Don't last year's blackouts count?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/pge-rebuked-over-imposing-bl...
California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
81–90 of 248 posts
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#82I 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.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#83I 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.
The tourist street in Playa del Carmen, Mexico got tore up right at the start.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> most 1st world countries have experienced a rolling black out Name one? I've never experienced (or heard) of one in Germany, for example, during my lifetime. And of course it's not "rolling blackout", but "rolling blackouts", plural.
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.com/2016/10/14/pge-power-outag...
- 2015, 45k https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/06/08/thousands-of-ba...
I'm only picking the first Google result for each year. I could keep going but I hope the point is made: Berlin got a blackout once in a decade like most American cities get multiple times a year. It reacted comparatively slowly because it's so infrequent there was no recovery plan. The political impact of the outage was huge, the country's attitude was that everything is collapsing - and by "collapsing", they mean "like America is all the time."
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#85We'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.
In a word, yes. There are plenty of smart people thinking about distribution management systems to control loads, manage local generation (household PV) and even use electric vehicles as an energy store to power the during periods of peak demand.
Supply authorities in my corner of the world (Australia) are planning this shift, but I can’t speak to the situation in other regions.
https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/06/future-grid-for-distribu...
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
A robust infrastructure should be able to handle surge loads. This isn't an extraordinary heat wave after some other natural disaster has directly damaged the power grid; it's that the grid as designed and built can't handle this load. It's hardly conclusive for a "grand decline" narrative, of course, since this is just one anecdote for an entire society.
Do we really need to pay for an electric grid that can handle a once every 20 year load?
Thanks to climate change, this is probably not going to continue to be a 1 in 20 year load. Expect this to be more and more frequent over the coming years. Might be an every year and/or multiple times a year thing within the next decade or two.
I've read some predictions that suggest these heat waves becoming a regular thing could happen within the next five years, but I'm sticking with more conservative predictions.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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It's worth noting this is a common tactic of the IMF... offer big loans to countries, as long as they let in outside companies to do business in their sectors, which causes lots of corruption and kickbacks... meanwhile, the problems that needed to be solved don't for the non-powerful locals, and now the country is in worse shape with corruption, and wealth inequality jumps while hvings massive amounts of debt. If tha…
Sounds like what our own financial sector is doing here.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#88Don't last year's blackouts count? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/pge-rebuked-over-imposing-bl...
Those were for fire safety, not because of excess load on the electrical grid.
Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#89Re: California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And yet 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck[1], and 40% don't have the money to cover a $400 emergency expense[2]. For our riches, we have the highest population of people without health insurance in the first world, and the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical expenses. Inequality drives cost of living up. Normal people in the US are competing with the richest people domestically and inte…
From what I have both seen and read, housing costs are the #1 cause of this. They have exploded in the last 25 years.
The thing that blows my mind is that the COVID recession shows no sign of slowing down house price growth, though it has tempered rents in expensive markets.
If housing still rises even now, something is totally insane.