Posted on 05/29/2021 5:02:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last summer, when a heat wave rolled across the western United States, California residents experienced energy blackouts as a result of a difficult-to-manage power grid. Even after that experience, which put residents’ health at risk due to excessive heat exposure, California continued its push to ban fracking, shut down nuclear power plants, and rely solely on renewable energy. Now, anew report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) states that “California is at risk of energy emergencies during periods of normal peak summer demand and high risk when above-normal demand is widespread in the west.”
The report says that there is a 400-megawatt shortfall expected at peak demand. This shortfall will come despite an addition of over 3 gigawatts, the majority of which will come from solar power, and an additional 675 megawatts of new battery storage systems. These increases are still expected not to be enough when California needs energy most and show that California hasn’t learned its lesson.
The issue last year, and likely this summer as well, was that when energy demand rose to peak demand—when people returned home after work in the late afternoon and the heat of the day remained—solar power production dropped off dramatically. While increased battery storage may help to overcome the lack of solar power production, California is still going to face difficulties with managing their energy grid this summer.
The NERC report does state that the increase of solar power and battery storage should help mitigate issues in the late summer, the time when California experienced the blackouts last year. But the reality is that currently, California is in a bad position to handle even normal summer energy grid demands.
California, as the sole state with a “high risk” status from the NERC report, paints a concerning picture of our nation’s energy future if the climate activists get their way and aggressive climate policies are embraced at the federal level. The Biden administration has certainly followed this aggressive climate policy path, particularly with the recent U.S. Paris Climate Agreement pledges of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% by 2023 and having a net zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.
Meanwhile, while often hailed as a “leader” and “example for other states” by climate activists, California has thrown itself headlong into embracing renewable energy and vilifying any other types of energy. But this has also already made their electricity generation unreliable and it’s only going to get worse if they continue down this policy path. Governor Newsom is pushing to ban fracking by 2024. The sole operational nuclear power facility in the state, which produces almost10 percent of the state’s energy, is scheduled to close beginning in 2024 as well. These are dangerous steps for California and puts Californians at risk.
Ironically, this isn’t even the best way to fight climate change and bring down emissions. Innovations that have made traditional fuel sources cleaner have driven our reduced emissions and improved environment.
Fracking made natural gas inexpensive, allowing it to overcome coal as the main source of electricity generation for our nation, a change which has helped us to greatly reduce emissions and keep energy costs low. Nuclear power, while playing a smaller role in our nation’s electricity generation at around20 percent, is carbon-free, cheap, and reliable. Our nuclear power capacity has remained stable at 20 percent for the last three decades but new technology coming online will reduce initial project costs and open up opportunities for additional nuclear power generation. Nuclear power has an important role to play in our clean energy future.
The rolling blackouts across the state last summer should have been a wake-up call for the state. Even now, this NERC report is warning state leadership once again that their energy policies are putting their residents at risk. California needs to change its course and show true leadership by recognizing the limitations of renewable energy and finding innovative ways to both reduce emissions and provide reliable, affordable energy to its residents. A first step will be to stop attacking nuclear power and fracking and stabilize their energy grid by incorporating these reliable and clean energy sources.
California has shut down all of their coal and nuclear power plants. They’ve built no new hydroelectric capacity since the 1970s; even many of these are being diverted to provide habitats for this or that fish species. They’re heavily dependent on out of state power generation running through an archaic transmission grid. The grid was never designed to handle these long distance sources and is poorly maintained.
Of course the upshot is going to be annual brownouts and blackouts, along with fires started by malfunctions from ancient converters and transformers.
PG&E sent us a letter that they are adopting “time of use rates.” That means they can charge you more during high demand times of the day. It is voluntary now.
“Mr. Governor, Mr. Governor, how will we charge all those electric cars?”
“That’s easy, little girl. We will charge them overnight with solar.”
“Overnight? With Solar? In the dark???”
14,894,912 cars in 2019, 33 kwh average for a 100 mile charge, roughly 492 million kwh required.
Does everyone just go out and get a generator and a dozen fuel cans?
California seems to know the right direction to go & has decided to take the opposite path. Creation of electrical energy is one of them.
What does Newsom care?
He’ll blame everyone and everything else except his own stupid policies - while he continues to defy those same policies he himself set for the rest of the state.
And the media will print every word he says w/o criticism.
Think the a/c goes off in the statehouse - or his private residence - when Sacramento hits 113 degrees in July, August and September?
