot summer shows up. ...3 or 4 consecutive > 100F weeks when the roads start to melt and random fires breaking out in grass everywhere, the wind blows and it just gets hotter etc...