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Power Earth

California Tests Off-the-Grid Solutions to Climate-Related Power Outages (apnews.com) 84

Posted by EditorDavid from the microgrid-miracles dept.
California's energy commission has funded dozens of projects "serving as test beds for policies that might lead to commercialization of microgrids," reports the Associated Press: When a wildfire tore through Briceburg nearly two years ago, the tiny community on the edge of Yosemite National Park lost the only power line connecting it to the electrical grid. Rather than rebuilding poles and wires over increasingly dry hillsides, which could raise the risk of equipment igniting catastrophic fires, the nation's largest utility decided to give Briceburg a self-reliant power system. The stand-alone grid made of solar panels, batteries and a backup generator began operating this month.

It's the first of potentially hundreds of its kind as Pacific Gas & Electric works to prevent another deadly fire like the one that forced it to file for bankruptcy in 2019.

The ramping up of this technology is among a number of strategies to improve energy resilience in California as a cycle of extreme heat, drought and wildfires hammers the U.S. West, triggering massive blackouts and threatening the power supply in the country's most populous state... "I don't think anyone in the world anticipated how quickly the changes brought on by climate change would manifest. We're all scrambling to deal with that," said Peter Lehman, the founding director of the Schatz Energy Research Center, a clean energy institute in Arcata. The response follows widespread blackouts in California in the past two years that exposed the power grid's vulnerability to weather. Fierce windstorms led utilities to deliberately shut off power to large swaths of the state to keep high-voltage transmission lines from sparking fire. Then last summer, an oppressive heat wave triggered the first rolling outages in 20 years. More than 800,000 homes and businesses lost power over two days in August.

During both crises, a Native American reservation on California's far northern coast kept the electricity flowing with the help of two microgrids that can disconnect from the larger electrical grid and switch to using solar energy generated and stored in battery banks near its hotel-casino. As most of rural Humboldt County sat in the dark during a planned shutoff in October 2019, the Blue Lake Rancheria became a lifeline for thousands of its neighbors: The gas station and convenience store provided fuel and supplies, the hotel housed patients who needed a place to plug in medical devices, the local newspaper used the conference room to put out the next day's edition, and a hatchery continued pumping water to keep its fish alive... During a few hours of rolling blackouts last August, the reservation's microgrids went into "island mode" to help ease stress on the state's maxed-out grid...
State facilities are planning to quadruple the amount of battery storage from 500 megawatts to 2,000 megawatts by this August.

But unfortunately, "There are setbacks too: An intensifying drought is weakening the state's hydroelectric facilities..."
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California Tests Off-the-Grid Solutions to Climate-Related Power Outages More

California Tests Off-the-Grid Solutions to Climate-Related Power Outages

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  • Municipal power. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @07:53AM (#61549268) Journal

    Rather than rebuilding poles and wires over increasingly dry hillsides, which could raise the risk of equipment igniting catastrophic fires, the nation's largest utility decided to give Briceburg a self-reliant power system.

    Sort of like municipal broadband without all the fighting back from the incumbents.

    • Well, I suppose if you were OK with your city only having a city-wide network which didn't connect to the rest of the Internet, then they would be similar. But unlike power generation, accessing "the Internet" requires some sort of connection between these remote towns and the rest of the world. Right now, the only real solution is laying down wires between points A and B. Wireless range is limited by the curvature of the Earth. And satellite is currently extremely bandwidth limited (though directional phas

    • Probably a case of not enough money to be made off the suffering of the people. Usually just replacing the failed line would be the more profitable solution. But in this case I think the power companies, providers, and local governments are seeing a lot of legal actions and damages won against them. We did what we had to do, we made it cheaper for them to do the right thing. And SURPRISE! They start doing the right thing!

  • Why not underground? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Danielsen ( 1180609 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @08:11AM (#61549296)

    Where I come from most of the cables 60kV and below is already under-grounded.
    https://www.irishtimes.com/new... [irishtimes.com]

    There is however discussions about a several hundred km long cable with 400 kV, on the vest cost of Jutland, where there are cost issues, and also technical issues. Those issues are related to the capacitance of underground cables, and the need to install reactors (electrical coils) every 15km for power factor correction.

    • Re:Why not underground? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday July 04, 2021 @08:26AM (#61549306) Homepage Journal

      Because of seismicity and topology it costs us more to bury wires than it does Europeans, by some estimates about twice as much.

      We should still be doing it of course, but just remember that capitalism is the dominant paradigm across literally the entire world, and fucking things up everywhere. In some places people are being fucked over less, but their lifestyles are predicated upon environmental destruction (read: oil money) and are also unsustainable.

      • It's pretty hilarious how any indictment of capitalism gets modded down on slashdot, even when it's provably correct.

