Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Many substations are older, and were never designed to handle high duty and load during climate-change driven weather events. These substations suffer from underreporting as they often dont have remote monitoring capability beyond whats detected at the line. Operators tend to baby these stations intentionally as their failure could spark massive outages across the grid (again, due to older design considerations)
Now this part might get a little political, but these substations/transfer depots/etc... arent just old because the outage would hit a lot of customers at once, but because NIMBY groups frequently oppose building or augmenting existing substations. Wild claims related to electromagnetism basically kill the project at every level.
its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict.
My understanding is that the mean-free-path of conduction electrons in even OFHC copper is quite short -- scattering on impurities is the dominant loss mechanism, not the boundaries of the conductor. Is the theory advanced above that the morphology of the wire matters, or is there another mechanism at work?
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con...
1. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chp...
The increase of resistance with temperature is well-known -- I was curious if there is some effect that is directly related to the wire sag (changing morphology, somehow-altered surface area/skin-depth, changing kinks at the connections, some subtlety with increased length (cross-sectional area also increases), etc..).
Like bending a piece of metal back and forth, it weakens each time.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion and check the coefficient of expansion.
Maybe I’m wrong and this kind of wire stretching doesn’t impact resistance?
https://www.atcllc.com/blog/why-do-power-lines-sag-on-hot-da...
Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.
Serious question: How was this handled in pre-AC times?
Is it just an issue because buildings are much better sealed than they used to be, or is there more to it than that?
Newer homes and buildings have a vapor barrier beneath the outside cladding. This article on the Perfect Wall [0], explains the benefits and options.
Older houses, like the Victorian that I live in, didn't have modern insulation, which can deteriorate if it gets wet, so they were made to breathe, so that any moisture that got into the wall could be removed through air movement. Not to mention that fireplaces required a constant stream of new air to replace that which is pulled up through the chimney.
[0][https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...]
But old buildings generally aren't even close to air tight. Under those conditions as long as they are heated even a little the humidity is mostly lower than outside. Mean the amount of water in the air as a percent is the same inside and outside. But since it's hotter inside the house the relative humidity is lower. In temperate climates you don't get mold.
It's actually modern air tight houses that have terrible problems with mold. Because they don't breath water vapor builds up inside.
I think that people who run their AC like they do are selfish and do not understand the impact that their everyday actions have on the world.
(I really don't run my AC. I do think people are overly dependent on it. The number of people I know who have their home cooler in the summer than the winter indicates many people really just do it because they can.
But also I'm not a judgey asshole, so I don't moralize about it to people)
That's all.
At the level of the generation there won't be much change, but the distribution / "last mile" substations have never been planned for the duty cycle and load they have seen over the last months.
Can you elaborate? A substation is about to start construction just across the (narrow) street from my child's elementary school.
I'd say 1/3 were reassured by my explanation of why non-ionising radiation isn't going to harm your unborn child/give you cancer[1], 1/3 decided I was a lying tool of the Establishment and They Knew The Truth, and the last 1/3 had a genuine mental illness - "No you don't understand, the Prime Minister has authorised the Police to monitor my TV viewing using radio waves and it's giving my family cancer".
[1]Unless you're climbing a transmitter tower and exposing your womb to a focused microwave beam at a very close range for a substantial period, then the heating effect probably isn't going to be doing good things.
That's exactly what I'd expect from a lying tool of the Establishment.
I would like to imagine that regulators and utilities have this under control, but making some effort to verify this could be reasonable.
(49 states permit utilities utilities to ground a current carrying overhead wire at utility poles, resulting in parallel currents in the ground. I’m not aware of this being a documented hazard to people, but it’s a documented problem for cattle. CA is the exception.)
Abstract This 2019 brochure is intended to explain the issues surrounding EMF. It covers the physical nature of EMF, our everyday exposures to EMF, the health research and its findings, and the conclusions reached by expert scientific panels and government agencies. It provides key updates to the review of the science that the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) published in 2002 in a booklet entitled, “EMF: Electric and Magnetic Fields Associated with the Use of Electric Power – Questions & Answers.” The 2002 booklet contains very useful information that remains current, and that the reader of this brochure may find of value.
Serious question, why is the answer to this not a slightly-but-not-much-more-polite version of "That's ridiculous, be quiet." and moving forward?
It's why you're seeing a rapid uptake in battery storage by consumers in California; it's a hack around regulatory and utility failures (and you get a federal tax credit if it charges primarily from your rooftop solar, which is mandatory on new CA residential construction).
It is ridiculous, and people who are ridiculous must be negotiated with (unfortunately!). I don't know what the solution is besides applying constant pressure in the appropriate direction.
Disclosure: This information comes from my own research, as well as first hand accounts from electrical linemen friends in NorCal upgrading infrastructure.
Laws could be passed to sidestep all of this and support infrastructure growth, but those laws would trigger the same attacks from coordinated groups NIMBY, who happen to often be wealthy single-family homeowners, and thus more often than their competition have captive lawmakers to resist any effort they disapprove of.
None of that precludes doing the right thing, of course, but if it's not an issue you care strongly about you might decide not to fight it. The best countermeasure is for everyone else to tune out local politics less, which is an area people oddly ignore even though it has the most day to day impact on your life.
Yes, stupid people can vote. This is the main vulnerability of democracy.
I think that what you've found is a flaw with humanity, not with democracy.
Well, yeah. BTW, I didn't say I have a better idea, I merely pointed out an issue.
In a monarchy or despotism, there is no transition of power by design. It is supposed to be difficult, because it is not wanted. So if you end up with the wrong choice it is very hard to correct.
Trump is scary. I am not of the US but: I fear if Trump wins. I fear the tantrum/insurrection of Trump if he loses in respect to a peaceful handover.
The US clearly fits in here. The US is not a direct democracy, but neither is any other country in the world, including Switzerland that perhaps is the one I know of that comes closest.
Here is what happens when you google democracy: "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy: 1a: government by the people especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
dictionary.com: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies.
You said the US is not a democracy, all definitions I can find says it is.
The end result is that many state and local issues are resolved through direct voter action.
https://mises.org/wire/stop-saying-were-republic-not-democra...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-11/is-u-s...
https://thebaffler.com/latest/were-a-republic-not-a-democrac...
Thanks for the links. I found the first link interesting and then disappointing, since I had worked at a bookstore in NYC in the early 90s that carried a lot of philosophy books, economics books mainly from the Austrian School, and so the mises.org link caught my eye. Ryan McKaken the author of the article basically dismisses the use of "we're a republic and not a democracy" when used as an argument in two cases of what he believes people are thinking. I was pointing out that we are not simply "a democracy", but more precisely constitutional republic, no more, no less.
