Rolling Blackouts in California Have Power Experts Stumped (nytimes.com) 260
Energy experts are bewildered as to why the manager of California's electric grid called on utilities to cut power to hundreds of thousands of customers over the weekend. "They said that the utilities had plenty of power available and that the blackouts weren't necessary," writes Ivan Penn via The New York Times. From the report: "They set it up like this is a historic event," said Bill Powers, a San Diego engineer who provides expert testimony on utility matters before the state's regulators. "This should not have triggered blackouts." The California Independent System Operator, the nonprofit entity that controls the flow of electricity for 80 percent of California, said it acted after three power plants shut down and wind power production dropped. It also cited a lack of access to electricity from out-of-state sources.
The energy experts noted that the peak electricity use over the weekend fell below peaks in other years, when utilities were able to handle the demand. They also said the operating reserves of power available to the utilities were higher than the 3 percent level where California ISO has traditionally ordered a reduction in electricity use. "It's just misleading to say that it was because it was a hot day," said [David Marcus, an energy consultant and former adviser at the California Energy Commission]. "I think they were being overly cautious." Saturday's peak demand, according to Mr. Marcus, reached 44,947 megawatts, much lower than the 46,797 he saw on Friday. But both of those amounts fell below the peak year for electricity use, 2006, when demand reached 50,270 megawatts, followed by 2017 with 50,116, according to data from California ISO. [...] What happens in the days ahead will continue to test Californians and the electric grid as California ISO forecast electricity demand Monday at near all-time peak levels.
The energy experts noted that the peak electricity use over the weekend fell below peaks in other years, when utilities were able to handle the demand. They also said the operating reserves of power available to the utilities were higher than the 3 percent level where California ISO has traditionally ordered a reduction in electricity use. "It's just misleading to say that it was because it was a hot day," said [David Marcus, an energy consultant and former adviser at the California Energy Commission]. "I think they were being overly cautious." Saturday's peak demand, according to Mr. Marcus, reached 44,947 megawatts, much lower than the 46,797 he saw on Friday. But both of those amounts fell below the peak year for electricity use, 2006, when demand reached 50,270 megawatts, followed by 2017 with 50,116, according to data from California ISO. [...] What happens in the days ahead will continue to test Californians and the electric grid as California ISO forecast electricity demand Monday at near all-time peak levels.
If San Onofre were still online? (Score:5, Interesting)
If San Onofre nuclear power plant were still online, I wonder if there would have been enough extra capacity that supply could easily handle this surge both during the day and evening and night?
"San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a 2,200MW, twin nuclear reactor power station." Was, now no longer producing thanks to ignorant anit-nuke so-called-environmentalists forcing early closing.
Re:If San Onofre were still online? (Score:5, Interesting)
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First, the German nuclear exit has been decided in the nineties, then redecided two times.
Second, nuclear power doesn't work for Germany, we don't even have an end storage facility because the state with the most nukes refuses building one on their soil.
Third, Germany uses far less coal than even just a decade ago, making you and your little conspiracy theory look stupid. Matter of fact, Germany will shut down its last coal fired power plants in 2038.
The only reason why Germany still uses them is that ligni
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The Nord Stream 2 project, kickstarted by crooked former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, has been causing a couple of issues already. Word is that MEPs from Germany threw the EU under the bus by agreeing to the new Copyright Directive under the conditions that France won't bother them over Nord Stream 2.
Gazprom having the German energy economy by the balls is also a rather dubious th
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And if you expect them to close up new plants that are less than 20 years old, you are as crazy as those that claim that China will shut down all of their new coal plants.
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Nope. Nukes are unsuitable for anything except base-load. They take far to long to adjust their power output for anything else. Delivering too much power is just as problematic as too little. Hence it would not have made one bit of difference.
Re:If San Onofre were still online? (Score:4, Insightful)
San Onofre had its own problems. It is vulnerable in the same way that Fukishima was, and was literally on the beach. It was shut down when replacement steam generators did not work. Upgrades designed to last two decades were found to have premature wear in tubes that were only a couple years old.
Re:If San Onofre were still online? (Score:5, Insightful)
"San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a 2,200MW, twin nuclear reactor power station." Was, now no longer producing thanks to ignorant anit-nuke so-called-environmentalists forcing early closing.
It also didn't explode into a giant mushroom cloud killing everyone.
Did you have a point? There was already enough power.
They could use power that doesn't kill people, given the entire history of nuclear power has killed less people than coal power (or Covid-19 in the US) is estimated to kill every few days (a month if you want to be generous in the number of people nuclear power has killed): https://cen.acs.org/articles/9... [acs.org].
