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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

#201

Post by zbrozek »

jldugger wrote: post #145
zbrozek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've kinda wondered this for a while -- why is SVP (Santa Clara) cheaper than PG&E?

As far as I can tell it's a cost-plus model. If PG&E wants to grow its revenue, it has to do something that costs more. They have a perverse incentive to make everything as expensive as possible.

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/how-rates-w...

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#202

Post by [deleted] »

kelnos wrote: post #89
rconti wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's contrary to my experience. I lived in south bay and the peninsula 2004-2010 and needed a/c every summer, for multiple weeks each year. For two of those years I didn't have a/c and had a lot of sleep loss those summers when daytime temperatures would break 90F, and occasionally 100F. Even when we'd "only" get mid-80F temperatures, I'd still want to run the a/c during the day if I was home. Feeling sticky while…

[deleted]

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#203

Post by jauer »

thephyber wrote: post #185
username4567 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cost recovery fees in areas where they were blocked by NIMBY groups? I'd love to see that, but skeptical that the regulator would approve.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#204

Post by noodlesUK »

davisr wrote: post #150
nrki wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a great source. Science is based on evidence, not lack of evidence. A rebuttal to that article appears in the same publication, and adroitly takes apart it's claims: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/dont-fall-...

Thanks, I didn't know about this article. I'm not heavily one way or the other, but I think it's important to put all the information out there.

This particular feeling, of having a compulsion to share scary information without a strong knowledge base, and then retreating to this sort of position “I think it’s important to put all the information out there” is well described, specifically on this topic, by a recent post by Troy hunt.

https://www.troyhunt.com/lets-stop-the-5g-hysteria-understan...

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#205

Post by paul_f »

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…

We need to quickly get to the next generation chloride ion battery batteries! A whole lot more salt lying around than lithium.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#206

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

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 is normal for Texas - but most buildings have central air so it’s not so bad. In NYC I’m in a pre-war building that has no A/C or ducting so I have to put in window units which only have a 3-5 year lifespan and aren’t horribly efficient , I can’t put in ceiling fans because the ceiling can’t support the weight (no cross beam or something), I’m limited in A/C size by the wiring, and until last year I had the old Edison S-type fuses which tend to blow in warm weather so you had to keep a shoe box of them around just in case - last year the super put in a breaker panel and man it has been wonderful, I’ve yet to even have to reset one of them.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#207

Post by c3534l »

I remember hearing about rolling blackouts in California as this mysterious problem that occurred after privatization, then after Enron broke, it was revealed that they'd been engineering blackouts in pump & dump schemes. Any chance there's a relationship between these blackouts and the older ones? Or are we sure this is some completely new phenomenon?

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#208

Post by zbrozek »

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,…

Making everything hopelessly complicated isn't really great either. Should water rates and gas rates do the same? Tolls already do this. It's a growing cognitive burden.

I don't look forward to surge pricing for data usage. It feels inevitable.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#209

Post by brudgers »

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…

Going from a three to four ton unit was a mistake. One that's easy to make because it's counter-intuitive. And because bigger units are more expensive there's a sales incentive to sell bigger units too. To be effective at cooling people an air conditioner needs to remove latent heat in the form of water vapor. Lowering the air temperature isn't enough.

Oversized units short-cycle, lowering the air temperature significantly faster than they remove latent heat by condensing water vapor. The controlling thermostat turns the unit off quickly because the big unit quickly reduces the air temperature. The latent heat in the water vapor remains in the air. People still feel hot.

Basically, a residential air conditioner should be running most of the time if it's properly sized. Oversized units will come on, run for a few minutes, shut down for a few minutes, run for a few minutes, etc.

Double pane windows and blown insulation will magnify the effect because the air conditioner will reduce the air temperature more quickly and efficiently and leave more latent heat in the air.

Note that latent heat in the air from water vapor increases with temperature. That's why we talk in terms of relative humidity. So oversizing is less of an issue for heating season and double pane windows and extra insulation help.

Re: Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped

#210

Post by userbinator »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #131
redbeard0x0a wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The temperature on the AC at my house is set at 80F. At 80F with the air flow from fans and a dressing light, there is no reason most people cannot be comfortable. I think that people cranking the AC down to 72F like they do are selfish and do not understand the impact that everyday actions have on the world as a whole.

For me, 80F is well beyond "sweating even without doing anything", even if wearing nothing (which is, thankfully in this work-from-home era, easier than ever.)
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