How do you answer the question, "What type of government does the U.S. have?"
As to your question, I would say that the U.S. constitution defines (indeed, guarantees) the country as having "a republican form of government" (at the state level, but this is maintained at the federal level), and that the processes and principles that it puts in place, such as representative elections, qualify that system as democratic.
But the TLDR is that (in the example of 5G), the power levels were talking about amount to ~300,000x less power than what would be required to irritate your skin in a minor way.
Of course, it's always complex because sure, stick your hand in to a transformer and electromagnetism will do plenty of damage to you. Being against 5G or power stations because EMF "can do damage" is a bit like banning cars because jumping in front of a car "can do damage", except cars are _far_ more lethal and far less helpful than signal-carrying cables.
These days, most households, especially the wealthy ones like in Marin, are helmed by people who do NOT work with their hands, do not respect people who do, and who have no interest in learning more. Even worse, infrastructure work is so heavily regulated and specialized that gobs of accidental complexity prevent anyone who wanted to from learning more about it, reinforcing the ignorance.
And truly, it's easy to have sympathy. The world is a complex place, and no doubt they have their hands full dealing with the technology revolution and palace intrigues at work; who has time to understand something as boring as infrastructure? And besides, if infrastructure fails, it fails for everyone so there's no real benefit to being informed or prepared (in that sense being informed about city infrastructure would be very similar to being a "prepper", in a weaker sense, which comes with it's own stigma).
So if you say "That's ridiculous, be quiet" you will offend sensibilities to the extent YOU will be banned, banned for having dirty knowledge, for shaming those that don't, and for tacitly asserting the value of having such knowledge! Plus, your views aren't in their news-feeds, so there's no emotional juice to them. Emotionally driven opposition is the inevitable retarding force in the hyper-connected, capitalist info-sphere, and ultimately leads to civic ignorance and paralysis. Good luck overcoming that in your city council meetings! (But you have my respect if you even try.)
But I have looked into it exactly zero.
Ever since it was passed, NIMBYs and other types of individualists have found more and more ways to use its provisions to block anything from happening that they don't want to happen.
> We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe
> The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" in 2011. Last year, a $30 million study conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) found “clear evidence” that two years of exposure to cell phone RFR increased cancer in male rats and damaged DNA in rats and mice of both sexes. The Ramazzini Institute in Italy replicated the key finding of the NTP using a different carrier frequency and much weaker exposure to cell phone radiation over the life of the rats.
> Since 5G is a new technology, there is no research on health effects, so we are “flying blind” to quote a U.S. senator. However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research. Meanwhile, we are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation. These increases are consistent with results from case-control studies of tumor risk in heavy cell phone users.
> Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, is director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been translating and disseminating the research on wireless radiation health effects since 2009 after he and his colleagues published a review paper that found long-term cell phone users were at greater risk of brain tumors. His Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website has had more than two million page views since 2013. He is an unpaid advisor to the International EMF Scientist Appeal and Physicians for Safe Technology.It has no scientific basis and is not a recognized medical condition.
https://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs296/en/
High levels of RF exposure can of course do damage, in the form of burns. Any seasoned amateur radio operator at some point in the progression of their hobby can surely attest to the pain of being "bitten" by an energized RF cable.
But trying to promote the idea that cellphones are dangerous is just scaremongering. You'll absorb more energy in just a few seconds just by standing in a sunbeam.
I don't know why all the rebuttals focus on energy absorption and absence of ionizing frequencies. Seems like the mechanism of toxicity, if any, has nothing to do with that.
Blocking signals with your body becomes more true as frequency (and bandwidth) goes up. 5G Wifi can't even properly penetrate dry wall, not even mentioning all that water and bone in your body.
Beside that, below the infrared spectrum, it is unlikely that much damage is done by common RF signals; the energy in a quanta from that spectrum is too small to effectively do anything but heat molecules up a tiny bit.
Photochemical effects, ie, things like chemical reactions being induced or cells reacting to the light, require atleast about 1Thz to work (low-end IR).
The heating occurs primarly for frequencies between 30 and 120MHz, which is actively used but not by B2C commercial things, it largely involves ham radio, air traffic radio, sea traffic, weather satellites, etc. Things you're likely to be closer to the receiving end of than the high powered sender.
Which also bring to the other issue; the energies in common RF close to you is too low. If you send with 100mW power, the power your body will capture, even if it's the phone right next to your ear, is likely below 10mW of power. Low enough that your native body heat already overpowers it easily.
I appreciate that in your brief analysis you are considering several mechanisms of action besides just the heating. There may be many kinds of resonances, at molecular level, supra-molecular, etc. If very little 900/1800MHz suffices to alter BBB, then it is like a trigger to worse things, without the need of much energy. In the animals tested, the amount reaching the brain, at typical GSM levels, had already the observed result. Of course my tone is speculative here, but if the effect was confirmed in humans, it would not need much energy, and just the medium-to-weak signal reaching the brain could be worrisome.
There are not yet any studies on it, but if the effects of 5G on BBB were much stronger than with 900/1800MHz, it may also be the case that much lower signal intensities would still alter noticeably the BBB, even after the attenuation of the body traversal.
I am not a luddite at all, but I do hope that scientists working to certify that 5G is healthy are not hand-waving away the problem only by saying that the energy absorbed is too low or that the body is blocking its intensity. That would mean they did not hear at all about the effect of the mere frequency as a signal on the adhesion between cells.
I really would like to see some study elucidate the mechanism (or the absence thereof, and the flaws of the previous study), maybe some sort of resonance, soon enough to avoid to be in a situation were Wifi/4G/5G would be everywhere yet with dangerous long-term effects on health.
I'd worry more about standard heat given off by devices like laptops. The radio emissions aren't gonna do much but the 80C hot air out of the exhaust blowing into your lap is definitely going to do something. There is plenty of studies on the effects of overheating genitals in males.
But back to the topic; the energy is too small. If these radio waves had an effect, being out during a cloudy day would. The energy you get from solar radiation over a day is probably about the same.
Things like DNA breaking apart don't generally happen with this low frequency, largely because they require a bunch of energy to happen. Like ionization, even 1000W of 100MHz radio waves aren't going to make it happen. There is no amount of energy you can dump into a 100MHz transceiver that would cause ionization of atoms. It simply won't happen. Well, they will ionize but not because of the radio waves but because they've heated up enough that they're starting to undergo plasma formation. But that semantic difference is still important.
The sender in your cellphone or the energy you get from your wifi router are too small to be measured and by all acounts of physics, their effects are too small to be reasonably measured even in long term studies. We're talking literaly sub-milliwatt over your entire body. The entire body uses atleast 100Watts to stay alive. <0.1% change in thermal energy.