Nancy Palosi's nephew, Gov Gavin Newsom, had a... (Score:4, Interesting)
...presser this afternoon. Hidden in it was this little bit, which Democrat-run news outlets are suppressing:
"We are committed to radically changing the way we produce and consume energy and we are creating now and have more jobs in this green sector than we do in the fossil fuel space. So we see it as an economic imperative and we see it as a moral and ethical imperative as it relates to the kind of world we’re going to leave, the kind of state nation we’re going to leave to our kids and grandkids. And we are not backing off on that commitment, quite the contrary. But in the process of the transition, in the process of shutting down, understandably the desire and need to shut down polluting gas plants, and a desire to go from old to the new. In that transition and the need to shut those down, comes the need to have more insurance, comes the need to recognize that there have been by definition demonstrably, in the last few days and what we expect over the next few days, gaps in terms of that reliability. We cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition, and we’re going to be much more aggressive in focusing our efforts, and our intention in making sure that that is the case. We need to make sure that we have a demand-response system and we have reliability that meets the expectations that we have all forecasted around issues of climate change, and around the prospects that this is not the last “record-breaking” historic heat dome and experience that we will have in this state, or in this region, or in this nation or in our hemisphere, in our lifetime, quite the contrary." - Gavin Newsom
and also:
"We identify the peak hours, roughly 3:00 PM, about to 9:00, 10:00 PM. Let’s say 3:00 to 10:00 are the peak hours. I can explain in a moment why those evening hours become the most precious in terms of our concerns, particularly as it relates to sun going down, the utilization of solar. The fact that while we’ve had some peak gust wind events across the state have been relatively mild. By the way, that’s a good thing from a fire suppression perspective. That’s unfortunate moment as it relates more broadly to addressing the episodic nature of the renewable portfolio of which we are prideful in the State of California, but vulnerable to in these conditions that I have stated." - Gavin Newsom
The problem is a really simple one which a great number of people predicted years ago when the Democrats became so powerful in the state that they now ignore all opposition in the legislature: They shuttered nuclear plants, oil-fired plants, coal-fired plants and hydro plants. All they have now for significant power generation are wind, solar, biofuels, and nat gas... most of that capacity (by type, not volume) is variable and unpredictable with only nat gas available for surge production. When you get very hot weather as CA does several times per year, you sometimes get clouds and a lack of wind... so those sources reduce and when you have severely limited nat gas plant licenses because you have committed to eventually eliminating that too, you are already using most of your gas generators and lack the ability to bring much more online.
We used to live in a free market economy, where we got quantity discounts on stuff including water and electricity. We now live in a much more controlled economy run by people with Marxist leanings and we have rationing. Gavin Newsom and his legislature have no solutions other than "conserve!" (i.e. use less than you want/need because there's not enough to go around because government has caused an artificial shortage in order to serve some ideological groups). The man even admitted in his presser:
"I signed an emergency proclamation that very specifically, very demonstrably directly shifts energy consumption in this state. We’re focused primarily on large energy users and we are shifting to their backup power, so they can utilize that power during the pe
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The article says they had enough power generation reserve though. Seems like a political maneuver to "raise awareness of global warming", fabricating a crisis on a fake premise to get brownie points against opponent who doesn't combat the fake premise.
The news of the blackouts were in all news outlets nation-wide attributing the blackouts to causes of increased demand, extreme heat wave, COVID-19 keeping people at home. There was nothing about reduced production capacity (which was irrelevant anyway) and ab
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Whether the motive is to "raise awareness of global warming" or to 'ready people for rationing', the important takeaway is the grandparent's contention that a completely one-sided legislature is bad for a nation's/state's citizens.
Without the checks and balances of healthy opposition in politics, including some balance in the press, one doctrine gets too powerful. With no chance of political survival otherwise, politicians begin to parrot the approved mission statement. This rarely ends well.
California i
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> California .. as the US state with the largest GDP, it's difficult to imagine its devolution
The Soviet Union was big too. Mexico and India have GDP similar to California (and actually larger in terms of what they produce) That doesn't mean they aren't shit holes. Big states can be big pieces of shit.
The "California GDP" thing is also misleading because all the trade between the US and Asia goes through the port of LA, and is therefore counted in the GDP of California. When a billion bushels of Iowa
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I'd like to know why gas plants were shut down.
