Bummer!
Posted on 08/19/2020 3:53:10 PM PDT by karpov
Rolling electric power blackouts afflicted as many as 2 million California residents last week as a heat wave gripped the Golden State. (It's apparently eased up for now.) At the center of the problem is that power demand peaks as overheated people turn up their air conditioning in the late afternoon just as solar power supplies cut off as the sun goes down. In addition, output from California's wind farms was erratic. Currently, about 33 percent of California's electricity comes from renewable sources as mandated by state law. Until this summer, California utilities and grid operators were able to purchase extra electricity from other states, but the current heat wave stretches from Texas to Oregon so there was little to none available to make up for California's power shortage.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, California electricity grid operators had warned in September 2019 that power shortages might become increasingly common when heat waves hit over the coming years. The current situation was thankfully not worse since California still has some natural gas power plants in operation that can be ramped up to supply energy when renewable supplies fail.
"Some folks in the environmental community want to shut down all the gas plants. That would be a disaster," said Jan Smutny-Jones, CEO of the Independent Energy Producers Association, a trade association representing solar, wind, geothemal, and gas power plants, to the Mercury News. "Last night [Sunday] 60 percent of the power in the ISO [Independent System Operator] was being produced by those gas plants. They are your insurance policy to get through heat waves."
Reuters reported that California's grid operators estimated that peak electricity consumption earlier this week might exceed available supply statewide by as much as 4,400 megawatts—roughly equivalent to the amount needed to power 3.3 million homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
When you have the means but still have to go without anything in the not so golden state, you can thank a utopian fidiot democrat for your hardships and troubles.
It’s 100% the fault of stupid democrats who are running the state into the ground.
Practice for when they are fully socialist/marxist.
LEFTISTS do not let reality get in the way of their ideology.
I have been saying this for a long time. Never let the truth get in the way of the agenda.
Interesting and well informed discussion on wattsupwiththat.com
Further suggested he build nuke plants for clean sustainable energy.
The real question is whether the Republicans left in this state can get their act together to take advantage of this.
And my answer is, I doubt it.
Reliable Power is a thing of the Past the Dems are in charge now
And yet if you ask the next guy on the street, odds are he'll blame it on Trump or the Republicans. It's amazing to me how Democrats manage to avoid blame for all the problems they create. Their propaganda is better than ours, with the help of the partisan media.
Bummer!
Or RINOs anywhere in the US. Mittens and Bain Capitol could help them. Auction energy generating and rate collection rights to international cartels. Win - win. The pols get bought off, the international cartels rack in millions. And who cares if the rate payers or American workers get screwed. Maybe get McKinsey in on the deal to make sure that max rake-off for the insiders occurs.
“I just sent Newsom a note asking why the world’s fifth largest economy is energy dependent on neighboring states?”
Because California Leftists have been externalizing their problems for decades so they can preen to the public about how they shut down all those big mean nook and gas plants.
Jerry Brown running around foaming at the mouth about Rancho Seco gave him lotsa points back in the 70s but of course they knew they could buy power from the upcoming Palo Verde Nuclear Generating station that LA DWP has a stake in. Which is conveniently hidden 60 miles west of Phoenix in the desert off the interstate far enough that the hoi polloi don’t notice it.
These SOBs have always known what they were doing: depending on Glen Canyon Dam, Parker Canyon Dam, Grand Coulee, the Delta coal plant, the Navajo Generating Station and of course Palo Verde. But the beaming simpleton voters in CA have no idea about those plants. But everyone in the outlying states knows about them and has to deal with any associated problems...like the air quality that the Navajo plant created up until the scrubbers were installed in the mid-70s.
Trash like Moonbeam never talked about them though, so of course...they don’t exist. At least not in the airheads of the Bay Area and Downtown Los Angeles.
Someone may have already mentioned it, but Rush was saying
California sunsetted nine gigawatts of natural gas production
over the last five years.
They were supposed to replace it with solar, wind, planet
friendly stuff...
LOL
Honestly, a group of people in the private sector would have
lost their jobs over this.
They should just run the power plants using Brawndo.
It’s got electrolytes!
“Climate friendly” Like in Japan?
Cali does use nuclear power..it just from comes the Palo Verde plant in Arizona
Watching leftist loonies ruin their lives is quite entertaining. Does this mean a popcorn shortage is in our future? More popcorn!!!
“”Some folks in the environmental community want to shut down all the gas plants. That would be a disaster . . .”
No it wouldn’t. People in California would be out of electricity but it would not be a disaster.
It could be one of the best things that ever happened if it lasted for years.
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