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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

#181

Post by thephyber »

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.

The work itself requires construction and any additional maintenance work may require construction (eg. digging a trench in the road / sidewalks). There's always some maintenance needed and I suspect vocal NIMBY people just don't want to tolerate any minor inconvenience, not simply any change.

Then again, maybe it's the same demand for power and independence that we are seeing with "Karens", masks, protests, Confederate statues, anti-intellectualism, conspiracy theories, etc. As individuals feel more powerless, they will almost certainly lash out at anything they can, including local utilities disrupting their life/convenience.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#182

Post by com2kid »

eggy wrote: post #143
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.

To be clear, the US is a constitutional republic and not a democracy, and the constant use of the word democracy dilutes this fact.

Except that the proposition system in California, and other states, is direct democracy.

The end result is that many state and local issues are resolved through direct voter action.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#183

Post by everybodyknows »

fortran77 wrote: post #64
everybodyknows wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> auto-magically signed-up for CPA (Clean Power Alliance). This is a state-governed "CCA": https://cal-cca.org/about/members/ Legally a CCA is required to send two "opt-out" notices. Being jaded and mistrustful, I did some research, and opted-out. > Which is, as far as I am concerned, a government run scam Only a slight exaggeration, by my experience. My city has lost money on the adventure, by extending zero-interes…

I opted out, too. I figured "It can't be without any downside as they say." I'm glad I did.

Might want to check city council records for hidden subsidies, covered of course by taxes on people like you and me.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#184

Post by [deleted] »

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).

[deleted]

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#185

Post by thephyber »

username4567 wrote: post #115
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 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.

I would love to see PG&E shame residents by showing PG&E customers how much their bill increases (both individually and in aggregate) because they have to work around NIMBYs.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#186

Post by Rebelgecko »

davisr wrote: post #124
paloaltokid wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Well, they're not entirely wrong about the 5G. I understand many in this forum won't agree with me. From https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no... > We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe > The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National T…

>two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats

If this is the study I'm thinking of, it's suspect for 3 reasons.

1. First off, the study didn't test against 5G. It used 2G and 3G emissions. Even if you believe the study, it doesn't make sense to use it as a reason to stick with 3G instead of 5G.

2. The study tested male rats, female rats, male mice, and female mice. Only male rats were allegedly impacted by radio signals. If 3G is so universally dangerous to living tissue, why did it only impact one of the species tested? And only the males of that species? Sidenote- the mice were actually exposed to more energy than the rats

3. Even though the male rats exposed to 2G and 3G were more likely to get cancer, they also lived longer than unexposed rats. Male rats exposed to 3G lived nearly 10% longer than ones that weren't. If this life extending capability also applies to 5G signals, we should be accelerating 5G deployment.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#187

Post by gjs278 »

WalterBright wrote: post #178

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,…

they already do this. nobody is going to understand or care or though. they’ll do it when they’re hot.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#188

Post by jeffbee »

khuey wrote: post #162
jeffbee wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I am going to try to use "unintentional curtailment" in a future post-mortem report.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#189

Post by bcrosby95 »

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…

Yeah, I got a pretty huge power bill last month and was trying to calculate my rate to figure out how much I could save where. Doing this is actually pretty confusing with the bill you get.

Tier 1 from SCE for us is $.106/kwh. Tier 2 is $.165/kwh.

Plus:

1. CCA surcharge (whatever that means) is $.0224/kwh for PCIA (whatever that is)

2. CCA surcharge is $.00580/kwh for DWR bond (whatever DWR is)

3. CCA surcharge is $.00089/kwh for CTC (whatever that is)

4. CPA generation charges is $.089/kwh

So tier 2 rate is actually 0.165 + .0224 + .0058 + .00089 + .089 = $.283/kwh, tier 1 rate comes out to $.224/kwh.

The breakdown is useful, I guess, so you kinda know where the money is going. But it's not useful if you're looking for how much you can save on your bill when looking into energy use habits.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#190

Post by giantrobot »

redbeard0x0a wrote: post #13
aleksandrm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict. Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.

Its not just overall grid usage, substations have capacities as well. So the business park is going to be underutilized, but the residential ones are probably seeing more demand as people are at home and not turning up the thermostat during the day to save energy (since they are at home and want a comfortable environment, vs. letting the house sit at 80 when nobody is home).

There's a good number of houses and apartments in the SCV with absolutely terrible insulation. The AC is the only thing keeping the interior moderately comfortable in 90°+ heat. If the thermostat is set to 80° The house will be significantly hotter than that.
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