Power shortage at sunset due to solar duck curve (Score:5, Informative)
That's interesting. I came to a similar conclusion based on completely different, non-political evidence - looking at the CSIRO dashboard data, this looks like an actual power shortage at around sunset due to the classic solar duck curve, and the figures quoted by the New York Times to claim there was no shortage are misleading. They point to the fact that CSIRO had a 12% operating reserve at 6 PM, and if you go to the dashboard [caiso.com] and view the renewable energy graph from Friday the 14th using the dropdown there's a rapid dropoff in solar output, which is already down to 5.2GW at 6 PM and drops to basically zero over the next hour and a half - some quick back of the envelope math shows that alone would consume roughly all of the operating reserve. Even if the instantaneous figures looked OK, there was an imminent shortfall due to something literally as predictable as the sun setting in the evening.
There are also a couple of other interesting things in the 2019 resource assessment this article is based on that it fails to mention. Firstly, total supply isn't the only constraint - apparently there's also a risk of "shortages of upward ramping capability" which "are most prevalent in the late afternoon when solar generation output decreases", and this was considered to be a more likely problem that total supply shortages. Basically, they might have enough total supply on paper, but some of it would be unable to ramp up fast enough to keep supply and demand balanced. You can see the cause of this sharp ramping requirement on the net demand graph on the dashboard - actual demand slows down towards the peak, but net demand minus solar and wind keeps increasing rapidly right to the peak due to sunset. Secondly, it predicts that the highest risk period is pretty much right when they had blackouts: "The CAISO will be at the greatest operational risk during late summer as the availability of hydro energy wanes and potential high peak demands in neighboring balancing authority areas decrease the availability of imports into the CAISO. The continuing decline in dispatchable generation as gas units retire creates further challenges for meeting the CAISO flexible capacity requirement and the peak demand, which is now occurring later in the day when solar output is at or near zero."
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"Basically, they might have enough total supply on paper, but some of it would be unable to ramp up fast enough to keep supply and demand balanced."
Shouldn't a power company that's been in business for over a century be able to predict that demand and have the resources on line in time to avoid blackouts?
Re: Power shortage at sunset due to solar duck cur (Score:2)
Even if you predict a shortage, how would you ramp up the sun and wind?
Solar and wind are great, as long as you donâ(TM)t need to rely on them. Germany has twice its needs in terms of GWh in potential production capacity from solar and wind.
Their total energy consumption from solar and wind stays hovering around the 13-20% range and people are paying upwards of 30c per kWh, though even though some times of the day they are selling energy to neighbors, most of the time they are buying nuclear from Franc
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Even if you predict a shortage, how would you ramp up the sun and wind?
That is not the argument. If all they had was solar and wind, then they wouldn't have enough on paper either.
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Germany has twice its needs in terms of GWh in potential production capacity from solar and wind.
That's ludicrous; if that were true, they'd be done with the energy transition already. At 50% curtailment you're near 100% RE penetration with minimal storage.
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Last year 34.5% of German electrical power came from the sun and wind. As for France, Germany is a net exporter of electrical power. It only looks like Germany buys a lot from France, but in reality it is transit from France to Poland and Austria. Germany just happens to be geographically between them.
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Being able to predict demand isn't enough - as I understand it, a lot of these power plants have fundamental design limits on the rate at which they can ramp up power output and how low an output they can operate at. Remember, you're not just turning coal or gas or uranium directly into electricity, you're using it to heat up steam and pump it through massive turbines, and if you ramp up the heat too quickly different parts of the massive building-sized equipment expand at different rates and the whole thin
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Re:Nancy Palosi's nephew, Gov Gavin Newsom, had a. (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you really just say we can't predict the weather? Or are you saying that when supply falls below demand (the classic economic problem [wikipedia.org]--unlimited wants but limited resources), the only way it should be solved is by increasing supply?
What is the free market solution to our nation's socialized roads [taxfoundation.org] and military?
It seems that the difference between Democrats and Republicans is Democrats admit they're Marxists and Republicans don't.
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I hate to break it to you, but state roads and state armies pre-date Marx by somewhere between 200 and 10,000 years. Even the US, which is a relatively new country, had both of those things for decades before Marx came along.
The person you are quoting is mostly correct in a strange way, but also thoroughly wrong. We did formerly have something much closer to free markets than we have now, and we did formerly get bulk discounts on most things, including on water and power. But those ideas don't really go
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What does the sunrise have to do with wind turbines again?
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He mentioned solar, although actually it does affect wind as the change in temperature can cause pressure changes.
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We used to live in a free market economy
No we didn't. At least not in the last 100 years. When are you referring to?
