151–160 of 248 posts
I live in a suburb of the Bay Area where temperatures are usually in 70s and 80s. Suddenly it is going to be 100 for 5 day straight. I have never seen anything like this
We're going to need lots of power grid upgrades over the next few decades, for all the new air conditioning (climate change), and the electrification of heat and transportation (trying to avoid climate change.) Are these upgrades even in the planning phase? People will be hesitant to migrate away from fossil fuels if they can't trust the alternative.
I'm sure there are plenty of plans: the question is whether the general public is willing to deal with the cost.
PG&E (allegedly) delays upgrades:
* https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-31/pge-rebuts...
But this was supposedly allowed by (elected) regulators because they didn't want blowback from the electorate about larger bills:
* https://www.wsj.com/articles/pg-e-caused-over-400-fires-in-2...
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This is because one of our two political parties doesn’t believe that government spending should exist, and is iffy about the concept of government overall. Because of that, the only body able to respond to crises is the Federal Reserve, and the only lever they have is the money supply. We’ve had multiple trillion dollars worth of infrastructure repairs we need to do and nearly sub-zero borrowing rates for the last d…
The GOP has no power in California, though, and that’s been true for over a decade.
The GOP could still block tax increases (including any tax rearrangement that included an increase in some aspect), because of the supermajority requirement, until the Senate class elected in 2018, which was significantly less than a decade ago.
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> Healthcare costs are up, but you don’t have to worry about dying from a scraped knee. As an American, you just need to worry about dying from incredibly common and treatable diseases like cancer, heart disease or diabetes due to lack of treatment. If you show up to an emergency room without insurance or ability to pay and expect chemo or a supply of insulin or blood pressure medication, you're out of luck. My grand…
The US is at or near the top for cancer 5 year survival rates. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cancer-su...
That doesn't mean anything for someone with cancer and no health insurance. If they show up to a emergency room expecting top tier cancer treatment some people in the US can afford, they are not going to get it, while they would in other first world countries. This is what my post was addressing.
Ironically, cancer survival rates are almost the only metric[1] by which the US medical system outranks other nations. When it comes to quality of care, health outcomes, mortality rates, etc they are almost all universally worse in the US than other first world nations[1].
[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...
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Here’s two examples of power grid failures in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_European_blackout https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-blackout-raises-questions-over-...
The size (not always duration) of outage in your second link would be considered routine in many American cities. To take SF as an example: - 2020, well, here you go - 2018/2019 should also need no overview, CA is probably the worst power situation in OECD countries in the 21st century - 2017, 88k without power https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/04/21/power-outage-sh... - 2016, 23k https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.c…
Strange reporting that people were "believed" to have been blacked out. We lost power yesterday in Sunnyvale from 5-9pm. Very interested in more info on the "hundreds of thousands" because it seems like the cuts were fairly limited. There was enough power to keep the fridge running but thats about it.
Lol and I made fun of my country when this happened in Iran. Good job America.
I live in a suburb of the Bay Area where temperatures are usually in 70s and 80s. Suddenly it is going to be 100 for 5 day straight. I have never seen anything like this
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I lost power but don’t have a Tesla. Your tip doesn’t help me.
If you had one, your individual choice would not prevent your particular electric service from going out, so no big deal. It would be neat if the utilities had the ability to selectively shed car chargers, clothes dryers, and suchlike loads. I imagine they have to make the choice at a much more coarse level, like at a distribution substation.
They have the capacity, though it's only used for AC reduction AFAIK: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy-money/savi...