There have been rolling blackouts in Placerville, Santa Cruz and a few other locations. Pg&e mostly, but they expect increased usage will require other metropolitan areas to be cut.
It’s hot, you can’t go anywhere to escape the heat, and social distancing measures prevent spending time indoors where you might normally “hide out.” So, were screwed.
I was going to head up the hill to a lake in the sierras this morning with the kiddos, but it was going to be 90deg at 5700ft. No thanks!
Btw - some of my kids asked to try to cook an egg on the car tomorrow. I conceded.
We’re in the Napa area and went through a short one on Friday. No power for about 3 hours. I have a generator but it’s not big enough to run the a\c. We just grabbed a few cold adult beverages and used a dozen of my lights and lanterns. Hot as heck right now but the house is well insulated so it stayed comfortable enough.
If it had gone on much longer I would have cranked up the genny to keep the fridge cold and maybe power up the cable and internet.
Power flickers early this morning, no blackouts yet.
I’m very glad we reroofed using a high emissivity “cool roof” material.
The attic temperature on peak hot days used to reach 150 F, and now only hits 110F. And the living space remains bearable even when the outside air temp is passing 90F.
I expect blackouts — word is PGnE did not want to bring expensive generating backup systems online to cover the need around sunset when solar PV drops off but heat lingers.
I’m thankful to have SMUD (a municipal utility company) and they’re fricking fantastically amazing compared to PGE. If I move a couple miles over, I’d be on PGE experiencing this crap.
Some of you won’t have any issues depending on what else is attached to your electric grid. Any grid with a hospital on it is supposed to be exempt from planned outages.
haven’t heard of any yet, but a co-worker participates in a voluntary power shut-off program, so I’ll have to ask her if that happens to her.
my car said it was 111 when I left to grab lunch. Usually it’s lying and it drops after I drive around a bit. That didn’t happen. I checked my home weather station (8 miles away), it said 104…
we tried that “voluntary power shut-off program” one year.
it didn’t work for us because they “un-voluntarily” reduced
(not shut off) power as well…and they did it once when
we had lots of guests in town for a wedding.
the women weren’t happy with that.
warm (not hot) showers.
weak lights for makeup.
we bought ice for cold beer
and the guys were good.
"After a very meticulous and thorough investigation, CAL FIRE has determined that the Camp Fire was caused by electrical transmission lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electricity (PG&E) located in the Pulga area."
(The Camp Fire is what the Paradise town fire is officially called.)
PGE sounded familiar, from the movie ” The Smartest Guys in the Room ”
” Portland General Electric. Enron’s infamous energy trading office was located in the same building with the utility in downtown Portland. That was where some of the infamous Enron tapes, like this one, were recorded. ” NPR News
“PG&E becomes one of America’s deadliest corporate criminals”
Current rolling blackouts are a Duck Curve issue. It is not a transmission capacity issue either, but a generation capacity issue.
The fire danger blackouts were due to transmission issues - and frequently affected people far downstream from the transmission lines, who themselves may not have been in a fire hazard area.
My parents are in the SF Bay, and have had no rolling blackouts yet - but did experience a lightning-related outage from the recent storm.