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

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#161

Post by kmonsen » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #93

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the key value of (our version of) democracy is the peaceful transition of power. For example from Clinton -> Bush -> Obama -> Trump. They all had very different views on what the country needed to do, but they all accepted that elections were how the future was decided and handed off power to someone they did not agree with.

In a monarchy or despotism, there is no transition of power by design. It is supposed to be difficult, because it is not wanted. So if you end up with the wrong choice it is very hard to correct.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#162

Post by khuey » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #144

khuey wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is likely natural fluctuations in demand. The grid operator has not announced any load shedding (they have not even announced any imminent need to shed load) and there's still another 5GW of available capacity according to the dashboard.

It doesn't seem very likely that the actual behavior of a large-scale stochastic system and the hour-ahead forecast of that system would part ways to the extent we're seeing, just by coincidence. If it wasn't an intentional curtailment of demand, perhaps there is simply an outage somewhere?

Maybe there was unintentional curtailment of some sort, idk. There's still no announcement of stage 3 emergency (intentional curtailment).

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#163

Post by scrumbledober » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

If the state could magically have enough battery capacity in every county to smooth out this curve, what scale of battery installation would that take?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#164

Post by burlesona » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

avelis wrote: post #114

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.

That seems normal to me for Texas, though. Most population growth across TX, NM, AZ happened after the invention of air conditioning, precisely because it's uncomfortable there for half the year without it.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#165

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

paloaltokid wrote: post #71

meroes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh god...Marin NIMBYism is really crazy when it comes to that stuff. And there's a lot of conspiracy theory / 5G type stuff that goes on as well. Strange to think that many of the folks who live there are in charge of a lot of the companies on HN (or are senior execs there).

It's clear not enough is being invested in schools, in particular the science curriculum.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#166

Post by giantrobot » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #63

dtwatljfk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I used to work in the contact centre for my country's radio spectrum regulators, we'd get numerous phone calls from people who were terrified of or complaining about the "radiation" part of "electromagnetic radiation" from power equipment or celltowers or radio transmitters. I'd say 1/3 were reassured by my explanation of why non-ionising radiation isn't going to harm your unborn child/give you cancer[1], 1/3 decided…

> Unless you're climbing a transmitter tower and exposing your womb to a focused microwave beam at a very close range for a substantial period, then the heating effect probably isn't going to be doing good things.

That's exactly what I'd expect from a lying tool of the Establishment.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#167

Post by fredliu » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

I start to see tweets attributing the CA power outages to increased degree of renewable energies that are "inherently unreliable"(solar, wind), on the supply side of the equation. And of course the tweets are very politically charged, making it hard to judge how true those claims are. Anybody has more insights on these claims?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#168

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

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 can't imagine what makes someone object to moving cables underground.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#169

Post by robomartin » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:13 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #87

robomartin wrote: post #43

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…

Wow. What what a nightmare. I'm sorry to hear it. Thanks for the comprehensive post. >"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 a…

You pay for energy, not power. The simple formula for energy is power x time. This is what "kWh" means... 1 kilo-Watt used for one hour.

When calculating total energy utilization for a period of time during which power varies (your TV is turned on and off, air conditioner cycles, etc.) the calculation effectively entails the integral of power plotted against time. Another way to put it is that the energy is the area under that curve.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#170

Post by offmycloud » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

khuey wrote: post #130

jeffbee wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but the sun is up right now and they are already shedding loads (the dashboard is bouncing off a ceiling of 45 GW).

That is likely natural fluctuations in demand. The grid operator has not announced any load shedding (they have not even announced any imminent need to shed load) and there's still another 5GW of available capacity according to the dashboard.

California declared a Stage 2 Emergency at 15:30 PDT today which begins curtailment of interruptible loads, a less drastic form of load shedding. A Stage 3 Emergency begins to affect firm load using rotating outages.