Posted on 12/09/2002 9:36:58 AM PST by Robert357
Wow! Thank you for the image! I can just see the PETA folks saying that a wolf is a wolf and will kill sheep because that is what it was genetically programmed to do. Yes, PETA would tell us that we should not object to wolves killing sheep. If sheep are so important to us, then we should blame the shepard for the death of the sheep.
This may be a new understanding. This may explain to me why so many Democrats felt that the Bush Administration and FERC were responsbile for the California Power Crisis. They are the current "shepards."
Of course it doesn't explain why the Democrats didn't bad mouth Bill Clinton when he was still president and the power crisis was occurring and Clinton's FERC told Davis to go away and deal with the power problems at a state level. I guess that is another matter.
Also all kinds of National Democratic party leaders were trying to make Enron and others the evil cause. But PETA would say that the wolf (the evil power marketers) was just being it's natural self.
I guess, I can't figure out liberal democrats even with this interesting image.
While I fear you are right, I hope that leaders in California get their act together soon.
One think I don't think people have really focused enough on is the huge recent investment by Wall Street in California. I suspect we will soon hear about how in the Budget cutting, this or that can not be done because of bond issue comitments and how Wall Street demands this or that.
You do realize, of course, that the only reason the FERC is involved in this particular issue is because your Cal ISO (yes, it is yours, it is an instrument of the California state government) is putting the whole West Coast grid in jeopardy with these antics.
When your Cal ISO takes down the grid, it will be creating blackouts in other adjoining states -- who are exporting power to California so that your lights stay on.
If Cal ISO could only turn out your lights, then FERC wouldn't give a damn whether California was in the dark or not. But, as it is, your Cal ISO is regularly endangering the reliable power supply in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
Which means your Cal ISO needs to shape up its act -- or get its butt kicked by the feds.
Tell your boy, Gray, "Hi!" for me...
Think of a spoiled child of 13 or so.
When we were supplying California with power, our local utility reduced our voltage by almost 12%. I recently installed a new and beefed up power suply in two of our computers in anticipation of problems next summer.
On the other hand, you Cali types will be heartened that, thanks to those sales, our Electric rates went down!!
Translation
The California ISO for about 20 minutes around 7 pm on Sunday was short on its agreed amount of spinning reserves by about 190 MW. That is about 1/5th the power from a nuclear powerplant or about half the size of a new combined cycle combustion turbine plant.
A utility is required to have spinning reserves to handle changes in instanteous demand for electricity created by customers. An electric utility decides a day ahead and an hour ahead how much electricity they think that all of their customers will use in the next "period of time." People can all turn on their lights switches at the same time. There can be huge changes in electric consumption for crazy reasons. I remember talking to dispatchers in Riverside California and they told me about a large cloud that went over the City and resulted in a major change (100 MW if I remember correctly) in electrical consumption because air conditioners didn't need to work as hard.
Spinning reserves are powerplants that have generators ready to take load almost instanteously. Usually a utility will keep some powerplants not fully loaded so that if a powerplant breaks down or load suddenly increases or a transmission line bringing in power from another location breaks, the utility will be able to meet load.
Spinning reserves are absolutely critical to avoiding blackouts. In fact under Cal ISO rules if spinning reserves get too low, interruptible load is to be turned off. If spinning reserves still are too low, then rolling blackouts are to be implemented.
How Roman of them,....grin!
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