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Rolling Blackouts Expected Today For 3.3 Million California Households

Here is another reason beside taxation to leave Calif. Rolling Blackouts! Now do you really want to vote for someone coming from a state that can not even keep the lights on?

Here is a link for the details. https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/rolling-blackouts-prolonged-heatwave-and-fiery-tornados-sends-california-brink

Comments

  • This is silly. This is like asking if someone would really want to vote for someone from North Carolina, a state which can not even prevent hurricanes and tropical storms from inconveniencing its citizens. Pacific Gas & Electric is not even close to perfect but it is not a government agency.
  • Hi Ben, But, it regulated by one as most utilities are. Skeet
  • My power was out for a few hours last night in Arizona where it has been running 115.

    Naturally I'm going to vote against the party in power. From top. To bottom.

    I also know I won't be voting for any politicians from New York. Because they do a lousy job managing pandemics. Since I live in Arizona, I only get to vote on one politician from New York. But I was going to vote against him anyway, because my power went out. And his party runs Arizona.
  • @Old_Skeet- And why exactly is it that you have installed a quite expensive automatic-start generator?

    Maybe because of unusual weather events?

    Like hurricanes?

    Or maybe once-in-30 years heatwaves?

    Come off it, Skeet.

  • Old_Joe said:

    @Old_Skeet- And why exactly is it that you have installed a quite expensive automatic-start generator?

    Maybe because of unusual weather events?

    Like hurricanes?

    Or maybe once-in-30 years heatwaves?

    Come off it, Skeet.

    First rolling blackout in 19 years. And everyone forgets those old blackouts were caused by Enron trading practices. How many of those guys plea-bargained and/or went to jail?



  • For those that prefer a legitimate source of information, here are excerpts from a current San Francisco Chronicle article:
    California braced itself for another potential round of rolling blackouts on Tuesday as excessive heat continued to plague the state and energy supplies ran short.

    The California Independent System Operator, which manages most of the state’s electric grid, declared a Stage 2 power emergency at about 2 p.m. and urged residents to conserve energy as much as possible. Conservation measures one day earlier had prevented the state from reaching a Stage 3 emergency, when the grid managers direct utilities to impose rolling blackouts.

    Homes, businesses and government agencies banded together on Monday afternoon to sharply curtail their electricity use, preventing what would have been the third round of rotating outages since the heat wave started on Friday.

    “It was stunning,” said Steve Berberich, the system operator’s CEO. He was hoping for similar efforts on Tuesday afternoon to narrow the scope of any blackouts or even avoid them entirely again.

    A few hours later, the system operator said that conservation measures were putting a dent in the expected shortage, though it still anticipated some rolling blackouts.

    California has endured severe heat before without experiencing energy shortages, most notably in July 2006, when the grid saw a record 50,270 megawatts of electric demand. No rolling blackouts happened then.

    But a big difference in recent days has been the extent to which other western U.S. states are also facing excessive heat, preventing California from relying on out-of-state power imports to close its energy shortfall.

    @Old_Skeet: Since you appear to be somewhat ignorant of the way that power is normally pooled and shared among power companies in various sections of the United States I have used bold text to help you understand some of the factors working here.
  • I'm with you @WABAC I live in Florida and I also won't be voting for the "politician" from New York. Of course his party runs Florida as well.
  • edited August 2020
    Years back on one of the family's Cabarrus County farms had electricity before the power company came. The farm generated it's own low volatage electricity. It had a wind turbine on top of the barn and a water wheel in the creek that drove generators that charged a bank of batteries. With this, the farm house, well house, barn were wired for lighting with some small electrical items run plus we had some exterior lighting as well. I still remember this electrical system and this is one of the reasons my mom and dad moved to the city even though the family farmed because the city offered more for modern day living than living in the country. Plus, at the time, the city school system was better than that of the County's. Now days, Old_Skeet has standby generation at his home for a good number of reasons just as the hospitals and other critical operational places do.

    My late pops had a saying ... If you prepare for the hard and bad times ... then, you are prepared for the good times as well. So, at times we do go off grid and generate our own power even today as we did years back on the farm. The reason for this is I live in a 100+ year old neighborhood with an aged above ground power delivery system that was put in place years back. The power company wants to upgrade the system ... go underground ... but, you guessed it. The local dems are against it plus the dems now control the state utilities commission. This is making it difficult on the utility to advance the system and go underground via city streets, etc. Another reason I am crossing party lines and voting mostly Republican come this fall. The radical dems need to go as they voted to defund our local police department.

    My observation is that the dems are in trouble with many factions breaking rank within the party not only Nationally but locally as well.

    Go Trump!

    I am Old_Skeet
  • Here is more on Calif's power outages ... some believe green energy could not meat the demand.

    https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/green-energy-failed-leaving-millions-in-california-blackout
  • No, it certainly couldn't, and at this stage of development it was never intended to. Sharing power reserves between various producers on an interstate or intrastate grid is a totally normal and anticipated business practice. It's really not too hard to understand, Skeet- why don't you give it a try:

    • It would be extremely expensive and inefficient for each and every power company to install and maintain enough capacity to service it's own area at all times, no matter how high the load, or in any emergency.

    • Therefore the power companies enter into power sharing agreements, basically covering each others emergency needs. It's called "insurance", Skeet- surely you're familiar with the concept?

    • As I explained above, in recent days the other western U.S. states are also facing unprecedented excessive heat, due to the climate change which the present administration chooses to ignore. This situation resulted in inadequate reserves for the power pool generally. The backup which had been contracted for simply wasn't there.

    Got it?
  • Hi @Old_Joe. Yes I got it. Seems the dems green energy plan left calif short as others had no power to send. Skeet
  • Well, it certainly seems to be a wake-up call, I'll give you that. But the folks in CA seemed to handle it well when asked to reduce their power consumption, resulting in no additional rolling blackouts after the Monday episode.

    130° in Needles, CA the other day. Never before in recorded history. But don't worry about climate change... lets drill for more oil, no matter where... lets burn more coal.

    Now Skeet, I have no idea how you might feel about those issues. But when you associate yourself with leadership that is attempting to make things even worse than they are now, what is someone to think?

    OJ
  • edited August 2020
    Delete
  • No offense intended... just trying to explain how and why others see a situation like this.
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