Newsome is not Pelosi's nephew (Score:2)
Newsom's aunt was married to Ron Pelosi, the brother-in-law of Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. I'm not saying that there isn't any family ties here, but that's hardly the same as Pelosi being Newsom's aunt.
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Why didn't you link to your source? Here, I'll do it for you: https://www.rev.com/blog/trans... [rev.com]
Oh dear, it appears that you forgot to quote the bit that undermines your rant about Marxists.
But in the process of the transition, in the process of shutting down, understandably the desire and need to shut down polluting gas plants, and a desire to go from old to the new. In that transition and the need to shut those down, comes the need to have more insurance, comes the need to recognize that there have been by definition demonstrably, in the last few days and what we expect over the next few days, gaps in terms of that reliability. We cannot sacrifice reliability as we move forward in this transition, and weâ(TM)re going to be much more aggressive in focusing our efforts, and our intention in making sure that that is the case.
So it's your basic incompetence, not a Commie plot to destroy California. Other countries have managed this just fine.
ha, sad effort (Score:2)
You will note that the bit you quoted is blather - nothing substantive other than what you apparently failed to notice: he admits the plan to also shutter all the nat gas plants.
I did not cut that portion to censor something - my post was already going to be long and nothing in those sentences refuted my post or changed the meaning of what I highlighted from his remarks (as all readers are free to note). Indeed, as I just pointed out it would have further bolstered my argument to have included the lines.
Ab
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We used to live in a free market economy, where we got quantity discounts on stuff including water and electricity. We now live in a much more controlled economy run by people with Marxist leanings and we have rationing. Gavin Newsom and his legislature have no solutions other than "conserve!" (i.e. use less than you want/need because there's not enough to go around because government has caused an artificial shortage in order to serve some ideological groups).
You know, most of what you posted was rational, but then you stopped resisting the urge to make commentary instead of presenting fact.
We used to live in a free market economy where we had lead in paint on kids' toys.
With that one sentence I'm illustrating that sometimes stuff is bad and should go away. I understand that - to politicize as much as you - to the Republican government, there is no other solution except "consume!", and the idea of going without even temporarily is anathema. California is i
Interesting. (Score:2)
Allow me to gently highlight sever points:
First, you disliked the fact that my post got political - hardly avoidable given the players involved and the actions they've taken - but then you yourself did the same thing on another level by equating the non-Newsom model to "those who make money off excess consumerism". Did you not notice the inner-leftist leaking out in that? WHO gets to decide exactly WHAT is "excessive"? And what's wrong with "making money" which is an efficient and echangable token of added
It shouldn't be a mystery (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I work for a utility, and get the gossip. These are personal opinions, not my employers.
This isn't a mystery, the people running the grid just don't want to admit the cause. California is currently dominated by intermittent generation. It has been getting away with it until now because they hadn't quite shuttered enough of their baseload resource, and they were relying on import power from nearby states. When those states were hit with a heatwave, there wasn't any day ahead or same day resource to procure. They used to have nuclear plants, and a few baseload gas plants that would have ramped up to take advantage of the high power prices in a heatwave... now they don't.
The article mentions that they CAISO supposedly had enough reserve, but there are real headwinds in the utility industry that are making even that harder to count on. With fewer fossil units to rely on, the remaining plants run harder and wear out faster. Maintenance gets harder to schedule, because those resources are needed and the grid operator has the authority to reschedule maintenance even over the objections of the utilities. Additionally, with the constant threats of closing down those plants the plant owners aren't going to make any major investments in them. No one is going to invest millions in a plant that the governor might order scrapped in a couple years, or that might be uneconomic to run under the current reimbursement scheme if a carbon tax is implemented. The plants will become less reliable as a result, which is a battle that is being fought all over the country. I'm sure COVID isn't helping either... I'm personally aware of a few instances where outages have been shifted or extended because large populations of contract workers caught COVID mid outage.
Frankly theres going to have to be a come to Jesus moment where someone just bites the bullet and develops a scheme to ensure profitable operation of those fossil units through the renewables transition period. It will suck politically, since people have been fed the unicorn farts version of renewable power capability and that will have to be walked back. But I can guarantee that if they stick a bunch more batteries on the grid with the markets structured the way they are, those batteries will suck away any remaining profitability of these baseload and fossil peaking plants and the utilities will try and walk away from them. CAISO can stop those closures for a while, but eventually the owners will either sue to exit or go bankrupt. The battery systems being built are designed to shave the peak profitability off of each day, not cover an unexpected grid disruption because the wind didn't blow or brushfire smoke blotted out your solar field.
