Posted on 10/08/2025 5:43:15 AM PDT by Tell It Right
In 2020, California imported about 25% of its demand for electricity from Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona due to the capacity limitations of the three utilities that serve the State (Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric). These capacity limitations resulted from the closure of fossil fuel plants and environmental restrictions imposed by regulatory authorities in California to meet climate change standards. New England, New Jersey, and New York combined imported about 30% of their demand from either neighboring states or Canada. Many utilities in PJM and MISO import electricity from TVA and the Southern Company System due to power plant closures to comply with environmental standards or the retirement of fossil fuel plants to meet climate change standards.
The Federal Power Act of 1920, amended in 1935, explicitly reserves generation facility decisions to the states. No federal agency can require a utility to build a power plant. PSCs base their decision to allow state utilities to build new capacity on “long term forecasts of supply/demand,” known as IRPs. Although IRPs can include forecasts for electricity exports, the PSCs cannot approve plants solely for exports if it harms in-state service (supply shortage to in-state users) or causes rates to rise (contract pricing for exports above existing state rates).
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
PSCs, which are assigned and/or voted on at the state level, can't make decisions based on the needs of power that's exported to other states. In other words, Alabama's PSC's decisions on whether or not to set up a new power plant can't be based on how much the states north of Alabama pull from our grid. (In the article this is stated as the TVA and Southern Company exporting power to the PJM and MSO managed grids.)
I don't know if that means that Alabama has the authority to shut off power export, if necessary, to meet in state power consumption during high demand. That would be nice, particularly with many of the blue states north of us deciding to do "green" intermittent power production (and thus not meet their needs).
This is not an accident, totally planned and executed by the left/elite/globalists.
Having worked in power production for over 40 years now, soon to retire, the last 10 of my water-chat conversations and outside of work friends’ conversations often are how wew we are losing capacity at a critical rate and how prices will rise and soon skyrocket (because of the last 2 years of AI push).
To that end we have cleaned up debt, create more free income waiting for prices to explode and added things like generators and such expecting limited brownouts and blackouts.
This is become so noticeable that those I work with and myself have literally positioned our income / debt and home life to account for it.
Wow....maybe we need more electric vehicles.. That’ll solve all our problems. Ask Al Gore, he’ll tell you.
It wasn’t planned. It was ignored. I worked for a utility and we said that green energy could not provide base line power. I pointed out the coming shortfalls until I was laid off.
Most of the young workers had drunk the Kool aide and now the only option is to restrict usage by raising the price. No AC for you!
Are these states open and welcoming to the use of nuclear energy?
Here in NYC, we just closed one of our fully functional nuclear power plant in Indian Point 40 miles from NYC.
It was closed due to political, environmental, and safety concerns, despite its strong performance and reliability.
Then-Governor Andrew Cuomo ( who now wants to be NYC Mayor) led the push to shut down Indian Point, citing its proximity to New York City (just 36 miles away) and potential risks from earthquakes, terrorism, or meltdowns.
Indian Point supplied 25% of New York City’s electricity—mostly carbon-free.
Its closure led to a 35% increase in carbon emissions from in-state generation, as natural gas replaced nuclear output.
Promised renewable replacements and green jobs have not materialized, and electricity has become costlier and less reliable.
So what are these states planning to do with available nuclea power and the many expert companies able to provide them?
Need interstate tariffs on production so the maker states get paid by the freeloaders/greenies.
Sounds to me like you have nothing to worry about so long as you don’t live in a blue shithole. If you do.....you’d best move, work to change the governance of your state or just accept higher prices and routine blackouts.
You and I think a lot alike. Though, admittedly, I have no experience with power production or electrical work (besides the every-man maintenance of a home like replacing a light fixture). I'm in my mid-50's and my wife and I are financially set enough to retire now. But I'm quasi-retired so I can build up our wealth more -- enough to pay off the home debt if desired and still have more than enough wealth to live on.
I'm on the fence with the old argument of paying off the mortgage to be debt free, vs. leaving that money invested to grow more than the low fixed interest rate of the mortgage. I handle that by wanting enough in investments to pay off the mortgage if the day ever comes that there's a dispute between me and the bank, I can withdraw enough to pay off the house debt outright and not miss a beat on my retirement lifestyle. (So the borrower won't be slave to the lender.) But if that day never comes, if I always have a good relationship with the bank, I'll leave that money invested and use it to make the mortgage payments.
I recently added to the home debt when Brandon issued multiple EO's in his first week in office to make it harder to drill for natural gas and oil. This was even though Barack's EPA forced Alabama Power to close down a coal plant and replace it with power produced by "clean burning natural gas". Basically, the Dims forced us to consume more natural gas, then punished us for doing so. My power bills and natural gas bills and cost for gasoline at the pump all skyrocketed.