The solar panel people are making BIG BUCKS in this state (California). Not a week goes by that I don’t see one of my neighbors installing solar panels on their roofs. Storage batteries too.
My brother went solar last year and says it runs his a/c 24/7 and he even feeds power back into the grid (for which he is not compensated).
“675 megawatts” of battery power is a drop in the bucket.
With apologies to my California neighbors, another round of outages would clinch Newsom’s demise, would it not ? Bring on the heat.
Boot the idiot—and ideally many of the swarm of D legislators with him—and then begin the long slog of fixing California to a state it once enjoyed.
Friends, colleagues; spend this summer elsewhere. Trust and pray your home doesn’t burn to the ground.
Irony alert!
Interesting! I knew the efficiency was improving, but apparently it is more than I figured. Was the initial capital outlay a back breaker? And - is the system ugly as sin? Sorry, but that does matter.
What would you bet that Newsome has a new outbuilding on his property which houses a diesel-powered generator and has a 500 gallon fuel tank next to it?
Power problems have become a fact of life in California. There’s no fixing it with Woke Leftists in charge.
I want to open a car dealership in Arizona and Nevada, just before the CA line.
I will ask - not sure if there were tax breaks involved, I suspect so. Haven’t seen the system yet so I don’t know if it’s ugly as sin. My brother wanted the system to be off the grid. I think he’s experienced brown-outs in his area - which can get unGodly hot during the summer and early fall seasons.
The solar panel system I see in my area - you’d hardly know they are there - they can be placed on the roof in the back.
During fires, rationing of water and electricity Californians (non FR ones) seem to gather closer together in a cozy hugging family surrounding and loving Newsom. His possible replacement would be another Marxist.
Alternative: vote for a genuinely conservative state government and Governor who will allow freedom, fewer regulations and less money wasted on illegals and phony climate change stuff.
That would imply personal responsibility and work for one’s own future rather than socialism. Thus, hugging parties for Newsom.
How many years has California been a Dem Uniparty state? A long time.
I want dibs on a 57 Chevy. A FReeper told me most of the old American cars all over Cuba have refurbished or replaced engines.
California may allow the powerplants under the hoods to feature 50 hamsters running on big drums. Signs on highway "Last Stop for 30 miles for Hamster Food Heaven, Two Miles Ahead."
The house was about 3000 ft2 total electric and equipped with a Honeywell system that consisted of a programmable HVAC thermostat and hot water heater controller. Out of sight in a closet was a black box having the brains of the system and a modem connecting the house to the power company. HVAC was by a high end heat pump. Funding for the system was by the power company as a research project.
Basically, the were 4 energy rates that were something like 0.7, 3.5, 7 and 11 cents/kWh coinciding with low, medium, high and emergency rates. Normally, the 3 normal rates engaged on a fixed schedule and emergency reserved for extraordinary situations.
It took only a couple of weeks to get the system set points programmed to our lifestyle and comfort. The temperature HVAC set points were adjusted by time of day and the rate tier in effect. The hot water heater was tired on and off based on when we are at home or not.
For example, on weekdays the hot water heater was only powered up about 6 hours a day for about 2 hours in the morning and 4 hours at night. The dishwasher had a start time delay so ran it after 11pm when the low tier rate was in effect plus the electric to the hot water heater was turned off. Most clothes washing and drying was on the weekend when the low tier rate was engaged from 11pm Friday to 6am Monday.
There were more bell and whistles to the system but the bottom line is I liked it a lot. Monthly electric bill was about $75. When we moved back to Houston, I wanted to get it for the house there. I finally found a person at the power company that didn't think I was nuts and was familiar with the Honeywell system. As a company, they were reserving the variable rate options to large commercial and industrial customers.
California's mandating of a variable electric rate is a scary proposition. It would be devastating economically to be in an emergency rate tier for any length of time.
They are my neighbors! I didn’t vote for this crappola. The watermelon tree-huggers have their hooks into the CaDNC. They closed down dams, nuke plants, transmission lines, and any other things that would have helped. Then, they stopped anything resembling forest management — that led directly to the fires. The only type of leader Newsome is, is the first lemming over the cliff.
Ahhh, the sight of EVs sitting in traffic jams as they wait to get to charging stations for a quick zap of energy to get home or to get anywhere. (when zaps are available that is)
Yes, warms the cockles of me old ticker.. Honk Honk!!
(which will soon turn into road rage&line jumping violence like none we have ever witnessed before)
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