However, I really hope they find what was the flaw(s) that led to the surprising result on the BBB of rodents.
A rebuttal to that article appears in the same publication, and adroitly takes apart it's claims: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/dont-fall-...
https://www.troyhunt.com/lets-stop-the-5g-hysteria-understan...
I don't think anyone can confirm or deny that 5G carries health risks. But, we do have evidence there are health risks with other cellular communication technologies, and we ought to use that as a basis for decision making.
2. please try to explain the security issues that 5G presents that aren't present in 4G, 3G, etc.
3. a lack of information is not an excuse to promote doubt and misinformation. part of the reason we haven't been able to measure the long-term effects of cellular radiation is that it takes time to run those studies. please stop promoting lies and undermining trust in the systems that help manage our society
In response to #3, I have not posted any lies, and anything that disagrees with your narrative is not automatically FUD. There are serious doubts of 5G on many fronts by many experts, and these doubts should be discussed. However, as I've noticed here, there is a tendency by the group to form an echo chamber. Anything that's not in-group is not allowed, as we see here, where an expert has a serious concern about untested technologies. I wish we were able to have an honest conversation about this.
> It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Why not? When we moved from 3G to 4G I felt like it was kind of useless, but now that I have it I definitely enjoy all the things that become possible with it (lower latency everything, mostly). It was the same way moving from ISDN to cable. It's never bad to have better stuff - you'll find a use for it even if you don't have one now.
> can you explain some concerns you might have about 5G
Frankly the only real and reasonable concern to have is that there are very few engineers that roll out 5G networks that aren't Chinese. I'm not opposed to China, but I am opposed to a country's entire infrastructure being built and maintained by another country (that may want to use that to exert political pressure some day).
> there is a tendency by the group to form an echo chamber
In this case I really don't think it's that, it's mostly that you posted information that's just wrong and then you retreated to a (frankly lazy) defense as to why you're spreading misinformation. It makes you come off as the kind of person that's really unpleasant to talk to, because the lies tend to be so sticky and pervasive. It's exhausting to have to revisit every component of what you know just because someone else couldn't be bothered to figure it out for themselves.
However, I do think there is an echo chamber here, and I think that anything that cautions against the cavalier use of untested technology is not permitted, which I think is very dangerous.
What you think is a 'lazy defense' is really just a guy trying to subdue what he could already recognize as a geyser of vitriolic, and frankly wrong, comments. But, hey, this is apparently a place where everyone's opinion counts as fact, and no criticism at all of 5G is allowed.
I'm going to stop commenting now.
You post a bunch of cherry-picked nonfactual stuff about 5G and then complain that HN doesn't have enough fact-based content?
Quoting a US senator on technology is not exactly a strong argument. Like arguing about email security and quoting a senator on the technology committee saying he has never sent an email.
https://www.engadget.com/2015-03-09-lindsey-graham-never-sen...
In many cases senators are the least possible informed people on a topic, and are almost certainly not focused on the pure science of an issue. Quoting one of them pretty much means you are trying to sway me by using their position, not research.
Also, nothing that you quoted about 5G actually says it is unsafe. Saying that 2G and 3G are unsafe and that we don't know what 4G does, and that government doesn't want to investigate 5G, and that tumors of a certain type 'may be at least partially attributable' to cell phone radiation, and all of the other slights, all of that doesn't add up to 5G is unsafe.
This is the direct rebut to the article you linked, even from the same site.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/dont-fall-...
> On the strength of epidemiological evidence, cancer fears are dangerously misguided: While American cell-phone usage has grown from virtually zero in 1992 to virtually 100 percent by 2008, there has been no indication that glioma rates have increased proportionally in the same period—a nonrelationship replicated by numerous other studies.
> David Robert Grimes is a cancer researcher, physicist, and John Maddox Prize–winning science writer. He is based at Dublin City University and is a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford. He advises, across Europe, on the public understanding of science, particularly on vaccination policy and combatting cancer misinformation. His first book, The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk, and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World, is now available from Simon & Schuster UK.Senators who don't send emails don't do so because they don't know how to send emails -- they do it because they're doing seriously fucked up stuff and don't want a paper trail. As the fictional drug kingpin Stringer Bell says in The Wire -- "is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?"
To characterize the nearly ten years of cell phone growth as "virtually zero" makes me seriously question the authors fact checking and thought process.
To whit: "While American cell-phone usage has grown from virtually zero in 1992 to virtually 100 percent by 2008"
If this is the study I'm thinking of, it's suspect for 3 reasons.
1. First off, the study didn't test against 5G. It used 2G and 3G emissions. Even if you believe the study, it doesn't make sense to use it as a reason to stick with 3G instead of 5G.
2. The study tested male rats, female rats, male mice, and female mice. Only male rats were allegedly impacted by radio signals. If 3G is so universally dangerous to living tissue, why did it only impact one of the species tested? And only the males of that species? Sidenote- the mice were actually exposed to more energy than the rats
3. Even though the male rats exposed to 2G and 3G were more likely to get cancer, they also lived longer than unexposed rats. Male rats exposed to 3G lived nearly 10% longer than ones that weren't. If this life extending capability also applies to 5G signals, we should be accelerating 5G deployment.
That's explained pretty well by this -
I think the only well known non-US private school system (off the top of my head) are UK commonwealth secondary boarding schools, and those schools are more well known for their abuse than their academic strength.
Pretty much any other country (for example, France, Japan, China, etc) are generally built on a system of publicly funded schools
Private for-profit schools can use their money to get political influence and reduce public school funding in order to further its economic advantage.
As someone who lives in Marin I’m not sure where you got this idea. Most people who live in Marin have been there for 20-30+ years and are retired.
They probably paid less than 300k for their home.
64.1% of those in the county 16 or older are in the labor force. Most people living in Marin County are not retired.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/marincountycali...
Which is related, but not totally, to who lives there.
"We told the California Public Utilities Commission of a 4,700-MW need through 2022 and that gap started in 2020. Despite all that, only 3,300 MW was authorized for procurement and none starting until 2021," Berberich said during a special telephone conference the Cal-ISO Board of Governors held Aug. 17, following a weekend during which the grid operator twice conducted rotating blackouts because of high demand and tightening reserves.
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne...
It's weird that none of the 'experts' in the news could figure this out and we've gone to blaming random homeowners, electric lines, 5G and everything else in this story without this information even coming up.
But that would probably be irrelevant for substations and you could isolate lines from populated areas with not problem. I think the issue is probably because there is little will for investments.
There's an effort to underground the utilities near Foothill College by tapping into Santa Clara County Fire's funds for improved fire safety, since they're allowed to use these funds in that specific location.
