Venezuela to Begin Rationing Electricity

“The sad thing is that when the lights go out people die. The old and the poor will be hardest hit.”

I don’t know of a middle class home or even upper middle class home that can sustain regular rolling blackouts either. I know of stories of nightly blackouts, resulting in food spoilage, and pets getting sick, in that’s in affluent areas.

We know Phily and Chicago are notorious for their Summer blackouts where poor seniors die from heat exhaustion.

In larger cities, the big buildings need power to pump water, so a lack of electricity means cutting off water too. Nobody should have to live that way in the United States.

In fairness though, does Detroit use the same amount of electricity today than it did a decade ago?

Well no, but then it has about 20% fewer people living there now and a lot less heavy industry. Hence much lower electric power used. So I would not say that we are doing more with less. I would say we are doing less with much less. Meaning that there is much less economic activity and we have much less electric generating ability.

Though coal plants have been closing, natural gas plants are starting, and many plants are being refitted with far more efficient turbines and generators.

You are correct that more gas electric generating plants have been built. But most of these plants are not base load plants which means they are not designed to run continuously 24/7. They are intended to be started up during periods of peak demand and then to be shut down. Many are not even manned around the clock. By the way I have been reading in the trades that a good number of these gas plants have been cancelled or delayed due to the drop in demand caused by the extended recession.

Yes many of the coal plants have been upgraded to more modern turbines and generators that are more efficient. But this does not come close to replacing the plants that are being decommissioned.

Numbers matter. Having depth in defense matters on the battle field and in electric generation. Equipment fails unexpectedly and base load plant shutdown often at times of peak demand. High ambient temperatures place stress on equipment just as it does people. When it gets hot equipment breaks at higher frequency. You need those older plants as backup generating capacity. If you have a big base load plant go down during a heat wave it is a big hit and if the grid conditions are right it can take down other plants with it. When that happens you get what California did a few years ago; an area wide black out.

And for essentially the same reasons that have caused the problems in Venezuela: incompetence and ideology. Chavez fired all the competent administrators and replaced them with military and other cronies loyal to him who know nothing about electricity generation and distribution.

True. But it is more than that the article mentioned the Electric system suffered outages due to lack of maintenance.

This is symptomatic of the entire country. Since Chavez took power he has dedicated huge amounts of the country’s economic output to foreign policy namely the spread of socialism. So there is less money to devote to the maintenance of infrastructure.

You can see some of this in Obama’s policies as well. Namely the 800 billion dollar stimulus bill which Obama promised would be spent largely on ‘shovel ready’ projects which said would be primarily repairing our deteriorating infrastructure. Well less than 5% was spent on repair of infrastructure. His excuse “Shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we thought”. The audience chuckles appreciatively.

The lack of maintenance was due to the face that he turned the entire system over to people who know nothing about the energy sector and are unaware of the need for maintenance. They are military, not electrical engineers. Obama and Chavez are birds of a feather. Did you read Miguel Octavio’s article?

http://devilsexcrement.com/2011/06/13/electric-crisis-and-the-chavez-government-from-who-me-to-its-all-your-fault/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2735437/posts

The sheeple are starting to UNDERSTAND that hopey and changey Obama really is behind all this stuff. If Obama could drive gas to $10/gal he’d do it and smile. He can’t even run if it goes higher.

Solar: I have enough to run the fridge, LED lights forever and fans for comfort. I can run a small A/C or heatpump for a while to just cool it off on those terrible days.

I work for a company that has TWO big holes for TWO new NUCs. The idiots at the EPA are going to shut down coal by driving the costs through the roof. The plan is to make it later so the MUSLIM can get re-elected then really screw us over.

I also am buying freeze dried food and experimenting with things so that if the curtain really does go down, I will be comfortable.

I have friends who love precious metals investing: LEAD and BRASS.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2736032/posts

Wrong link on previous post :-(

The sheeple are starting to UNDERSTAND that hopey and changey Obama really is behind all this stuff. If Obama could drive gas to $10/gal he’d do it and smile. He can’t even run if it goes higher.

Solar: I have enough to run the fridge, LED lights forever and fans for comfort. I can run a small A/C or heatpump for a while to just cool it off on those terrible days.

I also am buying freeze dried food and experimenting with things so that if the curtain really does go down, I will be comfortable.

I have friends who love precious metals investing: LEAD and BRASS.

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