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Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

nytimes.com

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Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#111

Post by toomuchtodo »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #42
toomuchtodo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the representatives with authority will get voted out by these folks. You have to dance around them, or find technical mitigations to the silliness (substation facades, suboptimal siting, more expensive underground transmission, etc). It's why you're seeing a rapid uptake in battery storage by consumers in California; it's a hack around regulatory and utility failures (and you get a federal tax credit if it c…

At what point is it ok to throw in the towel and say "this is just a city/state reaping what they sow". Sure there's people who want to do things right but as evidenced by a result they're a small enough minority that their voice doesn't matter. It's not like there's lobbyists from BigWildfire(TM) distorting things. The purpose of a system is what it does.

Every time I think we’re there, it turns out we’re not yet there. I don’t know.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#112

Post by dave5104 »

rconti wrote: post #74
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…

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 think one major difference this year with the current heatwave is that everyone's working from home. They're not going to an air conditioned office to work during the day, or they don't have the ability to go to the local library or Starbucks to sit and work. It's much worse having to sit through a heat wave at home with no A/C this year than in previous years.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#113

Post by jedberg »

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.

Part of the reason for that is because our houses are built for only temperate weather, especially the older ones.

My house was built in the 60s. It had single pane windows and no insulation under the floor in the crawlspace. It also had no attic fan.

We upgraded the windows and put in an attic fan, and that mostly works, but we still need the A/C a lot these last few years.

The house just doesn't hold temperature well. If there is more than a few degrees variance in either direction the temp swings wildly if I turn off the a/c.

This house was designed for the air outside to always be right around 72.

Another related story, I was using a datacenter in San Francisco. When the outside temp hit 85, we had to start shutting down servers. They told us the datacenter was designed with the assumption that the outside temp wouldn't ever get past 80.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#114

Post by avelis »

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…

Just to add to this perspective. I live in Austin, TX, in April of this year it is hot enough outside that the A/C has to stay on constantly day and night. It's August and the A/C is never off. I don't expect the A/C to turn off until late October. That's 6 months of non-stop A/C in our apartment. That's insane to me.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#115

Post by username4567 »

meroes wrote: post #38
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…

I am a technician for xfinity in the bay area and NIMBYism a huge part too I would say. Huge portions of Mill Valley especially on and around Mt Tam had such bad poles and vegetation. Only the last 3 fire years did anything. But literally nothing gets approved besides exact replacement. Nothing gets put underground, or rerouted because (as I understand it) mostly NIMBY groups. And I believe ATT ultimately owns most o…

I have family in Mill Valley in that area. They've seen PG&E helicoptering in new polls in residential neighborhoods. I assume it was because the streets were too narrow but also likely that the community didn't want heavy machinery in their neighborhood.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#116

Post by jeffbee »

fulafel wrote: post #29
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?

Pricing and regulation, we need to get out of pretend flat-rate electricity ASAP. This will probably lead to generously overprosivisioning solar & wind + long distance HVDC transmission lines or energy storage for the overproduction.

I don't see how pricing can really fix this, because the price falls on individuals who aren't in a position to fix the grid. Do you think it would be effective by incentivizing people to buy oversized residential solar arrays and significant dispersed battery storage?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#118

Post by hkmurakami »

zbrozek wrote: post #110
hkmurakami wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think the recent fires have nudged things towards more undergrounding. I'm familiar with some of the dialogue in similarly rural/affluent peninsula towns, and it's mostly a debate about safety versus cost to underground. There's an effort to underground the utilities near Foothill College by tapping into Santa Clara County Fire's funds for improved fire safety, since they're allowed to use these funds in that sp…

The justification is that there's a particularly high density and quantity of wiring around that fire station (one of two for LAH, IIRC) and that Moody is a major access route for emergency services and evacuation. A giant bundle of wires coming down across the road would strangle a response. A simplistic napkin math computation says that the cost delta in electricity between what Santa Clara pays and what PG&E custo…

Makes sense -- Moody Road is a pretty dicey road for access and there's a decent number of homes that could easily be cut off there. Presumably in such a situation the opposite side access from Page Mill Road would be jeopardized as well.

Too bad the deadline has passed for nomination for LAH Town Council. You should run next time ;)

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#119

Post by jeffbee »

Would love to know what changes day-to-day. According to CAISO dashboard, they are currently delivering 45 GW, while yesterday they were shedding load before they hit 44 GW. So, what aspect of supply changed? We're importing the same amount but we're getting 5 GW more natural gas supply than yesterday. Are there ... are there nat. gas plants that only operate on weekdays?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#120

Post by function_seven »

hanniabu wrote: post #62
ISL wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statement referred to heating driving sagging, which increased resistance. The increase of resistance with temperature is well-known -- I was curious if there is some effect that is directly related to the wire sag (changing morphology, somehow-altered surface area/skin-depth, changing kinks at the connections, some subtlety with increased length (cross-sectional area also increases), etc..).

Theoretically I would thing the sag itself should increase resistance since resistance increases with both length and smaller wire diameter. When the line lengthens the diameter should decrease (similar to stretching a piece of gum or putty).

It's not being stretched by an external force, though. It's expanding due to heat. The diameter would also expand some negligible amount I think.
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