A simplistic napkin math computation says that the cost delta in electricity between what Santa Clara pays and what PG&E customers pay, times the amount of electricity that LAH residents consume would pay for the entire undergrounding in 5-6 years.
So to my mind, it seems like a simple argument in favor of a municipal power utility that charges PG&E rates until it pays off its infrastructure, and then charges a more reasonable rate thereafter. Of course this assumes that LAH could achieve Santa Clara levels of cost efficiency, but it doesn't seem crazy either.
Too bad the deadline has passed for nomination for LAH Town Council. You should run next time ;)
More likely, though, is that smaller and newer utilities are likely to be more nimble than the big behemoth that has lots of tech debt and internal and external bureaucracy.
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/how-rates-w...
I'd be out there cheering on the linemen for replacing the old junk. :D
Just replacement to exactly what was there does not require that approval.
I can definetly see how replacing a lowly old pole with one of these annoyance towers can lead to strong opposition even for those not having 5G scares.
I take it you've never been to Japan
Most of those other things, I have seen, but on different projects lol. Like the LED street lamps have been phased in on most streets out here over the past few years. They also upgraded the light-up street signs to have LEDs and replaced the yellowed, cracked, faded glass with shiny new glass.
All of those things were super solid improvements though.
Of course, we could just act like the town is evil, defund everything, and then have them sell the rights-of-way to companies that would almost certainly squeeze the blood out of the infrastructure and place advertising on it.
Maybe they'd put cameras and use machine learning to determine which streets are the busiest, and find out more about the demographics of people who walk the street, so they can decide how long to leave the lights on - oh and sell that data to further profit lol.
Then again, maybe it's the same demand for power and independence that we are seeing with "Karens", masks, protests, Confederate statues, anti-intellectualism, conspiracy theories, etc. As individuals feel more powerless, they will almost certainly lash out at anything they can, including local utilities disrupting their life/convenience.
Not all locations are amenable to underground cables.
Here is a white paper that lays out all the tradeoffs and includes some costs. New construction costs can differ between overhead and underground by 2-10x. Conversion costs aren't negligible either. https://www.eei.org/issuesandpolicy/electricreliability/unde...
Where I live, 99.9% of power is delivered via underground cables, I get power outages like once every 5 years. Brownouts are more often but usually not related to cable issues. America needs to catch up to the rest of the world there.
It is complicated, as are most things.
The actual cost of construction and maintenance are going to vary from place to base based on geology, existing infrastructure, weather, labor costs, regulatory oversight, cost of capitol, etc. So there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
I think it was worth it. But there are crankypants types that hate any change because it's change.
That is too bad, I grew up in an desert locale that had all its power lines buried and I only experienced one power outage in fifteen years. Then I moved out to a coastal area where burying the lines wasn’t really feasible and pretty much every time it rained someone would hydroplane into a utility poll and knock out the power for a couple hours, and it rained at least once a week. If the climate permits them to bury, they should go for it.
For a few years I lived in a neighborhood that had above-ground lines, but further down the street they were below ground because that neighborhood was significantly richer. Our power went out fairly frequently. The neighbors told me it was because of the transition from below ground to above ground, but I also wouldn't have been surprised if NIMBYism kept older equipment in service.
I grew up in an old (for the US), hilly east coast city and nothing was underground. Because it wasn't very dense and didn't have gridded neighborhoods, it would have been quite expensive to run utilities underground. I subsequently moved to a newer part of a different city and all the new construction had underground utilities. It still doesn't prevent outages at the substation or high voltage transfer line layers.
Power outages are a once ever few years or more thing.
I have worked as an executive in a risk department at a telco and can say definitively say that NIMBYs don’t influence these decisions.
I worked with our government relations, legal and comms teams and was in charge of risk management.
There’s no profits to be gained in fixing most infrastructure issues and most times NIMBYs provided us cover for service issues.
“Yes congressmen we’d love to upgrade our infrastructure and provide better service but those damn NIMBYs”
That's incomprehensible to me... and then these same people complain about outages? Wow.
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2020/01/08/a-third-manhattan-bea...
what follows is speculation, so you can grab your pitchforks if you want but it will be a hollow victory.
I've always been suspicious of the claim that EM fields have zero effect on human beings, especially near high-volts lines. It doesnt seem possible. Our bodies function based on electrical signals and many cellular mechanisms are mediated with ions.
do we have a list of all electrically-sensitive bodily processes? could we guess what would happen if their simultaneous activation changed by 5%? what about 45% or more? So much of the human body is not exhaustively understood in the general case, and certainly not in the individual case.
idk, i dont wanna go all tinfoil hat here. it just seems like circumstances are aligned for there to be large holes in our public understanding (accidentally or otherwise).
note: for whatever its worth, ive spent some time around the 8MW generators on Nimitz-class aircraft carriers[0].
we'd have to be doing the studies, first. second, we'd have to know what we're looking for. if the effects were subtle, generational, or multiple and confounding, it would be hard to see even if we were looking. also, im sure the sample size is small. not a lot of people/animals spend years 10 feet from high-volts lines.
also, people are generally pretty change-averse. if there were proof that our current way of life was harmful, not a lot of people would be interested in discovering, spreading, or changing due to this news, least of all the companies with a profit motive. saving the turtles is fine if all you have to do is use a metal straw instead of plastic, but ask people to inconvenience themselves (less TV, less air-conditioning, less hot water, etc) and you've got a different response.
Sorry no link found right now.
While you read this, over 100 billion neutrinos went through your thumb.
You certainly know more about this topic than I do, but according to the article, it wasn't the operators that decided to cut back on power, it was ordered by the Independent System Operator.
From what I read, Edison, PG&E and SDG&E just did what they were told, and for some reason the ISO told them to cut back earlier than was previously necessary. That's why the experts are "stumped."
If I'm missing something, please let me know.
ahh yes, seems like the "looking for toilet paper in all the wrong places" phenomenon where there's no lack of supply, but the existing supply lines head to the wrong places. (all the industrial/office stuff is idled, while rural locations are blasting AC in ways they've never seen before)
That's a nice story, except as the article notes it wasn't distribution but generation that was the problem. Not a shortage of installed capacity, but shutdown of four (one wind apparently due to conditions, and three natural gas apparently voluntarily by the operators) plants.
For the first few years, we rarely used the A/C. Then one year we had a Horrible Heat Wave that lasted two or three days. The A/C ran more or less continuously during that time, but managed to mostly keep up. And it always cooled off at night.