Higher level, I have trouble rationalizing a world where renewable energy dominates in a wholesale market system. You're trying to promote power that is inherently less reliable and more expensive in a free market system, via an ever increasing array of rules and taxes and subsidies. If you really want renewables, admit the wholesale markets no longer meet your goals and either reestablish the utility monopolies or buy out the generating resource and make it a publicly owned venture like the water system is.
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You're trying to promote power that is inherently less reliable and more expensive in a free market system
Except it's actually cheaper. You said it yourself - the others can't compete.
The rest of your analysis might be right for California, but there are grid operators elsewhere that face similar problems to a much greater extent and manage to solve them without blackouts (or curtailing for that matter).
And yes, you need to develop a market for longer-term reserve capacity. These things are not rocket science.
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You're trying to promote power that is inherently less reliable and more expensive in a free market system
Except it's actually cheaper. You said it yourself - the others can't compete.
"Can't Compete" depends a lot on the rules of the game, doesn't it. The energy markets are structured in such a way that they favor renewables, as they don't weigh any cost of intermittency against renewables and you can buy and sell power with high certainty. You could just as easily structure a market where a generating resource has to bid into a market at some yearly minimum capacity (say 40% of max) guaranteed by the generator outside of maintenance periods declared in advanced to the ISO/RTO. That m
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There is grossly inadequate battery storage for the level of solar deployment today. Every solar installation should include battery backup; it is the two elements that make it work beyond a token portion of the grid.
Subsidizing the grid has-fired generators is likely unnecessary— simply allowing rule 6 (IIRC, been a while) interties with backup generators in buildings can get you the missing 5GW capacity for the 30-50 hours per year it is needed (until batteries are available).
Re: It shouldn't be a mystery (Score:5, Insightful)
This was the best post of the lot
I read them all. Too many red vs blue vs just bad policy decisions.
Except that this is literally due to "blue" bad policy decisions. Decisions to demonize reliable power sources and fetish-ize unreliable ones.
Which if that's what we really want to do as a society, well ok, but so far you have been able to largely pretend that was not what you were doing.
But your voters might really want the lights to come on when they flip the switch, so now it might come out into the open.
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The California decisions are definitely "blue" but I don't see anything in your post that implies voters will think they are "bad." If all of the ills of fossil fuels can be averted by one rolling blackout day per year, many (and in California, probably most) voters would consider that a pretty good trade-off.
If I had to put up with rolling blackouts on any sort of regular basis, I'd get myself a diesel or natgas generator. This is quite common in places like Nigeria. Rather a sad comment in the USA though.
2000 and Enron all over again (Score:2, Troll)
Politics (Score:2)
Methodology? (Score:2)
If there were rolling blackouts, then of course demand (usage) would have been lower, by definition. That's the whole point.
If demand was extrapolated from areas unaffected by blackouts, then that data is speculative. Of course it should be reviewed and there should be lessons learned, etc., but simply stating that actual demand (during blackouts) was lower than demand without blackouts is apples to oranges.
Replaced NatGas plant w/ 1000s of Honda Generators (Score:3)
Which one can be centrally managed for CO2?
Natural Gas vs Gasoline, which is cleaner? all other things being equal.
Doesn't sound real smart.
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And the real problem was a lack of planning on CA's part. You can not take out a monster nuke power plant and then replace it with NOTHING.
Slashdot just became Internet Explorer? (Score:2)
And Slashdot posts it on Tuesday.
Re:As time goes on... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's one of these things I find online, especially talking to Americans, is this desire to believe in any wild conspiracy theory that crosses their mind.
A vast conspiracy within the Democrats to deliberately turn off their own power to hurt Trump's re-election chances is just laughable. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Who did it? How? and Why? I'm not convinced your why is good enough.
Between 160,000 dead American and him saying "it is what is" - he doesn't need a giant conspiracy to take him down. He can do that all by himself.
Re:As time goes on... (Score:5, Insightful)
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How much must people hate the man if they're willing to kill themselves just to make him look bad?
I've asked my Mexican gardener and cleaning lady and they said it's true. Everyone says it's true. Believe me.
I never said that!
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Yup, it's definitely just Americans that believe in garbage.
Tell me where you're from? I'm happy to find some garbage conspiracy theories by some of your more garbage people.
Can't wait to be smoldering in history's scrap heap - want to go look at some of the amazing conspiracy theories going around China?
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And yet, one of the responses above yours here espousing this crap is currently +5 Interesting.
Yeesh.