        What's funniest about it is that capitalism's cheerleaders know that nobody is going to buy their shit arguments, so they have to resort to moderation to influence debates.

        Cowards, all.

        • Re:lol the capitalism cheerleaders are here (Score:5, Informative)

          by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @08:57AM (#61549384) Journal

          Because both you and the person below bring a lot of unnecessary baggage to the subject. Being influenced by costs isn't just a feature of capitalism. All the other social-economic systems have to deal with resource management and scarcity as well. And les one forgets citizens are both the producer and consumers in economic engines so what gets done (or not) is as much a reflection of their will as any centralized authority.

          • Because both you and the person below bring a lot of unnecessary baggage to the subject.

            What I brought was a story with history and perspective, and told without bullshit excuses.

            Being influenced by costs isn't just a feature of capitalism.

            That is not at all what I was talking about, and your description is either clueless or disingenuous. This isn't about costs, it's about greed and giving no fucks because there is no accountability. They have the money to do it right, we gave it to them. That's not how they are spending it.

        • Well, your use of "nobody" in on target. 'Cause you'd have to be a total nobody, as in loser, to try anything else. Cap. has raised more of the world's population out of poverty than any other system -- even more than every try at communism has murdered.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Underground cables also aren't a panacea - in rural areas, they actually end up being a hindrance rather than a help.

        When a overhead line goes down, it's easy to conduct a line inspection to ensure there aren't more faults that need to be cleared in a line. Underground cables make this inspection much harder and given the areas where the wires are will probably be overgrown with vegetation, restoration will take much longer due to the clearing that has to go on.

        In urban areas, it makes a lot of sense becaus

    • Cost. It would cost too much to put the cables underground and maintain them compared to building a tower and laying cable via helicopter. The extra cost takes away from the profit of the company. The CEO wouldn't be able to afford their third summer home.

      America operates on two extremes. Fast and cheap or slow and horribly expensive. Case in point, there's a bridge about a mile or so from me. It's about 60 meters long and goes over a creek. Reconstruction (completely tearing out the old bridge and pil

    • Re:Why not underground? (Score:5, Informative)

      by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @09:01AM (#61549394) Journal

      Where I come from most of the cables 60kV and below is already under-grounded. https://www.irishtimes.com/new... [irishtimes.com]

      There is however discussions about a several hundred km long cable with 400 kV, on the vest cost of Jutland, where there are cost issues, and also technical issues. Those issues are related to the capacitance of underground cables, and the need to install reactors (electrical coils) every 15km for power factor correction.

      There are also several advantages to overhead power transmission lines. As mentioned by others here, the cost to install is less, but upkeep and repairs are easier, and thus, also less expensive.

      Other factors favoring overhead lines: Dissipation of heat is more efficient in clear air than into the compacted ground, individual cables can be separated by several meters rather than run in the same jacket (significantly reducing capacitance), and as you've hinted at, overhead lines can carry power greater distances.

      Certainly, in an area prone to drought and wildfires, underground power transmission is the way to go, but not in all cases. Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good enough. Sometimes, cost and ease of installation are overriding concerns.

      • Re: Why not underground? (Score:4, Informative)

        by ttfkam ( 37064 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @09:40AM (#61549470) Homepage Journal

        There are also the issues of earthquakes and subsidence. In many other parts of the US, there's typically bedrock not too far down and not much shifts on a tectonic scale. In California, one small tremor could shift things a foot or two, causing enormous stress or breakage to buried lines whereas poles would barely sway. On a hillside--of which California has an abundance of due to aforementioned tectonic activity--especially after a hard rain, the soil unevenly heads downhill. This phenomenon is even more pronounced after severe wildfires that have destroyed many trees and other plant root systems that helped keep everything in place.

        Not unsolvable, but definitely a hard problem.

        • True that. I think it is Palos Verdes near LA where ground movement is so bad they put water pipes above ground. Here in Austin, the have clay rivers in parts of town. I rented a place on one when I first moved here. The owner sued the builder and got a settlement to pay for french drains. Not sure it helped, a marble would easily roll towards the front of the house it was so off balance. As you stood, you could tell the house was not level it was so bad. I looked at several houses in the area and they all

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That doesn't sound right. Buried cables will be less prone to being damaged and technology for maintaining them is mature, so the cost should not be higher.

        As for heat dissipation underground should be better. Temperature underground is fairly consistent and much lower than above ground in summer. Heat dissipation into the surrounding earth should be better than into air, especially on calm days.

        The main issue is cost, and in some places difficult terrain.

        • Heat dissipation [wi.gov] is hindered considerably in buried transmission lines.