In subsequent years we had period recurrences of 2-3 day heat events that caused our A/C to run quite a lot but still keep up. This latest heat event has seen the A/C running three days now with no relief forecast until Thursday. Worse, it's not cooling off much at night the way it always used to. For the first time in ten years we are having to run the A/C at night instead of opening windows in order to sleep.
Frankly, the trend scares the living shit out of me. The speed at which these changes are manifesting themselves in our little microclimate is just mind-boggling.
Never had AC on the Peninsula. We have heatwaves every year. This summer has been remarkably mild, low 70s most of July and August until now. We got our heatwave. A bit more humid than normal thanks to tropical storm remnants, 70f dewpoint and 95f on Sunday, 65f dewpoint and spiked to 105f Saturday briefly.
It seems fractionally warmer than most heatwaves, and slightly longer, but doesn't 'feel' indicative of a trend.
Still no A/C, and I guess I notice it more now that I'm home 24/7, but still totally do-able.
Been running the house fan overnight to get the rooms down into the mid-high 70s.
I've lived in SF since 2010, and there have been multiple weeks in the summer, during the past 5 or 6 years, where I've been unable to sleep due to heat. That sort of thing was rare in the 4 or 5 years prior. Just over this past weekend my inside temperature topped at just below 90F, with the outdoor daytime temperature getting as high as 98F. By the time I went to sleep, the indoor temperature was still in the low 80s, with windows open and fans on full.
If you don't require a/c at those temperatures in order to sleep well, lucky you, but then I wouldn't characterize you as typical.
It's just a really weird year all around.
Yes, it got hot on Friday and Saturday but those were the first two very hot days all year. This year has been overall pretty average, if not a bit cooler than average years.
My house was built in the 60s. It had single pane windows and no insulation under the floor in the crawlspace. It also had no attic fan.
We upgraded the windows and put in an attic fan, and that mostly works, but we still need the A/C a lot these last few years.
The house just doesn't hold temperature well. If there is more than a few degrees variance in either direction the temp swings wildly if I turn off the a/c.
This house was designed for the air outside to always be right around 72.
Another related story, I was using a datacenter in San Francisco. When the outside temp hit 85, we had to start shutting down servers. They told us the datacenter was designed with the assumption that the outside temp wouldn't ever get past 80.
That said, I grew up in southern ontario where discussing the weather is pretty much a widespread hobby, so it's actually kind of nice to have weather to discuss.
Had your coolant pressure checked lately? Heat exchanger fins clean, clear, and straight?
Humidity inside is running about 50% at the moment.
Drop that by 10-15% with a dehumidifier and you’ll feel a heck of a lot cooler despite temperature being the same.
Try looking for major sources of solar heating instead. Windows and especially skylights are big culprits. So are inadequately insulated roof / ceiling assemblies.
You can put solar film on windows, use indoor or outdoor shades, or replace glass with low SHGC (solar heat gain coefficient) glass to reduce heating.
Oversized units short-cycle, lowering the air temperature significantly faster than they remove latent heat by condensing water vapor. The controlling thermostat turns the unit off quickly because the big unit quickly reduces the air temperature. The latent heat in the water vapor remains in the air. People still feel hot.
Basically, a residential air conditioner should be running most of the time if it's properly sized. Oversized units will come on, run for a few minutes, shut down for a few minutes, run for a few minutes, etc.
Double pane windows and blown insulation will magnify the effect because the air conditioner will reduce the air temperature more quickly and efficiently and leave more latent heat in the air.
Note that latent heat in the air from water vapor increases with temperature. That's why we talk in terms of relative humidity. So oversizing is less of an issue for heating season and double pane windows and extra insulation help.
You can fake a second pane by putting plastic film over the window frame and taping it securely around the edges so there's no leakage, capturing the air between it and the glass. This will act as an insulating layer. Air leakage = heat transfer.
But you're better off replacing the windows with dual-pane units that have low-e coatings. Maybe the government or your utility has a program to help cover the replacement cost.
The temperature profile reminds me more of times in the tropics, though it is still comparatively dry here. We've managed roughly a 10F delta between the indoors and outdoors through the peak afternoon hours. The past few days when it got to 105-107 locally, it was around 95F indoors when the temperatures equalized and it was beneficial to open windows again in the evening. This morning, it only cooled to about 82F inside and has climbed back to 90F in 6 hours.
When I lived far away, I liked to reflect on the dark blue sky and desert-like temperature swings we sometimes had out here, with 100F+ days and nights below 60F. But, I cannot say that we never had hot weeks nor summer thunderstorms. I remember those too, along with other somewhat rare events like hard frosts, accumulating hail, or the occasional dusting of snow on local ridges and peaks.
So, with a longer view, I don't think this single event can be called a clear sign of climate change. Someone with a lot more statistical skills than me would need to model the frequency of events and trends and uncertainties...
This heatwave doesn't seem out of the norm.
The heat doesn't feel so new to me. As a kid I was always watching for those 100F+ days with the fascination of hitting triple digits. I have 30+ years of seeing those.
The thunderstorm was crazy tho.
Edit: The summer rain/thunderstorm we had yesterday, now that is rare.
Whenever Californians talk about whether I'm reminded of this Steinbeck quote.
Wait, are you saying that your concern is based on a personal experience of 10 years in a place? Besides the fact that your observations might be down to pure chance, there are also strong decade and multi-decade local climate cycles.
I'm on the other side of the planet in Northern Europe, and I feel the same. This summer has been very warm, it feels more like we are in some Mediterranean city (especially with all the outdoor seating due to COVID). We haven't had any record breaking highs, but the number of days when it has been 30c+ has been very unusual. Coupled with last winter which basically never came (usually we get -25c and frozen lakes; that never happened), we'll see what this year brings...
>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.
The state is currently reviewing proposals to extend the operation of old natural gas plants in Southern California. Environmentalists want the plants to remain closed because they use fossil fuels and are cooled using seawater, endangering marine life.
“It makes for a compelling story” if you have blackouts because of a lack of power plants, Mr. Powers said. “We know there is no capacity problem,” he said. “Something odd happened.”
They're currently running, but scheduled (from about a decade ago) to retire at the end of this calendar year. However recently (and prior to the rolling blackouts), several have had their retirement pushed out a year.
> These blackouts occurred as a result of a poorly designed market system that was manipulated by traders and marketers, as well as from poor state management and regulatory oversight. Subsequently, Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California's energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time.
Of course, I'm not saying that the current blackout is a conspiracy, claiming it to be a fossil-fuel conspiracy takes the paranoia to another level, especially when there's no evidence to back it up (yet). I mentioned it just as a historical curiosity.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#California's_deregulatio...
---
> “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.”
I just searched "Bill Powers", it seems that it's not a pseudonym given by the New York Times, it's real, sounds like a good name to work in the energy industry, haha...