So I took out a HELOC to buy and have installed decentralized solar to minimize my dependency on energy in the over-regulated energy market. I liked it so much I upgraded it a year later in 2022. That was the same year it was time to replace my wife's old gas crossover anyway. So I replaced it with an EV crossover. Both of us drive it way more than the gas pickup to minimize our dependency on over-regulated gasoline. I also converted my two natural gas appliances into high-efficiency electric ones, as well as made normal energy improvements to the home like more insulation and changing worn gaskets around the doors. All of that was paid for with the HELOC that I make regular payments to that are smaller than the energy costs I avoid (though I still have a small power bill for the 20% of the power I have to pull from the grid, but no natural gas bill and almost no gasoline cost, especially not for the 18K miles per year we drive the EV, just on the home charged miles).
So far no need for a backup generator. The few times the grid power went down in the neighborhood we had power to our home because we usually don't need the grid anyway. And when the grid goes down I ask my wife to hold off on extra power consumption like no getting in the hot tub and no washing and drying clothes until the grid comes back up. I also go out to the garage and change a setting on the inverters to not charge the EV unless the home battery stack is 100% charged. We usually have the EV charging on an intermittent charger that's charged whenever the battery stack is charged enough to power the home through the night. I often leave that set to 70% or 80% (the difference between 70% and the 30% SOC that the inverter starts pulling from the grid is 40%. 40% of our 90kWh battery stack is almost always enough to power the home through the night without pulling from the grid). But if the battery stack is charged to 100% I tell her to consume all the power she wants even if the neighborhood grid is down (might as well consume the excess power coming in).
Love your approach, we are alike in thought on this.
While I am not big on solar it does make sense in your usage case and exactly how I would employ solar.
We have modest needs so for us gas and solar generators are more than sufficient for expected brownouts and black outs.
Oh is was very much planned, not be utilities but by government regulations.
As I said over 40 years in utilities, nuclear power even. I saw TMI shutdown purely for economic reasons, that was government forcing it, not a utility ignoring it.
Note the nukes are coming back up but only to support AI, this keeps that power out of the public’s hands.
AI is not about our benefit; AI is about the global powers having a tool to work all our data and control us.
Sounds like a very wise strategy
That usually doesn't affect me personally because high power demands here in the south equate to hot summer days when everyone has to run their A/C a lot. But that's when I get free power anyway and don't need the grid. (That's part of the math on whether or not solar is feasible for one's particular situation.) But if Alabama has to export power to northern "green" stupid blue states because they don't know how to generate power dependably, then it does impact my neighbors.
More about the contract, the decision to limit exports typically plays out as to how to maintain the majority of the grid as to ensure the smallest amount of disruptions.
Rules change when grid emergencies are declared and those rules are regionally specific.
California voters can fix all problems they create. I trust in them.
NYSEG is NYS is foreign owned.
How is that not a national security issue?!
What a monopoly!!
Nuclear power is a prime example of the left pretending that they can't make up their minds on what's clean and not clean. I think that's by design. They intentionally make it impossible to please them. They promoted vehicles to be powered by CNG, with busses and trucks proudly displaying the "powered by clean natural gas" stickers. Only to now hate on natural gas more than my ex-mother-in-law hates on peace and quiet. LOL They've done the same with nuclear. As soon as we get more dependent on nuclear power, the left will figure out why it's tearing up the environment and demand it be shut down again.
The solution is never to cave into the left's demands. The solution is to either train the public to keep the left out of power, or in the case of energy, figure out how each of us can be more self-reliant and not depend on the left's over-regulated energy market and their doomsday cult warmageddon policies.
THE DEMANDS OF POWER & WATER BY “DATA CENTERS” IS ANOTHER LOOMING ISSUE.
PEOPLE HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH OF EACH IS REQUIRED—24/7/365
I have extended family further northeast from you, almost on the Atlantic coast. They liked my solar and asked me for advice for them. Solar isn't feasible for them. They get a lot more wind than I do. But the pico wind turbines I looked at don't produce enough to be worth the cost, even with their avg wind speeds on the coast. And none of them have water flow through their property, certainly not enough flow and head to power a pico hydro turbine feasibly.
Your approach for handling brownouts with backup generators is great. But only as long as the brownout is temporary, and as long as you have the energy source for your generator (i.e. natural gas/propane/diesel). I'm always afraid that the left who insist on making the grid unstable will make other energy sources unstable or too expensive to use too.
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