          The design and construction of underground transmission lines differ from overhead lines because of two significant technical challenges that need to be overcome. These are: 1) providing sufficient insulation so that cables can be within inches of grounded material; and 2) dissipating the heat produced during the operation of the electrical cables. Overhead lines are separated from each other and surrounded by air. Open air circulating between and around the conductors cools the wires and dissipates heat very effectively. Air also provides insulation that can recover if there is a flashover.

          Think of it like this. As you add heat to the surrounding outdoor air, it dissipates rather quickly. When you add heat to soil and rock compacted around buried conduit, it retains this added heat considerably longer, and becomes a less & less efficient heat sink.

      • Repairs are easier, but also more common than for underground cables, to wit:
        - car crashes into utility poles, and high loads not observing height limits
        - higher incidence of lightning strikes
        - ice buildup
        - fire damage from surrounding structures
        - falling trees/branches (should be kept clear, isn't always done properly).

        So whether repairs are less expensive in aggregate remains to be seen.

      • Certainly makes the case for decentralised power generation and more use of solar on houses and businesses with batteries attached

  • Wherefore the CA PUC? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday July 04, 2021 @08:24AM (#61549300) Homepage Journal

    This is all happening for two reasons.

    Reason the first: PG&E is a criminal conspiracy to defraud The People of California (and environs) by failing to perform contractually obligated maintenance tasks while charging us for them anyway, and while the state actually chips in additional funding above and beyond the portion of our bills which is supposed to cover maintenance.

    Reason the second: The CA PUC is a criminal conspiracy designed to rubberstamp the actions of PG&E, in exchange for kickbacks of various types. It does not and has never held PG&E executives accountable even to the degree already permitted by law, which is itself inadequate. CA's governors have permitted this situation not only to persist, but to degrade over time.

    • Yeah, try to hide the truth, noobs.

      Everyone already knows that PGE and the CAPUC are both corrupt AF. Modding my comment down won't hide that.

    • PG&E has long diverted rate increase funds from designated maintenance (by the PUC) to such things as bonuses. See their embarrassing court loss in Nv county where a whistleblower surfaced an internal memo from LegalDept saying that if the fines to divert funds don't exceed the gains (as in pocketed $$) go for it. Their bankruptcy was collusion with Ca go'mt. Ca gov'mt was criminal in their deliberate elimination of forest management (i.e., rake the forest floor -- like they used to do for decades) to

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )
        PG&E's budgets are largely set by CA regulators. What plants and infrastructure to build, the percentage of revenue used for maintenance (including tree trimming), and what prices to charge consumers are all set by the regulators, not by PG&E. The shit show that is the CA grid at the moment is mostly the fault of the CA regulators as PG&E's management certainly didn't choose the budgets and decisions that lead us to this mess. You are simply trying to divert attention from the CA democrats be

  • There are processes that are stubbornly more effective at industrial rather than community or neighborhood scale. Not that they cannot be done that way, but it just isn't the same.

    Think steelmaking.

    Even wind energy benefits from economy of scale. Think of those enormous tower and blade sections rolling down a highway near you on wide-load truck convoys. The first-gen wind turbines are toy-scale in comparison.

  • I'm wondering why they didn't site a cost per kwh? Probably over $5 per, where it's normally under $.20.

  • It wasn't decades of neglect and pork barrel politics that resulted in the collapse of the infrastructure. It was climate change, that bastard, which manifested too quickly. I bet Greta didn't see that one coming. All that idealism just ends up being used to start the next round of siphoning off public money into private coffers.

  • "Microgrids" are not a new solution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 04, 2021 @09:28AM (#61549444)

    Isolated local power generation is not new. There are thousands of communities around the world that do this because connection to a larger grid is impossible. Look at communities in Nunavut and the NWT in Canada.

    The engineering and costs of these "microgrids" are well known and understood.

    Changing the conventional wisdom about power generation and distribution is the story. Monolithic utilities abhor change but corporate survival in the face of the climate crisis dictates an unconventional response.

    • Re:"Microgrids" are not a new solution (Score:4)

      by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @02:00PM (#61550084)

      Isolated local power generation is not new.

      No it isn't, but it isn't cheap either.

      Changing the conventional wisdom about power generation and distribution is the story. Monolithic utilities abhor change but corporate survival in the face of the climate crisis dictates an unconventional response.

      Actually no, scale still matters. Micro-grids are far more expensive per watt delivered than a single linked grid. The issue is how much the rest of us have to subsidize these more expensive micro-grids. The real cause of the issues with the CA grid are wasting resources on projects that weaken the grid and take resources away from maintenance. The real reason the trees are not trimmed enough is that that budget was cut 15 years ago to pay for the Ivanpah plant in SoCal and the other renewable projects the CA regulators demanded. Some of that money came from maintenance budgets including the tree trimming budget. And so here we are, watching the same mistake happening again, wasting resources of vanity projects that don't really do much good while basic maintenance is ignored. But do keep going on about some management bonuses that represent 0.01% of PG&E's annual budget.