Re:As time goes on... (Score:4, Interesting)
>It's one of these things I find online, especially talking to Americans, is this desire to believe in any wild conspiracy theory that crosses their mind.
Last time Cali had unexplained blackouts it actually was a conspiracy cooked up by the Enron guys to make money.
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It's one of these things I find online, especially talking to Americans, is this desire to believe in any wild conspiracy theory that crosses their mind.
It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, it's just natural behavior to pass the buck more when you're passing the buck to the other party. When you are less likely to take ownership of your own problems, you are more tolerant of those problems.
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Re:As time goes on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity...
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Does that man you think Trump did it?
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Yes, but they can co-exist. Malicious stupidity.
Re:As time goes on... (Score:5, Informative)
A much more likely event is that this is the typical consequence of having too much intermittent supply to the network at that specific moment falling off rapidly. I.e. too much wind power in the grid and rapidly changing wind conditions.
Story clearly states that wind started to rapidly fall off while demand was still peaking. At which point grid has to start prioritising, and if there are no prioritisation contracts with industry, where they are switched off first and paid a massive amount from the utility to do so (i.e. what happens in Nordics), the only options are rolling blackouts or total blackout as grid collapses from inaction.
Sane minds choose rolling blackouts, which is why those are planned for in event of rapid fall-off in the grid that has a lot of intermittent power supply suddenly starting to fall off. You need to keep total grid up so that after your spinning reserve is overwhelmed, your cold reserve can finish starting up, spin up, pick up load and go online before entirety of regional grid goes down due to lack of supply in it.
No political conspiracy theory necessary. Facts known so far support "too much intermittent power in grid, intermittent power generation rapidly decreasing, peak consumption" hypothesis.
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Exactly this, if the risk of a sudden change of demand is high then the control room schedule all of the generators to run slightly below peak demand so they can ramp up quickly if required if demand falls off. Wind is a perfect example of this on days where there is a high amount of variable wind generation a lot of generators need to be kept below full power so they can fill the dips. This means you cant supply the full output of all your generators so you either need more of them or be prepared to cap
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Like I said, my primary knowledge on the subject is from the NordPool area, and more specifically about my home nation of Finland. There's a significant amount of heavy industry here of the kind that operates 24/7 in three shifts around the year, with stoppages only for maintenance. Some of those have tech processes that make it possible to halt operations without massive restart costs, and those tend to make contractual agreements with our domestic grid operator Fingrid that they can halt their tech proces
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Denmark has about the same amount of installed wind capacity as California, but there are only 6 million Danes, and no blackouts.
The grid in Denmark is managed by a national grid operator. The operator is responsible for ensuring availability of backup sources. If you can point to a source on big industry prioritization contracts for Denmark, I would happy to take a look.
I don't know much about the grid in California, except it's known for being ridiculously unstable, but I can tell you that a responsible g
Re:As time goes on... (Score:4, Insightful)
You know nothing about Danish grid I see. Because they wouldn't have what modern Westerners consider a functional grid if it wasn't for Swedish and Norwegian hydro. This is a problem so massive in Denmark, that a few years ago they had to illegally act to stop closures of their massively tax penalized coal plants that are made massively unprofitable by punitive tax regime placed on them. Because without those plants, even Swedish and Norwegian hydro wouldn't be enough to keep the utterly hilarious excuse for an electric grid up.
Barely a year after this was reported on, Swedish grid operator informed both Danes and us Finns that they're going to unilaterally treble or quadruple (can't remember how much it was, but it was an increase of several times) their transfer fees to us. This was fairly clearly aimed primarily at Danes as had no negotiation leverage. Without Svenska Kraftnät, they have no grid. Us Finns told them that they can come back and make a reasonable offer, or we'll just import more from Estonia and Russia.
The offer was considered so absurd here, that it made national news. To which Fingrid, our national grid operator pretty much stated that "this is obviously aimed at Danes, we'll negotiate to the real price because we have options".
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The massive problems are the grid teetering on the edge of collapsing several times in last few years while being fully dependent on foreign sources for stability. And even then, should the last few coal plants have gone offline, foreign links would have become insufficient due to lower reaction speeds. Like I said, they had their officials literally commit an illegal act by preventing plant closures against Danish law. It was a major scandal. And once Swedes realised just how perilous Danish situation was,
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The summary is miserable, but parent is spot-on. While the historic peak was higher, a significant amount of dispatchable and base-load generation have been removed from the grid in intervening years— 2GW in San Onofre, and at least 4GW of oil/gas/coal (likely much more).
The missing part of the equation is storage: the state is short about 5GW/15GWh of energy storage and really needs to get it in place quickly.