Seriously speaking, apparently this man, Bill Powers, is an activist in consumer protection and energy issues, who often tries to challenge multiple investigations on energy issues before the state’s regulators. I don't think it's wrong, we need people to show up during official investigations to make them more accountable, but it does reduce his credibility if there's no additional evidence to support his latest claim, e.g.
* Energy Experts Question Scale of Blackout (2011)
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/sep/09/energy-experts-questio...
> Energy experts are baffled at the scale of yesterday’s blackout which left five million people without power.
> The blackout here was caused by a transmission failure in Arizona. But power-industry analyst Bill Powers says the grid is set up so that if there’s a sudden loss of supply, energy companies must immediately lower demand through a strategy of controlled blackouts. Powers said a San Diego Gas & Electric executive’s repeated assertion that the blackout was caused by human error in Arizona yesterday falls short.
> “That doesn’t explain why SDG&E didn’t deploy its emergency procedure which is to selectively brownout and blackout portions of San Diego," Powers said. "It looks like something didn’t go right at SDG&E.”
* Is the Porter Ranch blackout warning overblown? Yes, says one expert (2016)
https://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2016/04/06/47787/energ...
> But Bill Powers, a frequent expert witness before the California Public Utilities Commission, isn't convinced by officials' claims, calling the blackout warning alarmist. He said that in at least the last decade, SoCal Gas has never hit its firm capacity during the summer peak in the L.A. basin.
* State Senate To Hold Hearings On Phony Blackout Blackmail Report (2016)
https://consumerwatchdog.org/blog/state-senate-hold-hearings...
> A report by engineer Bill Powers for Food and Water Watch found key mispresentations, omissions, and misstatements about demand and capacity. Will engineer Bill Powers will be able to present his opposition report and provide technical insight to the committee on a very technical issue? Both sides should be heard if the hearing is meant to shed light and not simply give energy regulators and So Cal Gas cover.
* What will the next heavy winds bring? Assessing the great power shut-off of 2019 (2019)
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-15/pge-powe...
> “The utilities will oppose accelerating the deployment of behind-the-meter solar and batteries, even in areas that are subject to the shut-offs, because it’s just so diametrically opposed to their business model,” said Bill Powers, a San Diego electrical engineering consultant and consumer advocate.
He's certainly outspoken and active, which doesn't make him wrong by any stretch; in fact, it probably means he's one of the most informed on these matters (which of course doesn't mean unbiased).
Thanks for the links!
Looking at raw percentage numbers for blackouts is wrong because this is an issue of not having enough capacity during peak, which nuclear doesn't solve.
Every now and then we might get bailed out if wind is strong that day but that's not something you can build a reliable grid on.
I don't have problems with renewable energy in principle, but until we have practical storage capabilities or other alternatives, it seems like we need to keep most of the less desirable forms of generation capacity around. I do not think it is acceptable to roll blackouts until we have something like a tesla powerwall in every electricity consumers' premises. We should never compromise on grid quality in pursuit of environmental objectives. The 2nd order consequences of an unreliable grid could have even more grave environmental impact than driving the grid with a coal plant (i.e. every business & homeowner on earth starts buying carbon-intensive generators or lithium batteries due to grid stability problems).
Decommissioning nuclear capacity seems like a massive mistake in general, but I understand the geology is potentially subpar in this specific case. Is it technologically infeasible to produce earthquake-proof nuclear power plants? Or, at least plants that would be guaranteed fail-safe under any seismic condition?
Please expand. How does France handle peaks, having almost 3/4 of their electricity coming from nuclear?
Rarely does northern California have heavy A/C loads in the evening. Solar power output and heat load usually match well. But not this week. Usually, peak loads are around 2 PM, at air conditioning peak. This power restriction is for 3 PM to 10 PM, which presumably comes from evening A/C loads while buildings cool down.
Wind is all over the place, up and down by a factor of 4, unrelated to time of day.
For example, evening A/C use can be time shifted to the day, by cooling the house more during the day, so less is needed in the evening. The thermal mass of a house has a lot of inertia (and can be increased by adding, say, a pile of rocks).
The idea of a fixed 24/7 electricity rate is hopelessly obsolete.
I don't look forward to surge pricing for data usage. It feels inevitable.
> Take advantage of time-of-use electricity rates in your area. eco+ intelligently precools or preheats the home at times of day when electricity prices are low.
People don't voluntarily change their electricity rate plan.
When they do, usually it's when they're existing rate plan expires, and in CA there's been a lot of marketing at that time to get them to switch to time of use rates, usually by trying to explain to them how much they will save by shifting their usage.
But most people don't want to think about when they use electricity - they want to use it when they want to use it.
That's why there is now a California government mandate for variable rate plans.
Going forward, we need truly dynamic rate plans and consumer appliances that support automatic load shifting (i.e an electric clothes dryer that let's you set a deadline for clothes drying and then optimizes when it runs), and along with that, people broadly becoming better educated about how electricity pricing works.
1. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-utilities-prep-n...
The problem is the time of use rates are terrible, and will be more expensive to anyone who normally stays within tier one rates of the old plan.
I'd end up paying about 30% more for power under any of their time of use rate plans even assuming I only use power in off peak times, despite owning a plug in hybrid. If you stay within their tier one rates on the old plan, the new time-of-use-plans just aren't priced acceptably.
And, of course, even if TOU was cheaper when I switched, that doesn't mean it doesn't become unfavorable next time rates change.
We're grandfathered into a plan that gives us peak hours of 1-7pm where the new plans are 4-9pm peak. This works great for us with solar, because we make huge generation credits in that 1-4pm range when nobody's home to use power. (or, nobody WAS home before COVID). And we start our evening energy usage after 7pm as we return home from work + outdoor 'after work' activities. The 9pm end for peak hours would definitely hurt us.
OTOH, we have an EV now, so even charging off-peak at, say, 18c is relatively expensive vs the really cheap EV plans that give you good overnight rates. We've got an 11.5kW charger so I'd really love a stupid-cheap rate between, say, 2-4am. But if we switch to an EV plan, the costs go up the rest of the day.
Another perverse thing I've found; your net metering credits under NEM2.0 are on a per-month basis. This is AWESOME in the summer when we generate solar credit at more than 2x the 'value' as we burn them charging the car at off-peak.. but in the winter, when we don't generate much, we get into tier 2 pretty damn quickly.
I have a feeling that offices that are "empty" are still running their A/C systems and lighting at some level, and then you have some portion of WFH people also running those things at home, so overall demand is higher than it was when most office workers were actually in the office.
All speculative, though, and probably not the main driver, I admit.
