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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

#171

Post by helaoban »

thevardanian wrote: post #153
helaoban wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience at all. I've lived in Marin county for 30 years, and this doesn't feel like anything extreme. I can recall many, many similar heat waves in my life. My bet is that the bay area has many micro-climates, and people's experiences can differ wildly. It's hard to extrapolate a trend from this kind of anecdota. Edit: The summer rain/thunderstorm we had yesterday, now that is rare.

"There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain... And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years,…

East of Eden, the most convincing account of what if feels like to have lived in Northern/Central California, even if just for the description of the land. For those who haven't read it, please do. It's a tale that will never really leave you.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#172

Post by mensetmanusman »

rbanffy wrote: post #168
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…

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

There will be a dirt pile in their morning landscape view from the east wing of their estate.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#173

Post by amluto »

Baeocystin wrote: post #105
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…

I live in Gilroy, and we've had 3 days of 105+ weather. When the house I live in was built, they put in a 3-ton unit, which was complete fine for the first 20 years my family lived here. I replaced it a few years ago with a 4-ton unit, and added extra blown-in insulation. It has barely kept up with the heatwave. Next is dual-pane windows, I guess. There are a lot of folks with less who are straight-out suffering. The…

Fancy insulation, double pane glass, etc are great for the heating season. They reduce conductive heat transfer, which is (roughly) proportional to the indoor-outdoor temperature difference. Even on a 100F day, the indoor-outdoor difference with A/C set to 75F is only 25F, which is equivalent to heating to 70F on a mild 45F winter day.

Try looking for major sources of solar heating instead. Windows and especially skylights are big culprits. So are inadequately insulated roof / ceiling assemblies.

You can put solar film on windows, use indoor or outdoor shades, or replace glass with low SHGC (solar heat gain coefficient) glass to reduce heating.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#174

Post by mensetmanusman »

kryogen1c wrote: post #154
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…

> Wild claims related to electromagnetism what follows is speculation, so you can grab your pitchforks if you want but it will be a hollow victory. I've always been suspicious of the claim that EM fields have zero effect on human beings, especially near high-volts lines. It doesnt seem possible. Our bodies function based on electrical signals and many cellular mechanisms are mediated with ions. do we have a list of a…

Turn on your FM radio, all that noise you hear in all the other channels are EM fields from exploding stars hitting you constantly.

While you read this, over 100 billion neutrinos went through your thumb.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#175

Post by mensetmanusman »

leni536 wrote: post #77
hanniabu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I don't think it should. Heat expansion should slightly increase the diameter.

Not if the length increases to counteract it.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#176

Post by bob1029 »

newguy1234 wrote: post #90
aaomidi wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The issue that is causing the problems is peak demand hits around 5:30 pm....exactly at the same time when solar supply is dropping rapidly. We need natural gas peaker plants that basically fire up to bridge the gap during the night. 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.

Ercot had this problem last year WRT to over-reliance on wind generation capacity. At one dire point we had 90 minutes of $9/KWh rates and the utility was looking to roll blackouts. I paid $200 for 1 day of electricity and I pulled my breaker about halfway through the worst part. I know people who got hit with nearly 4 figures for a single day of usage.

I don't have problems with renewable energy in principle, but until we have practical storage capabilities or other alternatives, it seems like we need to keep most of the less desirable forms of generation capacity around. I do not think it is acceptable to roll blackouts until we have something like a tesla powerwall in every electricity consumers' premises. We should never compromise on grid quality in pursuit of environmental objectives. The 2nd order consequences of an unreliable grid could have even more grave environmental impact than driving the grid with a coal plant (i.e. every business & homeowner on earth starts buying carbon-intensive generators or lithium batteries due to grid stability problems).

Decommissioning nuclear capacity seems like a massive mistake in general, but I understand the geology is potentially subpar in this specific case. Is it technologically infeasible to produce earthquake-proof nuclear power plants? Or, at least plants that would be guaranteed fail-safe under any seismic condition?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#177

Post by kryogen1c »

rbanffy wrote: post #160
kryogen1c wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wild claims related to electromagnetism what follows is speculation, so you can grab your pitchforks if you want but it will be a hollow victory. I've always been suspicious of the claim that EM fields have zero effect on human beings, especially near high-volts lines. It doesnt seem possible. Our bodies function based on electrical signals and many cellular mechanisms are mediated with ions. do we have a list of a…

Wouldn't we see those effects on the animals and plants that live around the power lines?

observational studies like this would be hard to craft.

we'd have to be doing the studies, first. second, we'd have to know what we're looking for. if the effects were subtle, generational, or multiple and confounding, it would be hard to see even if we were looking. also, im sure the sample size is small. not a lot of people/animals spend years 10 feet from high-volts lines.

also, people are generally pretty change-averse. if there were proof that our current way of life was harmful, not a lot of people would be interested in discovering, spreading, or changing due to this news, least of all the companies with a profit motive. saving the turtles is fine if all you have to do is use a metal straw instead of plastic, but ask people to inconvenience themselves (less TV, less air-conditioning, less hot water, etc) and you've got a different response.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#178

Post by WalterBright »

One way to deal with this is to have variable electric rates - cheaper rates when plenty of power is available, and more expensive when less. This incentivizes consumers to time shift their usage.

For example, evening A/C use can be time shifted to the day, by cooling the house more during the day, so less is needed in the evening. The thermal mass of a house has a lot of inertia (and can be increased by adding, say, a pile of rocks).

The idea of a fixed 24/7 electricity rate is hopelessly obsolete.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#179

Post by khuey »

offmycloud wrote: post #170
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.

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.

Yes, when I wrote that the Stage 2 Emergency had not yet been announced.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#180

Post by reaperducer »

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…

Operators tend to baby these stations intentionally as their failure could spark massive outages across the grid

You certainly know more about this topic than I do, but according to the article, it wasn't the operators that decided to cut back on power, it was ordered by the Independent System Operator.

From what I read, Edison, PG&E and SDG&E just did what they were told, and for some reason the ISO told them to cut back earlier than was previously necessary. That's why the experts are "stumped."

If I'm missing something, please let me know.

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