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What does California use for grid energy storage to get to those numbers? Most grids today have essentially none, and those that do typically have something that is hydro-gravity storage that is utterly unsuitable to assist in intermittency, as it takes a long time to establish proper flow path and spin up the turbines to operational speeds. Which is why with arrival of wind, most grid operators have been taking those offline.
I'm not intimately familiar with California's grid, and internet search suggests t
Re: (Score:2)
There were also some early reports that the peaker plants were not available. The sole purpose they have is to be there and available when the peaks arrive. Then other reports say those plants were available.
My guess is that someone in the ISO just panicked. There's a lot of missing data, and a lot of angry people and angry politicians.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Peaking was done manually for well over half a century. "Panicking" is something that happened back in early part of 19th century at latest. After that, everyone had specific rules in place on how much of what and how is switched in each given situation. There are people with specialized degrees and long experience in this specific field who's entire job description is to meticulously plan those things.
That's how you get what we call a "modern electric grid". And by modern, I mean any Western grid past half
Re: (Score:2)
Was obviously supposed to say "20th century". Typo.
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe demand is too intermittent. What's an objective way to tell when the problem is supply and when the problem is demand?
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Objectively, there's no way for demand to be "the problem", because the sole reason for supply's existence is to supply demand of the necessity that is grid electricity.
Same applies to other necessities, such as air, water and so on.
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In general, sending career politicians to address real life engineering problems, regardless of their political views, tends to result in perpetual motion engines, singularities and other problems that are really far too dangerous for humanity to handle.
To avoid this, keep career politicians as far away from real life engineering problems as possible.
Incompetence (Score:2)
You are underestimating incompetence.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I think it more likely your tinfoil hat needs some adjustments. I'll bet you used the cheap foil, get yourself some industrial strength foil and be a bit more careful with the gaps.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, if we look back to 2000 when California was in the news for rolling blackouts, it looks like the main cause was manipulation by Enron and others, which was made possible by the same kind of market deregulation that went on to crash the entire economy. A lot of people blamed Gray Davis at the time, but he appears to have just been stuck dealing with a manufactured crisis that was foisted on California.
Re: (Score:2)
I remember love/hate for Enron before this time. They had an offshoot called Azurix that was going to be about pumping central valley water into aquifers in wet years and selling back to farmers in dry years. I remember a big billboard opposed to it. Part of the problem is that they didn't own all the land that the aquifer encompassed, all they had were pumps. So one very conservative region very much opposed to Enron. But at the same time, Enron was making money out of nothing, their brand was about in
Re: (Score:2)
The California governor has no control over the ISO. He's just as baffled at their actions as everyone else. The ISO board members do not seem to be political appointees either, though details are not readily obvious with a quick search.
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Or, perhaps many things have nothing to do with national politics. And, I might add, what the hell happened in the republican party?
Re:As time goes on... (Score:4, Interesting)
People who listen to these state leaders will believe it's caused by Global Warming (increasing demand for AC and electricity, and caused by Trump's inaction) and Covid-19 (keeping people in homes further increasing demand for AC, caused by Trump's handling of the pandemic.)
The news that the blackouts were completely unnecessary won't even reach their ears.
Re: (Score:2)
California will need a new currency when they secede from the union. In the meantime, blackouts are to be expected.
lol
Re: As time goes on... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why is the news pretending not to know? (Score:4, Informative)
The funny thing is that all the headlines say that they're "stumped" yet I have no trouble finding an explanation from Cal-ISO [spglobal.com]:
Maybe we need to find better experts if these don't know anything?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest you read the article.
It appears that there was plenty of power available even with these three plants down and the wind production redueced - well beyond thresholds even calling for customers to conserve in the past.
Perhaps, though, you've highlighted the real reason -- blackmail and/or coercion by Cal-ISO. "PUC, we asked for something, you didn't give it to us, we are going to torture our customers so they come after you" - sort of along the lines of "Nice store you have here, it would be a damn
Re:Why is the news pretending not to know? (Score:4, Informative)
I did read the article and there was not one mention regarding the effect of solar or local congestion. The reserve numbers they were using were quoting were for statewide capacity. Unfortunately there are limitations to how much electricity can be moved between areas. The Bay Area was hit hard but has a historical local limitation that continues to be a struggle because of opposition to new plants within the local area. You can regularly see the local prices in the Bay Area jump anytime it is hot there because they can only bring in so much from the outside. It was not helped by solar which drops off when the sun goes down but the demand does not drop off at the same rate. That is why the blackouts started in the evening.