(that predates solar, boy do I wish we could store that daylight 12-16 hours)
The article was a bunch of statements along the lines of "the renewable push is the reason PGE has neglected maintenance!", without even attempting to explain the connections for any of their claims.
Another claim was that Jerry Brown shut San Onofre Nuclear power station, SONGS, and they wrote that if Brown hadn't shut it then we would have avoided the latest brown outs.
No explanation as to how they believe he'd managed to sabotage Mitsubishi Heavy Industries causing the problems at SONGS that led to billions of dollars and many years of NRC licensing hurdles and required repairs had they decided to do keep it up and running. And not only that, Jerry brown apparently also caused natural gas to be super price efficient, making it impossible for SCE to justify repairing and returning SONGS to full power. Nope, not a peep about those things or how they felt Jerry Brown caused them.
Of course the agenda pusher writing for Forbes didn't explain how Jerry Brown did any of those things, they could just state that Jerry Brown closed it and most people would have to take it at face value. Why care about facts when you can push an agenda!
It seems like California suffers from policy problems rather than technological ones.
Why doesn’t California embrace nuclear power? Traditionally most of France’s power has been nuclear and it has worked fine for decades. Interestingly the initiatives to switch to renewable energy specific excluded nuclear and hydro. Politics seem to get in the way of good policy. Rather than pleading to conserve power, why not generate more of it? When people are starving, the solution isn’t to tell everyone to eat less, but to produce more.
In our case, with a 13 kW solar array, our usual bill is in the order of $15 per month and has been so for years. Last month our bill was $350 and the prior month $184. We have been sending excess energy to SCE for years. I built a larger system than normal in preparation for electric vehicles. Which means that, at times, we send as much as 6 kW or so back. None of that mattered.
What complicates everything is that we were auto-magically signed-up for CPA (Clean Power Alliance). Which is, as far as I am concerned, a government run scam (sorry if this offends anyone). By "we" I mean, most of our neighborhood and town.
What makes this a mess is that SCE can't talk about CPA rates and CPA can't talk about SCE billing. One, in theory, provides the electricity and the other charges you for the transport and some fees. If you have ever tried to make sense out of one of these bills you know exactly what I am talking about. I have spent hours on the phone will SCE billing people and they can't tell me how some of it is actually calculated, even managers don't know.
https://cleanpoweralliance.org/
What makes it even worse is that the rate comparison tools and calculators available before the transition to CPA+SCE evaporated after the transition. The SCE website has been a mess for about two years and not having access to rate comparison tools makes it even worse. Billing and data clarity is obfuscated, to say the least.
Some of us are now in the process of opting out of CPA just to that we can talk to a single point of contact and actually discuss the bill. With CPA in the loop it is impossible because CPA and SCE point fingers at each other and consumers are left in the middle wondering what the heck happened.
Even beyond that, SCE told everyone that they had "grandfathered rates". This are the TOU-D-A and TOU-D-B rates from a few years ago. One of the things that changed radically with respect to that time is that some of the costs per kWh have more than tripled. When inquiring about how this could happen with "grandfathered rates" we were told that the rate schedule was grandfathered not the cost per kWh. In other words, the demarcation times between "On peak", "Off peak" and "Super off peak" remain fixed but your cost per kWh changes.
This is the most dishonest use of the term "grandfathered" I have seen in my life. This might not make sense to readers outside of the US. Here, the term refers to a condition being protected from future changes. Anyone who heard that term pretty much assumed their costs were locked in, not just the times for each rate. From my perspective this was a swindle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause
Frankly, this is about as anti-consumer as one can get. The average person isn't equipped to run through even the simplest electrical power calculations, they just don't understand. Add to this the complexities of tiered and time-of-day systems, varying rates and costs of transport, energy vs. power calculations, area under the power curve (which is what you pay for), difficulty in understanding energy utilization, etc. and you have the makings for a public that is powerless against this complexity.
I am quite comfortable with mathematics and complex financial modelling and still had to devote hours to getting enough answers from SCE to attempt to create a model in Excel in order to understand what happened during the last few months, not just for us but also our neighbors. Even with that, the decision had to be made to opt-out of CPA because the math is simply too complex and nebulous. Not to mention that I have better things to do with my life.
The decisions people like myself made a few years back --in my case the 13 kW system-- were based on promises made --a contract-- with SCE. Never in my life I would have thought that a system of this size would result in us having to pay for electricity. And so here we are. If this continues the ROI will be negative forever and the size of the system would either have to increase by 50% or more or batteries will have to be added in order to manage consumption at lower rate-per-kWh times of the day (which can change at the will of SCE).
I am literally working on this as we speak, so the pain and aggravation is fresh and real. At some point legal action might become the only recourse, I don't know. My neighbors are absolutely livid, unlike me (I engineered, bought and installed my own system), they ended-up with a range of leasing and other arrangements from a number of different vendors. The typical systems these vendors install are based on the rate structure at the time of system installation and only seek to achieve a baseline cost structure between lease payments and electricity purchase beyond generation. As rates and billing complexity changed, some of these folks are finding out that their 3.5 kW system is now almost useless and their electricity costs are going off the rails. The trouble is, they will have to pay on these leases for years and years.
This is a mess.
This is a state-governed "CCA":
https://cal-cca.org/about/members/
Legally a CCA is required to send two "opt-out" notices. Being jaded and mistrustful, I did some research, and opted-out.
> Which is, as far as I am concerned, a government run scam
Only a slight exaggeration, by my experience. My city has lost money on the adventure, by extending zero-interest loans, and then forgiving them.
The big winners are the power companies on the other side of the futures contracts, local clean-power advocates who imagine they have somehow "succeeded", and our city manager, who gets a trendy bullet item for his resume.
Meanwhile, local for-profit power has begun offering a 100% renewable supply option for about 3% less than the CCA.
Here's a good one: Each SCE bill includes two added costs that are only added to your bill if you are in CPA, these are:
"CCA Cost Responsibility Surcharge" and "CTC, NDC, PPPC".
These two are calculated based on energy utilization. This amounts to $40 to $60 per month for the bills I have seen. Which, in turn, means it makes CPA bills no different from or more expensive than SCE bills. That's why I called it a scam.
By now opting-out of CPA those two elements of the bill go away. What's just precious is that they place you in a "transitional" rate for six months.
I place this kind of stuff in the category of unnecessary complexity added to people's lives for no reason at all. It provides no benefits at all (or questionable benefits), burns time and financial resources.
>"area under the power curve (which is what you pay for)..." What is this billing model exactly> I tried to look it up in the context of utility billing but wasn't able to find anything.
>"My neighbors are absolutely livid, unlike me (I engineered, bought and installed my own system), they ended-up with a range of leasing and other arrangements from a number of different vendors."
