[deleted]
California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
171–180 of 248 posts
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has any other President - Republican or Democrat - actively tried to make it less effective? Why are we pretending that the current administration is normal? This isn’t a difference on the margins about whether you believe in supply side or demand side economics. If you look back on Presidents or politicians on either side of the aisle. We have never seen anything like this during my lifetime (born in 74). I didn’t a…
The orange one has done his share of awful things (like every president), but if this virus hadn't appeared we would very much still be in the "sports team" situation. We will certainly destroy ourselves by other means before "the deficit" affects us in the least. It never stopped us from buying more weaponry; now that there is obviously something else on which to spend money suddenly we should worry about it?
No we wouldn’t and by pretending anything Trump has done even pre-Covid is both trying to see “both sides” not to get flagged by HN and to say that all Republicans are just as malicious, corrupt and incompetent as his administration has been and is a lazy argument. I went out of my way not to paint all Republicans since 1980 with the same brush.
Before Trump, a Republican administration supported both the Voting Rights Act - didn’t try to disenfranchise minorities - and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Both Republicans and Democratic Presidents supported the EITC.
Bush didn’t demonize Muslims after 9/11 he went out of his way not to.
No I didn’t agree with all of their policies, but I didn’t feel that they went out of their way to target “others”. They showed a level of decency and poise that you don’t see now.
I still don’t see how this is coming off partisan.
To act as if any other President of either party in modern history has done the same things that he has said and done is a severe case of “whataboutism”.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Berlin got a blackout once in a decade like most American cities get multiple times a year.
The Berlin power outage linked above was over thirty hours, and the SF outages you linked were a few hours. To bury that in "(not always duration)" seems misleading to me. That said, the 2019 power cuts were indeed approaching third-world duration and frequency, to the point that homeowners who could afford it applied the usual third-world workarounds (gas generators, etc.). That was mostly outside the biggest cities, but huge numbers of people were affected.
And how did we get from SF to "most American cities"? California's grid reliability is notoriously and distinctively bad, and a huge political topic here too (though with little progress after many years). The World Bank[1] puts the overall USA's quality of electricity supply solidly in the middle of high-income countries though, slightly ahead of Germany.
We also seem to be mixing load shedding (i.e., the utility realizes they can't safely supply all their customers and therefore deliberately cuts power to some) with accidental outages. They look the same to the customer, but perhaps imply different kinds of bad planning by the utility.
1. https://tcdata360.worldbank.org/indicators/ha7db856d?country...
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#174I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.
If only there were some precedent we could look to where huge numbers of people were out of work and the government killed two birds with one stone by employing a lot of them on major infrastructure projects. And what if those infrastructure projects, like improvements to roads, bridges and national parks, were largely outside and thus relatively safe even in today's climate of Covid-19. It seems like we might go int…
Problem is most unemployed people don't have the specialized skill set to contribute to these projects and those that do aren't unemployed. The unskilled labor these projects require has mostly been automated over the last 100 years by robotic tools like excavators.
Basically every problem we used to be able to throw manpower at now has similar automation and the same sorts of projects would now be done by far fewer people. Any modern new deal would have to look very different to the old one.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#175Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#176I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.
You'd think with the reduction in traffic there's all sorts of extra space and time for fixing old infrastructure.
Unfortunately, I think this is countered by municipalities losing funding from sales taxes.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
And inequality is up since the 70's, as are housing, health care and cost of living expenses, while wages have remained stagnant for nearly 50 years.
Who cares about inequality — poverty is down: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26532 . The difference between the rich and the poor is less important than making sure that the poor are rich enough. Real median income is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N Tax revenues as a %age of GDP are mostly flat: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S US median disposable income is about the 3rd highest on t…
The richest have the loudest voices. Inequality distorts government plans, priorities, and how laws are written.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> It would be neat if the utilities had the ability to selectively shed car chargers, clothes dryers, and suchlike They have the capacity, though it's only used for AC reduction AFAIK: https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy-money/savi...
Maybe because I'm in Texas rather than California, but AC is the absolute last thing I'd want turned off. It doesn't make sense to try to convince people to reduce AC on the hottest days compared to something like charging a car, running a water heater, etc., even though this is probably the largest demand in such a case. What percentage of consumers have signed up for this program?
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#179Worth noting: This does not affect many of the major municipal utilities, including SMUD in Sacramento, LADWP in LA, and Silicon Valley Power in Santa Clara because many have their own generating capacity and are also in alternate distribution arrangements. The investor-owned utilities don't have much direct generating capacity anymore and rely on CAISO, and well, that has its limits. Also pretty sure that customers of the municipal utilities pay less than PGE/ SCE customers. For example, this is why Santa Clara has so many data centers (municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power).
Really unclear what value investor-owned utilities provide us - the municipal utilities in general seem way better.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only there were some precedent we could look to where huge numbers of people were out of work and the government killed two birds with one stone by employing a lot of them on major infrastructure projects. And what if those infrastructure projects, like improvements to roads, bridges and national parks, were largely outside and thus relatively safe even in today's climate of Covid-19. It seems like we might go int…
Problem is most unemployed people don't have the specialized skill set to contribute to these projects and those that do aren't unemployed. The unskilled labor these projects require has mostly been automated over the last 100 years by robotic tools like excavators. Basically every problem we used to be able to throw manpower at now has similar automation and the same sorts of projects would now be done by far fewer…
I won't even pretend to know enough about construction/infrastructure to know what's required to work on it, but there have got to be jobs that can be created that don't require technical skills. I've been reading that lots of people are now going to national parks because other stuff is closed, and they're leaving lots of trash - hire people to pick it up. Roads have potholes, and I can't believe that fixing those requires that specialized of a skill set.
And even for some of the things that are most efficiently solved with specialized skills and equipment, if there's a way to do them less efficiently by unskilled people, that's fine, since overspending on labor is totally fine if not desirable in this context.