California rolling blackouts, who here is affected?

congratulations
26% less unbearable

Im wearing a wet T shirt and wet bandana on my head, sitting in front of a fan. I do not have an Air Conditioner

Thankfully atm it is below 90F here.

We do not have PGE, nor rolling blackouts here

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.

Is PGE the same guys who were allegedly responsible for the outcome of the Paradise town fire?

Yup.

EDIT:

"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”

These headlines are just aweful.

PGE is not PG&E
Portland General Electric is not Pafic Gas & Electric

both are profit driven
both maximise short term profits

rolling blackouts postpone infrastructure expenses

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.

Well, there are several kinds of blackouts; for the next few days we’re told a blackout might happen somewhere, but nothing specific about the individual address or even ZIP code.

thank you for the informative link

it says we have enough generation capability from solar, but we dont have the ability to store the power until it is needed for peak demand, after sunset, because storage is cost prohibitive.

as best as I can figure, only 18% of PG&E generation actually comes from Solar power

how that becomes the cause for a duck curve that requires rolling blackouts, for lack of storage, is unclear to me

Word on the street is that having just one more nuclear plant in operation would keep this whole fiasco from happening.

But apparently nuclear power is illegal in CA or something.

34% of PG&E power comes from Nuclear

PLEASE NOTE: Power mix includes all PG&E-owned generation plus PG&E’s power purchases.

There's one nuclear power plant operating in California, and it produces 9.18 percent of the state's power mix.

I honestly don't know if nuclear power is a good thing considering how toxic nuclear waste is.

Worse, you could build a few IFRs (Integral Fast Reactors, which use fast neutrons vs slow [thermal] neutrons), and actually use radwaste from other nuke-plants as fuel, vs canning it and burying it to sit for ages.

Imagine buying 20gal of gasoline for your car, and dumping the entire tank after you drove only a few miles. That’s essentially what today’s nuke-plants do. IFRs wring out almost all of the juice and pulp and leave only low-level radwaste that you could practically just bury in your backyard.

But nope, almost all this “renewable energy” is based off electricity, and gasoline/oil/coal is all being phased out in favor of electricity. Buses, cars, even trucks are being electrified. Ah, we can see how that’ll work out, putting allllllll those eggs into one big electrical basket. Power goes out, whole grid goes down, etc., and nothing works anymore.

Imagine if Cali goes dark for an extended period. How ya gonna charge your Tesla or Volt? At least a Prius could still run on dino-juice to get outta Dodge.

Wellp, at least Canada was on the right track with their CANDU reactor designs…

I gotta look up how efficient propane-run fridges (like for RVs, etc.) happen to be. Might be a good alternative for emergencies.

Ah, perfect timing. See below, umm, above, gaah! previous page about IFRs. They eat “spent” radwaste for breakfast, and leave low-level radwaste that’s almost nothing.

I had never heard of Integral Fast Reactors before.

They sound amazing!

They are. And they’re almost intrinsically safe.

Dump the coolant from a conventional reactor, and you get The China Syndrome.

Dump the coolant from an IFR, and the reaction pretty much just fizzles and stops. No boom.

Host of other niceties about IFRs, which could pretty much solve today’s electro-generation problems without needing bird-blenders, or acres and acres of solar-panels, or salmon-killers, etc.

But nah, the “no nukes!” crowd would never let that happen. NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) had to have its name changed to MRI (magnetic-resonance imaging) because people loathed and feared “the n-word” so much.

I think certain nuclear technologies offer the best long-term option for baseline electric load generation. Hydro is great and everything, but can we talk about the real environmental impacts of building dams? I’m also a huge fan of solar and wind for the right applications - and even moreso if they can be coupled with a large-scale energy storage system.

That said, I don’t trust either for-profit corporations or the US government to do nuclear right at this point.

It is, and it can be done right.

Not good. The PacNW is dealing with a crisis of salmon in the rivers practically going extinct because of dams. Indian tribes which rely on salmon fishing are hurting, bad. Salmon don’t have those “ladders” (yeah, that’s what they’re called) to be able to go upstream past the dams, so they don’t spawn, and their populations wither away.

Here’s the fun part. One powerco that owns a bunch of dams was okay with letting the licenses lapse on, and demolishing, something like 5 antiquated dams. An enviro-group wanted this, too, and was going to oversee the work. A court stepped in and said “Not so fast. Just in case there are cost overruns or unexpected snags, we want you, Power Company, to be responsible for all those costs.”.

Hell, if I were the Power Co, I’d opt to keep the dams going and keep making money from them.

Imagine you wanted to sell an old beater of a car and focus on a newer cleaner one instead. You’re willing to not even make money off the deal (trade-in, scrap value, etc.) but are willing to just walk away and wash your hands of it, even at a loss. But now some busybody steps in and says nuh-uh, you can get rid of it, but if we have problems dismantling it or anything, we want you to pay the bill at the full 120bux/hr shop-rate.

I’d say screw you, I’ll be keeping it and driving it, and let it belch smoke and drop oil and other nasties all it wants.

Just make them criminally liable if anything goes wrong. That’s the problem with corporations (artificial persons). If they act negligently, you have one Hell of a time trying to throw a corporation in jail.

Blackouts are a small nuisance compared to raging fires in your neighborhood and evacuation orders

My sister-in-law is among the evacuated in Scotts Valley. This has the makings of another Paradise, CA sized disaster