Is this where SCE or another Edison has a third party leasing firm they partner with? I think these leases are for 30 years no? What happens when you sell a home with such a lease on it?
When calculating total energy utilization for a period of time during which power varies (your TV is turned on and off, air conditioner cycles, etc.) the calculation effectively entails the integral of power plotted against time. Another way to put it is that the energy is the area under that curve.
Tier 1 from SCE for us is $.106/kwh. Tier 2 is $.165/kwh.
Plus:
1. CCA surcharge (whatever that means) is $.0224/kwh for PCIA (whatever that is)
2. CCA surcharge is $.00580/kwh for DWR bond (whatever DWR is)
3. CCA surcharge is $.00089/kwh for CTC (whatever that is)
4. CPA generation charges is $.089/kwh
So tier 2 rate is actually 0.165 + .0224 + .0058 + .00089 + .089 = $.283/kwh, tier 1 rate comes out to $.224/kwh.
The breakdown is useful, I guess, so you kinda know where the money is going. But it's not useful if you're looking for how much you can save on your bill when looking into energy use habits.
Just check to make sure they arent holding California’s power for ransom pending payment to a random Bitcoin address
“If there’s really a problem and not just the ISO jumping the gun, it’s going to manifest tomorrow,” Mr. Marcus said. “Tomorrow evening, the wolf arrives.”
What is that referencing?
What reasoning is holding us up?
There must be another reason.
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8082841/Elon...
> It provides a total of 129 megawatt-hours (460 GJ) of storage capable of discharge at 100 megawatts (130,000 hp) into the power grid, which is contractually divided into two parts:[20][needs update]
> - 70 MW running for 10 minutes (11.7 MWh) is contracted to the government to provide stability to the grid (grid services)[21] and prevent load-shedding blackouts[13][22] while other generators are started in the event of sudden drops in wind or other network issues. This service has reduced the cost of grid services to the Australian Energy Market Operator by 90%.[23]
> - 30 MW for 3 hours (90 MWh) is used by Neoen for load management to store energy when prices are low and sell it when de
"Vistra approved to build a grid battery bigger than all utility-scale battery storage in the US combined"
The past month has been littered with news of exceptionally large battery storage developments, yet none in the world can compare to the news that Vistra’s permit to expand an energy storage system under construction at its natural gas-fired Moss Landing generation station in Monterey County, California to 1,500 MW/6,000 MWh has been approved.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/08/13/vistra-approved-to-bu...
[0] https://phys.org/news/2018-02-tesla-australia-homes-power.ht...
I can't seem to find it right now, but someone in another post noted that peak power demand in California is several hours later than peak solar production, so supposing you have storage, it doesn't really matter what the source of the energy is.
> grid battery storage
I'm really curious if this is more or less expensive than adding production capacity.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve
1. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/opus-one-tests-...
While the solutions seem simple, putting all the pieces together is the real hard part. It's pretty common to have no data available on the distribution grid and the sensors themselves are expensive and then you need all the related infrastructure.
People turn their lights on when the sun goes down, and efficient energy storage is the holy grail.
Also fun back of the napkin math with overestimates, if we have a totally efficient Li+ battery with 0.25 kWh/kg energy density, and converted all the world's 40 billion kg of lithium in the crust and oceans to batteries, we'd get roughly 10 TWh of energy storage capacity. Which is enough to power California for 19 days (we generate around 200TWh annually).
In reality we only have access to a tiny fraction of the world's Lithium reserves, batteries aren't that efficient, they're heavy, dangerous, and all that makes for an expensive technology ill suited for grid energy storage (and alternatives like lead-acid are even worse).
Energy storage on the grid is going to look more like dams and reservoirs in the mountains than battery arrays. Even that's not great, ideally we'd invest more into nuclear energy for generating clean power on demand.
You are confusing present estimates of lithium resources (a term of art used in the mining industry) with terrestrial abundance.
Your estimate of 40 billion kilograms roughly corresponds to the USGS estimate of world lithium resources in 2015 (39.9 million tons):
Mineral Commodity Summary, Lithium, 2015 [1]:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium...
Note that this year it has risen to 80 million tons:
Mineral Commodity Summary, Lithium, 2020:
Owing to continuing exploration, identified lithium resources have increased substantially worldwide and total about 80 million tons.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-lithium.pd...
And at the turn of the millennium identified resources were about 13 million tons:
Mineral Commodity Summary, Lithium, 2001:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium...
The Earth's mass changes negligibly over a few decades. The reason lithium resource estimates change so much over a short time is that people have put in the effort to identify and quantify specific sources of lithium. That's what converts preexisting geology from not-a-resource into what miners call a resource.
In generic geochemical terms, the Earth's crust is estimated to contain 17-20 parts per million of lithium by mass:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
If the mass of Earth's continental crust is 2.1 * 10^22 kg, as given in [2], then lithium in continental crust masses about
(2.1 * 10^22) * (17 / 10^6) = 357,000,000,000,000,000
kilograms, or 357 trillion tons. There's another couple hundred billion tons of lithium dissolved in the oceans.
[1] USGS lithium statistics and annual reports from https://www.usgs.gov/centers/nmic/lithium-statistics-and-inf...
[2] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.V33A1161P%2F/abs...
That one battery chemistry alone would be enough to power the entire world for a week. Once you eliminate nonessential industrial power consumption - aka bring your own power storage or shut down machinery with the sun - the amount of lithium we'd need to store to make a transition to solar/wind feasible would be far smaller than global reserves.
Edit: as noted by phillipkglass, this math is moot
[1] https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/archive/is_lithium_ion_t...
Here is, for example, a sodium ion chemistry based on prussian blue:
There were two problems.
One he was using 7 days worth of storage. It's true that in the fossil fuel industry 7 days of storage is standard. But that's because coal/oil/gas have supply chain issues to deal with. So he was intentionally increasing the required storage 10 fold.
The second. He studiously avoided any mention of thermal storage methods. Or using natural gas as a back up. Both of which can be scaled up to meet his 7 day storage requirement.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/05/22/borehole-thermal-ener...
https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surpris...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-blackout-warning-11...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2020/08/15...
Build 5,000 MW of natural gas peakers and this problem immediately goes away.
And to think, if we just hadn't stopped building nuclear, we would already be rid of CO2-intensive electricity. Instead, we've barely begun, and we've only begin through duck-curve denial. Facepalm.
How much would all that equipment cost to buy and to maintain?
That's what's holding us up.
The LEAF people at my former company complained that Teslas shouldn't be allowed to plug in in the limited chargnig spots because they need to be able to plug in to get home! Fortunately, the company said "tough. First come first served."