      • "No it isn't, but it isn't cheap either."

        It would be if all houses and businesses had solar and batteries (in suitable areas)

  • I am old enough to remember the debate to leave the expensive, polluting and unreliable private power generation behind and join the power utility's grid, which was none of those things.

    How the turntables.

    Of course, I'm not a CAian or even a USAian, but a similar theme is playing out in my locale. Due to neomarxist kleptocratic (mis)management, hiding behind wokeness.

  • I've been saying for several years now that the electrical grid is an anachronism for most of us. A monster grown too large to administer well, a political toy for "Free market" AKA sending money to my buds in Texas, and a strategic network target for outsiders as well as a market manipulation target - think Enron

    It is becoming technically, financially, and philosophically a good choice to go off grid. If you don't think so, try pricing out the cost to run a mile of poles, wires, and transformers. A costl

    • The problem with this idea is that the "best" form of electrical generation is arguably big-ass wind turbines, and to be useful they really need a distribution grid because you don't want to site them on top of the point of use.

      The second best form is PV solar, but retrofitting it onto rooftops at the point of use is what gives it a body count. So while we can and should be building solar rooftops, it really benefits from being located elsewhere and on the grid as well. I maintain that the best place to put

  • > "I don't think anyone in the world anticipated how quickly the changes brought on by climate change would manifest."

    Me, an atmospheric scientist: *screaming into the void*

  • They just had to throw the word "climate" in there. The vast majority of all power outages in the US are climate related and always have been. Lightening strikes, wind blowing trees down into lines, ice storms (that's the biggie around here), flooding, etc.

    Since these solutions are for "climate related" outages, I assume they aren't allowed to use them for non-climate outages? Like a blown transformer, a car hitting a pole, etc?

    • This is the common "climate vs weather" misunderstanding. All the examples you listed are weather-related outages. The climate component is about how frequently those kinds of weather events happen. If, for example, you had a stable climate with a certain number of ice-storms per year and designed your grid around that frequency but them something, say, a large perturbation to the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, changed the climate so that there were more or fewer large ice storms each

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by iggymanz ( 596061 )

        You make two errors. He used "climate" in the normal sense of the word, the outages were indeed due to the regular and expected climate of a region. You've been such a media sheep you thing of "climate change" anyone says "climate".

        Then you commit the fallacy of claiming we're moving to new climate(s). No, all the disasters we have are just weather and in fact have happened in the past, sometimes worse. Quit being a media fed hype monkey.

        • no, he was correct and you are wrong. get your head out of your conspiracy laden ass

          • I am right and real scientists are saying the same thing, you are just media fed and ignorant of science. climate change is slow and shows on graph over very long time periods, pointing to a single weather event and saying "climate change" is nonsense. You are the one with head in ass and getting your notions from social and mass media like the CNN hype monkeys

  • 8.5 minutes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Sunday July 04, 2021 @12:12PM (#61549774)
    8.5 minutes is how long it would take all the newly installed wind power last year to charge all the batteries manufactured last year. We can't store electricity! And before you say it, pumped hydro doesn't work either. We need bigger grids to reduce variability in demand and supply. We need pricing to closer match spot prices so that we will consume more wind and solar and we will reduce our demand when coal or gas peaker plants are in use.

    I've worked with electric regulators all over the world, California is the worst run by a small margin, Texas is trying hard but they lack the arrogance and cronyism that the UK grid has so I'd put them 3rd. Fixing the grid though requires educated voters. Politicians, even smart ones who know what needs to be done, can't sell solutions to ignorant voters. Voters get their information from journalists. Remember the kids who had no idea what was going on in grade 4 math class, they became journalists. We use the term "Eyes Glazed Over" for the expression on journalists faces when you explain a concept that take more than 2 sentences.

  • The Aussies love it, besides their moron PM.

  • I'm waiting for nuclear micro-reactors.

  • State facilities are planning to quadruple the amount of battery storage from 500 megawatts to 2,000 megawatts by this August.

    2 jiggawatts? That's not enough for even one time jump!

  • Here, I have had exactly 2 power outages in the last 20 years, both local to one building and lasting less than 2 minutes. You know, like in a _modern_ country with reliable critical infrastructure.

  • So, here in Bay Area, electricity can cost upwards of 48c/kWh, which is roughly 4x the national average, or it can cost 12c/kWh which is more or less exactly the national average. How does this happen?

    Some cities, like Santa Clara has their own power systems with in city and outside contracted plants, and they can provide power at reasonable rates to their citizens. Here the emphasis is on *some*, since this is rare.

    Or... the city goes with the default PGE option, which has a virtual monopoly in power distr

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