Re: (Score:3)
Solar isn't a factor when you have enough dispatchable power (such as natural gas plants) online. The utilities know when the sun is going down and even cloud cover factors are known in great detail, and this is planned on a daily basis.
From the article:
“But the ISO isn’t saying it’s congestion,” said Loretta Lynch, a former president of the California Public Utilities Commission. “They’re not saying a wire got burned down. It’s saying it’s a lack of power.”
In particular, California ISO said two natural gas power plants shut down on Friday and, on Saturday, a wind farm and another gas plant stopped producing power.
Authorities should start looking for similarities to the blackouts that were artificially induced in 2000.
Re: (Score:2)
"profit driven so there are strong laws to protect immigrant workers from wage theft"
Does not follow. It may be that there are strong laws to protect immigrants as you maintain, but the "profit driven" part would work towards weak laws to allow wage theft ( and other travesties ).
Re: (Score:3)
Just recently we've seen prominent Democrats telling old people that Trump's attack (what attack?) on the USPS
What attack? How did you get internet access under your rock?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: demand might be less but there is less generat (Score:4, Informative)
No, they had a margin which was seen as plenty in the past.
The higher percentage of intermirtent renewables the higher the margins need to be. Yhe margin which was plenty in the past does not need to be sufficient today.
Their responsibility is to prevent blackouts, not to protect oversimplified fairy tales about intermittent renewable power.
Re: (Score:2)
If their responsibility is to prevent blackouts I find it kind of ironic that they use blackouts to accomplish this.
Re: (Score:2)
Their responsibility is to prevent blackouts,
Given their response was to create blackouts, it's pretty clear they failed. Only reasonable answer is to move out of California into a first-world nation where the power stays on.
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Except that when these rolling blackouts happened, there was plenty of capacity remaining. The evidence is missing that indicates they prevented blackouts, we only have their word for it. This story is not here because we exceeded capacity, or because renewables could not cope; this story is here because it's a mystery why the ISO created the rolling blackouts. And because it's a mystery it leads to speculation across the board to help feed preconceived ideas (need more government control of these privat
Re:Excessive (Score:5, Insightful)
Most power is nothing to do with individual citizens, but industry itself.
But even the part that isn't industry, for "you" your office are cooling/heating their building, lighting it, your local fuelling station is pumping and lit, your shops are heated/cooled and lit, the telephone networks are on, the broadband equipment is powered, the cell tower is pumping out waves, the government websites are spinning, etc. etc.
You're "causing" about 5KW of power per person at any one time... not just your house, but everything you do. When you factor in industry, transport, agriculture, etc. - there are forges fired up to make your tools, robots cutting your furniture, welding tools building your car, and so on.
Consumer use is generally only about a third or so of actual electrical consumption.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're "causing" about 5KW of power per person at any one time... not just your house, but everything you do.
Your 5KW estimate appears to be a bit excessive. OP can't math. The numbers come down to 1KW per person, not 10KW.
Re: Excessive (Score:2)
Re:Typical (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this how that works? If so, it's completely retarded. All infrastructure that is not on backup power, but operated in standby mode, now resets, exits sleep mode, boots up, operating at full power until it reaches stable state and can enter sleep mode again. Espresso machines enter start-up cleaning, printers align print heads, machinery enters self-test activating every single never-used subcomponent, electric trains and street cars start accelerating to restore lost speed (sometimes causes by emergency brakes engaging), cellphones operate at max signal strength because they just lost signal, never mind all the machinery that depends on continuous power in manufacturing, and just results in a product that must be rejected and thrown away because, say, injection mold stopped pumping plastic for a second or two and there's a stupid seam with air bubbles in the product.
It's beyond stupid!
Re:Experts? More like morons. (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember the Camp fire? They are cutting power because of dry weather, high winds and a bunch of tree-huggers that still don't want power line maintenance done.
That is a lie, and you are a liar. Zero of the fires started by PG&E (including the Camp fire) were in areas where they were prohibited from doing maintenance. They just decided to skip it even though California paid them extra to do it, ON TOP OF the money they collected from customers which they were CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED to use for such maintenance.
Re: (Score:2)
PG&E (our electric company) hates California ever since we accused and punished them for causing a massive fire two years ago. Last year they pulled the stunt of turning off electricity whenever there was a slight breeze under the guise of preventing a repeat of that fire.
This isn't PG&E shutting off the power. This is the grid manager, who manages the grid for every utility in CA.
In any case, aside from your ignorance, that's a trolling comment which adds nothing to the discussion.